Project acronym ACADEMIA
Project Reconstructing Late Medieval Quests for Knowledge: Quodlibetal Debates as Precursors of Modern Academic Practice
Researcher (PI) Ota PavlIcek
Host Institution (HI) FILOSOFICKY USTAV AV CR, v.v.i.
Country Czechia
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2020-STG
Summary ACADEMIA proposes a pioneering study of a neglected corpus of manuscripts stemming from the practice of quodlibetal debates held at Faculties of Arts of European universities, flourishing from the 14th to the early 16th century. As prescribed by the university statutes, dozens of professors participated periodically in these unique collective works of the Middle Ages, which encompassed all the disciplines pursued at the university, from logic to medicine to theology. The PI hypothesises that the professors presented at the hitherto mostly ignored quodlibets their recent scientific innovations, which they then published in the first collective volumes of European academia. The PI thus proposes a novel theoretical framework for understanding the quodlibets: they stand at the origin of the modern concept of science as a collective intellectual enterprise, similar to modern conferences and the subsequent dissemination of results. This makes them and their written form critical for understanding European intellectual and scientific traditions, both past and present. ACADEMIA’s ambition is to establish the corpus of these debates as a new field of study through an extensive examination of manuscripts, thus filling a substantial gap, radically extending the fields of the history of universities and intellectual history, and reconstructing the roots of the modern practice of fostering collective science. A complex analysis of the corpus will bring about a substantial change in our understanding of medieval practices of the production and sharing of knowledge. Aiming to examine the quodlibets as a phenomenon successively interconnecting European intellectual space, ACADEMIA focuses on fourteen universities at which the PI has identified the tradition so far and on their mutual relations and development. ACADEMIA employs an interdisciplinary team and an innovative combination of approaches from history, codicology, palaeography, philology, hermeneutics and Digital Humanities.
Summary
ACADEMIA proposes a pioneering study of a neglected corpus of manuscripts stemming from the practice of quodlibetal debates held at Faculties of Arts of European universities, flourishing from the 14th to the early 16th century. As prescribed by the university statutes, dozens of professors participated periodically in these unique collective works of the Middle Ages, which encompassed all the disciplines pursued at the university, from logic to medicine to theology. The PI hypothesises that the professors presented at the hitherto mostly ignored quodlibets their recent scientific innovations, which they then published in the first collective volumes of European academia. The PI thus proposes a novel theoretical framework for understanding the quodlibets: they stand at the origin of the modern concept of science as a collective intellectual enterprise, similar to modern conferences and the subsequent dissemination of results. This makes them and their written form critical for understanding European intellectual and scientific traditions, both past and present. ACADEMIA’s ambition is to establish the corpus of these debates as a new field of study through an extensive examination of manuscripts, thus filling a substantial gap, radically extending the fields of the history of universities and intellectual history, and reconstructing the roots of the modern practice of fostering collective science. A complex analysis of the corpus will bring about a substantial change in our understanding of medieval practices of the production and sharing of knowledge. Aiming to examine the quodlibets as a phenomenon successively interconnecting European intellectual space, ACADEMIA focuses on fourteen universities at which the PI has identified the tradition so far and on their mutual relations and development. ACADEMIA employs an interdisciplinary team and an innovative combination of approaches from history, codicology, palaeography, philology, hermeneutics and Digital Humanities.
Max ERC Funding
1 260 485 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-07-01, End date: 2026-06-30
Project acronym BODY-POLITICS
Project Body-Politics: Personhood, Sexuality, and Death in the Iron and Viking Ages
Researcher (PI) Marianne Hem Eriksen
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER
Country United Kingdom
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2020-STG
Summary The overall objective of BODY-POLITICS is to provide an original and creative analysis of body-politics and personhood in first millennium Northern Europe. It is the first large-scale research project that seeks to understand political development through the battleground of the body and through the construction of the person in the Scandinavian Iron and Viking Ages. BODY-POLITICS will break new ground in combining cutting-edge natural science methods (aDNA, isotope analyses, osteobiography) with core social and philosophical concerns. The project will moreover provide problematizing research on challenging topics: sexual assault, subalterns as non-persons, and ritual violence, in an era that is frequently romanticized and has never seen more popular attention.
