(Re)Constructing the Archaeology of Mobile Pastoralism: bringing the site level into long-term pastoral narratives

CAMP investigates long-term pastoral dynamics in drylands, by developing an innovative and reliable methodology to study archaeological pastoral sites. Pastoralism has been recently endorsed by the FAO as a successful strategy to achieve food security by efficiently exploiting the inherent variability in natural resources. Modern pastoral systems represent the legacy of animal domestication processes that started before the beginning of the Holocene. However, our understanding of ancient pastoralism is hampered by the lack of a proper methodology that can overcome the ephemeral evidence that characterize pastoral sites. CAMP will pave the way, through methodological innovation, to a more thorough investigation of past adaptation to dryland environments. Highly controlled data on the anthropic markers for pastoral activities (chemical multi-element by portable X-Ray Fluorescence, phytoliths, organic residues and isotopes) will be collected in pastoral ethnographic settlements and analyzed to create models that will then be used to interpret the archaeological evidence. CAMP will advance research in: (a) methods and theory in the archaeology of pastoralism; (b) anthropic activity markers and the use of pXRF in archaeology; and (c) adaptive strategies in drylands. This project is a unique opportunity to strengthen the study of pastoralism by providing a widely applicable methodology that can augment our knowledge on past human adaptation to drylands and inform the design of sustainable and historically-grounded development strategies for pastoral futures. CAMP methodology will be potentially exportable to other archaeological sites, independently of their chronology, cultural or geographic context, representing an invaluable advance to archaeological methods at large.