Wessex–Armorica: territories, connections and hierarchies
The aim of the WATCH project is to model the organisation of territories, economic and political connections, and social hierarchies promoted and sustained by maritime connections across and around the English Channel during the early Bronze Age (EBA). This study is crucial to understand how communities living in the Channel coastlands became interdependent at a time when trade in tin and copper was strenghtening the foundations for an extensive prehistoric European union. Central to the project is the study of burials within their human, social, and natural environments using Geographical Information System (GIS) analysis. The project is interdisciplinary, rooted in archaeology but borrowing concepts, methods, and data from geography and environmental sciences. This project will enable the fellow to achieve the research and transferable skills, which will allow him to become a mature independent researcher and international expert of the EBA northwestern Europe. The fellow will be able to apply the most up-to-date GIS skillset to different problems in the field of prehistoric archaeology, which will extend an exciting research career. This project offers the opportunity to the fellow to conduct innovative research and transnational mobility while providing benefits for the European Research Area, the Bournemouth University, the supervisor, the partner organisation and the fellow. This project will allow the fellow to develop a research agenda that will lead to a range of research and consultancy projects with European academic and non-academic institutions for the better understanding of EBA societies and cross-Channel relationships, thus enhancing research excellence and addressing recognized research questions in Europe, and beyond. Finally, the fellow aims to offer civil society the demonstration of how and why both sides of the Channel became socially and economically interdependent in the past is relevant to considering the future of our societies.