Through an interdisciplinary research programme, the body will be centred as a political medium targeting three core themes: personhood, sexuality, and death. To operationalize the overall objective, BODY-POLITICS will conduct ground-breaking analyses of five interlinked datasets: 1) a never-before studied database of bodies deposited in settlements in the first millennium; 2) an in-depth study of infants, who are situated between sentient object and full social persons; 3) a novel dataset of sexuality and sexual violence in texts and things; 4) body imagery as it exposes body concepts; and 5) textual evidence of distinctions in personhood. In combination, these analyses provide glimpses of radically diverse concepts of the body: of ‘proper’ death, of sexuality as an instrument of violence and medium for power, of complex interplay between bodies and body imagery, and of blurring between bodies as social subjects and meaningful objects. Ultimately, the question of who could be a person in Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia is not marginal but integral to understand social and political development. It is a question that would – through migrations, raids, and violence – fundamentally shape the history of Europe.
Summary
The overall objective of BODY-POLITICS is to provide an original and creative analysis of body-politics and personhood in first millennium Northern Europe. It is the first large-scale research project that seeks to understand political development through the battleground of the body and through the construction of the person in the Scandinavian Iron and Viking Ages. BODY-POLITICS will break new ground in combining cutting-edge natural science methods (aDNA, isotope analyses, osteobiography) with core social and philosophical concerns. The project will moreover provide problematizing research on challenging topics: sexual assault, subalterns as non-persons, and ritual violence, in an era that is frequently romanticized and has never seen more popular attention.
Through an interdisciplinary research programme, the body will be centred as a political medium targeting three core themes: personhood, sexuality, and death. To operationalize the overall objective, BODY-POLITICS will conduct ground-breaking analyses of five interlinked datasets: 1) a never-before studied database of bodies deposited in settlements in the first millennium; 2) an in-depth study of infants, who are situated between sentient object and full social persons; 3) a novel dataset of sexuality and sexual violence in texts and things; 4) body imagery as it exposes body concepts; and 5) textual evidence of distinctions in personhood. In combination, these analyses provide glimpses of radically diverse concepts of the body: of ‘proper’ death, of sexuality as an instrument of violence and medium for power, of complex interplay between bodies and body imagery, and of blurring between bodies as social subjects and meaningful objects. Ultimately, the question of who could be a person in Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia is not marginal but integral to understand social and political development. It is a question that would – through migrations, raids, and violence – fundamentally shape the history of Europe.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 492 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-02-01, End date: 2026-01-31
Project acronym BOMPAC
Project Books of the Medieval Parish Church
Researcher (PI) Jaakko Tahkokallio
Host Institution (HI) HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
Country Finland
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2020-STG
Summary Book production became a market-orientated craft long before the invention of printing. In the late-medieval manuscript economy, the parish churches formed one of the biggest entities on the demand side. However, at present we know next to nothing about how they were provisioned with books. BOMPAC is a response to this gap in scholarly understanding. It offers the first substantial study of the place of the parish church in the culture and economy of the manuscript book, c. 1150–c.1500.
BOMPACs contribution to the topic will be twofold. It will, firstly, provide an extensive case study concering one medieval kingdom – Sweden – comprising more or less two modern countries (Sweden, Finland). Secondly, preliminary research indicates that many of the books used in the parishes of medieval Sweden were imported from abroad. Thus, the project will directly break new ground in the study of the international book economy of the later middle ages.
Parish church book provision remains poorly known because such books very rarely survive as complete physical items. BOMPAC will go around this limitation by innovative use of a hitherto understudied corpus of manuscript fragments. In Sweden, the parchment books of the parishes were recycled as covers for tax accounts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This operation was systematic and resulted in a massive collection of c. 50 000 leaves from c. 12 500 books, probably the biggest collection of material from medieval parish church books anywhere in the world.
Only recent cataloguing and digitizing efforts have made this material accessible for research. In BOMPAC, it will be studied with both statistical and palaeographical methods. A database-driven approach is used to produce a reliable big picture of how the books were distributed in the medieval period. Palaeographical and codicological case studies will show us the modes and routes by which parish churches acquired their books.
