Some monographic studies developed perspectives for the transition process between the Muslim domain and the Christian conquest by focusing on long chronologies and predefined spaces. Many questions remain though, in particular regarding the Islamic period and the transition process with its repercussions on the different social groups and on their coexistence, in an intercultural relationship that refers to a broader sense to frontier societies. Similarly, the Centre and South of Portugal, privileged space for observing the process of symbiosis and cultural articulation between different heritages and communities, has not been the object of a systematic investigation that crosses data and methodologies of different sciences.
As stated by the saying 'we are what we eat' and by extension 'where we live', the geochemical composition of skeletal remains is direct witness of the diet and of the location of past populations, thus useful for deciphering cultural practices. Combined with data resulting from zooarchaeological investigations-for identifying, characterizing and quantifying species, and for providing geochemical baselines for each specific geo-environmental context-the dietary fingerprint archived in human skeletons is a powerful tool for addressing, firstly, the following questions:
- Regarding dietary habits, we know very little the diet of the Muslims and Christians in communities in Medieval Portugal. Was the diet of the Muslims and the Christians, respectively, similar in all the investigated sites? Is the Green Revolution (i.e., introduction of new irrigation techniques and species; Alonso et al. 2014) recorded in the human skeletal remains? What were Muslim and Christian socio-economic rules for dietary practices, as inferred from dietary differences related to sex, age and status? In this case, being a warlike and unequal society, what was the place and typology given to the warriors? Are they likely to be identified by their morphology and diet? Is there any relation between dietary behavior with demography and pathologies? (For example, time and duration of weaning may impact reproduction and immunological development; Pearson et al. 2010).
- Regarding mobility patterns. What were the dynamics of the Muslims and that of the Christians populations buried in the necropolises? Are they very local people who lived and died at the same place? Or are they composed of individuals from varied origins, who came to the place later in life? In the case of heterogeneous provenance, do we observe any sex-age related mobility? Are there any dietary as well as anthropological differences between local and migrants? What might be the origin of potential non- local individuals?
These questions will be answered for each community (Muslim vs Christian, high vs low social status, warrior vs natural population, healthy vs diseased population) and environment (urban vs rural, coastal vs inland, center vs south) investigated and will be further integrated into their specific regional historical context.
Then, larger scale questions with broader implications will constitute the main focus of the transdisciplinary team. As previously mentioned, although the historical studies were already made about some of the areas included in this project, a lot of documental information is yet unknown or not yet analyzed within a framework of that kind. In fact, the trends already established in what concerns the military movements and the political changes have always left outside the research about the process of acculturation and cultural exchanges. With this transdisciplinary approach we intend to understand better how Christian conquest altered or not ways of life in conquered communities and how the coexistence, not always peaceful, between the communities have influenced and determined cultural practices and their maintenance even after the change of political rule. In fact, one of the main questions is what changes were introduced or not introduced by the political consolidation of the kingdom in the central and southern space of the territory and how they were reflected in urban and rural contexts with diverse communities?