Third-Party Funded Projects 

German-Australian collaborative project Child Slaveries in the Early Modern World: Gender, Trauma, and Trafficking in Transcultural Perspective (1500-1800)

The project is in collaboration with the Australian Catholic University (ACU) Melbourne and explores practices of child slavery and knowledge about children, slavery, gender, and trauma in the early modern world, illuminating historical shifts and global convergences in Asia, South America, West Africa and the Atlantic. It aims to contribute new research into the global history of slavery and its legacies.

Grant Holders:

Prof. Dr. Claudia Jarzebowski                                                                                                                        Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

Prof. Susan Broomhall                                                                                                                               Gender and Women's History Research Centre 
Australian Catholic University

Lisa Phongsavath
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

Joseph Biggerstaff
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

Dr. Kristie Flannery
Gender and Women's History Research Centre 
Australian Catholic University

Dr. Jessica O’Leary
Gender and Women's History Research Centre 
Australian Catholic University

Transottomanica is a priority programme (Schwerpunktprogramm) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In it collaborate 15 single research projects as well as a number of associated projects located at 13 universities and research institutions in Germany. In its first phase, the programme will run for three years from 2017–2020. In its second phase, from 2020–2023. 

Project members during first phase of the project:

Coordinators:
Prof. Dr. Stefan Rohdewald, Speaker
Eastern and Southeastern European History
Leipzig University

Prof. Dr. Stephan Conermann
Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

Prof. Dr. Albrecht Fuess
Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies
Philipps-Universität Marburg

Dr. Florian Riedler, Programme coordinator
Leipzig University

First Phase
Slavery and Loyalty: The Russian and Ottoman Empires

Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Christoph Witzenrath

Researcher:
Stanislav Mohylny, M.A.

First Phase
Slaves of the Black Sea Region in Istanbul: Spatial and Social Mobility in the Seventeenth Century

Researcher:
Dr. Veruschka Wagner

Project members during second phase of the project:

Coordinators:
Prof. Dr. Stefan Rohdewald, Speaker
Eastern and Southeastern European History
Leipzig University

Prof. Dr. Stephan Conermann
Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

Prof. Dr. Albrecht Fuess
Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies
Philipps-Universität Marburg

Dr. Florian Riedler, Programme coordinator
Leipzig University

Second Phase
Slaves of the Black Sea Region in Istanbul: Spatial and Social Mobility in the Seventeenth Century

Researcher:
Dr. Veruschka Wagner

Second Phase
Transottoman Semiospheres: Pavel A. Levašev's (d. 1820) and Necati Efendi's (d. after 1776)
Imaginations of the Other

Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Stephan Conermann

Researchers:
Alexander Bauer, M.A.
Dr. Gül Şen

Individual research grants of the German Research Foundation enable scientists and academics who have completed their academic training to conduct at any time research projects with clearly defined topics and durations, regardless of the subject.

TERRSOC: ‘Reading’ Ancient Landscapes

Agricultural terraces, when dated with confidence, can serve as windows on the social, economic, and political systems of the past. This multi-disciplinary project, called “TERRSOC: ‘Reading’ Ancient Landscapes”, investigates the role that agricultural terraces played in society, and how social and economic systems together stood behind the decision to build, maintain, and restore terraces, on the one hand, and abandon them, on the other. By integrating data sets with high chronological resolution within an agent-based model (ABM) framework, we test hypotheses regarding human behavior and decision-making, comparing the ways peasants invested in their land in the medieval Islamic period and Iron Age. At the center of the study is the excavation of the extensive Mamluk-era settlement of Khirbet Beit Loya in the Shephelah, and its agricultural terraces.

The project is funded under the DFG's Middle East Cooperation competition. It is a partnership between the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit of the University of Bonn and the Institutes of Archaeology at Tel Aviv and Hebrew Universities in Israel, and runs from 2022-2025.

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Bethany Walker

Project Term: 36 month (2022-2025)

Atlas zur Sklavereigeschichte der französischen und spanischen Territorien Santo Domingos vom 16. Jahrhundert bis Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts" (Ze 302/25-1)

[Atlas on the history of slavery in the French and Spanish territories of Santo Domingo from the 16th century to the end of the 18th century]

The aim of the project is to develop a thematic atlas on the history of slavery on the entire island of Santo Domingo. In this atlas, a development in time and space of the natural and material structures that are classified as evidence of slavery will be presented. In particular, slave retreat areas and the networks between slaves, runaway slaves and the colonial institutions will be worked out.

