SPP 1630:  Harbours from the Roman Iron Age until the Middle Ages - Archaeology and History of Regional and Supra-regional Traffic Systems

• Subject Area: Humanities ; Agriculture, Forestry and Veterinary Medicine ; Geosciences
• Term: from 2012 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 198801704

Harbours are the crucial link between land and sea; they were the corner stone of the economic infrastructure behind regional and supra-regional shipping and the transportation of people, goods and information in prehistoric and early historical times. They were, indeed, what first made it all possible. Given the progressive processes arising from the correlate "Ship and Harbour", harbours permit important insights into the history of technological development. Moreover, they are highly complex systems, in which ecological, logistical, economic, social, legal, military and religious sub-systems overlap and influence one another. In order to be able to properly evaluate the full extent and depth of the phenomenon "harbour" over the course of time, it is necessary to identify these sub-systems and their implications for the development of settlements. The strength of the Priority Programme not only lies in its geographically wide-spread study area, which stretches from Iceland to the Aegean, but also in its chronological depth, covering several epochs, and the diversity of its research projects, which results in a high degree of interdisciplinary cooperation. The Priority Programme tries to move away from the level of small-scale analyses: instead, in an overarching comparative analysis, it attempts to understand harbours as highly complex systems by defining and analysing their system-relevant components. This is the only way for harbours to be fully understood, comparatively analysed and interpreted as system-relevant structures. As well as establishing a standardised terminology and investigating the reciprocal effects exerted by the topography and the way harbours were constructed, the analysis concentrates above all on evaluating the influence of the environment on historical developments and analysing the various economic regions and traffic systems. This should finally result in the generation of models of cultural evolution over time.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• International Connection: Austria, France, USA

Projects

• Bilder und Vorstellungen römischer Hafenanlagen. Gattungsübergreifende Dokumentation und kontextualisierte Analyse römischer Hafendarstellungen (Applicant Feuser, Stefan )
• Central Geophysical Project for prospecting of archaeological sites in the onshore-offshore transition zone ("amphibic geophysics") (Applicant Rabbel, Wolfgang )
• Coordination Funds (Applicant Quast, Dieter )
• Early medieval harbours between Wismar Bay and Danzig Bay (Germany/Poland) (Applicants Jöns, Hauke ;  Lüth, Friedrich )
• Fossa Carolina: The link between the harbour networks at the rivers Danube and Rhine. Studies on bridging the central European watershed in the Middle Ages. (Applicants Berg, Stefanie ;  Ettel, Peter ;  Zielhofer, Christoph )
• Geoarchaeological investigations of harbours of the 12th and 13th cent. along the Hever Estuary (North Frisia) starting at the trading settlement of Rungholt - RUNGHOLT - (Applicants Hadler, Hanna ;  Hoppe, Wilfried ;  Vött, Andreas )
• "Gewerbewurten" and "Geestrandhäfen" - medieval harbours of trading places along the German North Sea coast (Applicants Jöns, Hauke ;  Segschneider, Martin )
• HaNOA: Harbours in the North Atlantic (800-1300 AD) (Applicant Quast, Dieter )
• Häfen als Siedlungsfaktoren zwischen Römischer Kaiserzeit und Mittelalter im Bremer Becken. Archäologische Auswertung und Geoprospektion bekannter Fundstellen (Applicant Halle, Uta )
• Ports and Landing Places at the Balkan Coasts of the Byzantine Empire (4th-12th Century). Monuments and Technology, Economy and Communication (Applicant Daim, Falko )
• Seaports as Intersections of the Maritime-Terrestrial Traffic of Passengers and Goods in the Byzantine Empire (7th to 11th cc.) (Applicant Pahlitzsch, Johannes )
• Studies of inland harbours in Central Europe as hubs for European communication networks (Applicants Ettel, Peter ;  Hack, Achim Thomas )
• The Adriatic communication area: functional structure of Roman imperial port cities and their facilities along the Italic and Dalmatian coasts. (Applicant Seifert, Martina )
• The Leiruvogur Harbor Research Project: Interdisciplinary Archaeological Examination of a Viking Harbor and Its Hinterland In Iceland (Applicant von Carnap-Bornheim, Claus )
• The Rhine as transport axis. Markets and transports of raw materials and goods in the context of Rhenish river ports during the 1st Millennium AD. (Applicant Bemmann, Jan )
• The river harbor of Ostia (Applicants Heinzelmann, Michael ;  Rohn, Corinna ;  Vött, Andreas )
• The Thracian harbour city Ainos in Roman and Byzantine times - the development of a traffic hub in a changing environment (Applicants Brückner, Helmut ;  Schmidts, Thomas )
• Within the network of fluvial ports. Efficiency and infrastructural development of inland waters and their vessels (Applicants Kleingärtner, Sunhild ;  Warnke, Ursula )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Claus von Carnap-Bornheim
• Deputy: Professor Dr. Falko Daim