1.PROGRESS AND EXPECTED RESULTS
The project has contributed to substantial progresses in current scholarship, in terms of acquisition of new data and the refinement of the methodology used. A better understanding of the complexities surrounding the interactions between climate/environmental variability and human mobility in relation to the shifting political regimes and land management systems in early medieval Italy has been achieved. The research has obtained new palynological records from lake sediments extracted in 2 localities. Through the integration of historical records and physical evidence a major synthesis has been produced, as to filling a spatiotemporal gap in current scholarship. The project has contributed to mitigate the challenges which interdisciplinary research poses, through a conceptual sophistication in the study of the migration-climate change nexus, and testing best practices for future research.
2.POTENTIAL IMPACTS
The impacts of the project are in that the research has been conceived as an initiative to overcome the challenges of the interdisciplinary research and to contribute in expanding our knowledge into new regions and periods. The project has fostered national and international research cooperations. Bonds between scholars based in the USA, and Italy and the research team of the ERC-founded project SSE1K, run by Prof. Helen Foxhall Forbs, have been established. New academic collaborations have also been built between Italy, the researchers of the University of Jerusalem in Israel, and two outstanding climatologists, i.e. Dr. Elena Xoplaki and Prof. Jürg Luterbacher. Finally, the project has brought benefits for the society through the education of young generations of citizens by setting parallels between past climate vatiability and the ongoing global climatic crisis.
