B 06: Humans and Resources in the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages - Anthropological and Bio-Archaeological Analyses of the Use of Food Resources and the Detection of Migrations

Summary

The importance of resources in the course of history is reflected not only by human activities, but directly in their organism as well. Differences in the access to certain resources or in their specific way of use may directly affect the physical appearance of an individual. This provides valuable evidence about the environmental, economic and socio-cultural conditions of living of specific individuals with the potential for general insights, highlighting the interrelation with historical dynamics. Especially when dealing with periods of human history not or insufficiently documented by written sources this approach offers information about living conditions rarely obtainable by material evidence alone. Also information about previous spatial movements of individuals can be retrieved, using the relevant indicators. This will prove especially valuable in the case of Early Medieval South-Western and Western Germany, where written sources are scarce.

Scientific Aims

The project will explore problems arising at the point of contact between archaeology, economic history and physical anthropology in an exemplary and innovative way. Four closely linked questions will be investigated:

1. It will be especially fascinating to trace the migrations immediately pre-dating the time frame of the project under the aspect of resource use and its physical effect on humans. The focus will be on what is commonly labelled as ‘founding generation’, presumably identifiable by archaeological records. With the use of strontium isotope analysis their human remains will be examined in order to identify their places of origin. This will lead to further investigations: to which extend the newcomers brought along the specific ways of use of resources from their home-lands or from regions they travelled through? Which imported strategies for subsistence and specific forms of agricultural practices can be identified by achaeo-zoological and archaeo-botanical evidence?

2. Another interesting topic is the interaction between rule, social inequality and adaption of use. For example it has to be investigated, whether hierarchical determined differences in nutrition tend to get more severe when immigrated groups stay in a new region for a longer time. Will anthropological evidence support the quality groups A to D, identified for the Alamannic region by R. Christlein and H. Steuer on the basis of burial gifts? Is there evidence for an emerging élite of warriors using a distinct kind of nutrition?

3. The question of foreign rule or colonisation has to be addressed. Are interrelationships or processes of adaption between local and immigrated populations detectable? How do such hierarchical differences shift in the course of the socio-political reorganisation of the economic structure and ethnic stratification during the Migration Period? Contemporaneous burials in churches and in cemeteries will be analysed, in order to detect possible differences in the origin of Franks and Alamanni and to shed light on differing strategies related to access and use of economic resources.

4. How did the human organism react on different uses of food resources and the related socio-historical dynamics? South-Western and Western Germany will serve as examples for differing geographical areas during the Early Middle Ages. The geographical frame includes urban, as well as rural areas, both central and peripheral to the settlement areas of Franks and Alamanni.

This anthropological analysis will be conducted as a combination of phenomenological and bio-chemical studies of human skeletal remains. It will focus on the distinguishing characteristics providing insight in nutrition, health and physical size and strain. The outcome will be combined and compared with the results derived from archaeological evidence, creating a bio-archaeological approach, linking cultural and biological data of individuals and populations. By this approach, possible only because of the rapid progresses in anthropological and bio-chemical methods, culture-historical processes will be examined from an innovative perspective, promising information that will lead research even further.

Long-term Perspective

During the second and third phase of funding comparable studies of burials from different regions and periods are projected in order to scrutinise results. Especially burials from the Hallstatt period, the period of the Greek colonisation and from the time of the Vikings will be analysed.
By including economic, environmental and socio-cultural factors into the investigation of the development of nutrition project B 06 opens up a significant field of analysis for the socio-cultural meaning of resources, the central topic of the Collaborative Research Centre. In addition by discussing the interrelationship between social inequality and adaption of use the project will offer an important contribution for the understanding of the role of resources in the creation and perpetuation of socio-political structures.

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