BODICON · BODIes of CONtact: Identity negotiations and biocultural effects in the Roman colonies of Macedonia, Greece
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2020-01-01 → 2021-12-31
- EU contribution
- €187,572
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
BODIes of CONtact: Identity negotiations and biocultural effects in the Roman colonies of Macedonia, Greece
BODICON examines the different ways identities are negotiated under colonial regimes by investigating the biocultural effects of Roman conquest on ordinary people through the lense of bioarchaeology. The site of Dion in Macedonia (Greece) is the ideal case study to examine the processes of negotiation of identities from both a diachronic and a regional perspective. Located at the foot of Mount Olympus, Dion was the Macedonians’ religious center and federal shrine from the 5th cent. BC onward. In 169 BC the city fell to the Romans; after the Battle of Actium (31 BC) Dion became a Roman colony and flourished until the end of the 3rd cent. AD. Dion was a highly connected urban centre and part of the network of Roman colonies established in the Greek Peninsula. Material evidence shows a highly urbanized life with signs of prosperity but also a bilingual population and a community that gradually evolved in a process of interaction and exchange leading to the fusion of the Roman and Greek cultures, a multi-ethnic population and a complex society. The research objectives of the project are: RO1: To reconstruct the life- and death ways of the population. RO2: To explore kinship and understand social complexity. RO3: To introduce a novel, holistic bioarchaeological approach to conquest and colonisation in Roman Macedonia To achieve these objectives, the project adopts a holistic bioarchaeological approach and combines current, sophisticated theoretical reflection on culture contact with cutting-edge interdisciplinary techniques (paleodietary reconstruction, biodistance analysis, radiocarbon dating). Going beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries, this approach: i) enhances views of the life in the past to a far greater extent than written or archaeological sources allow, and ii) offers a new, critical understanding of contact and admixture of populations diachronically.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
BODICON examines processes of identity negotiations under colonial regimes by investigating the biocultural effects of conquest and colonisation of the Roman Empire. Representing a new generation of contact studies, the aim is to expand upon traditional elite/non-elite dichotomies or the focus on the health of conquered peoples toward how political transformations are incorporated by the human body of both the colonized and the colonizers. The research focuses on Roman Macedonia (Greece) and explores variable effects of colonisation by analyzing skeletal remains and burial patterns from the colony of Dion, the sacred city and pilgrimage site of ancient Macedonians. To achieve this aim, BODICON adopts for the first time a novel, multifaceted and holistic approach that combines bioarchaeology and current, sophisticated theoretical reflection on culture contact and admixture of populations with cutting-edge interdisciplinary techniques and methodological innovations from other scientific fields (paleodietary reconstruction, biodistance analysis, radiochronology). The Fellowship will offer to the Experienced Researcher (ER) the opportunity to acquire advanced intellectual and technical training and new skills in these fields and reach the research objectives. At the same time, the Fellowship is the timely opportunity for the ER to re-establish her career after a prolonged break and the ideal next step in order to re-enforce her research position. Finally, the creation of interdisciplinary networks as well as the dissemination and communication of the results to the scientific community and the broader public will first, contribute to the global understanding of the formation of modern national identities and second, explore the way historical data are used in contemporary political debates.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN · GroningenCoordinatorNetherlands
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union