A new model for the city of Selinous

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Ortwin Dally; Dr. Dennis Wilken
• Subject Area: Classical, Roman, Christian and Islamic Archaeology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 460811908

This interdisciplinary project aims at creating the foundations for a new model of the city of Selinous, considering all major phases of the settlement’s history. The purpose is to capture the different historical periods and fractures of this famous archaeological site that are known to us from the written sources and to scrutinize their interdependencies with the formation and transformation of the urban space in a systematic and diachronic way.Research on the settlement development of Selinous has focused so far mainly on the reconstruction of an ideal-typical model of the Greek colony, built and gradually expanded between the 7th and 5th century BC. According to a simplified picture, the flourishing Greek city was destroyed by the Carthaginians in 409 BC and widely depopulated. After a brief interlude as a fortress, Selinous was reoccupied in Late Classical and Hellenistic times until its temporary abandonment in the mid-3rdcentury BC. Our knowledge of the nature of these settlement activities and of the implicated actors and authorities are, however, still rather vague and fragmented. Even more unspecific is our understanding of the subsequent use of the former urban space in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. In combining existing and newly collected data, this project aims at creating for the first time a differentiated picture of the development and transformation of the entire city, considering processes of formation, destruction, abandonment, reconstruction and conversion of public and private spaces in a diachronic perspective. In this way it can contribute to the understanding of the connection between the major historical and political changes, handed down by the written sources, and the urban transformations, evident in the archaeological record. In combining archaeological and geoscientific expertise, this project strives to capture systematically the entire urban area through the use of different prospecting methods, such as magnetometry, ground penetrating radar and intra-site artefact surveying. Specific information on the stratigraphy and chronology will be gained by strategic geological coring and archaeological excavations.This project spreads over two funding phases of three years each. Clearly defined results will be presented at the end of each phase: The main product is an extendable geographical information system that will be accessible through the iDAI.world. The results will furthermore be presented in a two-piece monography, one following each research period. The methodological challenges of the geophysical prospections will also be part of a dissertation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants