Project description
How the Roman Empire kept its army fed and marching
Feeding an army of 300 000 was no small feat, especially when most were stationed on the edges of the vast Roman Empire. How exactly those remote frontier garrisons were supplied with food remains a mystery. With this in mind, the ERC-funded FRAME project will analyse food remains (plants, animals, and ceramic residues) from five frontier regions. It will also combine archaeological science with historical records. The overall aim is to reconstruct what soldiers ate, how it was produced, and how supply networks shaped frontier landscapes. This human-centred, multidisciplinary research is rewriting the story of the Empire’s borders as economic lifelines that sustained an empire.
Objective
FRAME capitalises on advances in archaeological science and a critical mass of archaeological material to examine how the Roman Empire’s frontiers in Europe functioned as economic as well as militarised zones. The Empire’s expansion and longevity relied on the capability to maintain large armies and provincial garrisons for long periods. The army comprised c. 300,000 soldiers, mainly concentrated on frontiers and supply was a vast challenge, yet how it was achieved remains poorly understood. International in scale, this multi-disciplinary project will explain how the army was supplied with food and the impact this had on the landscapes and economies of frontier provinces and beyond. The Roman Empire’s frontiers are iconic, and their extensive remains have been a focus of research for centuries. Traditionally viewed as physical and cultural boundaries between civilised Romans and their ‘barbarian’ neighbours, Rome’s frontiers in Europe are ready for this ground-breaking project that will reappraise their functions and roles and make a major contribution to the study of Roman imperialism’s remarkable resilience and longevity.
FRAME focuses on the somewhat neglected (in Roman studies) resource of food remains (animals, plants and organic residues in ceramics) in five frontier regions. By combining cutting-edge multi-isotope and organic residue analysis with archaeological and historical evidence, the project will reconstruct the military diet across frontiers, address how food was produced, the networks that supplied it and the impact this had on frontier landscapes and economies. The ambitious analytical programme will reveal the regional strategies core to the functioning of the Roman Empire and how they were affected by cultural choices and environmental constraints. This multi-scalar methodology, using a suite of methods never before integrated in archaeological research, will provide a blueprint for studying past food supply in wide-ranging contexts globally.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences health sciences nutrition
- engineering and technology materials engineering ceramics
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-COG
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CF10 3AT CARDIFF
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.