Project description
When stone tools built and broke early states
Between 3000 and 1500 BCE, a relatively small number of Mediterranean and European societies underwent deep changes, leading to centralised and highly unequal economic and political entities. These disruptive societies thrived before collapsing centuries later. However, they shaped early forms of statehood far beyond Mesopotamia and Egypt. The ERC-funded CORNERSTONES project aims to explore the economic forces behind the rise and fall of disruptive societies. Specifically, it will study macrolithic tools involved in a wide range of productive activities such as food processing or metalworking. By analysing their use, distribution and specialisation, researchers will reconstruct the economic foundations of Early Bronze Age societies. The focus will be on Minoan Crete, the Únětice culture and El Argar.
Objective
Between 3000 and 1500 BCE, a relatively small number of Mediterranean and European societies underwent deep changes, leading to
large-scale, centralised, and highly unequal economic and political entities. Most of these Early Bronze Age “innovative regions” are
identified with the rise of a warrior elite or aristocracy, craft specialisation, agricultural intensification, and expanding exchange
networks. What caused the rapid emergence and, centuries later, sudden collapse of these “disruptive societies” is one of history’s
most important open questions, particularly in view of their triggering effect on the development of statehood beyond Ancient
Mesopotamia and Egypt.
CORNERSTONES will examine the economic factors underlying and connecting the rise and fall of Early Bronze Age disruptive societies by drawing on the heuristic potential of macrolithic tools. No artefact category of later prehistory was involved in a larger range of productive processes, from food processing to metal forging. Ubiquitous and plentiful, their numbers are directly related to production intensity, while their distribution reveals economic specialisation and centralisation. The limited attention so far paid to macrolithic tools in prehistoric archaeology is mainly due to the complexity of the required interdisciplinary approach. CORNERSTONES will meet this challenge with a set of innovative research tools from the fields of geology, material mechanics, functional analysis, ethnoarchaeology, and network analysis. New procedures and scientific standards will be combined in a comparative paleo-economic investigation of three of the most prominent Euro-Mediterranean Bronze Age contexts with disruptive trajectories: the Aegean Bronze Age, including Minoan Crete, the Únětice society in Central Europe, and El Argar in the western Mediterranean. This investigation is critical to the understanding of later disruptive processes and the economic challenges they represent for our own society.
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.
- humanities history and archaeology history prehistory
- humanities history and archaeology history ancient history
- humanities history and archaeology archaeology ethnoarchaeology
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences geology
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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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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.
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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.
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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-2024-ADG
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08193 Cerdanyola Del Valles
Spain
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