Summary
Book production became a market-orientated craft long before the invention of printing. In the late-medieval manuscript economy, the parish churches formed one of the biggest entities on the demand side. However, at present we know next to nothing about how they were provisioned with books. BOMPAC is a response to this gap in scholarly understanding. It offers the first substantial study of the place of the parish church in the culture and economy of the manuscript book, c. 1150–c.1500.
BOMPACs contribution to the topic will be twofold. It will, firstly, provide an extensive case study concering one medieval kingdom – Sweden – comprising more or less two modern countries (Sweden, Finland). Secondly, preliminary research indicates that many of the books used in the parishes of medieval Sweden were imported from abroad. Thus, the project will directly break new ground in the study of the international book economy of the later middle ages.
Parish church book provision remains poorly known because such books very rarely survive as complete physical items. BOMPAC will go around this limitation by innovative use of a hitherto understudied corpus of manuscript fragments. In Sweden, the parchment books of the parishes were recycled as covers for tax accounts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This operation was systematic and resulted in a massive collection of c. 50 000 leaves from c. 12 500 books, probably the biggest collection of material from medieval parish church books anywhere in the world.
Only recent cataloguing and digitizing efforts have made this material accessible for research. In BOMPAC, it will be studied with both statistical and palaeographical methods. A database-driven approach is used to produce a reliable big picture of how the books were distributed in the medieval period. Palaeographical and codicological case studies will show us the modes and routes by which parish churches acquired their books.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 808 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-01-01, End date: 2025-12-31
Project acronym CALIPHALFINANCES
Project The Finances of the Caliphate: Abbasid Fiscal Practice in Islamic Late Antiquity
Researcher (PI) Marie Legendre
Host Institution (HI) THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
Country United Kingdom
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2020-STG
Summary This project offers an ambitious new account of a seminal period in Islamic history. It will for the first time provide a view from below on Abbasid fiscal history through a study of papyrus documents in Greek, Coptic and Arabic written in Egypt, a field in which the PI is a leading scholar. The Abbasids were the second longest ruling dynasty in Islamic history (750-1258). The first centuries of their rise to power are of key importance for the history of Islam, as the earliest surviving literary texts written by Muslims (religious, legal and fiscal treatises, grammars and poetry) were composed at this time and in their capital, Baghdad. They have been the preferred sources for scholars working on this period. As a result, our current view of Abbasid state structures is a view from the top. State policies, however, were not decided by the caliphal centre and Baghdadi administrators alone. CALIPHAL FINANCES will refocus scholarship on the totality of Abbasid administration. It will be the first large-scale research project on Abbasid administrative and fiscal history to make use primarily of documentary sources. Egyptian papyri are concerned with everyday arrangements for fiscal collection in secondary urban centres and villages of the Nile valley. Capitalising on this material, the project will study the organisation of tax collection, tax rates and categories of taxpayers. The project team will trace how provincial revenues reached the caliph, incorporating information found in provincial chronicles with that in the papyri. Connections between administrators and local elites, religious and linguistic communities, their convergence on fiscal questions, their loyalty or resistance to the caliphate will all be assessed. In a field largely dominated by religious history, CALIPHAL FINANCES will renew our understanding of the dynamics of change in pre-modern state structures, with a focus on the complexity of local agency.
Summary
This project offers an ambitious new account of a seminal period in Islamic history. It will for the first time provide a view from below on Abbasid fiscal history through a study of papyrus documents in Greek, Coptic and Arabic written in Egypt, a field in which the PI is a leading scholar. The Abbasids were the second longest ruling dynasty in Islamic history (750-1258). The first centuries of their rise to power are of key importance for the history of Islam, as the earliest surviving literary texts written by Muslims (religious, legal and fiscal treatises, grammars and poetry) were composed at this time and in their capital, Baghdad. They have been the preferred sources for scholars working on this period. As a result, our current view of Abbasid state structures is a view from the top. State policies, however, were not decided by the caliphal centre and Baghdadi administrators alone. CALIPHAL FINANCES will refocus scholarship on the totality of Abbasid administration. It will be the first large-scale research project on Abbasid administrative and fiscal history to make use primarily of documentary sources. Egyptian papyri are concerned with everyday arrangements for fiscal collection in secondary urban centres and villages of the Nile valley. Capitalising on this material, the project will study the organisation of tax collection, tax rates and categories of taxpayers. The project team will trace how provincial revenues reached the caliph, incorporating information found in provincial chronicles with that in the papyri. Connections between administrators and local elites, religious and linguistic communities, their convergence on fiscal questions, their loyalty or resistance to the caliphate will all be assessed. In a field largely dominated by religious history, CALIPHAL FINANCES will renew our understanding of the dynamics of change in pre-modern state structures, with a focus on the complexity of local agency.
