MINERVA · Mapping intentionality: demonstrating innovation in Neolithic pottery uptake in the Eastern Balkans.
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-11-01 → 2021-06-02
- EU contribution
- €195,455
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Mapping intentionality: demonstrating innovation in Neolithic pottery uptake in the Eastern Balkans.
Today's rapid technological and social changes have clear parallels in prehistory. The project ‘Mapping Intentionality’ aims to investigate how a new technology (pottery) was transferred into new territories during European Neolithisation. Pottery was an essential component of the new and settled, agriculture-based Neolithic lifestyle in the Balkan region (7th-6th mill BC) that is in contrast with the earlier, hunter-gatherer pre-pottery way of living. The new pottery technology gradually spread from its Anatolian source into Europe. However, while the chronology and physical forms of the earliest ceramic wares from Bulgaria – amongst the key hotspots located at the crossroads between Asia and Europe – are known, the social processes by which pottery transfer occurred have not been studied in detail. When ceramic technology is considered, the non-uniform raw material geology of the Balkan Neolithisation routeways (clay, mineral temper, pigments), and variable plant tempers relating to subsistence practices, means that pottery adoption must have involved a degree of adaptation (intentional change) as it progressed. By identifying innovation across various target sites, MINERVA effectively maps social responses to the challenges of adapting a new technology, providing a window into the wider Neolithisation process for this gateway region. The MINERVA project not only reveals hidden aspects of prehistoric social learning, transfer of knowledge and training of craft skills. It actually encodes dynamics of communication of past societies, adaptation to new conditions, and especially the interaction between past communities in locally-specific contexts and changing environments, thus helping us to better understand major processes within European pre- and protohistoric societies.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Today's rapid technological and social changes have clear parallels in Prehistory. ‘Mapping Intentionality’ aims to investigate how a new technology (pottery) was transferred during the European Neolithisation. Pottery was an essential component of the 'Neolithic package' of cultural traits that spread from the Anatolian source. While the chronology and physical forms of the Bulgarian earliest pottery are known, the social processes by which pottery transfer occurred have not been studied. The non-uniform raw material geology (clay, mineral temper, pigments) of the Balkan Neolithisation routeways, and variable plant tempers from subsistence practices, means that pottery adoption must have involved a degree of adaptation (intentional change) as is it progressed. By identifying innovation across 20 target sites, MINERVA will effectively map the social responses to the challenges of adapting a new technology, providing a window into the wider Neolithisation process for this gateway region. Recognising intentional change requires an understanding of all the raw materials options that were available to the first potters. MINERVA will therefore combine programs of pottery analysis (mainly optical and scanning electron microscopy to identify the technology of manufacture) and geoarchaeology (clay sample collection and resource modelling using field geology methods and GIS). Comparison of the clays and tempers (mineral and plant) observed in the pottery fabrics with the reconstructed raw material and social landscapes will make visible the extent to which there were intentional departures from the homeland tradition of pottery-making as it was progressively adopted. In going beyond existing typo-functional studies to target the actual decision-making inherent to pottery adoption, MINERVA will provide a new scientific framework by which to explore large-scale cultural processes such as the European Neolithisation.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD · OxfordCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union