Mobility, Migration and Innovation

Spatially oriented and spatially effective innovations like wagons and draft animals, early herding and nomadism have influenced the demographic, social historical, and cultural historical development of antiquity.

One Topoi group of the research area "Spatial Environment" (A) is investigating the genesis and spread of these innovations. Mobility and migration are important factors here. In order to reconstruct them, natural scientific analyses based upon prehistoric archaeological data are conducted. Isotope-chemical analyses of teeth and bone from burial mound sites, for example, can provide information on changes of location of buried individuals. The examination of animal teeth can yield evidence of specialized cattle breeding in certain areas. How mobile people were in antiquity is shown by wheel and wagon models at archaeological sites in northwestern Ukraine, which suggest that the innovation of the wagon with solid wheels spread as early as the fourth millennium before Christ.

Two new publications review the actual research of this group:

Population Dynamics in Pre- and Early History
New Approaches by Using Stable Isotopes and Genetics
Ed. by Burger, Joachim / Kaiser, Elke / Schier, Wolfram

Mobilität und Wissenstransfer in diachroner und interdisziplinärer Perspektive
Hrsg. v. Kaiser, Elke / Schier, Wolfram

 

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