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H2020Individual fellowship2021–2023

VARGAH · Investigating the emergence of mobile and sedentary pastoralism in Neolithic Iran through ancient food residues analyses and radiocarbon dating

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2021-06-01 → 2023-05-31
EU contribution
€184,708
Participants
1
Scheme
MSCA-IF

Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.

Results in brief

Investigating the emergence of mobile and sedentary pastoralism in Neolithic Iran through ancient food residues analyses and radiocarbon dating

The Vargah project seeks to understand the development of agropastoralism in South West Asia, and in particular the Iranian Plateau, a center for the domestication of sheep and goat ten thousand years ago. The Zagros mountains are a natural habitat for caprines that favoured their domestication from the Neolithic period. Pastoralism development revolutionised human food procurement up to the present day with the reliance on domesticated animals for their meat and milk products. The objectives are to understand better the subsistence economies of ancient pastoral populations and when they started exploiting the secondary products, particularly the milk of their domesticated goats. Contextualisation of the social organisation of sedentary and mobile groups of pastoralists in a secure timeframe and chronology is also important for the understanding of everyday life and of related aspects of animal management and husbandry practices.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

The development of agriculture and the domestication of animals has influenced past human diet up to the modern food industry. Archaeology contributes to enriching our knowledge of past societies, including the exploitation of natural resources by human groups and adaptation to various environments. Human societies associated with the beginnings of agriculture and domestication began in the Neolithic. Recent bioarchaeological studies have highlighted the role of the Zagros mountains (Iran) in the dynamics of plant and animal domestication in the Near East and their spread eastwards. This region has also witnessed the development of nomadic pastoralism throughout its history. Nonetheless, the overall subsistence strategy and beginnings of milk exploitation by these early pastoralists are not yet understood, due to the lack of analysis of absorbed food residue from pottery and difficulties in dating the mobile camps in this area.VARGAH (“mobile camps” in Persian) aims to fill the gaps in our understanding of the development of agriculture and animal management in Iranian archaeology by (1) paleodietary reconstruction, using ancient proteins preserved in human dental calculus and lipid residues preserved in pottery vessels, (2) resolving the chronology using bone collagen dating and compound-specific radiocarbon dating of lipid residues and (3) contextualisation of pastoralism through the comparison of sedentary and mobile groups. This project is based on a synergy between advances in analytical chemistry applied to archaeometry (fellow), cutting-edge expertise in Iranian archaeology and biomolecular geochemistry (host), and advances in 14C geochronology measurements (secondment). VARGAH will provide robust answers on early pastoralism in a region central to our understanding for agricultural development. The project will also enable the fellow to reach an idependant leading position by developping sought-after expertise linking archaeology, chemistry and geosciences.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

  • MUSEUM NATIONAL D'HISTOIRE NATURELLE · ParisCoordinatorFrance

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union