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Landscape Use and Mobility In EuRopE - Bridging the gap between cremation and inhumation

Project description

Reconstructing human mobility across Europe from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages

The study of both inhumed and cremated human remains can shed light on changes in mobility, migration and landscape use patterns of early populations in Europe. The EU-funded LUMIERE project will identify the movement of people on a local, regional and European scale. It will explain how and why people moved as well as how they used their surrounding landscape between the Neolithic and the Early Medieval period, when both cremation and inhumation were practiced. The project will use state-of-the art bioarchaeology methods to merge information obtained directly from both cremated and inhumed individuals and develop new analytical tools for the isotopic study of archaeological human remains. The new approaches will increase the number of cremated specimens that can be examined and improve the quality of the information obtained.

Objective

Movement represents a key feature of an individuals life both now and in the past. How and why people moved in the past can be documented by biogeochemical studies on bone and teeth, and these are at the core of this project. However, in many cases, due to different funerary practices (i.e. cremation and inhumation), the type archaeological skeletal elements available and their state of preservation of is very variable. Characterizing mobility in times where both cremation and inhumation were practiced is challenging for three main reasons: (1) important amounts of information are destroyed during cremation with temperatures reaching up to 1000C, (2) the bioarchaeological information obtained from unburned and burned human remains often represent different times in their life (e.g. youth/adolescence vs adulthood), and (3) the limited adequate baselines available prevent the refined contextualisation and interpretations of the results in many parts of Europe.

In this project, new proxies are developed for calcined bone (burned above 650C), while the potential of charred bone is also re-evaluated. In parallel, adequate baselines need to be created. This enables, not only increasing the amount and the quality of information extracted from cremated human remains, but also significantly augmenting the number of individuals analysed as charred bones are currently excluded from palaeomobility studies. Furthermore, to bridge the gap between cremation and inhumation and enable the full reconstruction of life histories, it is crucial to better characterize turnover rates of the different skeletal elements.

Coupled with state-of-the art statistical and spatial models, previously published results combined with newly obtained data significantly contributes to the documentation of human mobility from the Neolithic to the Early Medieval Period at a local (i.e. landscape use), regional and European scale, at times where both cremation and inhumation were practiced.

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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ERC-STG - Starting Grant

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Call for proposal

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Host institution

VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 997 812,00
Address
PLEINLAAN 2
1050 BRUSSEL
Belgium

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Region
Région de Bruxelles-Capitale/Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest Région de Bruxelles-Capitale/ Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest Arr. de Bruxelles-Capitale/Arr. Brussel-Hoofdstad
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 997 812,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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