Max ERC Funding
1 497 647 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-09-01, End date: 2026-08-31
Project acronym ComPAS
Project Commercial Patterns Across the Sea: The interdisciplinary study of Maritime Transport Containers from Cyprus and the elucidation of Mediterranean connectivity during the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age
Researcher (PI) Artemis GEORGIOU
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY OF CYPRUS
Country Cyprus
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2020-STG
Summary Ancient ceramic vessels are not merely lumps of clay that were formed and fired to be utilised at some point in the past. They represent vigorous discourses among raw materials, technological knowhow and the societies that produced and used them. In addressing the complexities inherent in archaeological ceramics, we attain an indispensable insight into past communities and the antiquity of our own society. Special-function vessels used in the transhipment of goods, termed Maritime Transport Containers (MTCs), can shed light on the multi-level mechanisms involved in ancient seaborne commerce. In the temporal and geographical context of the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age eastern Mediterranean (LBA-EIA, ca. 1650-750 BC), the highly visible hallmarks of the flourishing trade between sophisticated states are three distinct MTC types: the Canaanite Jars, Egyptian Jars and Transport Stirrup Jars, produced in the Levant, Egypt and the Aegean respectively. Cyprus was a key player within interregional commercial strategies, and its archaeological contexts have yielded prolific amounts of MTCs; however, the lack of a systematic study of these assemblages undermines our understanding of LBA-EIA Mediterranean interconnections.
The proposed project aspires to provide a holistic study of the Levantine, Egyptian and Aegean MTCs from the Cypriot contexts of the LBA-EIA periods, addressing their morphology, origin, contents, chronology, capacity, manufacture technology, marking strategies and depositional practices. The project implements an innovative methodology, integrating archaeological, scientific, and technologically advanced approaches to illuminate the production, circulation, and consumption of MTCs and their contents. Acknowledging MTCs as principal contributors to the study of interregional exchanges, the proposed research will elucidate the transformative character of ancient commerce, and will provide substantial insights on intercultural connectivity in the Mediterranean.
Summary
Ancient ceramic vessels are not merely lumps of clay that were formed and fired to be utilised at some point in the past. They represent vigorous discourses among raw materials, technological knowhow and the societies that produced and used them. In addressing the complexities inherent in archaeological ceramics, we attain an indispensable insight into past communities and the antiquity of our own society. Special-function vessels used in the transhipment of goods, termed Maritime Transport Containers (MTCs), can shed light on the multi-level mechanisms involved in ancient seaborne commerce. In the temporal and geographical context of the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age eastern Mediterranean (LBA-EIA, ca. 1650-750 BC), the highly visible hallmarks of the flourishing trade between sophisticated states are three distinct MTC types: the Canaanite Jars, Egyptian Jars and Transport Stirrup Jars, produced in the Levant, Egypt and the Aegean respectively. Cyprus was a key player within interregional commercial strategies, and its archaeological contexts have yielded prolific amounts of MTCs; however, the lack of a systematic study of these assemblages undermines our understanding of LBA-EIA Mediterranean interconnections.
The proposed project aspires to provide a holistic study of the Levantine, Egyptian and Aegean MTCs from the Cypriot contexts of the LBA-EIA periods, addressing their morphology, origin, contents, chronology, capacity, manufacture technology, marking strategies and depositional practices. The project implements an innovative methodology, integrating archaeological, scientific, and technologically advanced approaches to illuminate the production, circulation, and consumption of MTCs and their contents. Acknowledging MTCs as principal contributors to the study of interregional exchanges, the proposed research will elucidate the transformative character of ancient commerce, and will provide substantial insights on intercultural connectivity in the Mediterranean.
Max ERC Funding
1 254 300 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-06-01, End date: 2026-05-31
Project acronym datarev
Project Leading the first data revolution in European agriculture: farm accountancy data and their impact 1870-1945
Researcher (PI) Federico D'ONOFRIO
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITE DE GENEVE
Country Switzerland
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2020-STG
Summary Long before Big Data invaded the countryside with datafication and High Precision Farming in the 2010s, at least another data-revolution had taken place in Europe. The spread of bookkeeping to ordinary farmers that started in the second half of the 19th century represents a revolutionary phenomenon whose importance and magnitude have been underestimated by historians. After overseas competition hit European farmers in the 1870s, the diffusion of bookkeeping techniques among ordinary European farmers was an important component of the recovery. The farm accountancy offices that mushroomed in northern and central Europe thanks to the work of economists and agricultural unions were crucial to reach medium and small farmers. Such offices acted as consulting agencies to farmers, helping them to be more efficient. But the offices also aggregated farm accountancy data from individual farms to produce benchmarks and for statistical purposes. Farmers unions could thus use micro-data to enlighten macro-economic issues and guide policy decisions at different levels in a striking example of “stakeholders’ statistics.”
DATAREV investigates the diffusion of farm accountancy offices of continental Europe since the 1870s and the use of farm accountancy data by state and non-state actors in the first half of the 20th century. With its four subprojects, DATAREV thoroughly explores different aspect of the first data revolution, its actors and its consequences. It examines how economic and socially change was conceptualized and direct through accountancy data and statistics and how the peculiar structure of the agricultural business in Europe imposed constraints on bookkeeping unlike those at work in industry. It questions the agency in the datafication process and explores the conflicting claims to the data. Finally, it clarifies how farm accountancy data played a crucial role in the reorganization of the governance of European agriculture after the Long Depression.
Summary
Long before Big Data invaded the countryside with datafication and High Precision Farming in the 2010s, at least another data-revolution had taken place in Europe. The spread of bookkeeping to ordinary farmers that started in the second half of the 19th century represents a revolutionary phenomenon whose importance and magnitude have been underestimated by historians. After overseas competition hit European farmers in the 1870s, the diffusion of bookkeeping techniques among ordinary European farmers was an important component of the recovery. The farm accountancy offices that mushroomed in northern and central Europe thanks to the work of economists and agricultural unions were crucial to reach medium and small farmers. Such offices acted as consulting agencies to farmers, helping them to be more efficient. But the offices also aggregated farm accountancy data from individual farms to produce benchmarks and for statistical purposes. Farmers unions could thus use micro-data to enlighten macro-economic issues and guide policy decisions at different levels in a striking example of “stakeholders’ statistics.”
DATAREV investigates the diffusion of farm accountancy offices of continental Europe since the 1870s and the use of farm accountancy data by state and non-state actors in the first half of the 20th century. With its four subprojects, DATAREV thoroughly explores different aspect of the first data revolution, its actors and its consequences. It examines how economic and socially change was conceptualized and direct through accountancy data and statistics and how the peculiar structure of the agricultural business in Europe imposed constraints on bookkeeping unlike those at work in industry. It questions the agency in the datafication process and explores the conflicting claims to the data. Finally, it clarifies how farm accountancy data played a crucial role in the reorganization of the governance of European agriculture after the Long Depression.
