The Site Plans section has been updated with new photos and extended. Through this page, you can get overviews and detailed photos of the different areas in the Forum.

We have updated the bibliography with PDF-files, where it has been allowed.

The PDF’s have been uploaded to the years 2011, 2012, 2013, 2017 and 2018.

We have added a new page to our section 3D Visualisation. The new page concerns our work on site and how we create the 3D models of both objects and large excavated areas. You can find the page here.

A video from a presentation held by PhD candidate Daniel Damgaard December 18 2018 is now online. The presentation was held in the seminar Ricerche Archeologia alla Foce del Tevere. Seminario internazionale dei dottorandi e dottorati di ricerca. The presentation was titled Traces of Early Ostia: Perspectives of a Ph.D. Project in the Framework of the Ostia-Forum-Project.

For the video, click here.

We are excited to have opened the Project Publications 2019 with a new publication on Late Archaic Ostia.

Dear all,

We had planned a campaign in Parco Archeologico di Ostia Antica from Monday March 9 until Friday March 20, where we would be working on our excavation material in the deposits as well as working in the archives and library. However, due to immediate health crisis, our campaign came to an untimely end. This happened in close cooperation with the authorities in Parco Archeologico di Ostia Antica, who are handling the situation with care and are doing all they can to maintain the site until they can open it for the public again.

We are hoping to be able to return to Ostia Antica soon, so that we can continue our work in the deposits and archives. For now, we are sending our thoughts to people, who are affected by this health crisis.

We are delighted to announce our new graduate college called the Ostia Graduiertenkolleg. It consists of six ph.d. projects supervised by Prof. Dr. Axel Gering, funded by the Stiftung Humboldt-University of Berlin (SHU) through a private donation. The six different topics are all the result of the work conducted by Ostia Forum Project since 2010 in the centre of Ostia.

The Graduiertenkolleg has its own website, www.ostiagraduiertenkolleg.com 

 

The application-deadline for Theme 3 (Coins in Context) is extended

The Ostia-Forum-Project (OFP) – thanks to Stiftung-Humboldt-University (SHU) – offers a maximum three-year funding for a PhD-thesis focussed on the working-up of all coin-finds from former and coming OFP-campaigns in the centre of Ostia antica (Italy). It is funded by 1500€ monthly, per year you can additionally get up to 1000€ for travel expenses and after finishing your PhD, you could apply for up to 6000€ covering the printing-expenses of the PhD-thesis in the OFP series.

The material consists of more than 900 coins, found between 2010 and 2019 at the Forum in superficial cleaning-areas and excavation-trenches from mid Republican times to the end of Antiquity. A certain part of these coins has already been cleaned, conserved and analysed, but this is an ongoing process. The main part of these coins comes from stratified contexts in recent excavation-trenches. The unusual high number of more than 600 late-antique coins (3^rd until 5^th century AD) can be explained by their deposition, due to a common collapse-catastrophe in Ostia’s city-centre, which externally can be dated around the mid 5^th century AD. The applicant should be interested and involved in the whole archaeological process from the finds-documentation consisting of a database, measuring, weighing, the manual cleaning and conservation until the final analysis and interpretation. The Ostian material is extraordinary in at least four regards:

a.) such a high number of late-antique coins has so far never been documented in the city-centre of Ostia,

b.) it could be paralleled with other recent coin-hoards from the periphery of Ostia, maybe underlining the theory of a major collapse catastrophe of the whole city,

c.) the latest coins could show which archaeological contexts and buildings were repaired even after this hypothetically widespread collapse of the 5^th century AD, an extremely interesting approach to late antique urbanism through numismatic analysis,

d.) especially the nummi and the divided coins could give a unique insight into the circulation-process and the monetary-system of the widely unknown 5^th century AD. Thus, this research can be fundamental for the history of economy of the 5^th century AD, because the collapse-catastrophe has preserved the status quo of all coins being circulated at this time.

If you already have experience and/or a strong research interest in Roman coins with a focus on late antique coins of the 4^th and 5^th century AD and their impact on the local evolution of Ostia and the economic history in general, you are most welcome to apply for Theme 3 at OFP!

The application-deadline is extended until the 10^th of November 2019.

On specific requests, it is also possible to get a personal deadline later for the full-application, if needed. Before you apply in any way, please contact the following mail axel.gering@web.de for further details.

For information about the doctoral process, see following link: Doctoral positions

The Ostia Forum Project is anchored in the Stiftung Humboldt-Universität. For more information about the Stiftung Humboldt-University, click here.

The selected candidates will be enrolled into the Winckelmann-Institut at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. For more information about the Winckelmann-Institut, click here.

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We are very delighted to announce that we are offering six doctoral positions within the frame of Ostia Forum Project. The subjects range between architecture, GIS, amphorae and ceramics.

The application deadline is the 20th October 2019.

A thorough description of the positions can be found below:

Doctoral positions

The Ostia Forum Project is anchored in the Stiftung Humboldt-Universität. For more information about the Stiftung Humboldt-University, click here.

The selected candidates will be enrolled into the Winckelmann-Institut at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. For more information about the Winckelmann-Institut, click here.

The Ostia Forum Project will again conduct excavations in the room TFR_2. That is located just on the other side of northeastern portico and just south of the three rooms, MFR.

The purpose of this year is to continue the excavations, which we conducted in 2016 and 2017. You can read about these excavations here. The first year, 2016, we analysed a late antique marble pile, and after the removal of the marble pieces, we found an interesting pottery layer. The analysis of the marble pile was part of a larger sub-project, where we analysed all the marble piles in and around the Forum – both late antique as well as modern. You can read a little bit about this sub-project here and how this helps interpret the larger structures in the Forum. In 2017, we excavated in the attempt to construct the chronology of the room, TFR_2 and to see if there would be earlier structures. That was the case, and this will be the topic of this year, 2019.

We will be excavating from Friday the 16th of August until Friday the 27th of September. We will not be on site in the weekends, except the first Saturday, the 17th of August. We are always open to answer any questions you might have regarding our excavations and Ostia in general, so feel free to ask. Also on site, in case any of you will be in Ostia in that period.