Landscapes of Mediterranean Celts: palaeoecological and geoarchaeological perspectives of Iron Age transmediterranean contact and interaction (CELTMED).

Descripción del proyecto

Hallar legados griegos en los paisajes celtas

En Europa occidental, la Edad del Hierro trajo consigo cambios culturales cruciales catalizados por las redes de contacto mediterráneas. Sin embargo, el legado medioambiental de la colonización griega en el mundo celta continúa sin estudiarse lo suficiente. Con el apoyo de las acciones Marie Skłodowska-Curie, el equipo del proyecto CELTMED integra la paleoecología y la geoarqueología en tres yacimientos: el griego Abdera, el galo Corent y el bicultural Lattara. Mediante el análisis de archivos sedimentarios y datos arqueológicos, el equipo de CELTMED pretende explicar cómo las interacciones entre griegos y celtas a principios de la Edad del Hierro modificaron la dinámica socioambiental. Dicho método multidisciplinar promete nuevas perspectivas sobre el modo en que estas interacciones influyeron en el uso de la tierra y los paisajes culturales celtas, ofreciendo una comprensión más profunda de la historia de Europa occidental.

Objetivo

In Western Europe, the onset of the Iron Age implied a series of critical cultural and technological changes that were to a large degree connected with the development of contact and exchange networks with the Mediterranean World. New cultural influences, involving different traditions of land and resources management, spread especially from Greek colonies into the sphere of the rising Celtic civilization, where they merged with autochthonous dynamics and promoted changes in social structures, economic and productive systems and land use. However, very few studies have openly addressed the environmental and landscape consequences of the Greek colonization in the Celtic world, and thus its impact and role in the shaping of Western European cultural landscapes remains largely overlooked. To fill in this gap, CELTMED will employ an integrated multidisciplinary approach merging palaeoecology and geoarchaeology in three selected sites subject to different degrees of Greek influence: Abdera, an Aegean colony representing the genuine landscapes of the Greek World; Corent, a Gallic oppidum in central France exemplifying genuine Celtic landscapes; and Lattara, an hybrid Celtic site with a harbour under important Greek influence, located in the contact area of both civilizations in the coastal wetlands of SE France. CELTMED will use high-resolution, multi-proxy palaeoecological and geoarchaeological analyses of sedimentary archives, combined with archaeological data, to reconstruct and compare socio-environmental dynamics and landscape change across this transmediterranean geographic and cultural transect from coastal Greek to Continental Celtic worlds. This will allow to explore how the interplay between both cultures from the early Iron Age changed the way Celtic societies interacted with their environments and contributed to the shaping of cultural landscapes in the Celtic area, providing a new and more comprehensive knowledge of the history of Western European landscapes.