Project description DEENESFRITPL Reconstructing the past of the Near East indigenous communities For millennia, Jewish and Christian minorities with their own unique Aramaic traditions have coexisted alongside mainly Iranian speech communities. But the origin and development of this cultural-linguistic mosaic remain a mystery due to superimposed nationalism and scarcity of historical records. The ERC-funded ALHOME project will reconstruct the composite socioreligious past of the disappearing indigenous communities from the first millennium BC well into the Islamic period. The project will study social interrelations and use linguistic evidence from the history of Jewish, Christian and Kurdish communities as well as the recently enhanced database of spoken Neo-Aramaic languages. Show the project objective Hide the project objective Objective Mesopotamia is the home of remarkably diverse ethnoreligious and linguistic microcommunities with historical roots in the ancient Near East. Jewish and Christian minorities with their own unique Ara-maic traditions have co-existed alongside mainly Iranian speech communities for millennia. Today the origin and development of this rich cultural-linguistic mosaic remains elusive due to superimposed nationalisms and paucity of historical records. ALHOME aims to reconstruct the complex, socioreligious past of the disappearing indigenous communities who were once more widespread across West Asian from the first millennium BC well into the Islamic period. Studying their genetic and social interrelations through their linguistic traditions will radically change our ideas about their origins. Using linguistic evidence hitherto untapped for this aim, we can untangle the intertwined his-tories of Jewish, Christian and Kurdish (i.e. Iranian) communities. This evidence comes from the recently richly enhanced database of spoken Neo-Aramaic languages which stretch back 3,000 years. This promises to mark a sea change in linguistic studies which have focused on the documentation of endangered languages as well as in sociological studies that have focused on the historical context giving rise to nationalisms. For the first time an interdisciplinary team of both Aramaic and Iranian specialists and computational linguists will study the interactions between two speech communities. We will apply groundbreaking quantitative, phylogenetic models to unearth relations between speech communities over millennia. Studying this period of multiculturalism and multilingualism of virtually unparalleled duration promises to challenge existing models of contact. Aramaic-Iranian exchanges fit into models based neither purely on linguistic-cultural prestige nor on agentivity of a single language. Thus ALHOME will have major implications for our understanding of areal convergence and contact. Fields of science humanitieslanguages and literaturelinguisticshumanitieshistory and archaeologyhistoryancient historysocial sciencessociologyanthropology Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme Topic(s) ERC-2020-ADG - ERC ADVANCED GRANT Call for proposal ERC-2020-ADG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-ADG - Advanced Grant Host institution THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE Net EU contribution € 1 997 800,00 Address TRINITY LANE THE OLD SCHOOLS CB2 1TN Cambridge United Kingdom See on map Region East of England East Anglia Cambridgeshire CC Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 1 997 800,00 Beneficiaries (1) Sort alphabetically Sort by Net EU contribution Expand all Collapse all THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE United Kingdom Net EU contribution € 1 997 800,00 Address TRINITY LANE THE OLD SCHOOLS CB2 1TN Cambridge See on map Region East of England East Anglia Cambridgeshire CC Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 1 997 800,00