Grant holder: Prof. Dr. Michael Zeuske
Staff: Dr. Alexa Voss

Balancing the center and the local: Mobilization and production strategies of the Inca and colonial state in Cochabamba, Bolivia

The project aims at an interdisciplinary analysis of archaeological and ethnohistorical data regarding the changes in settlement patterns, population and land use during the Inca conquest and occupation of the Cochabamba valleys and its impact on the rest of the Inca Empire, especially on the expansion of its Northern part (today Ecuador). Under the reign of Inca Huayna Capac (1491 – 1527 AD), the Central Valley of Cochabamba experienced massive population changes through the colonization of 14.000 mitimaes from all over the empire to work on the Inca state fields. In turn, the original groups were expulsed and sent to the eastern valleys. The paramount interest of the Inca was the fertile valley bottom for the cultivation of maize and the generation of surplus and staple goods for further conquests. The population movements before and after Spanish Conquest can be tracked in archival sources, a work that hardly hasn’t be done so far. The archeological complex of Quilllacollo and Colcapirhua consists of more than 4000 granaries, located in four different sectors on the hills to the south of Rocha River. Preliminary mappings indicate an area of more than 200 hectares. In no other area of the vast Inca Empire existed such gigantic capacity for the storage of maize as in Cochabamba, indicating that Cochabamba seems to have played a highly important role in the economic, political and social organization of the Empire. The novel interdisciplinary approach of a combined ethnohistorical (archival) and archaeological study will help to investigate the mechanisms of the Inca State, and the role of the qollqas specifically. Both methodologies are different from each other but complementary in helping to build a complete picture of the Late Horizon in Cochabamba and beyond. Additionally, we will investigate climatic and environment-specific aspects, which allowed such a magnitude of cultivation of maize in the region.

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Karoline Noack

Staff: Dr. Olga Gabelmann

Project Term: 24 month (2022–2024)

Die Monte Abatone-Nekropole von Cerveteri

The aim of the project is the study of a large cemetery of approximately 100 ha surface (8th century BC–1 century AD) in order to reconstruct the historic and demographic development of the Etruscan metropolis Cerveteri (30 km north of Rome, Italy) with particular regard to its social structure, aspects of dependency and gender differentiation. The methods employed include archaeological survey, geophysical survey, excavation as well as the study of grave goods from old excavations (approximately 300 graves). The Bonn Center for Digital Humanities (BCDH) has been involved since 2020. The first phase of the project runs from 2019–2022.

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Martin Bentz
Staff: Dr. Dennis Beck, Christian Briesack M.A., Florian Birkner M.A.

Collaboration with the Università della Campania L. Vanvitelli and the Università della Tuscia, Viterbo.

Dynamics of Power. Courtly Elites acting in the Realm of Rulership as reflected in Middle High German Literature

The project is dedicated to the narration of dynamics of power in German literature of the 12th and 13th centuries, focusing on the literary representation of secular and ecclesiastical leadership groups and their prominent representatives, who become tangible in the environment of the ruler. At the center of attention are both processes of interaction and communication at the imperial, royal and princely courts. The focus is on the claims and interests of female and male elites, on the resources, potentials and options of power that allowed them to act in the realm of rulership, as well as on the political contexts, spaces, and situations in which dynamic shifts in the structure of power at court could occur. The focus on the elites does not mean, of course, that the ruler could be completely overlooked: In a time in which royal rule was not thought of solely in transpersonal terms, but was essentially based on personal relationships and ties to the noble elite, the actions of elites in literary texts are always seen in relation to the actions of the ruler and vice versa.

By providing an interdisciplinary perspective, seeking to connect with recent fields and paradigms of research in literary and cultural studies (interaction and communication, 'consensus-dissent-conflict', 'dis/ability', 'gender and intersectionality'), combing these with the investigation of narrative procedures and strategies, and furthermore taking into account the concrete materiality and mediality of illuminated medieval manuscripts, the project re-addresses older questions on the social issues of medieval literature in a new systematic and methodologically reflected manner.

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Elke Brüggen
Staff: Dr. des. Sebastian Winkelsträter (postdoctoral researcher), Niclas Deutsch (doctoral researcher)
Project Term: 36 months (08.2022–2025)

Pillars of Royal Rule. Queens and Princes in the Eastfrankish-German realm (9th to the beginning of the 12th century)

The project examines the mutual dependency between ruler and political elites in the Frankish-German realm from Carolingian times up to the 12th century especially addressing the tensions arising from the fact that members of the elite – both secular and ecclesiastic – participated in royal rule, e.g. as counsellors and at the same time could wield domination themselves, often in a regional context. Particular interest is devoted to the ruler's wife, who naturally had a special relationship with the ruler, but at the same time also performed functions that corresponded to those of the highest circles of the political elite, such as advising the ruler or intervening on behalf of petitioners with the ruler.

