University of Hradec Králové Joins the CORNERSTONES ERC Project
The University of Hradec Králové (UHK) has become a partner institution in the international research project CORNERSTONES: Disruptive Economies and Macrolithic Technologies in the Euro-Mediterranean Bronze Age, led by Roberto Risch from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. The project investigates the economic foundations of some of Europe’s earliest state societies during the Early Bronze Age (c. 3000–1500 BCE).
CORNERSTONES focuses on regions with dynamic and ultimately unstable developmental trajectories, including Minoan Crete (and its predecessors in the Peloponnese), the Únětice culture in Central Europe, and El Argar in the western Mediterranean. Through the study of macrolithic (ground-stone) tools, the project seeks to better understand the economic processes underlying the emergence, transformation, and collapse of early state societies.
At UHK, the research will be carried out by Richard Thér and Eva Schimerová from the Department of Archaeology, whose work will concentrate mainly on the Central European component of the project. The UHK team will contribute to the functional and technological analysis of macrolithic tools, with a particular emphasis on rugosity analysis of stone tools and experimental casts, combined with use-wear studies and other interdisciplinary methods.
By linking technological evidence with broader economic and social processes, the CORNERSTONES project contributes not only to prehistoric archaeology, but also to wider discussions on economic sustainability, inequality, and the long-term dynamics of complex economic systems.
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