Author: Daniel Damgaard

May 2022

This Friday May 20, two presentations will be held in Odense, Denmark. They are part of the Ostia Graduiertenkolleg, Theme 4 and Theme 6.

The presentations will be held in Danish, but published in English in the future. You can find the programme below.

June 2022

June 22-24, project director, Prof. Dr. Axel Gering and a ph.d. candidate from the Ostia Graduiertenkolleg will present their ongoing research in the seminar Hazard and Disaster Risk: Ostia and Portus between Hypothesis and Reality. You can find the programme below:

Dear all,

We are delighted to announce new online chapters about our work during the campaigns in September-October 2022 and February-March 2022.

As we also did the last time, the chapters are written by the six ph.d. candidates from the Ostia Graduiertenkolleg, since they are all working on the material in one way or the other from the excavations between 2016 and 2019.

Therefore, enjoy the reading.

On Thursday April 7, 2022, we had the opening of our exhibition at the Tieranatomsiches Teater in Berlin. We were positively surprised of the many visitors who showed up and showed a great interest in the exhibition and in our project. We would therefore like to thank everybody who attended. It went beyond our expectations.

Below, you can see some pictures from the evening.

In the exhibition, we have created two areas with virtual reality. In one, you can experience the story behind the excavation, the altar and experience a sacrifice in the 2nd century BCE in the centre of Rome’s ancient harbour city. In the other, you can have a detailed look at some of our finds, which are of utmost importance in regards to the reconstructions and the overall interpretation. However, the glasses used during virtual reality are only available on selected days, which is why our cooperation partners from the Technical University of Berlin, Jakob and Markus have made two videoes, where you can see the virtual reality world. You can find the video of the excavation and altar here and the video regarding the finds here.

In another room, some objects are exhibited along with the posters explaining the projects. They comprise 3D-prints of a find and the room TFR 2, where we have been excavating since 2016 and where we have found the remains of the altar. The find is a bowl with the inscription A P L O N I (a dedicatory inscription to Apollon). You can read more about the process behind the 3D-printing here.

For the reconstructions in both the videoes that runs in the exhibition as well as the reconstructions in the virtual reality world, we all have to thank Steven Götz. He worked closely with Prof. Dr. Axel Gering and the ph.d. candidates from the Ostia Graduiertenkolleg to create the exact shapes of houses, temples and altars, thus making it look as authentic as possible and most importantly, to make it come as close as possible to what the archaeological evidence revealed. Without his exhaustive work, the exhibition would not have had this important aspect of visualising our hypotheses in a 3D and 4D world – one of the main aims of the Ostia Forum Project.

Wednesday March 30 and Thursday March 31, we were all at the Tieranatomisches Theater to prepare the opening of the exhibition A 200 year-long Quest for Traces in Ostia: The Discovery of a Sanctuary.

We are looking forward seeing you all to the official opening tomorrow Thursday April 7 at 18:00 – 21:00. You can get access to the exhibition already when the museum opens at 14:00.

We a delighted to finally present our exhibition at the Tieranatomisches Theater in Berlin. The exhibition revolves around the individual projects of the Ostia Graduiertenkolleg. On the opening day, we invite people for a reception. The entrance is free of charge. Therefore, if you have the time, we strongly recommend you to attend the opening – we will all be present.
If you do not have the time, then do not worry. The exhibition is open until September 30, 2022. The entrance will remain free of charge.

Time: Thursday April 7, 2022 at 18:00 – 21:00

Place: Philippstraße 13 (Campus Nord, Haus 3, 10115 Berlin, Germany)

The Ostia Forum Project has been working in Ostia between February 12 and March 18 2022. The campaign was very similar to the last two campaigns in 2020 and 2021. No excavations have been conducted, since the discoveries in 2017 and 2019 have yielded much evidence that need to be examined, before going further into the earliest phases of the centre of Ostia. The material has been divided into different doctoral topics.

We will soon publish some online articles regarding our work as well as creating new Campaign Photo Gallery for the campaigns in 2021 (September and October) and 2022 (February and March).

As always, the Ostia Forum Project has been delighted with the collaboration with the Parco Archeologico di Ostia Antica, its direction and staff.

Monday January 24, 2022, we had an interesting workshop with our corporation partner, Jakob Korbel. He is part of our project, because he is reconstructing TFR 2 in its present form, but also in its Republican form until the Hadrianic period, where the area was part of a large sanctuary. All this is being done in virtual reality. Jakob visited us on site in October 2021, where we went through most of the details. We have since had a couple of meetings, where we provided Jakob with the newest results, and where he informed us about his process and his ideas behing the virtual space. This day, we were presented for the version in the making. We are all very excited about his work and the hitherto results.

The purpose of this virtual reality sub-project is to present our research in a different manner to the public. From April 1 until September 30 2022, the Ostia Forum Project is having an exhibition in the Tieranatomisches Theater in Berlin, where this virtual space is going to be available for guests. Along the virtual reality aspect of the exhibition, the exhibition will also include the projects from the Ostia Graduiertenkolleg as well as the focal areas of the Ostia Forum Project and its history.

Below you can see some photos from the day and maybe a little preview of the virtual space.

Wednesday February 2, 2022 at 19.15 (local Berlin time)

Prof. Dr. Axel Gering will present our latest results from our campaigns 2016-2019. The presentation will be held in German, but the presentation will contain a vast amount of photos, which should ease the burden for non-German speakers.

The presentation is titled

The discovery of a sanctuary below the Forum. Excavations by the Ostia Forum Project 2016-2019 (German: Die Entdeckung eines Heiligtums unter dem Forum. Zu den Ausgrabungen des Ostia-Forum-Projects 2016-2019)

We have updated our publications for 2021 and initiated the year 2022.

The two new publications are from:

Undine Lieberwirth, a cooperation partner, who took part in the project in 2011. The publication is about the development of 3D and 4D cartography. This is being done on the back drop of her results from 2011.

Prof. Dr. Axel Gering, the project director, who has published some results about the geophysics and 3D documentation during our campaigns. The anthology, in which his article is, will be published in March 2022, but can already be accessed online.

We have added a new page with our 3D and 4D work regarding the Temple of Roma and Augustus. You can see it here.