Project description
A study on the earliest forms of Palaeolithic shelters
Homes reflect our sociocultural traditions and play a crucial role in structuring our local economies and facilitating human habitation across the globe. However, our understanding of the earliest forms of Palaeolithic shelters remains limited due to the lack of identifiable archaeological signatures. With this in mind, the ERC-funded HOME project seeks to address this gap by uncovering and evaluating various Palaeolithic shelters in East-Central Europe. Through ethnographic documentation, the project aims to identify factors that influenced the location and design of forager shelters. Additionally, it will develop new geophysical methods to detect residues of open-air shelters. The project will also investigate mammoth bone structures, one of the earliest built structures, and compare open-air shelters with regional cave occupation through targeted excavations.
Objective
From penthouses to igloos, homes are a cornerstone of human society, deeply entrenched in our evolutionary past. Their staggering array of architecture simultaneously shape and reflect our sociocultural traditions, structure our local economies, and have enabled us to inhabit all four corners of the earth. Yet surprisingly little is known about their earliest formsPalaeolithic shelters. This is because no systematic attempts have been made to target their early archaeological signatures. HOME will search for a diversity of Palaeolithic shelters during the Late Pleistocene through informed systematic surveys and excavations of archaeological sites in East-Central Europe, a place where early mammoth bone structures suggest precocious shelters, but where the record remains inconclusive. This projects goal is to uncover and assess a variety of Palaeolithic shelters with the aim to understand the diverse ways that humans lived and survived in some of the coldest, harshest climates. The objectives are to: (1) Recognize the factors that influence the location and design of forager shelters through a goal-directed study of ethnographic documentation. (2) Develop new geophysical methods to identify open-air shelter residues in large-scale archaeological surveys. (3) Determine how one of the earliest unambiguous built structures, a mammoth bone structure, was used with the latest techniques in archaeological science. (4) Compare and contrast how these open-air shelters relate to a regional cave occupation through targeted excavations. The results will elucidate how our ancestors adapted to past climate change and expanded into new biomes, ultimately leading to our ubiquitous population of the earth. In addition to its significance to archaeology and anthropology, the outcomes have implications for theories of culture, evolution and human resilience by helping us understand the physical building blocks of early societies.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
2311 EZ Leiden
Netherlands
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