Networks in Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean - Making and Managing History with material culture

Progetto di Ricerca di Interesse Nazionale

Principal Investigator: Daniele Malfitana (Università degli Studi di Catania)

Il progetto SHERDs prova a ragionare sull’esigenza di mettere insieme più aree culturali mediterranee e più produzioni ceramiche prodotte in età ellenistica-romana, dunque dalla fine del IV secolo a. C. alla piena età imperiale. La metodologia che SHERDS intende applicare combina, in una prospettiva “olistica”, sia l’approccio tradizionale allo studio delle produzioni ceramiche del mondo antico (classificazione cronotipologica e funzionale) sia il contributo di diverse discipline archeometriche. La ricerca integrata proposta dai quattro gruppi sarà applicata a diversi contesti archeologici, cronologicamente collocabili dal IV-III a.C. al I-II d.C., che spaziano dall’Italia settentrionale (Aquileia) a quella meridionale (Pompei) comprese le grandi isole di Sicilia (Siracusa e Finziade) e Sardegna (Nora).

The main aim of SHERDS is to demonstrate that a new integrated and interdisciplinary approach in investigating material culture’s use and production can shed new light on past social practices and cultural identities. Based on the premise that the study of handcraft artifacts strongly depends not only on the detail and quality of the analysis of the raw data, but also on the capacity to compare them within a common framework, the project will propose an innovative approach in the study of household pottery, meaning fine and coarse wares, produced in the Mediterranean during the Hellenistic/Roman period. The project holds important potential to document the contribution of the artisanal world to its regional economy, reveal the complex and developing social matrix sustaining the evolution of productive contexts in antiquity, as well as contribute to the study of ancient urbanism.

The methodology that is intended to be implemented in SHERDS combines the traditional approach to the study of ceramic productions of the ancient world, essentially based on a chrono-typological and functional classification, with the contribution of many archaeometric disciplines. These will be used for the analysis of the artefacts and for the determination of the characteristics of the natural and anthropic context of discovery. In this perspective, the physical-chemical characterization, the analysis of traces of use, the identification of organic residues, will allow to acquire valuable information on the techniques of production, trade and use.

Unità di Ricerca

• Università degli Studi di Catania: Daniele Malfitana (Principal Investigator)
• Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia: Daniela Cottica
• Università degli Studi di Genova: Silvia Pallecchi
• Centro Nazionale delle Ricerche: Alessio Toscano Raffa