Description du projet
Un examen approfondi du changement climatique dans le Croissant fertile
Berceau des plus anciennes civilisations, le Croissant fertile est une région qui s’étend du Nord de l’Égypte au golfe Persique. Tirant son nom de la richesse de ses sols, son accès à l’eau a contribué à l’agriculture et aux routes commerciales. Toutefois, l’eau dans la région devient de plus en plus rare en raison du changement climatique. Les phénomènes météorologiques extrêmes comme les sécheresses ont entraîné des déclins de population, de la complexité sociale et des changements politiques. Dans ce contexte, le projet CLaSS, financé par l’UE, examinera la durabilité et la résilience des sociétés locales face à des changements climatiques soudains et à plus long terme. Pour ce faire, il établira des ensembles de données empiriques en recourant à la science des données archéologiques. Des données sur des peuplements archéologiques et l’archéobotanique (restes de plantes et d’arbres) seront collectées pour l’ensemble de la région du Croissant fertile.
Objectif
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.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitution d’accueil
DH1 3LE Durham
Royaume-Uni