Mass-production, landscape transformation and the birth of science in the land of Thales (8th-6th centuries BCE)

Project Information

THALES

Grant agreement ID: 700769

DOI

10.3030/700769

Project closed

EC signature date 10 March 2016

Start date 1 October 2016

End date 30 September 2018

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 195 454,80

EU contribution

€ 195 454,80

Coordinated by

THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - THALES (Mass-production, landscape transformation and the birth of science in the land of Thales (8th-6th centuries BCE))

Reporting period: 2016-10-01 to 2018-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

According to historical accounts (esp. Herodotus’ Histories), the Greek city of Miletos, in ancient Ionia (an area mostly within modern Turkey), became a major metropolis and sea-power between the 8th to the 6th centuries BCE, founding many colonies around the highly-profitable Black Sea region, relying on its hinterland and associated international oracle sanctuary of Didyma for economic and spiritual prestige respectively. During this pre-modern era of globalisation, the peninsula and neighbouring cities became famous for its scholars and craftsmen. The Ionian enlightenment’ initiated by Milesian and other Ionian philosophers (including Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras) has been characterized as the founding point of modern European philosophy and science. At the end of the 6th century, the state of Miletos became embroiled in a political struggle with the expanding Achaemenid/Persian empire, suffering taxes, revolt and ultimately defeat and destruction in 494 BCE.

Though the outlines of this history have long been known to classical scholars, the mechanisms of rise and subsequent fall (and of the transfer of cultural and scientific centre from Ionia to Attica), have remained obscure. Modern archaeological research, combined with insights from textual sources, now offers the opportunity for a richer insight into the industrial and knowledge economy of this critical pre-modern era for the foundation of European economic and scientific principles.

The THALES project aims to embed archaeological, geomorphological and textual data from current projects on the Milesian peninsula, Turkey, into wider academic and societal debates on economic production, landscape change and philosophical reflection in the Greek world between the 8th and 6th centuries BC. The overall objectives of this project are: 1. to evaluate the effectiveness of new methodological and technological approaches to the characterisation of objects and their mode of production; 2. to apply models of landscape reconstruction to a region of critical economic production to help explain territorial inequalities in the ancient world; and 3. to review, re-assess and reconsider the context of the origins of the earliest Western philosophical texts (the pre-Socratics) in the light of the primary archaeological material relating to economic and landscape dynamics.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the two years of the project, the focus has been on: study of relevant material and background literature; attending relevant training and knowledge development; planning and organisation of workshops and meetings to create strong networks of interested researchers; and preparing the groundwork for primary archaeological research in the field during the summer season.

Courses/training programmes attended and completed include:-
• Ceramic Petrology, two-week intensive course at the Fitch Laboratory at British School at Athens (secondment, May 2017).
• Spatial Data- and Text Mining
• Leadership and Management training

Workshops and meetings:-
• Organisation of workshop: "Para-colonial legacies: German & British imaginaries of ancient Aegean landscapes" (Dec. 2017), held at the McDonald Institute of Archaeological Research Cambridge, sponsored by the DAAD, McDonald Institute and Churchill College. Co-organised with archaeologist T. C. Wilkinson.
• Organisation of workshop: "Shedding Light on the Matter. Ideascapes and Material Worlds in the Land of Thales" (http://ionia.eu/workshop/). On 22nd and 23rd of March scholars from 5 countries met at the Faculty of Classics, Cambridge to discuss ideascapes and material culture from Ionia during the Greek Archaic period.
• Organisation of panel: "Trust, Branding and Fakes in the ancient world" as part of the 19th International Congress of Classical Archaeology (AIAC) in Cologne/Bonn, 22 – 26 May 2018.

Primary material collection/study
• Planning for geomorphological fieldwork in Milesian peninsula Turkey. Originally planned for summer 2017 and 2018, administrative issues means that this part of the project has had to be postponed until summer 2019.
• Study of ceramic material from Milesian peninsula, summer 2017.

Publication and outreach
• Co-authored article by international peer-reviewed journal on landscape change in the Milesian peninsula: “Processions, Propaganda and Pixels: Reconstructing the Sacred Way between Miletos and Didyma” in American Journal of Archaeology [published Jan 2018].
• Project blog: http://anja.slawisch.net/.
• A five-week school outreach project focussed on introducing primary school children to manufacturing in Ancient Greece, through discussing replica objects and getting the children to make their own clay toys (13.06.-12.07.2018).
• Organisation of a photographic exhibition "Layers of Landscape. Visions of the Changing Milesian Peninsula": The exhibition was opened in Cambridge on 13th November and will be on display until 23rd February 2019.

Main results:
• Evaluation of modern archaeological research methods (especially coring and petrology) and novel computational techniques (e.g. text mining) has confirmed their applicability to the Milesian case.
• There is a critical mass of researchers in the field of archaeology and related disciplines, until now mostly working independently, whose research would be considerably enhanced by sharing and collaboration across disciplinary boundaries.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Given the limited degree of past research devoted to linking archaeological and philosophical evidence of the Milesian peninsula during the 1st millennium BCE, this project has already progressed beyond the state of the art. It is to be expected that the research networks developed during the two years of the project will facilitate a considerable amount of novel research outcomes. The project has highlighted the importance of collaboration between “scientific”/technical and “humanities”/discursive modes of research, which help benefit both sides.

Expected potential impact (including wider societal implications):
• Both the primary research and the outreach aspects of the project, in particular the bilingual (English/Turkish) exhibition at Cambridge (UK) and Balat (Turkey) are expected to raise the profile of Ionia within discussions of the ancient Greek world (in which it often plays a secondary position compared to Attica, for example).
• The major expected impact of this project is to create a fertile space for cross-disciplinary research into the future. Too often textual and archaeological studies of the case-study region have been conducted as though other categories of evidence do not exist (e.g. ceramics and sculpture, or philosophical texts on nature and the actual physical environment of the region, are each studied individually without recourse to research undertaken on the other). The results of this project and in particular the outcomes of the inter-disciplinary workshops should help to resolve this odd but long-lived separation and hence open new avenues for research on the ancient world with relevance to the modern day.
• The results of the project provide insights into the economic rise and fall of major ancient city, and ultimately provide models by which we can understand and perhaps even predict the development of modern urban societies.
• The project will also raise awareness of the threat to cultural heritage from large-scale tourism developments along the coast of Turkey.

Fieldwork August/September 2017