Project description
The origins of rock art and the behavioural evolution of Homo sapiens
The emergence of symbolic material culture marked a pivotal moment, enabling the storage of information beyond the confines of the human brain through the creation of meaningful artefacts and images. Conventionally, this leap was attributed to a European Upper Palaeolithic ‘revolution’ some 40 000 years ago. However, recent findings from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) in Africa 150 000 years ago hint at the presence of symbolic material culture. With the support of Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, the TaphArt project will explore this further, merging archaeology, paleoenvironmental science, atmospheric science, material science and analytical chemistry. Located in South Africa’s Blombos Cave, it will determine whether the absence of MSA rock art paintings results from cultural choices or taphonomic processes.
Objective
"The advent of symbolic material culture and the storage of information outside the human brain through the production of artefacts and images imbued with meaning was a landmark in human evolution. Although it has been generally considered as the consequence of an European Upper Palaeolithic ""revolution"" that took place around 40 ka, new evidence from the Middle Stone Age (MSA, ~300–40 ka) suggests the presence of symbolic material culture in Africa at ~150 ka. In this context, a major research challenge for archaeology is to explain the apparent absence of rock art paintings in the MSA archaeological record of southern Africa. Ochre pigments are ubiquitous in the sites from this period, and toolkits used to produce ochre-rich liquid paint date from at least ~100 ka. Furthermore, images engraved on pieces of ochre and a crayon drawing demonstrate that the MSA populations had all the material, technical and cognitive resources necessary to create graphic representations. Thus, through an innovative and interdisciplinary approach that brings together archaeology, paleoenvironmental science, atmospheric science, material science, and analytical chemistry, the TaphArt project aims to develop an experimental research to determine whether the absence of rock art paintings in the MSA sites of southern Africa is due to a cultural choice of the human populations or the result of taphonomic processes that eliminated the painted images from the archaeological record. Taking as reference the archaeological and paleoenvironmental context of Blombos Cave (South Africa), the project tests the hypothesis that marine aerosol and wind erosion may have contributed to the destruction of rock art paintings potentially produced on the site, providing groundbreaking unprecedented data to the discussion on the origins of rock art and the behavioural evolution of the Homo sapiens.
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Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities arts visual arts
- social sciences political sciences political transitions revolutions
- humanities history and archaeology archaeology
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01
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33000 Bordeaux
France
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