EVOSHEEP proposes to document how Near Eastern and Middle Eastern societies developed sheep farming and how this influenced their history using a multidisciplinary approach drawing on evidence from different sources: archaeozoology, philology, iconography and paleogenetics from a wide temporal (6000-1000 BC) and geographic scale (Near East and Middle East, the Caucasus). This approach conducted on ancient breeds will be completed by work on modern breeds (sheep with hairy fleece or hair from Lebanon, Iran, Ethiopia) to provide new biometric and genetic reference records more adequate than European races for further scientific research. The originality of EVOSHEEP is to combine morphometric and genetic data from ancient and modern breeds to document the pace of the emergence of sheep breed in the course of the complexification of Near and Middle Eastern societies.
Madame Emmanuelle VILA (Archéorient - Environnements et sociétés de l'Orient ancien)
The author of this summary is the project coordinator, who is responsible for the content of this summary. The ANR declines any responsibility as for its contents.
Smurfit Institute of Genetics
AMIS Anthropologie moléculaire et imagerie de synthèse
Archéozoologie - CNRS Archéozoologie, archéobotanique
Archéorient - CNRS Archéorient - Environnements et sociétés de l'Orient ancien
LECA - UGA Laboratoire d'écologie alpine
Help of the ANR 558,608 euros
Beginning and duration of the scientific project:
March 2018
- 48 Months
