Descrizione del progetto
Uno sguardo più attento ai mandriani a cavallo provenienti dalla Russia
Cosa sappiamo dei notevoli cambiamenti verificatisi in Russia circa 5 000 anni fa? Ne rimangono tracce visibili nell’ascendenza genetica, nell’organizzazione sociale e nelle lingue europee. Mettendo sotto osservazione gli Yamnaya, i mandriani a cavallo provenienti dalla Russia, il progetto YMPACT, finanziato dall’UE; studierà la loro distribuzione nei territori delle steppe in Bulgaria, Ungheria, Romania e Serbia. Il gruppo di ricerca condurrà inoltre studi sul campo e raccolte di campioni. In particolare, il progetto farà luce sul loro modello di interazione, sull’aspetto fisico e sulle dinamiche della popolazione, oltre che su aspetti quali mobilità, alimentazione, insediamento e stile di vita. Studierà i dati provenienti dagli scavi di 320 tumuli funerari e di oltre 1 000 sepolture al fine di attribuire un giusto peso a tali cambiamenti.
Obiettivo
Dramatic migrations in the third millennium BC re-shaped Europe, modifying its economy, society, ethnicity and ideological structure for ever. The best incentive proxy are populations that moved from the steppes of Russia, spreading as far west as Hungary, implanting a pastoral economy with widespread innovations. These dynamic people covered thousands of kilometres within a few centuries, and organised direct physical relations over the steppes for the first time. This synchronism is promoted by a society organised to fit to this lifestyle, with new herding techniques, likely use of wagons and domesticated horses, and a protein-rich diet, whose adaptive advantages are evident from the physical record in human skeletons and territorial extensions. This is the Yamnaya complex, whose impact remains visible today in the European gene pool and apparently the propagation of Indo-European languages. This international and interdisciplinary project examines the data from 320 excavated burial mounds and c.1350 burials to calibrate these changes, also against a control sample of supposedly local and neighbouring populations. The archaeological, biological and environmental information allows large, new datasets to be built, whose systematic interrogation and modelling should reveal the formative processes behind these changes. Assessing funeral archaeology, material culture, and exchange pattern defines their culture and impact. Scientific analyses of skeletons expose relations of origin, degrees of consanguinity, diet, and histories of individual mobility over single lifetimes with new precision and replicability. They should also act as proxy datasets for environmental changes using further analytical techniques in a context of landscape evolution. Diachronic patterns within these sets should link with aspects of the internal social dynamics, such as the creation of new status positions, visible later in the Pan-European Corded Ware and Bell Beaker groups.
Campo scientifico
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-ADG - Advanced GrantIstituzione ospitante
00014 Helsingin Yliopisto
Finlandia