Max ERC Funding
1 500 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-09-01, End date: 2026-08-31
Project acronym DEATHREVOL
Project The roots and evolution of the culture-of-death. A taphonomic research of the European Paleolithic record
Researcher (PI) Maria Teresa Nohemi SALA BURGOS
Host Institution (HI) CENTRO NACIONAL DE INVESTIGACION SOBRE LA EVOLUCION HUMANA
Country Spain
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2020-STG
Summary There can be no more profound insight into the human mind than the complex cultural practices surrounding death. While all human cultures across the globe today engage in funerary practices, the emergence of funerary behavior is one of the most contentious aspects in the field of human evolution. New methodological approaches on taphonomy field can help elucidate fundamental facets of hominin behavior making important contributions to the understanding of our ancestors. The European fossil record is a key source of information in this regard due to the relative abundance of fossil skeleton, many of which have been interpreted as burials, and the possibility for biological and cultural interactions between different human species. Nevertheless, direct taphonomic analyses on these human fossils are rare and essentially limited to those cases with possible signs of cannibalism. The present application proposes a multidisciplinary research project to investigate the origin of funerary behavior during the Middle Pleistocene and to trace this behavior throughout the European Paleolithic archaeological record. This project aims to address the dearth of taphonomic studies on Paleolithic hominins and represents the first large-scale project focused on a thorough multi-taphonomic study of the European fossil record. This involves the participation of a wide team of scholars and a network of methods including classical and innovative taphonomic analyses, virtual reconstructions for forensic analysis, study of spatial distribution patterns, the global relationship of different sites, and mathematical models to interconnect the broad-spectrum data gathered. The results have the potential to significantly alter our views on behavioral aspects of European Paleolithic populations. In particular, the results will examine whether mortuary practices and, hence a culture of death, predated the appearance of modern humans and Neandertals.
Summary
There can be no more profound insight into the human mind than the complex cultural practices surrounding death. While all human cultures across the globe today engage in funerary practices, the emergence of funerary behavior is one of the most contentious aspects in the field of human evolution. New methodological approaches on taphonomy field can help elucidate fundamental facets of hominin behavior making important contributions to the understanding of our ancestors. The European fossil record is a key source of information in this regard due to the relative abundance of fossil skeleton, many of which have been interpreted as burials, and the possibility for biological and cultural interactions between different human species. Nevertheless, direct taphonomic analyses on these human fossils are rare and essentially limited to those cases with possible signs of cannibalism. The present application proposes a multidisciplinary research project to investigate the origin of funerary behavior during the Middle Pleistocene and to trace this behavior throughout the European Paleolithic archaeological record. This project aims to address the dearth of taphonomic studies on Paleolithic hominins and represents the first large-scale project focused on a thorough multi-taphonomic study of the European fossil record. This involves the participation of a wide team of scholars and a network of methods including classical and innovative taphonomic analyses, virtual reconstructions for forensic analysis, study of spatial distribution patterns, the global relationship of different sites, and mathematical models to interconnect the broad-spectrum data gathered. The results have the potential to significantly alter our views on behavioral aspects of European Paleolithic populations. In particular, the results will examine whether mortuary practices and, hence a culture of death, predated the appearance of modern humans and Neandertals.
Max ERC Funding
1 494 486 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-04-01, End date: 2026-03-31
Project acronym DISSINET
Project Networks of Dissent: Computational Modelling of Dissident and Inquisitorial Cultures in Medieval Europe
Researcher (PI) David ZBIRAL
Host Institution (HI) Masarykova univerzita
Country Czechia
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2020-COG
Summary The DISSINET project will provide an unprecedented, “networked” understanding of dissident religious and inquisitorial cultures in medieval Europe through a vast computational analysis of the social, spatial, and textual relationships by which they were formed and recorded. Rather than treating these cultures through narrative case-study or traditional social-historical analysis, our approach will build upwards from the microscopic details of human interactivity towards a broader social picture. Historiographical impressions of the social grounding and spread of religious dissidence, the specifics of dissident cultures as well as their shared characteristics, and the confrontation between inquisitors and suspects will thus be challenged from a previously inaccessible perspective. To achieve this goal, we will manually collect data on every aspect of dissident and inquisitorial interactivity from inquisition records that cover thousands of individuals from the 13th to the 16th centuries. The resulting database will be large-scale and yet retain every nuance of our sources. Our data model will allow us to employ cutting-edge computational techniques, well-adapted to uncover hitherto undetected and historically significant patterns: these methods will include social network analysis, geographic information science, and computational text analysis. In its broader implications, the project will open up a significant new dimension in the conversation between history and the social sciences. It will offer the former a novel approach to challenging historical material, and the latter pre-modern perspectives on the bottom-up emergence of larger social phenomena such as covert networks, repression, and shared religious culture. Finally, DISSINET will make a significant contribution to the digital humanities, providing a powerful digital toolkit for research into multifaceted human phenomena that retains and makes use of the complexities of textual sources.
