For the logistic and financial support of OFP’s research, we have founded a new association named: „Ostia-Forumprojekt. Förderverein zur archäologischen Erforschung Ostias / Society for the Promotion of Research in Ostia”.
This association will be dedicated to the support of actual research by students and scientists with the long-term aim of a major final publication and innovative ways of presenting cultural heritage.

For the next years our association will be focussed on supporting the Forum-research and its publication: What we plan to do the next years is basically the subsequent work-up and interpretation of all our excavation data from 2010 to 2012, of our supplementing surface-survey data until 2014, and of our finds so far (coins, ceramics, small finds like glas, bronze, bone artefacts and up to all kinds of marble objects, inscriptions and large finds). We hope to be able to continue our cooperation with the Superintendency of Rome and Ostia and the direction of the ‘Scavi di Ostia’ (Prof. Cinzia Morelli) and the finds deposits (Prof. Paola Germoni) for these fundamental aims to be as successful as in the last year.

Donations most welcome! If you want to know more about the ‘Ostian (Forum) Society’ or “Förderverein“ read the following Chapter 5 and/or contact following adress:
contact@ostiaforumproject.com

If you are interested in knowing what we plan to do on site in Ostia and back home in university in the next year(s), see “2015 A view back & plans for the future“: 7 major project-areas (subdivided for BA-, MA- and PhD-theses) cover almost 1000 years of Forum history in the center of the world’s largest excavated site!

Follow the progresses of our research from late-antique marble-reuse to early-imperial pediment sculptures!

For the 2014 campaign see: “2014 campaign: From a late marble-pile to Augustean Temple-pediments“.

Sub-chapter 1  is online now: You can follow the first two weeks of our excavation!

Sub-chapter 2 is online too: You can get informations about “the third working week and an antique ‘marble-workshop-depot’ ” (further chapters will follow soon…)

Einladung zum Vortrag/ invitation to the lecture:

 

PD Dr. Axel Gering,

“Von Capricornen und Kalkbrennern. Neufunde des Ostia-Forumprojekts 2014 und die Rekonstruktion eines archetypischen römischen Tempelgiebels”

 

Mittwoch/ Wednesday       7. 1. 2015        19.00 c.t.

 

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, Hörsaal 2091/2092

The university has started its winter-term and all the team-members are back from the field campaign 2014. This year we have documented a large pile of marble fragments in one of the rooms south of MFD with laser-scanners and the newest 3-D-camera-system used by the German Aerospace. Due to the high number of half-worked fragments and “exercise-pieces” we believe this could have been a rubbish dump of an artisans’ workshop nearby, probably the one we have found in the campaign 2013. A detailled quantitative and qualitative analysis of all marble pieces will be the focus for our next years campaign.  Many fragments come doubtless from the Roma- and Augustustemple, some of them are previously unknown, like parts of the pediment sculpture. Other fragments were parts of sculptures, statue-bases, sarcophagus, reliefs or architectural decoration of demolished buildings surrounding the south end of the Forum.  By the stratigraphical information we suppose it could have been a deposit with a TPQ of the middle of the 5th century AD. A new report will summarize our finds and their significance for reconstructing the final phases of Ostia soon!