WESTERN EUROPEAN ACHEULEAN PROJECT

"Human dispersals into Western Europe: the Acheulean technology through another lens"

This project lays on the creation of a relational database, including Acheulean technological data, according to my previous experience, and complementing this with the incorporation of new techniques, such as 3D models to analyse morphometry of tools using two new softwares (Artifact 3D and AGMT3D). On the other side, the incorporation for the first time of archaeological, chronological, paleontology and environmental information will make this a different approach. And this detailed information will be the base to define the parameters used in the ABM to simulate the migrations into Western Europe, taking the advantage of ROCEEH (The Role of Culture in Early 4/30 Expansions of Humans) and METHOD IFG (Modelling the Environmental Dynamics and Hominin Dispersals around the Mid-Pleistocene Revolution) projects, and in agreement with the specialists of those projects. For the first time, the main goal will be to focus specifically in two periods: 1Ma-700ka and 450-250ka, showing a large chronological range between them, different humans species and also technologies and having access to changing resources. When the project ends, a relational database will be hosted in open access to the scientific community. This will be the first project to combine specifically technological features from such a larger territory (16 archaeological sites from UK, France and the Iberian Peninsula,) and so wide chronological range (1Ma to 250ka), with multidisciplinary information (palaeoclimate, temperature, topography, geography, resources) in a large array of variables and using new computational approaches to improve the results of the project.

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