Social and environmental transitions in arid zones: the North Gujarat Archaeological Project — NoGAP

Abstract

The Northern Gujarat Archaeological Project (NoGAP) is a new collaborative initiative between Spain and India, and promotes an interdisciplinary approach, integrating environmental, archaeological and ethnoarchaeological data for studying social contacts, resource use and cultural landscape in a long-term perspective. The programme includes:
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\n 1.-The excavation of a set of key sites within north Gujarat to create a broad dataset from anthropic deposits.
\n 2.-Extensive geoarchaeological and vegetation surveys.
\n 3.-The systematic recovery of bioarchaeological remains (charred macros, charcoals, animal bones, phytoliths and starch) highlighting trajectories of domestication and human-environment interactions.
\n 4.-Sedimentological and micromorphological analyses to unravel site formation processes and taphonomy.
\n 5.-The study of traditional activities in contemporary pastoral and agricultural settlements to support the pattern recognition and analysis of site formation and activity signatures. Ethnoarchaeological work in north Gujarat has been carried out in Nagwada and Jhandala where crop processing and traditional building activities have been recorded and sampled for physical, chemical and residue (plant micro and macro-remains) analyses to create a signature dataset.
\n 6.-All information to be put together in a Geographical Information System (GIS) to analyse spatio-temporal relationships.