Marine Ecosystems, Animal Resources and Human Strategies in Ancient Mediterranean: Integrated Studies on Natural and Societal Resilience

Project Information

MERMAID

Grant agreement ID: 101002721

DOI

10.3030/101002721

EC signature date 27 January 2021

Start date 1 June 2021

End date 31 May 2027

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 974 161,00

EU contribution

€ 1 974 161,00

Coordinated by

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
France

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - MERMAID (Marine Ecosystems, Animal Resources and Human Strategies in Ancient Mediterranean: Integrated Studies on Natural and Societal Resilience)

Reporting period: 2024-06-01 to 2025-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Facing today’s radical deterioration of marine ecosystems, marine historical ecology has a pivotal role in measuring the impacts of past environmental and human pressures on marine biodiversity, with the aim of understanding the resilience of socio-ecosystems and proposing a sustainable management of marine resources. Recent studies confirm that human groups begun “fishing down the food web” earlier than previously believed. The Mediterranean, this palimpsest landscape, offers a unique archive of undisrupted sea-harvesting activities and a precious palaeoenvironmental indicator, i.e. the remains of marine organisms from archaeological excavations. Although independent studies have increased our knowledge of how Mediterranean resources were exploited, MERMAID proposes an integrated long-term study to understand: a) how marine resources have been influenced by environmental/human pressures, b) when human impact can first be identified, and c) the ways ancient societies depended on these resources and adapted exploitation strategies. MERMAID will first produce an unprecedented archaeofisheries synthesis (M-ARCHIVES Database) of every available dataset, covering several millennia from the Palaeolithic to the Roman era and Mediterranean biogeographical subdivisions. An unconventional combination of approaches (zooarchaeology, marine biology, isotope analysis, fisheries science, ecological modelling, statistics, input of anthropological, geomorphological and palaeoclimatological data) will then be applied on a critical sample from major spatiotemporal contexts (9,000 specimens from 154 sites) at a multi-scale resolution never envisioned before. The results will be key to reconstruct marine ecosystem states (baselines) through time, provide robust evidence of shifting baselines, and assess the nature and degree of human adaptations to shifting ecosystems. The project aspires to make archaeological data exploitable within historical syntheses and marine management studies.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

MERMAID has collated to this day all available faunal data (fish bones, shells, other) from archaeological sites around the Mediterranean dating from the Palaeolithic to the Roman period. This huge dataset constitutes the oldest "fisheries archives" available. Statistical analysis of these data put forward more intensive periods of harvesting of marine resources despite a lower number of excavated sites and archaeological phases, namely during the Neolithic, and inversely, an impressive drop in marine exploitation through Antiquity. Cultural choices in species selection that persist throughout the Mediterranean and despite local availabilities are also observed. Thanks to this valuable record we reconstructed the exploited coastal and marine zones primarily harvested by Mediterranean communities through time. We are currently combine data on the presence of major exploited fish taxa with available (actual or model-derived) data on ancient sea temperatures, salinity and isostatic changes, to model the nature and degree of major climatic fluctuations on marine stocks. We also used archaeological remains of marine organisms to reconstruct trophic levels, despite the absence of the basis of marine chains, namely plancton and plants, thanks to an innovative approach combining marine ecology and stable isotope analysis. Our results show that primary consumers (invertebrates preserved in the archeological record) are influenced by their environmental conditions, as reflected on their isotopic ratios. This is the first step towards estimating the evolution of marine baselines over long periods of time and, ultimately, a better understanding of the environmental and anthropogenic impact on coastal ecosystems. We also started working on the human exploitation aspect of the project, by implementing research on the seasonal management of marine resources in ancient Mediterranean. The work started by suggesting novel, non-destructive analytical tools for sclerochronological studies, as commonly used by biological sciences.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project's aims are twofold, aiming at investigating both the environmental and the human agents in the fluctuations of marine ecosystems, and the resilience of the latter. Human societies are also put into focus, as the project aims to follow the degree and forms of exploitation of marine resources by ancient Mediterranean communities.
We are currently working on estimating the degree of environemtnal pressure by combining palaeoclimatic and environmental data with our dataset of ancient marine remains under a inter-disciplinary ecological model. We will also complete palaeoceanographic data with isotope analyses that provide the actual temperatures and salinity conditions measured on the archaeological fish and invertebrate remains. We will also work on the degree of human pressure by estimating the isotopic baselines by period and their potential shifting, as well as potential decrease in the size of main exploited fish and invertebrate species. We expect to provide quantitative and qualitative data on ancient fish catches that will be compared with modern fisheries data. The reconstruction of ancient marine habitats by Mediterranean sub-region aims at providing an image of pristine conditions, that could help the more accurate implementation of MPAs across the Mediterranean.
Focusing on the human societies, we expect to provide evidence of seasonal exploitation of marine resources in order to suggest insights of sustainable managemnet of these resources. During the second half of the project we will implement two major aspects related to the exploitation of marine resources by ancient Mediterranean societies. The first aspect will focus on the quantification of the input of marine resources compared to other animal foodstuffs. The second aspect aspires to offer a solid methodological answer onto the unsolved issue of the "invisible" marine protein from the ancient Mediterranean human skeletal remains. We will provide isotopic data of both humans and marine remains and model the degree of visibility of the latter depending on both the type of resource and intensity of consumption.

Description of the project's objectives