TRANSCULTURAL: História, Arqueologia e Antropo-biogeoquímica da população medieval em Portugal (sécs. X-XIV). Cultura, identidades e interculturalidade descodificadas pelo estudo da dieta e da mobilidade
POCI-01-0145-FEDER-031599
Description:
The project ambitions to conduct a comprehensive transdisciplinary approach for understanding the socio-economic organisation of Muslim and Christian populations in Medieval Portugal, via the investigation of their diet and mobility .
The key for the achievement of the research objectives lies in the expertise of the research team, almost equally composed of researchers in Humanities (historians and archaeologists) and in Natural Sciences (anthropologists, an anthropo-biogeochemist, chemists, a geologist and a zooarchaeologist).
The team has selected medieval necropolises from Center and South of Portugal , considered as of special interest regarding the necropolises' time span of usage, the constraint archaeological framework, as well as the presence of different groups and dichotomies. Diet and mobility will be studied using the biogeochemical composition of human skeletons buried.
Since food preferences are based on both ideology and availability, if we know the environmental resources available to these past populations, it will be possible, by studying their diet practices, to understand the ideology behind the cultural behaviours. Dietary habits are often ruled by socio-economic factors such as age, social status and beliefs. Besides, information from mobility studies will provide a picture of the relationships between past individuals.
Questions addressed in this project are fundamental, especially nowadays, when major societal transformations are happening within a socio-economic globalization context, where religion, identities and borders constitute foremost political issues.
Partners: University of Coimbra, University of Évora and University of Algarve
CIDEHUS team members: Hermínia Vilar, Filomena Barros, Fernando Branco Correia
Funding source: Portugal 2020/SAICT
Duration: 2018-2021
