MICROARCHAEODUNG · Human-animal interactions in early sedentary and urban societies in the Near East and northern Africa: microarchaeology of livestock dung
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2016-06-01 → 2018-05-31
- EU contribution
- €183,455
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
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Results in brief
Human-animal interactions in early sedentary and urban societies in the Near East and northern Africa: microarchaeology of livestock dung
Across the world and throughout history, animals have long played a central role in human life. People have a remarkably rich and diverse range of relationships with animals. From the food we eat and the clothes we wear, to symbolic and religious beliefs, our day to day lives are inextricably bound up in complex interactions with animals. The relationships between humans and animals can be environmental, economic, social, cultural, symbolic, and ritualistic and all of these may be interrelated. The MICROARCHEODUNG project has explored the many and varied interactions which humans have with animals in key moments tracking the emergence of early agricultural societies and domestication of animals in the Near East around 10,000 years ago and from the still little investigated North Africa, a critical area with implications for surrounding regions including the Mediterranean and the Sahara. The project has highlighted the overlooked importance of livestock dung as an important source of manure, fuel, and temper in building materials and ways in which this can inform on ecological and social aspects of animal management at the dawn of agriculture and in more complex farming societies. The MICROARCHEODUNG project developed, standardized and integrated much-needed interdisciplinary methods for multi-proxy studies of animal dung as an important archaeological material that is routinely overlooked or missed using traditional excavation and sampling procedures. The project has emphasized the usefulness of integrating ethnoarchaeological and laboratory-based analytical methods from the fields of geosciences, botany and biochemistry in delineating human-animal relationships in Archaeology. Through a range of interdisciplinary international collaborations, the project has been investigating contemporary research issues in Archaeology of direct relevance to everyday life today including: human-environment relationships and responses to climate change, agricultural development and animal management practices, human and animal diet, food and fuel supply and consumption, and the built environment more widely.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Livestock dung is commonly found in many human settlements, especially after the domestication of herds. Although receiving increasing attention in archeology, dung materials and secondary products are still routinely overlooked and this area of research is under-developed despite their worldwide importance as suppliers of manure, fuel source, temper and building material. This oversight is due in part to methodological problems in identifying dung during excavation and many bulk analyses, which destroy critical evidence on dung form, content, deposition and preservation in archaeological assemblages. This research will develop new interdisciplinary analytical strategies for microarchaeological study of dung combining geoarchaeology, bioarchaeology and biochemistry and experimental and ethnoarchaeological approaches. This integrated methodology will be applied to examine the context and content of livestock dung from mobile hunting-gathering to more sedentary farming Neolithic case-studies selected on a transect through the Near East, one of the key heartlands in which plants and animals that were later domesticated occur naturally, to the still little investigated northern Africa, a potentially critical area with implications for surrounding areas including the Mediterranean and the Sahara. It will also provide exciting new insight into the role of livestock and livestock dung in the development of more complex urban societies in Eastern Maghreb. These case-studies offer rich dung evidence for tracing human-animal interactions in different regions through time and key episodes of environmental and social change. The proposed project will establish a standard state-of-the-art interdisciplinary methodology for insight into archaeological dung as a valuable source of information on diverse cultural and economic aspects of past life-ways and the developments early farming and complex urban communities more widely.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE UNIVERSITY OF READING · ReadingCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union