Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-18

Food Globalisation in Prehistory

Objective

Each of today s major food species is distributed worldwide. While much of that food globalisation has resulted from modern trade networks, it has its roots in prehistory. By the end of the second millennium BC, the south west Asian crops, wheat and barley, were in several parts of China, and Chinese millets and buckwheat were in Europe. There was a parallel exchange of crops between South Asia and Africa. A series of later episodes of globalisation involve exotic fruits, vegetables and flavourings. This earlier phase would appear to involve instead staple starchy crops. Moreover, the movement of these starchy crops seems to precede other forms of evidence for cross-continental contact, such as is reflected in artefacts. What prompted this early globalisation of starch crops? How did it relate to the way in which humans societies were changing, and to the development and evolution of the crops themselves? These are questions I shall address through an archaeogenetic approach, which will modern methods of bio-archaeology and crop genetics. The focus of my bio-archaeological research will be selected sites in West China and Kazakhstan, chosen to complement ongoing research elsewhere (by a number of different groups) and to fill a critical geographical gap in the growing bio-archaeological record of Eurasia. For my genetic analyses I shall target upon two crops, one whose movement in prehistory was from west to east, the other form east to west. Of the various crops that moved in this way, I have chosen barley and foxtail millet chosen on the basis of i) their archaeological record of domestication and spread; ii) their genetic suitability for study, and iii) the timeliness of studying them in relation to contemporary research around the world today.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

ERC-2009-AdG
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-AG - ERC Advanced Grant

Host institution

THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
EU contribution
€ 1 946 514,76
Address
TRINITY LANE THE OLD SCHOOLS
CB2 1TN CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom

See on map

Region
East of England East Anglia Cambridgeshire CC
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Beneficiaries (2)

My booklet 0 0