Project description DEENESFRITPL Shaping a new cultural history of heathlands Anthropogenic heathlands are a common cultural heritage of Europe. They emerged more than 4 000 years ago, when small-scale agropastoral communities began massive forest clearances and maintained the arising heathlands by grazing and regular burning. The EU-funded ANTHEA project will investigate how such disturbance ecologies were organised in the north European heathland regimes (3200 BC to 1000 AD). The survival of these areas suggests the existence of highly specialised forms of human-nature entanglements and social organisation. Linking landscape archaeology with social anthropology and palaeoenvironmental modelling, the project envisages a new cultural history of heathlands. Show the project objective Hide the project objective Objective "In a time of accelerating human-caused ecological catastrophe, questions of organizational resilience have become extremely timely. In bringing the archaeological perspective of a 4200-year timespan, ANTHEA seeks to to radically alter our knowledge of resilient forms of self-organisation in past land-use regimes and human-nature entanglements. Based on seven case study areas, ANTHEA will show how collaborative institutions of common land use were organized in the North European heathland regimes (3200 BC-AD 1000), with a particular emphasis on their earliest emergence, their adaption to internal and external factors as well as their ecological, temporal, spatial, and social fabric. More than 4,000 years ago, farming communities across northern Europe began the first fire-based expansion of naturally occurring heather. Pollen evidence suggests that some of these grazing areas, spanning thousands of hectares, existed until the 18th-19th century. Without frequent intervention and management, anthropogenic heathland will turn into forest. So the survival of these areas suggests the existence of highly specialised forms of social organization with the unique capacity to persist. Still, we know little about the actual stability of these heathlands or what caused their unprecedented resilience. By shifting attention away from seeing institutional robustness as equilibrium, stability and continuity and placing the questions of instability, uncertainty, and areal flexibility at the centre, ANTHEA envisages a new cultural history of heathlands that breaks with rooted ideas of these areas being marginal and underdeveloped. ANTHEA is truly multidisciplinary and links landscape and settlement archaeology with paleoenvironmental modelling, social anthropology and philosophy. Moreover, the project introduces a pioneering theoretical and methodological advancement in the temporality of resilience, to be made usable in contemporary land-use policies. The long-term perspective will allow detailed historical trajectories to be established of how common land-use institutions emerged and reorganized according to changing circumstances, challenging the ""tragedy of the commons"" narrative." Fields of science humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistoryhumanitieshistory and archaeologyarchaeologysocial sciencessociologyanthropologysocial anthropologyhumanitiesphilosophy, ethics and religionphilosophy Keywords Heathlands land tenure resilience social organisation common property regimes time and temporality Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme Topic(s) ERC-2019-STG - ERC Starting Grant Call for proposal ERC-2019-STG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-STG - Starting Grant Host institution AARHUS UNIVERSITET Net EU contribution € 1 390 359,94 Address NORDRE RINGGADE 1 8000 Aarhus C Denmark See on map Region Danmark Midtjylland Østjylland Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 1 390 359,94 Beneficiaries (2) Sort alphabetically Sort by Net EU contribution Expand all Collapse all AARHUS UNIVERSITET Denmark Net EU contribution € 1 390 359,94 Address NORDRE RINGGADE 1 8000 Aarhus C See on map Region Danmark Midtjylland Østjylland Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 1 390 359,94 COVENTRY UNIVERSITY United Kingdom Net EU contribution € 109 097,06 Address PRIORY STREET CV1 5FB Coventry See on map Region West Midlands (England) West Midlands Coventry Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 109 097,06
