Completed projects at the Department of Classics

FWF project, Lise Meitner Program, individual project M 3180 (2022-2024)

Head: Marcello Turci

The aim of the research project is a study of the imperial building programs in the post-Severan era, specifically in the period of the Illyrian emperors, with a focus on the peri-urban district of Ostia along the coast. The main context of the investigation is the complex east of the Baths of the Porta Marina, which has already been object of a series of non-invasive exploration campaigns conducted in 2018 and 2019 by a multidisciplinary team under the supervision of the applicant. Furthermore, the project emphasizes imperial construction activities in Ostia as a paradigm for urbanization in the ports and for the supply system of Rome.

The research project aims to verify the identification of the site with the Aurelian Forum and the subsequent praetorium publicum, as mentioned in the Historia Augusta. Another hypothesis to verify is the assimilation of the praetorium with the seat of the annona prefecture. These field operations are the first phase of the archaeological and geoarchaeological exploration of the site. Their main purpose is to improve our knowledge about: the arrangement of the internal spaces; the architectural and time relationships with the structures previously spotted by M. Heinzelmann; the understanding of the time sequence concerning the structures detected at a planimetric level.

These general goals will be achieved via four steps: archaeological survey of the complex East of the Baths of the Porta Marina; study of the literary and epigraphic material related to the imperial building programs from the Late Antiquity; thematic insights on the Baths of the Porta Marina: unpublished epigraphy, sculptural programs and history of antiquarian research, water supply system; topographical and palaeoenvironmental context of the coastal district of Ostia. At the same time, the research in cooperation with the FOSPHORA project (based at Aix-University, École Française de Rome et Sapienza University of Rome) will focus on the study of epigraphic sources from Ostia and Portus that date back to the period between the end of the Severan era and the advent of Constantine.

A multi-level approach is selected in order to integrate the investigation firstly within the framework of Ostia's urban planning and then in a broader perspective on the Latium coast (Via Severiana, from Ostia to Terracina), Portus and the city of Rome. All the collected material will be implemented into a GIS system. The methodology will be multidisciplinary, with the participation of international partners from historicalhumanistic sectors (Archaeology, Art History, Antique Topography, Epigraphy and Roman History) and scientific-environmental disciplines as Geology and Archaeometry, and will be conducted at the Department for Archaeology (Graz University). This study is part of new investigations on the lesser-known areas of the city at the mouth of the Tiber.

Thyssen Foundation (2022-2024)

Head: Ursula Quatember

Although Hellenistic architecture represents a decisive turning point in the ancient architectural tradition, this period of architectural history has received relatively little attention in research to date. The groundbreaking architectural innovations that appear in these monuments reflect the changed political and social conditions of this period. Insights into these changes and innovations are essential for our understanding of Hellenistic architecture as a link between the Classical period and subsequent eras. The project on Hellenistic architecture in Asia Minor aims to close this research gap and focus on this important phase of ancient architectural history.

ÖAW Doc (2020-2024)

Head: Julia Leitold

Between 2001 and 2005, the Landesmuseum Kärnten carried out archaeological investigations and, in cooperation with the University of Aachen, also geophysical investigations in the village of St. Michael am Zollfeld. The latter brought to light an approximately three-hectare settlement including a large temple district, which was already known from aerial photographs. The main focus of the research campaign was on uncovering this imperial temple and its portico.

The temple was probably already known in the 17th century. In 1691, the provincial chancellery official Johannes Dominicus Prunner wrote the following in his treatise "Splendor antiquae urbis Salae": "...on flat ground under St. Michael next to the Grätzenberg in a field (where a Haydn temple used to be) many antiquities/und gemeyne Opffer-Zeychen von Eysen were excavated...". A disturbance in the findings and a heavily bent thaler of Emperor Leopold, which can be dated to 1670, indicate that the temple was uncovered at least once in the middle of the 17th century.

After that, the building seems to have fallen into oblivion. Modern research became aware of the temple again through aerial photographs taken in 1976, but it was not recognized as such at the time. Further aerial photographs taken by the Austrian Armed Forces in 1993 finally led to the conclusion that the complex was a temple district.

