Theme:
6. A Decade after the ‘Third Science Revolution in Archaeology’
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Moving into the Mediterranean – New Developments in the Research on Genetics, Mobility, Culture Change and Languages
Content:
The ongoing Third Science Revolution in Archaeology brought with it a resurgence of migratory models of culture and inquiry into language changes in the past. This led to calls for a holistic integration of archaeological disciplines with the natural sciences and for a responsible formulation of interpretations harnessing the parallel growth of theoretical frameworks, from network modelling to post-colonial thinking, to exceed simplistic narratives of mass migrations and population replacements.
The Mediterranean region is rich in archaeological evidence for diverse interconnected cultures, settlement systems, and socio-political aggregations. The wide-ranging historical record attests to the presence of numerous languages and language families. The region has been relatively inaccessible to genetic research due to less favorable conditions for DNA preservation, however, recent methodological advances are bringing a wealth of new data. As with other, more thoroughly analysed regions of Europe, these data point to widespread changes in the genetic landscapes, associated with the Neolithic Revolution and, later on, the dispersion of ancestry related to pastoralists from the Eurasian steppes, which is commonly linked to the spread of Indo-European languages. Research on material culture and isotopes have revealed wide-ranging networks of interaction along maritime and land routes involving Europe, the Levant, North Africa, and regions beyond.
These developments promise to help identify many of the mechanisms that drove the formation of the Mediterranean linguistic landscape. Biomolecular evidence can be utilized to evaluate existing and formulate new hypotheses on the movements, interactions and social organizations of linguistically defined, past groups.
In this session, we invite participants from the disciplines of archaeology, genetics and linguistics to present research from pre-historic or early historic Mediterranean case studies, regional-scale theoretical frameworks for individual mobility, or methodological innovations for measuring who or what was mobile. We seek interdisciplinary contributions that engage with and lend inspiration to other disciplines.
Keywords:
mobility, linguistics, aDNA, isotopes, Mediterranean, bioarchaeology
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Alissa Mittnik (United States) 1,2
Co-organisers:
Guus Kroonen (Netherlands) 3
Tina Saupe (Estonia) 4
Claudio Cavazzuti (Italy) 5
Barry Molloy (Ireland) 6
Affiliations:
1. Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA
2. Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
3. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, P.O. Box 9515, 2300 RA, Leiden, Netherlands
4. Estonian Biocentre, Institute of Genomics, University of Tartu, Riia 23b, 51010 Tartu, Estonia
5. Alma Mater Studiorum, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche, Piazza San Giovanni in Monte 2, 40124 Bologna, Italy
6. UCD School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
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