Project Details
Projekt
Becoming resilient in the Urmia Plain: A view from Tappeh Balu, Northwestern Iran
Applicant
Sepideh Maziar, Ph.D.
Subject Area
Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Term
since 2019
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 424263040
The project focuses on the resilience strategies of a Bronze-Age diasporic community, the Kura-Araxes, in the Iranian highlands. In the first phase, the concept of ‘resilience’ and an analytical framework is defined, and the provisional risks and vulnerabilities that the Kura-Araxes groups might have to cope with are stimulated. The second phase of the project focuses on the micro-level data based on excavating one of the Kura-Araxes settlements in Urmia Plain to gather information and evidence on the societal organization, socio-ecological nexus, subsistence economy, and the resilience strategies of the Kura-Araxes community in this area. Their economic cycles of production/consumption, control and management of resources, and local and interregional networks of exchange are among the objectives of the second phase of the project. As the nature of this project is inherently multi-disciplinary, different experts from archaeology, bioarchaeology, archaeometry, cultural anthropology, and geoscience collaborate to bring new perspectives to enrich our understanding of the resilience strategies of the Kura-Araxes society in their lived environment. Generally speaking, this project focuses on three key aspects to respond to the research agenda of the SPP 2176: (1) The degree of mobility and interaction among the Kura-Araxes communities with the focus on Urmia Plain, (2) Subsistence economy and environmental conditions and (3) Resource management. By gathering more analytical data at the micro-level and putting together the macro-meso-micro-level data, this project aims to calibrate and enhance the resilience model proposed in the first phase of the project.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