The excavations revealed that the temple was a prostyle podium temple measuring 16.8 x 9.6 m, which was erected on a 190 m³ thick foundation slab poured in three layers. In addition, remains of the altar foundation (3.6 x 2.7 m) and the portico (60 x 52 m), which occupies a special position with its two exedrae, were also unearthed.

The overall reconstruction now plays an important role for the entire sacred architecture of the Roman northern and western provinces. The temple district occupies a key position insofar as, unlike many other known sanctuaries, it was investigated using modern excavation methods, so that in addition to the stratigraphic findings, a large quantity of high-quality stratified finds and architectural elements are also present. It is particularly noteworthy that the architecture of the temple complex, which was built in its first construction phase in the Hadrianic period (117-138 AD), clearly refers to the Forum Augustum in Rome with its temple to Mars Ultor. In addition to the worship of the demigod Hercules and the emperor, the dedications in St. Michael also point to the worship of Mars Ultor, which is extremely important for research, as Mars Ultor only appears in the private sphere outside the capital Rome and no dedications from a sanctuary are known.

No. 101019035 funded by EU Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement (2021-2023)

Head: Bernhard Bauer

The project is funded by a H2020-MSCA Individual Fellowship. The central research question relates to the genesis of vernacular early medieval Celtic glosses: Are the glosses originals or translations of original Latin glosses? In order to find an answer(s) to this question, a case study will be carried out on the Celtic and Latin glosses of the manuscript Vienna, Austrian National Library, Codex 15298 (olim Suppl. 2698). The two main objectives of the project are

1. a comprehensive digital edition of the Vienna Beda with all glosses and the main text and
2. an interdisciplinary theoretical framework to analyze early medieval (parallel) glosses, which will include methods of digital humanities, philology and linguistics.

Internal university project

Head: Markus Hafner

The habilitation project deals with concepts of cooperative authorship in early Greek and classical literature (8th/7th-4th century BC). The aim of the study, which, in overcoming Barthes' dictum of the 'death of the author', ties in with Foucault's fonction-auteur and the interest in the phenomenon of authorship since the bimillennium, is a historiography of the author in the literature of the archaic and classical periods, based on an analysis of the types and models of authorial practices: Authorship can be described as a cooperative activity and a synchronously and diachronically effective interplay of human actors and medial factors. Overall, the focus is on various authorship models in the period from Homer to Plato. The analysis of different authorial voices is intended to straighten out an existing theoretical gap in the modern philological authorship debate. Research in ancient philology has a special role to play here, as significant upheavals in media history - the change from orality to writing (8th/7th century) and later to book culture (5th/4th century) - led to massive changes in concepts of authorship.

Cooperation project with the Croatian State Restoration Institute (Hrvatski Restauratorski Zavod) 2018 - 2022

Head at University of Graz: Manfred Lehner

Excavation management Croatia: Ana Azinovic Bebek

• Field report, photos and link to the YouTube videos
• Description of the project in the online journal Forum Archaeologiae: I. Koch - A. Azinović Bebek, Die spätantike Höhensiedlung Crkvišće Bukovlje (Kroatien). A cooperation project, Forum Archaeologiae 90/III/2019

Internal university project

Head: Markus Hafner

Project on the history of ancient studies journals 1933/34 and 1946-49

On the basis of as yet unpublished correspondence, the research project examines the 'Aryanization'ngs' tendencies and the anti-Jewish measures in the field of selected ancient studies journals from 1933 onwards, as well as their consequences for the editors. The focus is on the scientific-political mood of contemporary antiquity studies and the decisions of the relevant actors at the transition to the Nazi dictatorship and then to the post-war period, which are clearly evident from the letters. The results of the study are to be published in the form of a monograph in the coming years.

