DiscoverAzores - When were the Azores archipelago really colonized? A high-resolution paleolimnological approach
- ICETA - Instituto de Ciências e Tecnologias Agrárias e Agroalimentares(líder)
- FCiências.ID - Associação para a Investigação e desenvolvimento de Ciências(parceiro)
- Fundação Gaspar Frutuoso(parceiro)
- Universidade de Évora(parceiro)
Summary
The discovery and colonization of islands is crucial to understand the occupation patterns of new territories, language spread, past economic trades and diffusion of past societal and scientific advances. However, historical and archaeological records are too scarce and incomplete in many islands including the Azores, especially regarding the determination of the exact age of these first settlements hampering to precisely determine it. In this project, we present a new perspective in which we intend to overcome the previous limitation by using environmental reconstructions based on long continuous sequences of natural archives. The work recently developed by this research team in Easter (Chile) and S. Miguel islands (Portugal) demonstrated the robustness of this new perspective.
The occupation of the Azores archipelago?s (AA) is controversial, due to a lack of solid evidence pertaining to its discovery [1-3]. The divergence in dates attributed to early occupation for S. Miguel, obtained with historical and paleolimnological sources was clearly stated in the pilot study by this research team [1]. Nevertheless, it is necessary to consider that to reach and occupy the Azores, first settlers would have to be in possession of navigation technology and, most importantly, favourable weather and climate conditions during the period around their arrival to a given area. So, using the AA as a case study, the main objectives of DiscoverAZORES are twofold: 1) to determine as precisely as possible when took place the human settlement, and 2) under which climate circumstances they occurred to understand the first colonizers distribution patterns.
DiscoverAZORES will use state-of-art environmental and climate reconstructions of the AA through a multiproxy approach on lacustrine sedimentary sequences that include: i) classical paleolimnological and paleoecological (e.g. pollen) approaches to identify the first signals of change related to human occupation; ii) cutting-edge approaches to document unequivocal traces of human activity preserved in the sedimentary record (ancient DNA and faecal related organic compounds); and iii) past climate reconstructions and modelling based on the analysis of instrumental meteorological and climate reconstructions to assess which were the main climate conditions at the time of the arrival.
DiscoverAZORES project will be led by CIBIO, an internationally recognized RU conducting basic and applied research. IDL, the leading Centre in Portugal of climate variability, extremes and climate impacts research also be an active participation partner. The DiscoverAZORES is composed by a strong multidisciplinary team of national/ international partners that have a solid publishing and research record and have complementary facilities, equipment and know-how to fulfil the needs of the project. Additionally, have work and published together in previous projects [1, 4-7].
Goals, activities and expected/achieved results
Goals
Objectives:
The main objective of DiscoverAZORES is to time the first human settlements of the Azores archipelago, and reveal their contemporary climate in order to understand the first colonizers distribution patterns.
DiscoverAZORES will achieve these objectives through:
1) identifying the first signals of change related to human occupation (past land use changes) using both paleolimnological (chironomids, diatoms, inorganic and organic composition of sediments) and paleoecological (pollen analysis) classical approaches as well as
2) using cutting-edge approaches (faecal related organic compounds and human DNA presence) as unequivocal tracers of human activity preserved in sedimentary record
3) using climate and environmental activity reconstructions and to unravel the role of the anthropogenic, climate and volcanic forcings on the vegetation evolution
4) to characterize climatic and environmental conditions at the time of early human settlements on the Azores archipelago
Activities
The research plan will be addressed in ten interconnected activities (A), in order to provide answers to the main goals of DiscoverAZORES project.
A1 Lake sedimentary retrieval
A2 Sampling party
A3 Chronological models
A4 Environmental and major volcanic eruptions reconstruction of Azores archipelago
A5 Classical approaches to detect first signals of human settlement
A6 Cutting-edge approaches to detect first signals of human settlement? biomarkers
A7 Cutting-edge approaches to detect first signals of human settlement? DNA
A8 Reconstruction of past climate modes
A9 Colonization patterns
A10 The role of climate change and ashfall events in the vegetation and cattle during the Azores colonization
Results
The successful fulfilment of the proposed work packages will give us the opportunity to produce high quality outputs: i) a comprehensive detection of the first signals of human arrival in the Azores archipelago (T4-5); ii) a confirmation with unequivocal tracers of human activity preserved in sedimentary record (T6-7); iii) a robust reconstruction of past climate (T8); iv) understanding favourable past climate windows to a successful distribution of humans on remote oceanic islands (T9-10). The reconstruction of the dynamics of past landscape (T4-5) will give the opportunity to relate it to eventual modifications by climatic shifts and human activities such as fire, agriculture or cattle raising and decline, potentially yielding publications in journals like Quaternary Science Reviews or Frontiers in Plant Science. The confirmation with unequivocal tracers of human activity (bio and molecular markers approach) preserved in sedimentary record (T6-T7) will yield an independent publication in journals like Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution or Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. The reconstruction of the past climate of the Azores (T8) will provide one of the most innovative contributions paleoclimate research in the North Atlantic and is expected to yield a publication in Climate of the Past, The Holocene or similar journals. Understanding favourable past climate windows to a successful distribution of humans on remote oceanic islands will provide the most innovative outcome and it is expected to yield a publication in high impact journals (T9-10). Project results will be published in MSc theses and international meetings. Also, dissemination of results will include a variety of routes, such as: articles in local newspapers, direct links and communications with different stakeholders and policymakers. Short news will be released at participants? institutions WebPages, and local/national and international media.
| Attribute | Type | Value |
|---|---|---|
| id | integer | 3867 |
