Climate, Agriculture and Society - On the sustainability of early agricultural systems in the Near East

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Simone Riehl
• Subject Area: Classical, Roman, Christian and Islamic Archaeology
• Term: from 2010 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 163597005

The main research goal is the investigation of presence or absence of sustainability in ancient Near Eastern agricultural systems, i.e. the relationship between climatic and environmental change and societal development from the Neolithic period until the end of the Iron Age with focus on agricultural systems.Applied methods are environmental archaeology (archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, stable isotope geochemistry, geoarchaeology), Near Eastern archaeology and ancient philology. The choice of the methods are oriented at available explanatory models of societal collapse or factors considered to be causal in such processes:(a) climate and environmental change (natural or anthropogenic, e.g. depletion of the landscape through agglomeration of production(b) a development of higher complexity in problem solving systems which may be obstructive for human adaptation to changing conditions(c) a combination of all factorsThe interdisciplinary results will be published in form of a digital atlas.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants