The NEANSCAPES project aims to advance our understanding of Neanderthal subsistence strategies during MIS4 (71-57 ka), a glacial period that imposed harsh conditions that impacted on environment on a worldwide scale. The transition from the temperate phase of MIS5 (128-71 ka) to the cold phase of MIS4 required flexibility and innovation in livelihood strategies and resource management by these populations. Much is known about MIS5 and MIS3 (57-27 ka), but there is a notable gap in human subsistence during MIS4. This project will assess the impact of MIS4 on the resilience of Neanderthals in Iberia for understanding their ability to cope with severe climatic cycles. It will test whether this species behaviour was maintained invariably, making them vulnerable to abrupt climatic changes, or conversely, they were able to change their behaviour when the environmental changed drastically. To this end, the project will examine the ungulates hunted from archaeological sites in north-eastern Iberia, where repeated and intense Neanderthal occupations span the entire MIS4 glacial period, from the Pyrenees to the coast. Stable isotopes (oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, sulphur, strontium) preserved in the animal tissues recovered on sites provide detailed information on the animals' past ecology. By combining multi-isotope analysis with isoscapes modelling (oxygen, sulphur, strontium) on the region, we will provide a high-resolution climate and spatial reconstruction directly linked to human presence, to characterized past human habitat. Using isoscape modelling, NEANSCAPES will maximise the resolution provided by stable isotopes to characterise the micro-environments frequented by humans and to understand landscape use resulting from human population choices. This cross-cutting methodology has never been applied to Palaeolithic research in Iberia and will provide a good opportunity to test its suitability on a regional scale and to generate new analytical tools.

This is a higher education student and staff mobility project, please consult the website of the organisation to obtain additional details.

The interdisciplinary research explores the ways transnational autobiographies by black authors address different forms of black mobility in the Americas during the Age of Revolutions and its aftermath until the onset of the US American Civil War (1760-1860). During that time, large parts of the Americas gained their independence from the European colonial powers. Simultaneously, black-authored narrative texts emerged in the region. Among them, autobiographies played a key role as vehicles of asserting black selfhood and participating in societal discourses. Four major types of black life narratives developed at the time: slave narratives, Indian captivity narratives, spiritual autobiographies, and memoirs-as-travelogues. In all of them different form of (im)mobility played a defining role in shaping black identities and experiences. The research is the first of its kind to study transnational black autobiographies from across the Americas in the Age of Revolutions with a focus the (voluntary or enforced) spatial, socio-cultural, and narrative mobilities of black people. Its objective is to produce a series of scholarly essays, to be subsequently joined into the first comprehensive study on the subject. Drawing on the theoretical and methodological approaches of Inter-American, Black Atlantic, Mobility, and Autobiography Studies, the project closes a gap in the scholarship of the Americas and the Atlantic world. Due to the aesthetic innovation and societal relevance of autobiography in the region from 1760-1860, the research will be based on a literary analysis of the major types of black Inter-American life writing of the era. In so doing, it will not only chart black contributions to autobiography but also advance the theoretical study of the genre. Home to the renowned Institute of Black Atlantic Research and its world-class scholars of the Early Black Americas and Black Atlantic (Prof Rice, Dr Hoermann, Dr Saxon), UCLAN provides an ideal host institution.

This is a higher education student and staff mobility project, please consult the website of the organisation to obtain additional details.

This is a project for higher education student and staff mobility between Programme Countries and Partner Countries. Please consult the website of the organisation to obtain additional details.