Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
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Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department of Ancient Civilizations

Projects & Collaborations

11 found
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(V)INEQUALITY. Tracing Mobility, Health and Diseases in the Social Networks of 4th Century Vindonissa

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

Vindonissa bietet ein einzigartiges Umfeld, um Herkunft, Mobilität, Lebensbedingungen, Gesundheit, Ernährung und soziale Strukturen der spätantiken Bevölkerung zu untersuchen. Über 400 Bestattungen aus mehreren Arealen (Oberburg, Tschanz, Dammstr., Remigersteig) werden erstmals interdisziplinär analysiert, dies unter Einbezug von aDNA, Strontium-, Sauerstoff- und Kohlenstoff-Isotopen sowie anthropologischen Daten.

Die bereits vorliegenden anthropologischen Analysen von 38 Bestattungen aus 26 Gräbern (Windisch-Tschanz) zeigen eine auffällige demografische Zusammensetzung: Es handelt sich nämlich mehrheitlich um junge Männer, die körperlich stark belastet waren und teilweise Anzeichen systemischer Infektionen und Karies aufwiesen. Die Gräber waren fundarm, lediglich Münzen, Schmuck und Kleidungselemente dienten als Beigaben, einige Artefakte deuten auf Soldaten oder Zivilbeamte hin.

Ziel des Projektes ist es, Herkunft, Verwandtschaft, Krankheiten und Ernährungsgewohnheiten der im spätantiken Vindonissa lebenden Bevölkerung zu rekonstruieren und neue Aspekte der Ungleichheit der Bestatteten zu untersuchen. Die Kombination von naturwissenschaftlicher Methoden und Analysen der materiellen Kultur werden neue Einblicke in soziale Strukturen, Mobilität und Interaktionen im spätantiken Vindonissa ermöglichen. Ein Vergleich mit den in absehbarer Zeit vorliegenden Daten aus den spätantiken Gräberfeldern in Basel (vgl. Depaermentier et al. 2023 und https://data.snf.ch/grants/grant/208060) erlaubt zudem einen überregionalen Abgleich der Daten. 

Im Vorfeld dieses Projektes wird eine Pilotstudie durchgeführt, die 40 zufällig ausgewählte Gräber umfassen soll (Finanzierung durch den Forschungsfonds), gefolgt von der umfassenden Analyse aller Bestattungen (Finanzierung durch SNF/ERC Starting Grant). Die Kooperation mit der Integrativen Prähistorischen und Naturwissenschaftlichen Archäologie (IPNA) am Dep. Umweltwissenschaften (Universität Basel) und dem Max Planck–Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean in Jena gewährleistet zudem die methodische Expertise im naturwissenschaftlichen Bereich.

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EGRAPSA: Retracing the evolutions of handwritings in Greco-Roman Egypt thanks to digital palaeography

Research Project  | 6 Project Members

Papyri preserved by the dry climate of Egypt are an unparalleled source of information on the Ancient World. Around 80,000 papyri written in ancient Greek have already been published, covering a millennium between the time of Alexander the Great and the Arab conquest of Egypt (end of 4th c. BCE to early 8th c. CE). However, their large number, their diversity and their current dispersion have impeded a comprehensive grasp of their nature and content. In particular, palaeography, as the study of handwritings that has the potential to unveil who, where and when a text has been written, still relies on experts' assertions which rarely reach consensus. New technological advances in Computer Science allow now building the big picture of the writing culture of Greco-Roman Egypt and developing scientific analyses of scripts. The goal of EGRAPSA project (literally "I have written" in Ancient Greek) is to provide a new theoretical framework to the palaeography of Greek papyri. Starting from sound evidence, it aims at retracing the evolutions of handwritings, generating a model that, in turn, can contribute at organizing the papyrological documentation in a coherent panorama, improving the solidity of dates and writer identifications made on palaeographical grounds. The ground-breaking dimension of the project is not only in its scope that encompasses the entire papyrological documentation in its complexity, and in its conceptual approach to make sense of the plurality of scripts by discerning evolution phenomena but also in its methodological choice to measure similarities and explain evolutions by focusing on the reconstruction of the dynamics of writing, thus to literally re-trace handwritings.
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Climate Science & Ancient History Lab

Research Project  | 1 Project Members

The Basel Climate Science and Ancient History Lab is a pioneering interdisciplinary collaboration between ancient historians and climate scientists and bridges the traditional gap between the natural sciences and the humanities. Climate science has started to expand the spectrum of historical evidence to an extent inconceivable just a few years ago. The time is ripe to make use of this new evidence for elucidating the Graeco-Roman world whose study has relied so far largely on the written and archaeological record. The combined analysis of various materials promises an entirely new perspective on the ancient Mediterranean: paleoclimate archives literary sources biological evidence archaeological remains coins papyri Compared with most parts of the world, the Mediterranean region offers a wealth of natural proxies including lake sediments, speleothems, and many more that resolve parts of the past hydrological cycle, historical, and archaeological evidence. Egypt in particular provides a unique historical laboratory in which to study social vulnerability and responses to abrupt hydroclimatic change based on historical evidence, including Nile flooding data. The climate conditions may be caused by the influence of external factors, such as changes in solar and volcanic activities, or by purely internal variations in oceanic and atmospheric circulation. By using novel palaeoclimate model simulations in tandem with hydroclimate reconstructions climate variability and climate change can be connected to economic, social, and political transformations. The interaction between climate change, environmental stress, and socio-political systems is increasingly attracting the interest of the scientific community and the general public, as contemporary concerns about global warming grow. Climatic fluctuations are rarely the only contributor to major societal collapse, but they can impact political structures, economic relationships, and cultural habits to varying degrees. Historical and scientific analytical and quantification techniques and statistical applications can be used to understand causes and effects and to link socio-economic developments to climate and environmental changes.