SRP-Groeifinanciering: The Archaeology of Coastal Communities: social resilience, innovation and adaptation in landscape, settlement and material culture driven by migration and globalization, climate and environment

Coastal zones, including riverine estuaries, have always constituted contact zones where people connected and interacted, thereby exchanging thoughts and goods. This connectivity as well as the dynamic coastal environment made these communities highly responsive to change and innovations. People continuously adapted to new situations and influences (trade, migration, climate, sea-level rise…), which stimulated the social resilience and the adaptation of changes in lifestyles. Both are embodied in the material features of the coastal landscape and its landing and meeting places, which acted as hubs for trade and ideas. Authors such as Gordon-Childe and Pirenne have in the past addressed the evolution of these centres and the related issue of urbanisation. MARI wants to further explore the responses to this dynamic connectivity by focussing on the archaeology of the landing and meeting places in different periods and parts of Europe, being Bronze Age Cyprus and the Medieval North Sea World. We approach this question of connectivity from different angles: the study of the exchange of artefacts, the changing environment and use of space, all the way to the bioarchaeology of the coastal communities (migration/traders). Our interdisciplinary approach combines field archaeology with high-definition archaeological sciences supported by analytical data, and confront existing theory with hard scientific facts.