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Current Research Projects

While Sardinia’s participation in a wider Mediterranean seaborn web is well-known, the way the Nuragic population was involved is rather unexplored. It remains open to question whether the inhabitants were actively shaping these networks or rather passive consumers. As the latter has been often implicitly assumed, the study aims to illuminate the Nuragic involvement in the maritime world and seaborn interrelations through the investigation of the micro-region of the islet of Sant’Antioco at the South-western coast of Sardinia. The inhabitants of Sant’Antioco already took advantage of the maritime character of the islet in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods as can be shown by a seaborn network reflected in the jasper and obsidian distribution. In the later Nuragic period the sea orientation of the Nuraghe S’Ega Marteddu at Maladroxia, Cala Bianca, or Porto di Triga supports a similar assumption for the protohistoric period. Such a maritime landscape has never been systematically analyzed in Nuragic archaeology. Therefore, the project aims to fill this gap and focus on this unique feature as part of a landscape-archaeological approach.
As a landscape-archaeological study, the project investigates the inhabitant’s daily routines within the realm of subsistence economy and exchange as well as their involvement in ritual, social or political activities. Through remote sensing, geomorphological investigation, survey, excavation, experimental approaches and underwater investigations the project reconstructs the communities’ taskscapes and their spatial layout to trace the specific land- and seascape appropriation of the inhabitants and to carve out their possible perceptions and meanings. It hence has the potential to break the almost stereotypical idea of the Nuragic population as mountaineers and herdsmen, restricted to pastoral life and averted from the sea, which is often perpetuated in literature and touristic commercialization and which has partly entered narratives of local identity and marketing.

Project management: Prof. Dr. Constance von Rüden

Publications related to the project:
Constance von Rüden, Tim Klingenberg, Marie Usadel. 2023. Grutt’i Acqua and its Hinterland. Some preliminary insights into the exploration of the microregion of Sant’Antioco. In: 2023, Mauro Perra - Fulvia LoSchiavo, Proceedings of the Fifth Festival of the Nuragic Civilization (Orroli, Cagliari). Cagliari: ARKADIA EDITORE.

Constance von Rüden. 2022. Making Landscape. Exploring a Praxeological Approach to Landscape Archaeology. In: Tobias Kienlin – Richard Bußmann (eds), Sociality - Materiality – Practice. Bonn: Habelt, 163-178.

Marie Usadel, Francesco Corgiolu. 2021. Der Brückenbauer. Intervista con Dario Siddi. EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology 6, December 2021, 197-206.

Frank Gfeller, Marie Usadel, Nadja Melko. 2020. Vom Sediment zum Gebrauchsgegenstand - Eine experimentell-archäometrische Fallstudie an Rohstoffen und nuraghischer Keramik der Insel Sant’Antioco. Experimentelle Archäologie in Europa 21, 161-174.

Social Media:
Szenen einer Grabung - Ein Morgen, sechs Jahre später (ASMR)

unterUns - Landschaften und Klanglandschaften

Die alten Nuragher und das Meer. Einblicke in eine praxistheoretische Untersuchung der bronzezeitlichen Landschaft von Sant'Antioco/Sardinien (recorded presentation)

The Palatine as the 'cradle' of Rome aroused the interest of antiquarians, excavators and artists early on. This research project focuses on how the challenge of visually documenting and reconstructing the ancient buildings of the Palatine, which extend over 10 hectares and several levels, and its numerous finds was to be tackled, which techniques and methods were used, and how the resulting images were employed to generate and pass on knowledge.
This DFG-funded project deals with the handling of pictorial documentation in archaeological research processes on the basis of a larger topographical complex. The time frame is broad and ranges from the first plans and representations of the Palatine in the early modern period to current computer-aided methods of image production.
Due to the long period of investigation, changes and breaks in the images come to light and make it possible to analyse the factors responsible for this. In addition, the long-term perspective of the project also makes it possible to examine the influence of earlier images on the visualisations created after them, thus answering the question of how pictorial conventions emerge, change and have a lasting impact on research questions and results. In this way, the project not only generates new information on the Palatine and its research history, but also makes a fundamental contribution to the practice of pictorial documentation and reconstruction as practices of knowledge production in archaeology.
Parallel to an analytical monograph, a geoinformation system for the visualisation history of the Palatine ("PalatinGIS") is being developed within iDAI.world as a central analysis tool. It enables the comprehensible comparison and evaluation of the extensive data collection already available (approx. 1,700 digitised images) from private and institutional archives. The GIS will be made accessible in accordance with the FAIR principles and will be freely available for further research following the project. In the course of its development, there will also be the opportunity to critically reflect on the heuristic added value of digital data processing.