FWF Project Joint Program, I 3992 (2018 - 2021)

Head: Benjamin Štular

Head of the University of Graz: Manfred Lehner

Collaborators: Christopf Gutjahr, Stephan Karl, Iris Koch, Edisa Lozic

Lead Partner: ZRC SAZU - Institute of Archaeology of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences

Further project partners: Zavod za varstvo kulturne deiščine Slovenije

The aim of the project is to develop an analytical overview of settlement in the south-eastern Alps during the Early Middle Ages (ca. 500-1000 AD). To this end, two approaches are being pursued: on the one hand, a spatio-temporal analysis of settlement patterns in the region as a whole and, on the other, the investigation of three selected micro-regions with regard to particular economic, social and cultural issues.

Sources of archaeology of the Early Middle Ages in the south-eastern Alps are cemeteries, hoards and settlement features. A better understanding of this period is limited by the lack of knowledge about settlements and their archaeological evidence. This is due to the fact that 1) finds and features are sparse in comparison to other periods, and 2) many early medieval sites show a site continuity that is still sustainable today. Nevertheless, the number of known settlement sites has increased significantly in the last twenty years, mainly due to emergency excavations along major linear construction projects; however, less than a quarter of these new discoveries have been analyzed and published in detail. The poor state of settlement archaeology research is therefore the main problem of early medieval research in the south-eastern Alps. The main aim of the project is to remedy this situation by means of synthetic research approaches, which has now become possible for the first time thanks to access to sufficient settlement data.

More information

Internal university project

Head: Ursula Gärtner

Collaborator: Nora Kohlhofer

The project focuses on parables in ancient epic poetry. The aim is to collect and categorize all parables in pagan and Christian epic poetry. A project proposal is in preparation and extensive preliminary work has been completed. The aim is a digital repertory. This will be supplemented by a doctoral project in which Claudian's epics will be examined as a corpus of poetry that demonstrates the intertextual charge of the images particularly clearly (N. Kohlhofer).

bmwfw project, Sparkling Science funding series (2017 - 2019)

Head: Ursula Gärtner

The project introduces pupils (SuS) of the subjects Latin and Ancient Greek to literary and cultural studies. Fables are suitable because the texts are short and relatively easy in terms of language; they also encourage interpretation through their imagery. At the same time, they are a particularly good example of contextualization in terms of production and reception. In antiquity, fables were initially rhetorical means of argumentation that were intended as images to illustrate a point. However, when fables are compiled in collections or presented as individual poems or prose narratives, the recipients lack context. Here it is possible to work out clearly with pupils how texts can be read with the - completely justified - question "What does this tell me today?" or how (prospective) academics have to ask themselves what the text, which often has to be painstakingly compiled, might have meant for the recipients at the time.

From a scientific point of view, the project is extremely exciting. Ancient fables, especially Phaedrus and Avian, have long been neglected in academic research. It is only in more recent research that the texts have been perceived as sophisticated art that fits into the literary discourse of their time. The project aims to annotate larger sections of Phaedrus and Avian and produce a digital edition with a text-critical apparatus.

Danube Transnational Program, Interreg (2017 - 2019)

Head: Peter Scherrer

Staff members: Susanne Tiefengraber, Regina Klöckl, Stefanie Gaberz

The Iron-Age-Danube project is part of the Danube Transnational Program supported by the EU. The eleven project partners and nine associated partners are institutions in Croatia, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary. The project runs from January 1, 2017 to June 30, 2019.

The aim of Iron-Age-Danube is to research, protect and use the most important Iron Age cultural landscapes in Croatia, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary for tourism. Visitors and residents of these landscapes are to be encouraged to take a responsible approach to their own environment, culture and history. In addition to the two Austrian micro-regions of Großklein and Strettweg, there are seven others: Jalžabet and Kaptol (Croatia), Poštela and Dolenjske Toplice (Slovenia) and Süttő and Sopron (Hungary). Part of the project was the implementation of archaeology camps with excavation campaigns, geophysical measurements, lectures, guided tours and workshops in all these regions. In Austria, the Archaeology Camp Austria took place from April to June 2017 in the areas around Strettweg (Murtal district) and Großklein (Leibnitz district).

