The systematic research into the Ethiopian manuscript culture is the aim of the long-term project “Die Schriftkultur des christlichen Äthiopiens und Eritreas: Eine multimediale Forschungsumgebung” (“Beta maṣāḥǝft: Manuscripts of Ethiopia and Eritrea”). Ethiopia and Eritrea are situated, from the perspective of cultural history, both at the periphery of the so-called Christian Orient and in the…
Ceiling and mural paintings are constitutive elements in the design of baroque interiors. Unlike all other forms of pictorial art, these truly three-dimensional artistic media define early modern architecture literally from above, through colourful and complex iconographic programmes: in ecclesiastical as well as secular environments, in residential palaces and ceremonial halls, churches and…
The project “Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg” (i.e. “Epigraphic Database Heidelberg”, or EDH for short) was established in 1986 with a duration of five years under the auspices of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Program, and further funded from 1991 onwards by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. Since 1993, it has been a research project at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences with a duration until 2020.…
The research project is supervised by an institution of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Its objective is the establishment of a tripartite analytic-semantic handbook, which essentially provides a new foundation for the history of towns and urbanization during the premodern period. Additionally, it constitutes an important instrument for a multitude of historically oriented…
The project “Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya (TWKM)” is funded with 5,42 Million Euros and is set to run for 15 years. It is located at the institute for Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology of the University Bonn. The project manager is Professor Dr. Nikolai Grube, who is an internationally renowned expert in the field of Maya research and a member of the North…
Human evolution is a story of expansions. During the last two million years the genus Homo spread from Africa into Asia and Europe in several waves of migration. New species developed and old groups became extinct (range expansions). As early as three million years ago, hominins had established new ways of dealing with their specific environment through culture. Stone tools produced with the help…