Seascapes

During the 3rd millennium BCE, seaborne travel progressively linked the coastal societies along the shores of the Central and Western Mediterranean into a series of interlocked maritime networks. Archaeologists view the so-called Bell Beaker ceramics as the most conspicuous material expression of these maritime networks. Bell Beakers are found from the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the coast of Italy in the east, including the Balearic islands, Sardinia and Sicily, Morocco and coastal Algeria. However, our understanding of the early maritime connections behind these artefacts is limited by the lack of robust and accurate dates. In this project, we will conduct the first large-scale radiocarbon dating programme of Mediterranean Bell Beakers. We will extract lipid (fat and oil) molecules from pottery to trace the sources of their original contents, including carcass and dairy products from ruminant (e.g. cattle/sheep/goat/deer) and non-ruminant (e.g. pig, wild boar) animals. The large-scale application of lipid extraction to hundreds of sherds will help to understand the diet and subsistence of Bell Beaker-using people across time and space. Importantly, the lipid residues will also provide us a short-lived dateable material, from which we will obtain 100 accurate and precise (typically 25 years) direct dates using a recently developed methodology for compound-specific radiocarbon analysis (CSRA). In addition to CSRA, we will perform 260 radiocarbon dates on other short-lived material, more than doubling the number of high-quality radiocarbon dates from Mediterranean Bell Beaker sites and providing the first adequate dating for a number of its regional variants. Using radiocarbon dates and shared material culture, we will explore a range of possible Medite rranean network structures through computational modelling and simulation. The project will illustrate long-held interactions, movements (of objects and people) and networks around the Mediterranean Sea, and between Europe and Africa. As such it is of significant societal relevance today within the wider context of contemporary migration, globalization and cultural interactions. We will communicate the longevity and importance of long-distance networks of seaborne interaction for the subsequent emergence of major Mediterranean cultures through illustrated narratives, public workshops and multi-lingual teaching resources.