Unfamiliar landscapes: from foraging to farming in Central Anatolia, Turkey

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Foraging and farming in Central Anatolia, Turkey.
Team from the School of Environmental Science journeying through Sweden and Norway

The Leverhulme Trust has awarded a grant of £231,948 to fund a new collaboration between the Schools of Environmental Sciences and Archaeology, Egyptology and Classics. Eleni Asouti (P-I), Richard Chiverrell (Co-I), Doug Baird (Co-I) and Matt Grove (Co-I) will undertake research over 2 years from 1st May 2013. They intend to:

  1. assess the environmental contexts and evolution through time of early Holocene hunter-gatherer subsistence economies in the Konya plain;
  2. assess the distinctiveness and challenges for early Holocene cereal cultivation in the Konya plain;
  3. develop a better understanding of past people-environment interactions and economic decision-making through predictive modelling approaches.

The aim of the project is to place the transition from foraging to farming in the Konya plain into a “real-world” setting and test scenarios of changing nature/dynamics of hunter-gatherer life-ways on the eve of food production.