Uni-Tübingen

Project Division B. Movements

Resources and Spatial Development

Project division B. Movements deals with the role of resources in the context of processes of the development and settlement of spaces, whereby resources are discussed as a central starting point.

The focus is primarily on the resource-related conditions of the appropriation of space; included in this, however, are the processes, further socio-cultural developments in the developed area as well as symbolic dimensions of the relevant resources in each case.


B 01: Prof. Dr. Harald Floss/Prof. Dr. Nicholas Conard

Variability of the Use of Resources and Space by Late Neanderthals and Early Modern Humans

The project focuses on resources of late Neanderthals and early anatomically modern humans in Europe. It examines the continuities and discontinuities of human behaviour in a diachronic perspective at this crucial hinge in the history of mankind, using the example of material and immaterial resources, against the background of the immigration of Homo sapiens to Europe and the encounter with 'indigenous' Neanderthals. An important change at the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic is the presumably first emergence of figurative art and other innovations in the symbolic field, which the project is dealing with in the third phase of funding.


B 02: Prof. Dr. Thomas Knopf/Dr. Peter Kühn/Prof. Dr. Thomas Scholten

Resource Use in Favourable/Disfavourable Areas

The project focuses on researching the development of resources in favourable and unfavourable natural environments from an archaeological and archaeopedological perspective. Central is the question of settlement and land use dynamics. With the interdisciplinary analysis of soils, in particular colluvia, and their archaeological context, settlement and land use dynamics and the associated potential movements of people (for example in the form of settlement relocations) are deciphered. The focus of the third phase of funding is a transition period from favour to disfavour in one and the same area (here: Hochdorf/Enz) in order to better understand the temporal dynamics of settlement and land use.


B 03: Prof. Dr. Sigrid Hirbodian/PD Dr. Lukas Werther

Exploitation of Resources and Ruling Areas in the Middle Ages: Monasteries and Castles

Castles and monasteries are being studied as resources for the formation of aristocratic rule during High and Late Middle Ages. During the first phase of funding, the focus was on the economic and spiritual resources of medieval monasteries and the nobility interacting with them in Upper Swabia; during the second phase, it was on castles and the formation of lower nobility between the Rems, Fils and Danube rivers. In the third phase, the interaction of castle and monastery is systematically and comparatively examined in order to work out socio-cultural, spatial and temporal similarities, differences and changes in the ResourceAssemblages and ResourceCultures linked to them.


B 04: Prof. Dr. Richard Posamentir/Prof. Dr. Natascha Mehler

 Search for Resources as an Incentive for 'Processes of Colonisation'? Research of Fragmented and Modern Colonisation Phenomena

Resources have often played an important role in considerations of the causes of migration in antiquity: above all, material resources such as land, grain or metals. The project aims to break down this concept of resources defined according to economic aspects and to focus on the aspect of cultural attribution of value. Comparative studies of two geographical areas with different conditions should help to replace an outdated understanding of resources with a more differentiated view.


B 05: Prof. Dr. Thomas Schäfer

Colonisation? Imperialism? Provincialisation? – Resources between Conflict and Integration in the Phoenician-Punic West in the 1st Millennium BC

The project investigates socio-cultural dynamics triggered by the Phoenician expansion from the Levant coast into the central and western Mediterranean in the 1st mill. BC. The development of raw material deposits in the west led to the establishment of numerous Phoenician settlements of varying size, quality and longevity. Distinct, locally differentiated complexes developed around mineral and agricultural resources that were interconnected in a pan-Mediterranean maritime network with high connectivity.


B 06: Prof. Dr. Jörg Baten/Dr. Marta Díaz-Zorita Bonilla

Humans and Resources in the Bronze and Iron Age – Anthropological and Bioarchaeological Analyses of the Use of Food Resources and Detection of Mobility

This project investigates how people acquired, used and valued food and health as resources. Anthropological and bioarchaeological analyses of skeletal finds allow to look at maritime and non-maritime societies in prehistory and the early Middle Ages, because the use of food resources left specific traces in their bones. In addition, the influence of migration patterns and the adaptation of the societies under consideration on these food- and health-specific resource cultures is investigated.


B 07: Prof. Dr. Peter Pfälzner/Prof. Dr. Thomas Scholten

A Hunt for Raw Materials? Spatial Models in the ResourceCultures in the Northern Periphery of Mesopotamia

The project investigates the main resources of the northern peripheral or neighbouring regions of Mesopotamia in a diachronic approach. For the third phase of funding of SFB 1070, the relations between the resources are to be modelled and visually represented through a series of spatial analyses. To this end, various methodological tools will be used in succession and building on each other: water modelling, soil modelling, path modelling, settlement modelling, landscape modelling and finally the modelling of ResourceCultures.