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Matthias Becher
Staff: Luise Jansen, M.A., Philipp Merkel, M.A.
Project Term: 2022-2025

SFB 1167 Macht und Herrschaft, TP03 „Reiternomadische Reiche in Innerasien im diachronen Vergleich – Sicherung und Ausübung von Herrschaft im Spiegel der Baudenkmäler und Schriftquellen“

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Jan H. Bemmann
Project Term: 2016-2021

Zuschuss zur Finanzierung der Konferenz „Competing Memories: The Politics of Remembering Enslavement, Emancipation and Indentureship in the Caribbean“

Grant Holder: Dr. Sinah Kloß
Project Term: March 29-31, 2023

Cerveteri-Projekt

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Martin Bentz
Project Term: 2019-2022

Die konstantinische Bischofskirche von Ostia: Struktur – Entwicklung – Kontext

Grant Holder: Prof Dr. Sabine Feist
Project Term: 2023-2025

Die Akten des Konzils von Ephesus 431. Übersetzung, Einleitung, Kommentierung und Register

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Wolfram Kinzig
Project Term: 

Drei Reiseberichte von Frauen aus der späten Kadscharenzeit. Historischer Kontext – narrative Strategien – weibliche Autorenschaft

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Stephan Conermann
Project Term: 2015-2019

Was wusste ein osmanischer Sultan vom Russischen Reich? Der Bericht über die Gesandtschaft von Mustafa Rasih (st. 1804/05) nach St. Petersburg (1792-1794)

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Stephan Conermann
Project Term: 2017-2020

TP Macht und Herrschaft in indo-persischen historiographischen Texten aus der Zeit des Delhisultanates (1206-1526)

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Stephan Conermann
Project Term: 2016-2020

Gesellschaft und Kultur der Mamlukenzeit (1250-1517)

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Stephan Conermann
Project Term: 2011-2022

Atlas zur Sklavereigeschichte der französischen und spanischen Territorien Santo Domingos vom 16. Jahrhundert bis Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts"

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Michael Max Paul Zeuske
Project Term: 2020-2024

Connecting Late Antiquities (CLA)

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Julia Hillner
Project Term: 24 Months 

for excavation, laboratory analysis, and textual analysis

Two phenomena dominate the demographic history of Greater Syria in the medieval era: the contraction of settlements and emigration of populations in the 10th and 11th centuries CE, and the sudden reoccupation of the same places in the 13th and 14th centuries. What appears as a deliberate decision by multiple households, or even entire communities, to return to villages that had not been occupied for centuries, reoccupy their ruins, rebuild houses, and cultivate anew neglected fields is a fascinating chapter in the history of the Middle East that has relevance to the modern world, but has never been systematically investigated.This project aims to return balance to the study of demographic change by shifting the focus from out-migration to return and recovery, and to discover who these people were and what pushed them return to long-abandoned places.

This project aims at understanding this phenomenon through intensive investigation of one rural community in modern Jordan. This season of excavations at Tall Hisban will focus on two clusters of Late Antique farmhouses reoccupied in this period and the contemporary cemetery built in the ruins of a church nearby (excavation combined with isotope analysis of human remains). The project also includes study of period-texts relevant to the identity of small-scale communities, migration, and land use.

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Bethany Joelle Walker 

for excavation and laboratory analysis

This project includes a single excavation season and post-season analysis of soil samples and finds from two clusters of Mamluk-era farmhouses, combined with survey, excavation, and OSL dating of the relic agricultural terraces in the Wadi Ḥisbān, to investigate the ways the local community organized food production, fair access to natural resources, and communal labor. A robust program of environmental, materials, and textual analysis is planned for the study of household industry, socialization, and community-making.

The combination of digital record-keeping; 3-D modeling of architecture; phytolith, macrobotanical, faunal, starch, and residue analysis; and archaeometry (namely, thin-section petrography, XRD, and XRF of ceramics) will address a range of questions related to cooking practices, resource exchange, and social networks. Beyond confirming the occupational history of these structures, this season aims to address two phenomena in Middle Islamic settlement history for Transjordan and Palestine: the wide-scale reoccupation of abandoned houses, after hundreds of years, in the 13th and 14th centuries, and the struggle for control over natural resources between local communities and imperial powers.

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Bethany Joelle Walker

Collaborative excavations at Khirbet Beit Mamzil, hinterland terrace survey, and OSL dating of terrace soils – held jointly with Gideon Avni (Israel Antiquities Authority/Hebrew University)

This is a multi-year, multi-disciplinary study of a late medieval farmstead in its agricultural landscape, and includes three components: the excavation of the site of Khirbet Beit Mazmil in Jerusalem, the excavation and OSL-dating of relic agricultural terraces in the Ein Kerem hinterland, and extensive textual analysis of Mamluk endowment documents and Ottoman tax registers and court records relevant to land use and disputes.

