TransMed · Transported Landscapes of Greek Mediterranean Colonisation
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2019-09-16 → 2022-09-15
- EU contribution
- €241,399
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Transported Landscapes of Greek Mediterranean Colonisation
TransMed focused its analysis on the development of the landscape in Greek colonies, which spread during a few centuries in most parts of the Mediterranean. Colonisation had been mainly a Greek and Phoenician phenomenon that appeared from the 8th to 6th centuries BC and affected almost all parts of the Mediterranean and reached the Black Sea as well. A result of this activity had been the interaction of the Greek culture with various local ones across this large area. The study of Greek colonies has a long history, but most of them have explored various aspects of their material culture. However, there has been little attention paid to the culturally-determined landscape modifications that were made or sought by the colonists to their new lands. Furthermore, another issue that was addressed had been the character and intensity of cultural interaction between the colonists with the local communities. The importance of this study for the society is associated with past and present issues of human movement and cultural interaction. It is becoming increasingly clear how important is the transported landscape as a significant aspect of moving groups. The blending of colonial ideas with local conditions and characteristics can be seen in several cases. The transported landscapes with their economic and sociocultural meanings and their contact with local practices and beliefs led to trans-Mediterranean cultural cross-fertilisation. These cultural interactions happened in the past, but their analyses are meaningful and important for current social issues. Cultural groups are still moving across the landscape. The overall objectives of this action are to understand the historical evolution of landscape and its Tran-Mediterranean links. This was achieved by addressing three research objective/paths. The first was to trace the form and trends in the land use and organisation in the colonial and non-colonial areas. The second was the landscape impact that the colonial settlements had to the environment. The third was to evaluate the changes produced in the local communities from their interaction with the colonists.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
With the creation of the first colonies by Greek and Phoenician cities a complex process of two-ways acculturation-imitation-syncretisation started that would eventually lead to the development of a Mediterranean ‘koiné’ with common cultural traits and contacts. Although this process has previously been studied from a material perspective (e.g. architecture, urbanism, ceramics), it also involved important cultural-determined landscape modifications. When groups move they carry with them their plants, animals and perceptions. Colonists transformed the environments in which they settled adapting them to their particular economic and production needs but also to their own concepts of landscape and the interaction with local communities. Transported landscapes emerged from all these linkages and evolved as an expression of trans-Mediterranean cultural cross-fertilisation. They form the basis of many Mediterranean landscapes and their morphology has influenced agricultural production, land ownership, settlement and population distribution until today.TransMed will further the analysis of transported colonial landscapes as means for the understanding of trans-Mediterranean cultural links and landscape evolution. To do so it will combine multi-disciplinary approaches, which include drone-aided survey, multi-temporal satellite remote sensing, GIS, archaeomorphology and multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental analyses, to investigate the landscape impact of Greek Ionian colonies, a coherent cultural group which includes some of the largest and most successful metropoleis. Two case-studies will serve to test these mew methods and extract general insights: the colonies of Emporion (Catalonia, Spain) and Abdera (Thrace, Greece). They were both founded by the Ionian metropoleis of Phocaea, Clazomenae and Teos. Data from the Ionian area will provide a complementary view of landscape evolution in the metropolitan landscape where these colonial groups originated.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- Institut Català d'Arqueologia Clàssica · TarragonaCoordinatorSpain
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union