Project description
Open spaces in Neolithic transition
The development of mudbrick architecture is associated with the rise of human settlements some 13 000 years ago. It’s also marked by plant and animal domestication. However, although built areas are widely studied, open spaces remain less investigated. The EU-funded PATIOS project will explore the establishment of open spaces to study how the earliest sedentary communities have worked at supra-household levels. By focusing on early Holocene communities in the Near East, the project will develop a multiscalar and interdisciplinary method to improve the identification of organic microscopic and molecular residues in open sequences. PATIOS will qualify the diversity of forms and taphonomic processes influencing open areas and deliver further insight into the concepts and transformations of open spaces.
Objective
The emergence of sedentary life ca. 13,000 years ago marked the development of mudbrick architecture and the transition to new forms of human ecology based on plant and animal domestication. In this context, settlement open areas played a vital socio-economic role as the loci of discard practices, outdoor activities, and human-animal-environment interactions. However, while built environments are a recurrent research theme for this period, open spaces remain less studied. This oversight is partly due to the methodological and interpretative problems posed by open areas, often displaying complex stratigraphies consisting of superimposed microlayers and excavated in arbitrary units that do not represent units of deposition. The aim of PATIOS is to explore the constitution of open spaces to investigate how the earliest sedentarising and sustained sedentary communities operated at supra-household levels. The specific project goals are: 1) to develop a new multiscalar and interdisciplinary methodology for an improved identification of microscopic and molecular residues of organic nature in open sequences; 2) to characterise the variety of formation and taphonomic processes affecting open areas; and 3) to provide a wide diachronic and geographical understanding of the concepts and transformations of open spaces and the socio-cultural aspects related to their use. PATIOS will focus on early Holocene semi-mobile and sedentary communities in the Near East, one of the core areas of the Neolithic Transition. Through a multi-proxy methodological approach that combines spatial analyses, geoarchaeology, plant science, biochemistry and ethnoarchaeology, this project will explore the heterogeneity of the earliest settlement open areas, opening up a much-needed comparative path for the examination of local trajectories in their creation, transformation and use. Thus, PATIOS will contribute new insights into the rise and evolution of anthropogenic landscapes and ecologies.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF-EF-CAR - CAR – Career Restart panelCoordinator
28006 Madrid
Spain