Descripción del proyecto
Explorar la desigualdad y la muerte en la Europa prehistórica
Tradicionalmente, se han identificado diferentes escalafones políticos en la prehistoria europea a través del tratamiento diferencial de enterramientos individuales. Sin embargo, el vínculo entre el tratamiento funerario y el estatus no suele ser tan directo. La desigualdad puede ser más evidente a través de oportunidades vitales variables, parentesco, costumbres o ascendencia, que a través del mando político, la riqueza o la identidad. Con esto en mente, el proyecto ANCESTORS, financiado con fondos europeos, pretende poner a prueba modelos alternativos de desigualdad y ritos funerarios en la prehistoria. Estudiará las relaciones sociales en vida mediante la osteobiografía y analizará la muerte utilizando la tafonomía funeraria. Combinar ambas metodologías hará posible conectar las vidas y las muertes de la prehistoria. Los resultados del proyecto proporcionarán información sobre las formas en que la desigualdad afectaba a la vida en la Europa prehistórica y el papel que los ancestros tuvieron en ella.
Objetivo
How did politics and inequality work in prehistoric Europe? Traditionally, politics has been seen in terms of discrete political ranks identified through differential treatment of individual burials. But this results in classifying much of prehistory, where the dead were treated in ways which effaced individual identity, as egalitarian. The result is an artificially dichotomous history: Neolithic people had landscapes, rituals and ancestors, Bronze and Iron Age people had politics and inequality. In the last two decades this approach has been strongly critiqued. Burial treatment rarely relates to status so directly; the dead serve many different political roles. Inequality in pre-state groups rarely consists of clear strata; inequality and equality exist in tension within groups. Inequality may have been present throughout European prehistory, but manifest situationally through differential life chances, kinship, ritual or ancestorhood, rather than overtly through political command, wealth or identity. But this new perspective has never been tested empirically.
This project tests alternative models of prehistoric inequality and deathways. To investigate social relations in life, it uses osteobiography, reconstructing life stories from skeletons through scientific data on identity, health, diet, mobility and kinship. To understand deathways, it employs a second new methodology, funerary taphonomy. Combining osteobiography and taphonomy allows us to connect ancient lives and deaths. Peninsular Italy provides a substantial test sequence typical of much of Europe. For each of three key periods (Neolithic, 6000-4000 BC; Final Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, 4000-1800 BC; Middle Bronze Age to Iron Age, 1800-600 BC), 200+ individuals will be analysed. The results will allow us to evaluate for the first time how inequality affected lives in prehistoric Europe and what role ancestors played in it.
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-ADG - Advanced GrantInstitución de acogida
CB2 1TN Cambridge
Reino Unido