Avifauna in archaeoecological networks

Introduction

We love birds but probably do not worry enough about our relationship to them. Across the world, we are threatening their critical ecosystem functions, including birds’ positive impact on our wellbeing. Poultry has become our favourite meat, yet industrial-scale breeding has consequences for human and bird health. Arguably, this lack of concern is due to our ignorance of the deep historical roots of these relationships.

Historical Context

Our interaction with birds, for their plumage, eggs, meat, song, or spirit, extends back to prehistory. At the same time, avifauna responded to climate shifts and to our modifications of the landscape. This has created a tangled archaeological record, which makes understanding bird-human relationships all but impossible.

Project Overview

Building upon and moving beyond my expertise in biomolecular archaeology, AviArch will explore, from a bird’s eye view, the transition to agriculture in Epipalaeolithic/Neolithic southwest Asia and the emergence of urban life and trade routes in Bronze Age Crete.

Methodology

AviArch will reveal the variety of birds in past human systems by using new techniques for the identification of avifauna, integrating zooarchaeology, palaeoproteomics, and AI. My sites have been carefully chosen to target biodiversity hotspots with a rich archaeological record intersecting socio-ecological changes of human-bird relationships.

We will combine ecological, morphological, and behavioural traits for each bird to produce the most refined exploration of human-avian relationships yet attempted in archaeology. Using network analysis and underpinned by multispecies theory, AviArch’s archaeoecological models will discover how environmental shifts affected people, and how anthropogenic- and climate-driven changes affected birds.

Impact

By transforming the ways in which past bird-human interactions are studied, AviArch promises to improve human adaptivity, avian conservation strategies, and make us worry and marvel about these beautiful creatures a little more.