Descrizione del progetto
Come la vita trasforma le nostre ossa
Gli esseri umani sono passati da cacciatori-raccoglitori nomadi ad agricoltori e, più recentemente, ad abitanti delle città. Nel mondo, la popolazione urbana è aumentata rapidamente dagli anni ’50, passando da 751 milioni a più di 4 miliardi oggi. Di fatto, più della metà della popolazione mondiale vive in aree urbane. In questo contesto, il progetto TRANSITIONS, finanziato dall’UE, studierà e fornirà una formazione avanzata sulle differenze scheletriche e svilupperà approcci per interpretarle nel contesto dei cacciatori-raccoglitori, degli agricoltori e degli abitanti delle città. I risultati getteranno nuova luce su come i diversi stili di vita influenzano la forma dello scheletro, aspetto importante per comprendere la vita dei popoli del passato e come mantenere la salute dello scheletro nel nostro mondo in rapida urbanizzazione.
Obiettivo
In the last 10 millennia humans have changed the way we live, moving from mobile hunter-gathering to farming and the urban living we are most familiar with today. Since 2008 more than 50% of the global population live in cities. But what effect has this had on our bodies? Understanding how we have adapted to past transitions is vital to interpreting archaeological remains and to anticipate the physical effects of this ongoing modern transition to a highly technologically dependent urban species. The goal of TRANSITIONS is to develop the research capacities of the European Fellow, in his broad area of interest in human variation and evolution. It will provide advanced training in the context and study of the skeletal consequences of changes in lifestyle and activity through a series of defined objectives for resaerch and training that compare skeletal form and function within and between past populations with different subsistence and lifestyle strategies; hunter gatherers, agriculturalists and urban dwellers. The results will provide new insights into how different lifestyles and their functional consequences affect skeletal form. Multiple factors impact on the skeleton, yet there is a discernible, consistent trend with increasing modernity towards ‘gracilization’. Thus, despite the multifactorial causes, to what extent are skeletal effects similar or different between transitions to agriculture and to urban or other ways of life? The answer will reflect how flexible our responses are to similar and different pressures and the extent to which we can use knowledge of historical transitions to interpret archaeological material and anticipate current and future ones. As well as providing advanced training by applying cutting-edge techniques, The ER will be supervised and trained in broader aspects of academic activity, knowledge transfer and career development, enabling him to position himself as a potential research leader.
Campo scientifico
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EFCoordinatore
YO10 5DD York North Yorkshire
Regno Unito