Objective Our world is marked by ‘disruption’, major re-orderings of society through changing circumstances, including abrupt climate change, impacting on social and economic life. What lessons can we learn from the prehistoric past about disruption, and human engagement with it? One of the first global disruptions faced by human societies was the Neolithic transition from mobile forager-hunter to settled farmer-herder in the Epi-Palaeolithic and Early Neolithic periods of the Middle East, 17,000-7000 BCE. Human communities worked through this disruption, including climate change, to enable complex societies to thrive and to form the basis for later cities, empires and civilisations. In this project, I will address key ‘Grand Challenges’ for archaeology including human responses to climate change, and societal transformation and resilience.I will lead an inter-disciplinary team in investigating the Early Neolithic transition in a greatly under-researched region, the eastern Fertile Crescent of western Iran and eastern Iraq, a core zone for early developments, including domestication of animals and crops such as goat and barley. From this zone, early farmers disseminated herding and cultivation practices across Iran into Central and South Asia and Transcaucasia. But as yet we know little about the early stages in the development of farming life-ways in the eastern Fertile Crescent, because this upland area of the Zagros mountains in Iran and Iraq has been challenging for research teams to work in. As the only scholar directing research in both western Iran and eastern Iraq, I am in a unique position to lead this high-risk, trans-border project, on a major ancient route-way (later the Silk Road) from the highlands of Iran to the plains of Mesopotamia. I will direct a programme of six integrated Work Packages examining climate, plants and animals, built environment, food-ways, death and burial, and craft, within a theoretical framework of community networks and identities. Fields of science humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistoryancient historyhumanitieshistory and archaeologyarchaeologyagricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturenatural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme Topic(s) ERC-2017-ADG - ERC Advanced Grant Call for proposal ERC-2017-ADG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-ADG - Advanced Grant Host institution THE UNIVERSITY OF READING Net EU contribution € 2 499 351,00 Address WHITEKNIGHTS CAMPUS WHITEKNIGHTS HOUSE RG6 6AH Reading United Kingdom See on map Region South East (England) Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Berkshire Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 2 499 351,00 Beneficiaries (1) Sort alphabetically Sort by Net EU contribution Expand all Collapse all THE UNIVERSITY OF READING United Kingdom Net EU contribution € 2 499 351,00 Address WHITEKNIGHTS CAMPUS WHITEKNIGHTS HOUSE RG6 6AH Reading See on map Region South East (England) Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Berkshire Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 2 499 351,00
