SFB 1070:  Resource Cultures. Socio-Cultural Dynamics in Relation to Resources

• Subject Area: Humanities ; Geosciences
• Term: since 2013
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 215859406

What are resources? This simple and fundamental question was at the beginning of the reflections on the use of resources and their significance for socio-cultural dynamics. Resources are what moves societies. People create their own social foundations and ensure their preservation, availability and use. At the same time, they change their social relationships in the process of valorising these resources. This in turn has an impact on resources, which are also transformed in the course of social reproduction. Resources are thus, on the one hand, products of community action and, on the other, sources of renewal of social life. SFB 1070 focuses on these multi-layered socio-cultural dynamics in dealing with resources. In the understanding of the SFB 1070, these foundations of social life can be both material and immaterial resources. The decisive factor is that people attribute a cultural value to them for their form of living together.The SFB 1070 has developed a comprehensive resource concept with the units resources, ResourceComplexes, ResourceAssemblages and ResourceCultures. Their significance for dynamics and processes within and between societies is the focus of joint research in the subject canon of archaeology, modern cultural studies, earth sciences, historical philology and history. They will be examined in the three project areas of development, movement and evaluation. The SFB 1070 is characterised by interdisciplinary research, above all by extensive discussions in the cross-sectional areas of materiality, knowledge and power. The results have so far been published in 11 (+ 8 in print) volumes of the SFB's own open access series 'ResourceCultures' and more than 400 specialist articles and book chapters. Based on the investigations on ResourceComplexes and ResourceAssemblages in the second phase, the aim of the third funding phase is to synthesise the results. This synthesis will take place on two levels. On the one hand, within the sub-projects the work will be completed according to their long-term perspective and the results of the funding phases will be integrated. On the other hand, the final formulation of the new resource concept of SFB 1070 around the central concept of ResourceCultures is the focus within the overall SFB. In addition to national and international publications on the resource concept, the joint product of all participating researchers is a complete work entitled "RessourcenKulturen" (ResourceCultures) in the form of a book in which the theoretical basis of the resource concept, its application and significance in the participating disciplines and the possibilities and limits of its transferability to issues outside the SFB 1070 are presented and discussed.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres

Current projects

• A02 - Cultural Entanglements in the Lower Guadalquivir - Interacting ResourceCultures and Socio-Cultural Change in the South of the Iberian Peninsula (Project Heads Bartelheim, Martin ;  Hardenberg, Roland )
• A03 - Stones from the South. Resource complexes in Southeastern Iran in the context of regional and interregional networks. (Project Heads Klocke-Daffa, Sabine ;  Pfälzner, Peter ;  Polit, Karin )
• A04 - The development of Syrian Palace-ResourceCultures (Project Heads Pernicka, Ernst ;  Pfälzner, Peter )
• A05 - “The land flowing with milk and honey“. Development and significance of agrarian resources in Bronze and Iron Age Palestine (Project Heads Kamlah, Jens ;  Riehl, Simone ;  Starkovich, Britt )
• A06 - Connectivity, interregional networks and cultural contacts: Late Bronze Age and Iron Age ResourceCultures in the Eastern Mediterranean (Project Heads Bartelheim, Martin ;  Herrmann, Virginia ;  Kamlah, Jens )
• B01 - Variability in the use of resources and space by late Neanderthals and early modern humans (Project Heads Conard, Nicholas J. ;  Floss, Harald )
• B02 - Resource use in favourable/disfavourable areas (Project Heads Knopf, Thomas ;  Kühn, Peter ;  Scholten, Thomas )
• B03 - Exploitation of ressources and the establishment of power in the Middle Ages: Monasteries and castles (Project Heads Hirbodian, Sigrid ;  Patzold, Steffen ;  Schreg, Rainer ;  Staecker, Jörn ;  Werther, Lukas )
• B04 - The quest for resources as a trigger of colonization? Research into the causes of fragmented or modern colonisation phenomena (Project Heads Lipps, Johannes ;  Mehler, Natascha ;  Posamentir, Richard )
• B05 - Colonisation? Imperialism? Provincialisation? – Resources between conflicts and integration in the Phoenician-Punic West in the 1st Millennium BC (Project Head Schäfer, Thomas )
• B06 - Humans and Resources in the Bronze and Iron Age – Anthropological and bioarchaeological analyses of food resource use and detection of mobility (Project Heads Baten, Jörg ;  Diaz Zorita Bonilla, Ph.D., Marta ;  Härke, Heinrich ;  Wahl, Joachim )
• B07 - A hunt for resources? Spatial models in the ResourceCultures at the northern periphery of Mesopotamia (Project Heads Fuchs, Andreas ;  Pfälzner, Peter ;  Scholten, Thomas )
• C02 - Religious cultures during the Roman Empire and in Late Antiquity: religious resources between faith, society and power (Project Heads Meier, Mischa ;  Männlein-Robert, Irmgard ;  Stanzel, Karl-Heinz ;  Zeller, Peter )
• C03 - Resources and the formation of societies, settlement areas and cultural identities of the Italian peninsula in the 1st millennium BC (Project Head Schäfer, Thomas )
• C04 - ResourceCultures of rice and wheat in South and Central Asia: Religious and (agro-)economic dimensions of grain (Project Heads Conrad, Ruth ;  Hardenberg, Roland )
• C05 - Island economies – A comparative study on island societies in the Medieval and Early Modern Ages (Project Heads Dürr, Renate ;  Mehler, Natascha )
• C06 - T Health as an individual and collective resource: the Covid19 pandemic (Project Head Alex, Gabriele )
• C07 - Objects of the past and present as a resource. Cultural heritage - nationalism - identity (Project Heads Alex, Gabriele ;  Härke, Heinrich ;  Polit, Karin ;  Thiemeyer, Thomas )
• S - Scientific service project: geoscientific and geoarchaeological expertise (Project Heads Bartelheim, Martin ;  Kühn, Peter ;  Schmidt, Karsten ;  Scholten, Thomas )
• Z01 - Central Tasks (Project Head Bartelheim, Martin )

Completed projects

• A01 - Resources and the emergence of inequality. Raw materials and communication systems in prehistoric South-Eastern Europe (Project Heads Krauß, Raiko ;  Pernicka, Ernst )
• Ö - Resources and the public (Project Heads Bartelheim, Martin ;  Klocke-Daffa, Sabine ;  Thiemeyer, Thomas )

• Applicant Institution: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
• Participating University: Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main; Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Participating Institution: Curt-Engelhorn-Zentrum Archäometrie gGmbh; Frobenius-Institut; an der Goethe-Universität; Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (SHEP)
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Martin Bartelheim