The HORIZON Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action (MSCA) Doctoral Network “Archaeological Coastal Heritage: Past, present and future of a hidden prehistoric legacy” (ArCHe) trains 10 doctoral candidates in studying Stone Age hunter-fisher-gatherer remains in coastal areas across Europe in an international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral perspective.
DC5: Techniques mediate the actions of humans on their environment and constitute essential archaeological evidence of the norms and practices of past populations in their lived landscapes. Because the prehistory of the shore has long been marginalised in the grand narrative of human origins, no synthesis has been produced on the particularities of these technical systems and networks compared to those developed in the inland of the continents. Based on bibliographic data (publications, reports, inventories) and databases, the project studies coastal hunter-fisher-gatherer toolkits made of different raw materials (lithic, bone, shell), techniques or structures (marine or estuarine fisheries, prey processing devices, storage structure) across Europe (Atlantic, North Sea and Baltic). They also concern several other registers of action on matter as culinary practices and means of movement (boats and navigation). This investigation is resolutely multi-disciplinary, integrating technological and archaeological data, archaeozoological, ethnographic data and experimental archaeology. The aim of DC5 is firstly to establish a common methodology for interrogating such data and unifying the results. A relational database should then be established to define technical solutions adopted by hunter-fisher-gatherers in these different environments. The question of their originality in relation to continental techniques is central to defining the historical dynamics on the shores in the early Holocene. The cultural and topographic diversity of the coastal prehistory in Europe appears to be an asset for identifying standards and adaptations, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean seas.
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[Website ArCHe project]