#	Pagina
attuale pagina	/open-h2020/projects/209010/results.html

Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CoPOWER (Government of Life and Death: The Rise of Coercive Power in European Late Prehistory)

Teaser

Summary

CoPOWER investigates the transition to urban society and the rise of social control in selected regions of Europe c 1600-200 BC.

Many research projects investigated urbanization in the study area by focusing on the elite groups that are supposed to have led this process. By contrast, CoPOWER explores the life histories of the marginal individuals that are often the forgotten victims of history. Such people may include individuals that were socially excluded for their low status, gender, disease or disability; children dying of starvation; people subject to forced labour and undernourishment; and the victims of extreme violence and ritual abuse.

Marginality, disability and gender-based exclusion remain modern problems. They are exacerbated by the evolving socio-economic landscape of our time, which is characterized by the rise of austerity, economic crisis, global warming, massive migration and the spraed of far-right activism in the West. Archaeology can provide science-based information on human response to social change and environmental stress, and its variability through time. Such evidence is key to inform debate on how violence and marginalization may arise in such moments of crisis and transformation.

Objectives of CoPOWER are:
1: shed new light on the transition to urban society in late prehistoric Europe. This has been achieved by focusing on the consequences of power centralization and social change on the marginal individuals that are often the forgotten victims of human history
2: collate bioarchaeological and archaeological data from the study area to shed light on the potential spread of disease, malnutrition, work-related trauma and violence, and their potential connection to social change, environmental stress and social instability
3: develop an analytical framework for identifying bioarchaeological correlates of social change and marginalizatiom in the mortuary record of any given society, with a focus on their effects on socially excluded
individuals.
4: promote marginality studies in archaeology

Work performed

The PI (Principal Investigator) of CoPOWER, Dr Elisa Perego, has built a database of dozens of marginal burials from selected regions of late prehistoric Europe (Bronze and Iron Age, second and first millennia BC). She has developed a framework for identifying and assessing such evidence, with the aim of shedding new light on the life histories of socially excluded individuals in the past. This work builds on her long-term research on social exclusion in later prehistory, resulting in the Archaeology of Marginality approach. The analytical framework includes the combined application of paleopathological, taphonomic, aDNA and multi-isotope (strontium, nitrogen, carbon and oxygen) analyses to human skeletal remains. State-of-the-art medical research on trauma, nutrition and gene-environment interactions is also being integrated into the available bioarchaeological data. Dr Perego has also started to apply the Bioarchaeology of Care approach to evidence of disability in her sample.

The marginality approach is currently being applied by Dr Perego to a sample of c.20 potentially marginalised inhumation burials from the Late Bronze Age hub of Frattesina, Italy. The Frattesina case study features a collaboration with several Italian colleagues, such as Dr Cavazzuti (bioarchaeology and isotope analysis), Dr Interlando (paleopathology), Dr Ferrante (strontium isotope analysis) and Prof. Lubritto (nitrogen, carbon and oxygen analysis). Collaborations with top aDNA labs are currently being developed.

Dr Perego and CoPOWER collaborator Dr Scopacasa shed new light on human-environment interaction in Italy c. 1000-200 BC, with a focus on the consequences of climate change and natural disaster on marginal and vulnerable human groups. They have proven that environmental stress (e.g. flooding) was linked to an increase in ritual violence and the abuse/ marginalisation of some individuals and social segments in the Italian region of Veneto c. 700-500 BC. Ritual violence might have included human sacrifice, or the intentional exploitation and abuse (e.g. dismemberment) of human remains; it was a key feature of ritual practice at the dawn of urban society in Veneto, and possibly in peri-Alpine Europe more in general.
Dr Perego and Dr Scopacasa have also shown that a probable raise of temperature in the south Italian region of Apulia, c. 325-200 BC, did not prevent people (who might have included marginalised/ non-elite groups) to occupy one of the most arid areas of Italy (the Tavoliere and Murge). This case study casts new light on human resilience in the face of climate and social unpredictability at the time of Rome\'s expansion and growing urbanization in Apulia.

Thanks to a collaboration between Dr Perego and Dr Tamorri, CoPOWER is also the first project in Italian archaeology to use archaeothanatology applied to archival and photographic material; it is also the first project to extensively apply burial taphonomy to marginality research.

Dr Perego, Dr Scopacasa and Dr Tamorri have applied micro-scale contextual analysis, archaeothanatology and the marginality approach to shed new light on child personhood, the life course and social exclusion in the central Italian region of Samnium, as well as in burial sites of later prehistoric and Iron Age Veneto, such as the recently published cemetery of Emo in Padua.

Thanks to a collaboration with Dr Rebay-Salisbury, PI on the ERC-funded VAMOS project, Dr Perego is applying the marginality approach to motherhood research in late prehistoric Europe. As of June 2019, CoPOWER has produced one Twitter account, one co-edited volume on collapse and marginality in the ancient Mediterranean (in press), four book chapters (in press), one journal article on human-environment interaction in Apulia (published in 2018 in Humanities, with Dr R. Scopacasa), two articles in journal issues/ volumes (one published in 2018 with Dr R. Scopacasa, one in review), 10 conference or workshop talks, 4 Twitter talks, 2

Final results

CoPOWER is the first large scale project to address marginality as a distinct category of interpretation in archaeological research. It built a methodological framework for identifying and contextualing social marginality, and extreme social exclusion, in the archaeological record of any given society. Research in CoPOWER is contributing to developing a bioarchaeology of marginality, which applies a multidisciplinary approach (e.g. isotope analysis, aDNA analysis, paleopathology, medicine, environmental data, burial taphonomy and archaeological theory) to past social exclusion. The methodology and theoretical framework developed in CoPOWER will be applicable to other geographical and chronological contexts.

CoPOWER shed new light on the transition to urban society in peri-Alpine Europe. By focusing on socially excluded groups and individuals - instead of the elites - CoPOWER shows how social dynamics are often driven by complex phenomena of marginalisation, abuse and resistance within broader historical flows. It also explores social change at the micro-scale of the single life history, a topic still partially unexplored in research on ancient European urbanization.