Descripción del proyecto
Un análisis más detallado sobre el cambio climático en el Creciente Fértil
El Creciente Fértil, que acogió a las civilizaciones más antiguas, es una región que abarca desde el norte de Egipto hasta el golfo Pérsico. Denominada así por la riqueza de sus suelos, su acceso al agua contribuyó a la agricultura y las rutas comerciales. Sin embargo, el agua en dicha zona es cada vez más escasa debido al cambio climático. Los fenómenos meteorológicos extremos, como las sequías, han provocado declives demográficos, complejidad social y cambios políticos. En este contexto, el proyecto CLaSS, financiado con fondos europeos, investigará la sostenibilidad y la resiliencia de las sociedades locales a través de cambios climáticos bruscos y a largo plazo. Para ello, construirá conjuntos de datos empíricos mediante la ciencia de datos arqueológica. Se cotejarán datos arqueobotánicos (restos de árboles y plantas) y de asentamientos arqueológicos en toda la región del Creciente Fértil.
Objetivo
Over the last 8000 years, the Fertile Crescent of the Near East has seen the emergence of cities, states and empires. Climate fluctuations are generally considered to be a significant factor in these changes because in pre-industrial societies they directly relate to food production and security. In the short term, ‘collapse’ events brought about by extreme weather changes such as droughts have been blamed for declines in population, social complexity and political systems. More broadly, the relationships between environment, settlement and surplus drive most models for the development of urbanism and hierarchical political systems.
Studies seeking to correlate social and climatic changes in the past tend either to focus on highly localised analyses of specific sites and surveys or to take a more synthetic overview at much larger, even continental, scales. The CLaSS project will take a ground breaking hybrid approach using archaeological data science (or ‘big data’) to construct detailed, empirical datasets at unprecedented scales. Archaeological settlement data and archaeobotanical data (plant and tree remains) will be collated for the entire Fertile Crescent and combined with climate simulations derived from General Circulation Models using cutting edge techniques. The resulting datasets will represent the largest of their kind ever compiled, covering the period between 8000BP and 2000BP and an area of 600,000km2.
Collecting data at this scale will enable us to compare population densities and distribution, subsistence practices and landscape management strategies to investigate the question: What factors have allowed for the differential persistence of societies in the face of changing climatic and environmental conditions? This ambitious project will provide insights into the sustainability and resilience of societies through both abrupt and longer term climate changes, leveraging the deep time perspective only available to archaeology.
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitución de acogida
DH1 3LE Durham
Reino Unido