Research > National Projects > PRIN Projects > The Price of Progress. A Multidisciplinary Research on Human-Environment Interactions in the Levant at the Dawn of Urbanism (3500-2000 BCE)
Principal Investigator: Marta D'Andrea
The 4th and 3rd millennia BC saw archaic urbanization develop differently in the northern, central, and southern regions of the Levant according to various regional trajectories. This long period of time is situated between two rapid global climate changes that occurred 5,900 and 4,200 years BP. Furthermore, during this long time, increasing appropriation and intensified exploitation of the landscape by humans must have altered the environment in ways far more profound than previously considered. Therefore, the project focuses on a reconsideration and reconstruction of the distinct trajectories of regional development in the Levant from the 4th to the 3rd millennium BC along a rural-urban continuum and vice versa, within the context of human-environment interaction. The proposed research program is based on a collaborative research design, bringing together three research units with different chronological and regional expertise (University of Pisa, PI: Prof. Sara Pizzimenti; Sapienza University of Rome, head of research unit: Prof. Marta D'Andrea; Perugia University, head of research unit: Prof. Andrea Polcaro), and on a multidisciplinary methodological approach that combines archaeology, archaeometry, bioarchaeology, and data science to address two main research questions.
This research aims to shed light on the diversity of adaptive responses to climate change on a micro-local scale and on the role of anthropogenic changes on the environment, which is currently absent in narratives describing the flows and ebbs of archaic urbanization in the Levantine area in its broader sense. The goal is to produce an advancement in scientific knowledge on human-environment interactions in the Levantine EBA, as well as to articulate new interpretations of the early trajectory toward urbanization in the Levant, emphasizing the diversity of intensity, scale, pace, and responses to different problems, stimuli, and factors (both positive and negative). The main outcome will be the development of a new interpretative model of mutual human-environment interactions during a critical period in Levantine history, firmly grounded in archaeological, archaeobotanical, and archaeozoological data.
Collaborators:
Lorenzo Verderame (member of research unit); Nicola Lanzaro (research fellow); Carolina Cioffi (PhD candidate)
Further details about this research:
- Research type: Progetto di ricerca PRIN
- Research topic: STAA-01/E - Archaeology and Art History of ancient western Asia and the eastern Mediterranean
- Fundings: The project is co-financed with PNRR funds for Mission 4, Component 2, Investment 1.1.
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