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The key questions related to this approach can be summarized as follows:
1. Is human mobility to be interpreted as response to specific environmental conditions as soil, relief, climate, raw material sources and plant cover?
This question will be addressed on the basis of GIS-calculations of settlement areas and environmental factors. Maps of settlement areas of different cultures and time slices will be intersected with environmental data. In a modeling approach, expected and observed data will be compared. Methods will be the modelling of ecological parameters, esp. niche-modelling and species distribution modelling in cooperation with project Z2.
2. What is the role of cultural factors as subsistence, innovations, population density, settlement organization and social structure?
Data on these factors will be interrelated with the observed population dynamics. Information on innovation will come from the former CRC-project D5 and archaeological literature. Based on the hypothesis, that an increase in the consumption of meat is correlated with lower population densities and perhaps higher mobility, we are also interested in isotopic measurements of human bones. These will mostly come from literature and will be interpreted in cooperation with Corina Knipper (CEZ – Curt Engelhorn Zentrum für Archäometrie, Mannheim). Since our approach aims at quantitative diet reconstruction estimates some series will have to be complemented by further analyses on samples from selected sites (isotopes concerning diet as well as mobility). Quantitative diet reconstruction will be achieved through a novel modelling approach using the Bayesian mixing model “Food Reconstruction Using Isotopic Transferred Signals” (FRUITS) from multiple dietary proxies in cooperation with Ricardo Fernandes (Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena / McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge). Data on isotope measurements from humans and large mammals will be added to the IsoMemo database (https://isomemo.com).
3. Which variables explain the dynamics of cultural cycles in the periods under consideration?
Integrating the results of the aforementioned analyses, in a last step the importance of these variables for the formations of cultural cycles and the great transformation from foragers to farmers will be estimated.