Head of Project: Dr. Barbara Sielhorst

Publications related to the project:
V. Santoro – B. Sielhorst, I Borbone sul colle degli imperatori. Nuove scoperte sugli Orti Farnesiani al Palatino dall’Archivio di Stato di Napoli, in: Grand’A. Revista semestrale di arte, archivi e architettura, 2023/1, 88–95.

V. Santoro – B. Sielhorst – L. Terzi, I Borbone sul Palatino: Documenti inediti sugli Ort Farnesiani dal 1731 al 1861, RM 128, 2022, 432–471.

K. Ghedi-Alasow – B. Sielhorst, »Karten schaffen Räume«. Reflexionen zum Aufbau eines Geoinformationssystems (GIS) zur Forschungsgeschichte des Palatins in der iDAI.world, FdAI 2022/1, § 1–24.

B. Sielhorst, The Palatine Hill in Rome and its history of research in the 19th century. A report on the latest ›excavations‹ in the archives of Rome. Season 2021, eDAI-F 2021-2, § 1–9.

B. Sielhorst, Fernpraktika am DAI – ein neues Format zur Nachwuchsförderung. Die Fernpraktika des Jahres 2020 und der ersten Jahreshälfte 2021, eDAI-F 2021-1, § 1–5.

The subject of the planned project which is funded by the DFG Walter Benjamin Programme will be a comparative and relational-historical assessment of the biographies of German experts involved in the modernization and reform processes of the Ottoman Empire from 1789 to 1918, the analysis of the social networks with which they dealt during their tenures, and the mapping of the places and institutions in which they worked. In the lighting of this subject, it is aimed to use the data to be obtained from the following three analysis levels:  
At the first level of analysis, the modernization and reform studies carried out by German experts employed in the modernization process in the Ottoman Empire between 1789 and 1918 will be discussed by the prosopographic method in which biographical data of a group are systematically created and analysed. The main objective of this level of analysis is to obtain biographical information of all German experts working within the Ottoman Empire, regardless of civilian-military distinction, taking into account the periods and branches in which they worked, and to close the research gap in this regard.
At the second level of analysis, questions will be formulated to determine the status of German experts. These questions will be designed to determine the personal situations, duties, corporate relations and interactions of German experts and a "German network of experts" will be created. This configured data will be analysed using the social network method according to the prepared questions. The purpose of using the social network method is to make sense of the biographies of German experts, to help explain the reform activities in the institutions in which they work, to define the social reality of the period, to analyse the nature and degree of social structure and the degree of movements within it. The information to be supported by infographics and social network analysis schemes to be obtained from these analyses will be used both in prosopographic content and in two directions on the webpage to be created
The cities and institutions where German experts working on reforming the vast Ottoman lands will be embodied on the interactive map using the mapping method at the third analysis level of the project. For the mapping study, the prosopographic database prepared at the first analysis level will be integrated into the open-source geographic information system software QGIS and embodied by adding the distribution of the German experts in the Ottoman land, the timeline and the visual material obtained on the basis of city, task, tenure and institution.
The research output has the potential to be a reference point for academic and cultural research in different disciplines at the local and global level, mainly to address recent Ottoman History and Ottoman-German relations.