FWF project, individual project P27921 (2015 - 2018)

Head: Ursula Quatember

The aim of the FWF-funded project is a monographic study on the architecture of Roman Asia Minor in the period from the 1st century BC to the 4th century AD. In accordance with a research approach that has hardly been questioned to this day, Roman architecture is largely viewed as an empire-wide phenomenon and seen from the perspective of the capital Rome. Even comprehensive studies usually only take local characteristics into account to a limited extent and, if at all, tend to regard them as "accidental" peculiarities. In contrast, the project is based on the premise that the Roman architecture of Asia Minor was strongly shaped by local conditions and had a regional identity that clearly stood out from the architectural forms of the rest of the Roman Empire.

The study creates a new basis for understanding the countless Roman monuments of Asia Minor and at the same time directs attention from the capital Rome to an independent architectural landscape in the east of the Imperium Romanum. The result is a case study of regional identity and local characteristics within an overarching architectural tradition, which will provide further impetus for the investigation of this topic in other areas of the Roman Empire.

FWF project, individual project P31317, funded by the Province of Styria (2018 - 2021)

Head: Tobias Schreck (TU Graz)

Head of the University of Graz: Elisabeth Trinkl

Staff at the University of Graz: Stephan Karl

Further research partners: Benjamin Bustos (University of Chile)

3D objects are used in many application areas to represent the shape, appearance and function of natural and manufactured objects. Increasingly, 3D objects are playing an important role in libraries and museums, where 3D digitized collections of objects, archaeological finds, architecture, etc. are used for purposes such as presentation, research and long-term archiving. New methods of 3D digitization, shape modelling and synthesis are now creating large collections of 3D objects. Small quantities of 3D objects can be indexed individually, but this is no longer efficient with large amounts of data. Therefore, search techniques that can be used to find existing 3D objects by similarity to a query object or a search sketch are an essential functionality for using and indexing large 3D object collections.

Existing 3D search methods allow the search for globally and partially similar shapes based on sample objects and sketches, and support general, generic 3D objects. In this project, a new method for searching from incomplete 3D query objects will be developed. In archaeological research in particular, artifacts are broken or eroded and are therefore only incompletely available.

FWF project, individual project P 28981 (2016 - 2019)

Head: Alice Landskron

The sculptures from Side are among the best-preserved sculptural material in Pamphylia and Asia Minor. Its location by the sea and on the trade route to the Levant and Egypt favored the economy of the ancient port city, especially in the imperial period, and Side developed into one of the richest cities in Pamphylia and the entire region in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. More than 400 sculptures and sculpture fragments from the Roman period (statues, fragments, heads, statuettes, etc.) came to light during the excavations in Side. The project examines the ideal sculpture (male and female figures of deities, heroes or athletes) of the sculptural material from Side in the context of production, time and space.

To the website Alice Landskron

European Territorial Cooperation (ETC) Program - Operational Program Slovenia-Austria (2007-2013)
Employees University of Graz: Stephan Karl & Manfred Lehner

Project partners

The project InterArch-Steiermark, which is carried out in a cross-border cooperation, uses a bilingual digital tool to make the common archaeological heritage from the Styrian-Slovenian area within the program area accessible. With the help of archaeological information systems, both objects found in museums and written sources on sites in archives - mainly from the period from around 1800 to 1918 and from the regions of Leibnitz, Maribor, Ptuj and Celje - are recorded and digitized. All archaeologically and cultural-historically relevant data - integrated into a geographic information system (GIS) - will be accessible to users via an interactive web platform. InterArch Styria is aimed at both laypeople and scientists and uses its own tools to promote spatial planning, monument protection, tourism and archaeological research, thereby ensuring both versatile and sustainable benefits.

Internal institute project (until 2018)

Head: Peter Scherrer

FWF project, individual project P 29636 - G25 (2017 - 2020)

Head: Ute Lohner-Urban

The total duration of the research project was 7 years. The research in the field has been completed and intensive work on the publication of the results has been ongoing since 2018.

