Location:Turkey
Year(s): 2018-2020
Research Fellow: Dr Benjamin Irvine
Funding: BIAA (Postdoctoral Fellowship)
Under BIAA SRI(s):
Migration, minorities and regional identities
Climate change and the environment
Habitat and Settlement in prehistoric, historical and contemporary perspectives
Summary: This research project aims to examine human and animal mobility in 3rd millennium BC Anatolia and the interaction between movement and other aspects of society such as dietary habits and subsistence practices, trade and exchange, and social and political developments. The project will be bioarchaeological in its approach and will include human and faunal osteological, botanical, and stable isotopic and bio/geochemical analytical methods. There are proposed hypotheses about the existence and aetiologies of population replacements in certain areas, increased interpersonal conflict and evidence of warfare, increased interaction, trade, and exchange, and pastoralism and the relationship between humans and animals in the Early Bronze Age (EBA) of Anatolia, and this project aims to analyse and test them.
Dr Benjamin Irvine is a bioarchaeologist who specialises in utilising osteological and stable isotope analyses to examine the dietary habits, subsistence practices, and mobility patterns of populations in the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age periods of prehistoric Anatolia.