The harvest of marine resources played a critical, but as yet underappreciated and poorly understood, role in global history. To bridge this gap in our understanding, the project includes an interdisciplinary team combining expertise in historical archaeology, marine environmental history, climate history, natural history, geography, historical ecology, ancient DNA, radiocarbon dating and zooarchaeology. We will examine when and where marine exploitation was of significance to human society; how selected major socio-economic, cultural, and environmental forces variously constrained and enabled marine exploitation; and identify the consequences of marine resource exploitation for societal development and the oceans.
The project is led by four principal investigators:
James H. Barrett, Cristina Brito, Poul Holm (corresponding PI) and Francis Ludlow.
The ancient DNA strand is led by Bastiaan Star and the radiocarbon dating by Marie-Josée Nadeau
4-OCEANS is a European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Project. It is funded by the ERC under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 951649).