TRANSFORM · Regionalised Trajectories and Socio-Political Transformations in the late 4th - early 3rd millennia BCE in Mesopotamia.

Regionalised Trajectories and Socio-Political Transformations in the late 4th - early 3rd millennia BCE in Mesopotamia.

TRANSFORM was designed to address a major gap in our understanding of how communities experienced and adapted to the socio-political transformations that unfolded between the Late Chalcolithic (LC) and Early Bronze Age (EBA) in northern Mesopotamia. This period is one traditionally characterised through a narrative of “collapse” and remains poorly understood in the Zagros foothills due to a lack of long-term, stratified datasets and limited archaeological science-based investigations. The archaeological site of Kani Shaie provides one of the rare continuous occupation sequences spanning the LC-EBA transition in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, offering an unparalleled context for reconstructing technological practices, social organisation, and resilience during a time of regional fragmentation and reconfiguration. Against this backdrop, TRANSFORM’s prime objective was to integrate ceramic analysis, archaeological science, and anthropological theory to reconstruct pottery production, resource use, technological knowledge, and everyday practices as indicators of social and economic change. Through combining archaeological science, macroscopic analysis of ceramics, archaeological excavation and analysis of the chaîne opératoire, the project applies a thoroughly interdisciplinary methodology. This integration allows technological choices, production organisation, and culinary practices to be interpreted not merely as material data, but as expressions of individual or group-based identity, knowledge transmission, adaptation, and community-level decision-making. In doing so, the project situates past technological behaviour within broader questions of resilience, transformation, and human agency. The expected impact of TRANSFORM is significant: it establishes the first comprehensive, high-resolution ceramic technological sequence for the LC-EBA in Kurdistan, thus refining regional ceramic chronologies. It provides a comprehensive dataset which challenges long-standing narratives of collapse and contributes to heritage preservation and international research collaboration. Project scientific results will support future comparative studies across southwest Asia, while the project’s methodological integration sets a model for interdisciplinary archaeological research. Ultimately TRANSFORM generates new knowledge that enhances our understanding of how ancient societies negotiated periods of instability and therefore provides insights relevant not only to archaeology, but to contemporary discussions of resilience, cultural heritage, and long-term human adaptation.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз