MILWAYS - VU Istorijos fakultetas

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PAST & FUTURE MILLET FOODWAYS (MILWAYS),
No. 101087964 (PI: Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute Keen).

The MILWAYS project will use broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) – and will bridge a large geographic territory tracking the earliest millet dispersals across eastern-central Europe from the mid. 2nd mill. BCE onwards along the south-north axis all the way to millet cultivation limit. MILWAYS will utilize the high carbon isotope values of millet, resulting from its C4-photosynthetic pathway in conjunction with the distinct miliacin biomarker in order to identify its consumption, with respect to shifting climates, human mobility, demographic categories of sex, age and changes of plant use across historical times.

European Research Council, Consolidator Grant 2022 (ERC CoG 101087964 ) – Start date: 1 June. 2023

Regional focus:

East and Central Europe that includes:

Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Moldova, Ukraine

METHODS

WP 1 Project coordination and management

WP 2 Earliest wave of broomcorn millet spread north

This work aims to detect the earliest signs of millet use and to identify how millet consumption varied among individuals of different sex, age, and social classes, and determine if the millet eaters were local or non-local and what biological sex they belonged to.

WP 2.1 δ13C and δ15N and 87Sr/86Sr, δ18O isotope analysis

WP2.2 Biomarker miliacin and shotgun proteomics of millet proteins from human dental calculus

WP 2.3 Sex specific proteomics

WP 2.4 Chronological attribution of pre-Bronze age shards with millet impressions

WP 3 Analysis of climate change and links with millet cultivation

This WP will determine the relationship between climate and agricultural behaviours of past populations and reconstruct the ecological conditions that facilitated the spread of millet in the past.

WP 3.1 Miliacin in sediment cores

WP 3.2 δ2H isotope analysis

WP 3.3 Pollen analysis and radiocarbon dating

WP 4 Millet cultivation history though historical and archaeobotanical datasets

This WP will reconstruct the history of millet cultivation and variation in its exploitation and status during the historical period though a detailed investigation of historical and archaeological sources. This newly reconstructed history will be analysed in the light of climatic records, changes in the exploitation of other foods and technological advancements.

WP 4.1 Investigation of available historical records

WP 4.2 Social and environmental aspects of millet use though time via archaeobotanical research

WP 5 Millet adaptation in marginal environments though physiology

This work package will determine the interplay of cultural, environmental and plant physiological factors in millet cultivation in northern latitudes by studying millet crop adaptation at different day length regimes between 55-60°N during June-September months. This sub-package will use laboratory controls on millet accessions stored in gene banks from different geographical locales and conduct phenotyping determination for the influence of day length and temperature on millet flowering which are the key limiting factors to crops dispersal in northernly latitudes26,88.

WP 6 Future millet exploitation strategies

Drawing on the results of all the prior work packages, I will dissect the interplay between human diet, geographical origins and cultural versus climatic factors in crop adoption and abandonment over time, generating cultural and ecological models that could be used to form cultivation strategies for millet and other novel or forgotten crops for future exploitation by humanity.

PEOPLE

Reseach staff

MILWAYS project PI Giedrė Motuzaitė Matuzevičiūtė Keen

Prof Dr Piotr Guzowski, historian

Assoc Prof Dr Petr Pokorný, palynologists
Pokorný.jpg

Prof Dr Natalia Gerasimenko

N.Gerasimenko

Dr Michael Kempf

Michael holds multiple Master's degrees, including Geography, Geology, Meteorology, and Archaeology, earned in 2010 and 2018 from the University of Freiburg. He completed his PhD in Physical Geography at the same university in June 2020. Following this, he secured a two-year post-doctoral fellowship at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, and later became a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge.

In 2022, Michael joined the Geography Department and CRC1266 at Kiel. He received a Swiss National Science Foundation post-doctoral fellowship in 2023 for his project titled "EXOCHAINS - Exploring Holocene Climate Change and Human Innovations across Eurasia," which is based at the University of Basel and the University of Cambridge.

Currently, Michael is actively involved in various research projects, including the study of paleoclimate and human mobility across Eurasia, conducting stable isotope analyses in archaeological and ecological contexts, and utilizing computational methods to gain insights into past human behaviors. His expertise lies in multivariate statistics, spatial analysis, and computational modeling in the fields of geography and archaeology.

Dr Margaux Depaermentier, Postdoctoral researcher
M.Depaermentier

Meiirzhan Abdrakhmanov, PhD candidate
Meiirzhan website milways

Kyriaki Karanikola, PhD candidate

Key collaborators:

Rimvydas Laužikas (Vilnius University in Lithuania)

Jérémy Jacob CNRS, Paris-Saclay University (CNRS, Paris-Saclay University in France)

Shinya Shoda (Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties in Japan)

Kristina Jaškūnė LRCAF (Lithuania)

Miglė Stančikaitė (Natural Science Centre in Lithuania)

Alexander Varzari, Eugen Sava, Denis Topal (National Museum of History of Moldova)

Serghi Telizhenko, Oleksandra Kozak (Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine)

Petr Pokorný (Center for Theoretical Study, Charles University in Czech Republic)

Przemysław Makarowicz (University of Adam Mickiewicz in Poznan in Poland)

Łukasz Pospieszny (University of Gdansk in Poland)

Maria Hajnalova (Masaryk University in Slovakia)

PROJECT DISSEMINATION

Editor of a special issues

Motuzaite Matuzeviciute, G. & Liu, X. Editor of a special Issue "Millet and Pseudocereals: New Insights into Archaeobotany, Plant Domestication and Global Foodways". MDPI: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy/special_issues/millet_archaeobotany_domestication_foodways.

Publications

Motuzaite Matuzeviciute, G.2024. Broomcorn millet: From Past to Future. Archaeology of Food and Foodways. https://doi.org/10.1558/aff.27126.
Shoda S., Murakami N., Ananyevskaya E., Lukpanova Y., Talbot HM., Craig OE., Motuzaite Matuzeviciute G. 2024. Steppe Nomads and Millet Porridge. In: Yoneda M., Sasaki Y., Gakuhari T. eds. New Developments in Archaeological Sciences in East Asia. Tokyo: Yuzankaku. pp. 88-96. (in Japanese). ISBN: 9784639029700
Motuzaite Matuzeviciute, G. & Laužikas, R. 2023. A Brief History of Broomcorn Millet Cultivation in Lithuania. MDPI Agronomy 2023, 13(8), 2171.

Invited lectures

Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute: δ2H isotope analysis for reconstructing the past environments of millet cultivation, in ERC_StG RAINDROPS workshop Recent advances on stable isotope analysis on modern and archaeological plant remains. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Campus Ciutadella, Barcelona (Spain).June 16, 2023.
Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute: Biomolecular approach to millet journey across time and space" ISBA. 13th to 15th of September: https://isba10.ut.ee/program.
Vilnius conference: https://vilniusconference.lt/. Panel discussion on FOOD SECURITY AND THE BIOECONOMY. September 7-8, 2023.
Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute: Just a minor crop? The past and future foodways of broomcorn millet in Europe. KEW Gardens, London. July 13, 2023.
Mitai ir realybė apie mūsų protėvių paleomitybą: trumpa Homo sapience "sėkmės" istorija. (Miths and reality about palaeodiet: The Homo sapience sucess story“). The Leaders Club, Vilnius, Hotel Vilonas, June 6, 2023.

Media

ANNOUNCMENTS

Sidebar

PAST & FUTURE MILLET FOODWAYS (MILWAYS),
No. 101087964 (PI: Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute Keen).

METHODS

PEOPLE

PROJECT DISSEMINATION

ANNOUNCMENTS

MILWAYS GALLERY

Mokslas

Sidebar

PAST & FUTURE MILLET FOODWAYS (MILWAYS), No. 101087964 (PI: Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute Keen).

MILWAYS GALLERY

Mokslas

PAST & FUTURE MILLET FOODWAYS (MILWAYS),
No. 101087964 (PI: Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute Keen).