The purpose of the project is to explore the development of Jerusalem's agricultural hinterland during the later medieval period, with an eye to the financial initiatives taken by local communities. The larger perspective is the struggle for control over land and food that defined the rather dependent relationships of small-scale communities vis-á-vis the state.

The project is currently in final publication phase and has been contracted with Equinox Press to produce the monograph Life on the Farm in Late Medieval Jerusalem: The Peasant Farmstead of Khirbet Beit Mazmil, Its Occupants and Their Industry over Five Centuries.

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Bethany Joelle Walker 

Grant Holder: Elke Brüggen
Project Term: 2021-2024

Kollaborativ-digitales Arbeiten in den Textwissenschaften (with PD Dr. Peter Glasner)
part of Virtual Collaboration – Gemeinsam für die Zukunft lernen (VICo),  funded by Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre. 183.371,52€

Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Nikolai Grube
Project Term: 2013-2027

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Limes und Legion – Wirkmächtigkeit römischer Militärpräsenz am Niedergermanischen Limes. Edition und Interpretation archäologischer Quellen

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Jan H. Bemmann
Project Term: 2022-2039

Co-PI: Michael Schmauder and Salvatore Ortisi

W1-Stiftungsprofessur „Cultural Heritage of the Americas

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Nikolai Grube
Project Term: 2022-2027

Co-PI: Karoline Noack

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Akademische Oberratsstelle für die BASA

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Nikolai Grube
Project Term: 2020-2025

Co-PI: Karoline Noack

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Abschlusspublikation Uxul

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Nikolai Grube
Project Term: Jan. 2022-Jan 2023

Foundation of the Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences (BoCAS)

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Nikolai Grube
Project Term: 2021-2027

Co-PI: Prof. Dr. Martin Bentz, Prof. Dr. Jan H. Bemmann

Medium Keramik. Produktion, Verwendung und kulturelle Bedeutung rheinischer Keramik mit Bildsprache und Symbolik der frühen Neuzeit

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Jan H. Bemmann
Project Term: August 1 2018—December 31 2021

Ausgrabung im römischen und mittelalterlichen Montanrevier bei Königswinter-Bennerscheid

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Jan H. Bemmann
Project Term: since 2019

KONTEXTIL – Archaeological Textile Research / Archäologische Textilforschung

Grant Holder: Dr. Petra Linscheid
Project Term: 2021-2025

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Sabine Feist
Project Term: 2021-2026

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Die spätantik-frühmittelalterlichen Textilien in Sant’Ambrogio, Mailand

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Sabine Feist
Project Term: 2023

Zuschuss zur Finanzierung der Konferenz „Transforming Spirit Bodies: Changing Materialities and Embodied Dependencies“

Grant Holder: Dr. Sinah Kloß
Project Term: September 29-30, 2022

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Tagung "Sünde in Judentum und Christentum. Historische Perspektiven" des Theologischen Forums Judentum – Christentum

Grant Holder: Prof. Dr. Wolfram Kinzig
Project Term: February 13-21, 2019

Trading Chinese Migrants: Networks of Human Trafficking in Treaty-Port China (1830-1930s) (TraCMi)

Grant Holder: Dr. Mònica Ginés-Blasi
Project Term: 2022-2024

The project Exploring Slave Trade in Asia (ESTA) is a collaboration by the International Institute of Social History, the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, the Linnaeus University and ENS Lyon.

Members: Jeannine Bischoff, M.A.; Dr. Claude Chevaleyre; Prof. Dr. Stephan Conermann

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The Revista Latinoamericana de Trabajo y Trabajadores (REVLATT) seeks to satisfy the need for a journal focused entirely on the worlds of labor, bringing together research with diverse views and perspectives about and from Latin America.

The journal will approach studies of labor in a broad sense and in the long term (16th to 21st centuries), with the aim to overcome several dichotomies (such as the division between the studies of the "classic" industrial and waged workers and those dedicated to slavery and other forms of coactive work) and explore a variety of socio-economic systems, as well as the diverse non-evolutionary continuum of coactive labor and labor regimes that bring together informal and popular activities.

Contact person: Dr. Christian De Vito

The COST Action "Worlds of Related Coercions in Work" (WORCK) calls for a radical change of perspective in labour history. It links the stories of work and production with those of violence, expropriation and marginalisation.

By studying the persistence and transformations of coercion and bondage across gender orders, geographic regions and historical eras, WORCK shifts the focus of labour history: Neither the male-breadwinner model nor the free wage labourer or the capitalist mode of production can form the blueprint for this new history of WORCK. Instead, a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of coercion in all work relations throughout history is the pivot of this endeavour.

Members: Dr. Claude Chevaleyre; Dr. Christian de Vito; Dr. Hanne Østhus

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