ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

This project has the potential to radically change current understanding of cultic and social transformation in the post-exilic temple community of Jerusalem (c. 6th-4th centuries BCE), an important formative phase of ancient Judaism. “BABYLON” draws on recent, ground-breaking advances in the study of cuneiform texts to illuminate the Babylonian environment of the Judean exile, the socio-historical context which gave rise to the transformative era in Second Temple Judaism. In particular, these new data show that the parallels between Babylonian and post-exilic forms of cultic and social organization were substantially more far-reaching than presently recognized in Biblical scholarship. “BABYLON” will study the extent of these similarities and explore the question how Babylonian models could have influenced the restoration effort in Jerusalem. This goal will be achieved through four sub-projects. P1 will study the social dynamics and intellectual universe of the Babylonian priesthood. P2 will finalize the publication of cuneiform archives of Babylonian priests living in the time of the exile. P3 will identify the exact areas of change in the post-exilic temple community of Jerusalem. P4, the synthesis, will draw from each of these sub-projects to present a comparative study of the Second Temple and contemporary Babylonian models of cultic and social organization, and to propose a strategy of research into the possible routes of transmission between Babylonia and Jerusalem. The research will be carried out by three team members: the PI (P1 and P4), a PhD in Assyriology (P2) and a post-doctoral researcher in Biblical Studies specialized in the Second Temple period (P3 and P4). The participation of the wider academic community will be invited at two moments in the course of the project, in the form of a workshop and an international conference. “BABYLON” will adopt an interdisciplinary approach by bringing together Assyriologists and Biblical scholars for a much-needed dialogue, thereby exploding the artificial boundaries that currently exist in the academic landscape between these two fields.

1 200 000 €

Start date: 2009-09-01, End date: 2015-08-31

The last 30 years have seen the rapid emergence and growth of a new high-profile interdisciplinary field, the study of cultural evolution, which has produced novel ways of understanding human cultural and socio-economic behaviour. In particular, it has produced mathematical models derived from evolutionary biology demonstrating the importance of culture and history in understanding human cultures and societies, while at the same time taking into account the adaptive dimension. The field has seen a great deal of theoretical development and some empirical work, not least by myself and colleagues at the UCL AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity and its predecessor. However, there has been no substantive attempt to bring the different sub-fields of cultural evolutionary theory and method together in an integrated fashion and apply them to large-scale case-studies in history or prehistory to address specific questions concerning the links between demographic, economic, social and cultural patterns and processes. The aim of this proposal is to do that for the first time and in doing so to provide the basis for a new account of the role of farming in transforming early European farming societies, c.6000-2000 calBC, focussing on the western half of Europe, where the available data are best. The project will have a major impact on the field of cultural evolution by providing a model example for cultural evolutionary studies of early societies in other parts of the world. It will also provide important new insights into the history of European society and give a significant impetus to re-orienting the disciplinary field of archaeology, making it part of the broader inter-disciplinary endeavour of evolutionary social science, as other researchers follow its example.

2 000 000 €

Start date: 2010-05-01, End date: 2015-04-30

This project analyses the structures of colonial systems of forced labour, in an attempt to come to a comparison of the different trajectories of African populations under distinct European administrations. Through the interpretation of case studies from different West African and Central African territories, it will be possible to understand the techniques of organising an involuntary labour force, and their evolution until and beyond independence. The slow process of the abolition of forced labour from World War II did not exclude continuities in clandestine practices of forcing African (rural) populations to work without remuneration. Another form of continuity connects colonial practices to the postcolonial re-institution of systems of forced labour: many postcolonial African governments were inclined to rely themselves on respective practices under the impression of dire budgetary situations. The different case studies will highlight the existence of forced labour as an Afro-European heritage in the social structures of African societies, and link that heritage back to the experiences of African populations in the local arena. For cases from Ghana, Senegal, São Tomé e Príncipe, and a larger Central African region consisting of sub-cases from Angola, Gabon, and Zambia, the project will address the question how structures of and changes in forced labour had an impact on relations of power inside of the local societies. In particular, forced labour was, in the colonial period, not only a means for colonial officials to shape socio-economic realities in the colonies according to their ideas, but it also was an instrument in the hands of chiefs ( traditional rulers ) who were eager to employ it as a weapon to discipline any existing opposition among their populations. African voices, both from archival sources and from interviews, will be in the focus of this analysis: they will show the importance of the particular experience of forced labour for African social evolution

665 550 €

Start date: 2010-09-01, End date: 2015-02-28

The purpose of the proposed project is to think afresh about the violent aftermath of the Great War and its legacies. This will be achieved by forging a team of researchers who focus on the violent conflicts that erupted in many of the former combatant states after 1917/18 from a comparative or transnational global perspective and the ways in which these conflicts were avoided in other areas. The project will differ from previous attempts to analyse the violent transition from war to peace in this period in several ways: The first is its comparative and transational complexion. Despite recent attempts to write transnational histories of the Great War, the global history of its immediate aftermath is yet to be written. War and the politics of conflicts (and its aftermaths) are still largely studied according to divisions of national identity or ethnic difference. And yet clearly the First World War was a phenomenon that crossed frontiers and left legacies that posessed common themes. Indeed one of its consequences, especially in East-Central Europe but also in the shatter-zones of the Ottoman Empire and colonial contexts, was the destruction of frontiers, creating spaces without order or unquestioned government authority. The project will thus approach its subject matter by zones of victory, of defeat, and of mutilated or ambivalent victories rather than nation-states as a novel way of overcoming nation-centric frameworks of analysis. In terms of chronological scope, the investigation moves away from the traditional emphasis on the years 1914-18 as the crucible years of twentieth-century history. Furthermore, the project is at once European and global, investigating the emergence of violent conflicts in both the shatter-zones of European land empires and colonial conflicts.

1 199 386 €

Start date: 2009-09-01, End date: 2014-02-28