The systematic investigation (archaeological excavation, historical building evaluation, surveying) of the East Gate provided new information and supplemented the results of older research. The archaeological excavations inside and outside the gateway recorded earlier structures and construction phases. The typochronological association of the find material with the layers should enable the exact dating of the construction phases. A historical and typological evaluation of the gate structure and comparisons with other city gates in Pamphylia were carried out. The areas around the main gate were also investigated as part of the project.

Project website is under construction and will be linked shortly

Further information on the resulting FWF project"Hellenistic-Roman City Fortifications in Asia Minor. Trends of Development and Function Change in View of Stratigraphic Evidence at the East Gate of Side (2017-2020), Ute Lohner-Urban" will be online shortly

Cooperation project with

Austrian Foundry Research Institute (ÖGI), Parkstraße 21, 8700 Leoben, Austria

Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR), University Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 368, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany

Goethe Center for Scientific Computing (G-CSC), University Frankfurt, Kettenhofweg 139, 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Institute of Mathematics and Scientific Computing, University Graz, Universitätsplatz 3/II, 8010 Graz, Austria

Head: Stephan Karl

The application of X-radiography in ceramic studies becomes an increasingly valued method. Using the potential of industrial X-ray computed tomography (CT) for non-destructive testing as an archaeometric or archaeological method in pottery studies, especially regarding aspects such as manufacturing techniques or pottery fabrics, requires controlled data-acquisition and post-processing by scientific computing adjusted to the requirements of archaeological research. This ongoing project (started 2009) shows that, despite the difficulties inherent in CT-technology, considerable information can be extracted for pottery analysis. The low density and heterogeneous nature of ceramic substances proves to be ideal for CT examinations. The radiation exposure, as demonstrated by optimal performance, can be classified as low. TL-dating for the purposes of verifying authenticity is guaranteed even after a CT examination, taking the threshold values into consideration. More than any other method, the industrial CT achieves, without contact and in a non-invasive manner, a fully three-dimensional image of an object including all external and internal structures. The information created by the CT volumetric reconstruction-matrix, which provides a virtual three-dimensional visualization of the object based on the respective densities of a data-element (voxel), can be measured and evaluated using commercial software programs in a contact-free manner.

The combination of CT-data with methods of non-contact 3D-measurement using structured light, which are already well proven in the documentation of Greek vases, allows the capturing of the color information of the painted surfaces and the accurate closing of not visible parts of the vessels. The overall aim is the recording of the entire physical objects - a virtual copy or reconstruction of the original - in relation to the outer surface as well as the inner structures for further analysis in archaeological research of antique ceramics.

Innovation check of the FFG (2014)

Employees: Elisabeth Trinkl, Stephan Karl

The aim of this study was to evaluate archaeological reproductions using 3D scans and 3D printing or milling processes for universities, museums and research projects. The aim was to investigate the areas in which there is a need for such reproductions in archaeology and whether the new techniques can replace conventional methods of molding.

Further information

Project study

Internal project (2009 - 2011)

Head: Peter Scherrer

Collaborators: Eva Christof, Gabriele Koiner, Ute Lohner-Urban, Alexandra Puhm

Under the direction of o.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Karl Strobel, Institute for Ancient History and Classical Studies at the University of Klagenfurt, surveys were carried out between 1998 and 2004 in the urban area of central Anatolian Tavium (today's village of Büyüknefes, Yozgat province) and in several surrounding villages. In the course of these surveys, all ancient and Byzantine stone objects, often reused as spolia in houses, were recorded and documented. This material was processed as part of the project "The ancient architectural fragments from Tavium/Büyüknefes" (G. Koiner, E. Christoph, A. Puhm). In 2009, the Institute of Archaeology took over the project management under the direction of Prof. Dr. Peter Scherrer. In addition to further survey activities on site in July 2009, a large part of the finds from the previous years were recorded in April/May 2011 as part of a museum campaign in Yozgat.

Project website is under construction and will be linked shortly