Head of Project: Dr. Tunca Özgişi

Scholarly works pertaining to interactions between the Ottoman Empire and its European counterparts have predominantly concentrated on the pre-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This is primarily attributed to the widely held view among historians that the Ottoman Empire's political, military, and commercial relationships with Europe were most significant during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Moreover, the sources produced in subsequent centuries have focused on a limited number of cities and mainly explored the relations among non-Muslim communities, such as Orthodox merchants. Such diaspora-centric studies have tended to adopt a nationalist or religious framework for historical analysis, prioritizing communal bonds while overlooking the interdependence and interactions among different communities.
By examining the movements of individuals and the resulting processes, structures, and consequences, the concept of mobility provides a valuable framework for analyzing potential interactions and interdependencies. The primary focus of this investigation is, therefore, to examine the mobility patterns of Ottoman subjects who either dwelled or traveled to and from Habsburg lands during the years 1823, 1824, and 1825. To accomplish this task, three voluminous archival registers, which were produced by Habsburg authorities during the designated period, are subject to detailed analysis. However, it is important to note that the temporal scope of the registers is not limited to the three years during which they were created. In fact, some of the information recorded in the registers can date back up to fifty years prior to the registration date. The registers contain information such as name, age, religion, and/or nationality, as well as family member details if applicable, the location of registration, descriptions of physical characteristics and clothing, date and place of birth, occupation, and relevant passport details including issuance reason, date, location, and authority. Moreover, it is noteworthy that the registers may include not only factual information, but also subjective opinions or statements from the registrar regarding the individuals or groups being registered. Furthermore, the registers also documented the intentions of the individuals present regarding their stay in the destination. The ultimate goal is thereby to offer a more comprehensive understanding of socio-economic and political phenomena during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries that facilitated interaction between individuals from diverse societies, with a focus on all Ottoman subjects, irrespective of their ethnic or religious background.

Head of Project: Zeynep Arslan M.A. (Affiliated Researcher)

In cooperation with the University of Potsdam, the project, which is funded by the DFG, focuses on the illegal military cultures of violence of the Ottoman and Habsburg armies in the so-called Turkish Wars of 1683-1699 and 1714-1718 from a micro-sociological perspective.
While the Ottoman Empire increasingly lost its significance as a threat in the dominion of Vienna, the sense of threat in Ottoman Southeastern Europe towards its rivals steadily increased. It is, first of all, this change in consciousness against the background of changed military conditions that raises the question of the shaping of cultures of violence in a period of transformation. In structural-historical terms, the two wars fell in a period seen as the beginning of a phase in which the "modern state" increasingly appeared as an actor of violence. Homogenization and professionalization of the armed forces are defined as decisive features in this process. This raises the question of whether and to what extent the Ottoman Empire fits into this pattern and whether structural changes in the military sphere had an impact on the shaping of cultures of violence. Historical research has dealt with this transition process in Southeast Europe mainly in the sense of classical military and diplomatic history, so that the analysis of violent phenomena or the question of cultures of violence has hardly been dealt with in depth so far. Our research project thus intends to contribute to a closer intertwining of military history with historical research on violence within the framework of a history of empire and thus to strengthen the necessary interdisciplinary exchange.
Within the framework of this concept, a distinction is made between three spaces of violence, in which the perpetrators of violence and its victims, as well as the structures and mechanisms of violence defined as illegitimate, are investigated: Spaces of the actual battlefield, spaces of soldierly life, and spaces of civil societies, at least temporarily, directly affected by the war. In addition to the official documents in the state and military archives in Istanbul and Vienna, unofficial sources, such as first-person documents, tracts, chronicles, memoirs, folk poems or captivity diaries will be considered, which enable a micro-sociological analysis of the military cultures of violence.

Head of Project: Prof. Dr. Markus Koller
Project Officer: Barbaros Köksal M.A.


Research Cooperations

You can view ZMS's cooperation projects here.