Summary
The DISSINET project will provide an unprecedented, “networked” understanding of dissident religious and inquisitorial cultures in medieval Europe through a vast computational analysis of the social, spatial, and textual relationships by which they were formed and recorded. Rather than treating these cultures through narrative case-study or traditional social-historical analysis, our approach will build upwards from the microscopic details of human interactivity towards a broader social picture. Historiographical impressions of the social grounding and spread of religious dissidence, the specifics of dissident cultures as well as their shared characteristics, and the confrontation between inquisitors and suspects will thus be challenged from a previously inaccessible perspective. To achieve this goal, we will manually collect data on every aspect of dissident and inquisitorial interactivity from inquisition records that cover thousands of individuals from the 13th to the 16th centuries. The resulting database will be large-scale and yet retain every nuance of our sources. Our data model will allow us to employ cutting-edge computational techniques, well-adapted to uncover hitherto undetected and historically significant patterns: these methods will include social network analysis, geographic information science, and computational text analysis. In its broader implications, the project will open up a significant new dimension in the conversation between history and the social sciences. It will offer the former a novel approach to challenging historical material, and the latter pre-modern perspectives on the bottom-up emergence of larger social phenomena such as covert networks, repression, and shared religious culture. Finally, DISSINET will make a significant contribution to the digital humanities, providing a powerful digital toolkit for research into multifaceted human phenomena that retains and makes use of the complexities of textual sources.
Max ERC Funding
1 991 868 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-07-01, End date: 2026-06-30
Project acronym EVERYDAYISLAM
Project Becoming Muslim: Cultural Change, Everyday Life and State Formation in early Islamic North Africa (600-1000)
Researcher (PI) Corisande FENWICK
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Country United Kingdom
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2020-STG
Summary The Muslim conquests of North Africa in the 7th century transformed the everyday lives of communities– between 800-1000, the region experienced an economic ‘Golden Age’, visible in the growth of urban populations, intensified exchange across a vast trading system and the introduction of new agricultural practices and technologies. New social-religious norms underpinned the development of a distinctly ‘Islamic cultural package’ marked by the spread of new aesthetics, public and private architecture and Muslim dietary practices. Despite significant recent advances, much of our knowledge continues to reflect the experience of rulers and elites, rather than the bulk of the population. Our understanding of the timing and process of these innovations is hampered by a reliance on later literary sources, monumental architecture and the high arts, the absence of high-resolution archaeological data and an incomplete understanding of what these changes meant for the people living on the ground. Through new excavations and scientific analysis using state-of the-art methods, legacy datasets and written sources, this project will explore the underlying reasons for the spread of Islamic way of life in North Africa between ca. 600-1000 CE. In so doing, this project aims to make a paradigmatic shift in scholarly understanding of the impact of Muslim rule by focusing on local populations, their houses and their everyday practices. It will take a comparative approach and study long-term changes in housing, agriculture, diet and technology in three key regions: 1) the central Medjerda valley in Tunisia, the famed granary of Roman and Islamic Africa; 2) the fertile Sebou Basin in Morocco, at the centre of the Idrisid state; 3) the Saharan oasis belt of the Wadi Draa in Morocco, on the margins of settled life. The ambitious objective is to rewrite the history of Muslim rule and the Islamisation of daily life from the perspective of the communities living through this pivotal period.
Summary
The Muslim conquests of North Africa in the 7th century transformed the everyday lives of communities– between 800-1000, the region experienced an economic ‘Golden Age’, visible in the growth of urban populations, intensified exchange across a vast trading system and the introduction of new agricultural practices and technologies. New social-religious norms underpinned the development of a distinctly ‘Islamic cultural package’ marked by the spread of new aesthetics, public and private architecture and Muslim dietary practices. Despite significant recent advances, much of our knowledge continues to reflect the experience of rulers and elites, rather than the bulk of the population. Our understanding of the timing and process of these innovations is hampered by a reliance on later literary sources, monumental architecture and the high arts, the absence of high-resolution archaeological data and an incomplete understanding of what these changes meant for the people living on the ground. Through new excavations and scientific analysis using state-of the-art methods, legacy datasets and written sources, this project will explore the underlying reasons for the spread of Islamic way of life in North Africa between ca. 600-1000 CE. In so doing, this project aims to make a paradigmatic shift in scholarly understanding of the impact of Muslim rule by focusing on local populations, their houses and their everyday practices. It will take a comparative approach and study long-term changes in housing, agriculture, diet and technology in three key regions: 1) the central Medjerda valley in Tunisia, the famed granary of Roman and Islamic Africa; 2) the fertile Sebou Basin in Morocco, at the centre of the Idrisid state; 3) the Saharan oasis belt of the Wadi Draa in Morocco, on the margins of settled life. The ambitious objective is to rewrite the history of Muslim rule and the Islamisation of daily life from the perspective of the communities living through this pivotal period.
