BEFOREtheFLOOD
BEFOREtheFLOOD - Neolithic coastal settlements and responses to environmental dynamics: A pioneering world lost beneath the Mediterranean Sea
(ERC - Starting Grant 2022-2027 ~ € 1,498,938 )
The goal of my project is to study the relations between environmental change and cultural change in coastal and wetlands ecosystems which were vital to the development of Mediterranean complex societies
However, even though coastal societies must have hold a significant place in Mediterranean history; many of their earliest trajectories, however, are archaeologically obscure due to a rise in sea levels since the last Ice Age.
WHERE?
We are working at the Carmel coast in Israel which is a small but exceptional area with nearly 20 submerged sites dating from the early to the late Neolithic period.
It is the only place in the world that can provide us such a unique laboratory to study changes through time at the lost Neolithic coast.
(For further information see Galili et al. 2020. Israel: Submerged Prehistoric Sites and Settlements on the Mediterranean Coastline - the Current State of the Art. In: The Archaeology of Europe’s Drowned Landscapes. pp. 443–481).
WHY?
1) European Heritage
The sea and coastal settlements have a central role not only in European history (and elsewhere) but when looking at the origins of European complex societies – its first chapter is about the Mediterranean.
While we know quite a lot by now about the development of social complexity inland we still miss the story of the coast in this process.
2) Micro-History and Archaeological Sciences
The common approach to environmental and cultural change is too often examined at a very large scale (over centuries or even millennia). However, we know very little about the meaning of 'dramatic' change in sea level over millennia to the people themselves who live in the scale of several years to decades.
BEFOREtheFLOOD is developing a novel methodology in order to provide high-resolution information on how people respond, at a local–level, to small-scale changes in their environment which until now were overlooked.
3) A look into the future?
Global warming, ice sheets melting and the threat of rising sea level put coastal areas at very high risk. The only time settled societies experienced such a change was during the Neolithic. Our project aims to tell us the story of what global warming and rising sea level actually means to coastal resilience.
HOW?
The earliest known Mediterranean coastal settlements and their paleo-landscapes, now situated offshore along the Carmel Coast, Israel, will be studied by drilling sediment cores and through underwater excavations, followed by microscopic and chemical analysis in the laboratory that will integrate geoarchaeology, bioarchaeology and paleoenvironmental reconstructions.
Team
David E. Friesem (PI)
Ehud Galili (Underwater Archaeology)
Roni Zuckerman-Cooper (Project manager and Zooarchaeology)
Isaac Ogloblin (Underwater Geoarchaeology)
Elle Grono (Geoarchaeology and Archaeobotany)
Nicolas Waldmann (Marine Geoscience)
Dafna Langgut (Archaeobotany)