Max ERC Funding
1 498 688 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-01-01, End date: 2025-12-31
Project acronym FELIX
Project Genomes, food and microorganisms in the (pre)history of cat-human interactions
Researcher (PI) Claudio OTTONI
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI ROMA TOR VERGATA
Country Italy
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2020-COG
Summary Pest-control agent, object and symbol of value in past civilisations, companion animal, and iconic celebrity of the web in the modern society, the domestic cat has an intricate bond with humans. This relationship started more than 10,000 years ago, when cats began scavenging and hunting pests that infested granaries of early farming communities in the Near East. Later in history, cats from Egypt dispersed in the Mediterranean following routes of human trade and connectivity. Cats established a unique and intimate bond with humans, and this, together with their adaptability, determined their global dispersal. Yet, the biological and cultural trajectories behind the development of cat-human interactions, and the implications of the global dispersal and evolutionary success of the domestic cat remain enigmatic.
By generating a complementary set of unique and as yet unexplored multidisciplinary data, from paleogenetics, to organic chemistry and microscopy, FELIX will dig deeply into the past of the cat-human relationship by tackling three fundamental variables strongly influenced by the domestication process: genomes, food, and microorganisms. It will unravel how the increasing bond with humans across a wide spectrum of socio-cultural contexts, from prehistoric farming communities to the ancient Egyptian and Medieval societies, shaped the cat genome, leading to behavioural changes that turned cats into pets. It will examine how cats changed their nutritional behaviour while adapting to anthropized ecosystems, and document the temporal trajectories of pathogen infections in cats, shedding light on the rise of zoonotic diseases. This will offer unprecedented evolutionary insights on the debate about animal domestication, and will raise public awareness on the role of the cat as cherished pet, but also as one of the world’s most invasive alien species in natural ecosystems and host of infectious diseases recognized today as public health threats.
Summary
Pest-control agent, object and symbol of value in past civilisations, companion animal, and iconic celebrity of the web in the modern society, the domestic cat has an intricate bond with humans. This relationship started more than 10,000 years ago, when cats began scavenging and hunting pests that infested granaries of early farming communities in the Near East. Later in history, cats from Egypt dispersed in the Mediterranean following routes of human trade and connectivity. Cats established a unique and intimate bond with humans, and this, together with their adaptability, determined their global dispersal. Yet, the biological and cultural trajectories behind the development of cat-human interactions, and the implications of the global dispersal and evolutionary success of the domestic cat remain enigmatic.
By generating a complementary set of unique and as yet unexplored multidisciplinary data, from paleogenetics, to organic chemistry and microscopy, FELIX will dig deeply into the past of the cat-human relationship by tackling three fundamental variables strongly influenced by the domestication process: genomes, food, and microorganisms. It will unravel how the increasing bond with humans across a wide spectrum of socio-cultural contexts, from prehistoric farming communities to the ancient Egyptian and Medieval societies, shaped the cat genome, leading to behavioural changes that turned cats into pets. It will examine how cats changed their nutritional behaviour while adapting to anthropized ecosystems, and document the temporal trajectories of pathogen infections in cats, shedding light on the rise of zoonotic diseases. This will offer unprecedented evolutionary insights on the debate about animal domestication, and will raise public awareness on the role of the cat as cherished pet, but also as one of the world’s most invasive alien species in natural ecosystems and host of infectious diseases recognized today as public health threats.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 420 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-04-01, End date: 2026-03-31
