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Funding for multidisciplinary field school at Portus
by Graeme Earl
We have been awarded funding from a Student Centredness fund grant to create a unique field school at Portus that will provide the context for novel learning experiences to students from across the University, including an on-line infrastructure to build a community around a period of archaeological fieldwork in Italy. It will also benefit from a related SC project aimed at providing virtual access to the Portus fieldwork experience.
The field school will eventually host a Curriculum Innovation Programme module, Southampton archaeology UG student field training, MSc Archaeological Survey and Landscape students, and overseas students from archaeology, anthropology and related disciplines. In addition UG, PGI and PGR students from across the University will be encouraged to participate. The Portus multi-disciplinary field school will provide the opportunity for a new educational experience open to all students at the University, by offering hands-on, team-focused training in a variety of techniques used in modern archaeological fieldwork. The students will be exposed to techniques belonging to different scientific disciplines (including computing, geology, geophysics, biology), and research methods of social and human sciences (including history, classics, history of art), and will grow as interdisciplinary scholars and mediators – crucial skills in the modern world.
Curriculum Innovation at Portus
by Graeme Earl
We have received the first stage of approval for a new Curriculum Innovation Programme (CIP) module focused on Portus. The CIP is adding a new level of multi- and interdisciplinary education at the University of Southampton. CIP Portus will start in summer 2013 and offer a combination of hands-on practical archaeological training and academic content. Students will receive practical training in areas such as survey, excavation, finds recording, archaeological computing, geophysics, data analysis and report preparation during a three-week residential field school at Portus. This training will be supplemented by lectures given by instructors and guest speakers and study visits designed to introduce students to various aspects of Roman history and material culture. All students will also be supported via innovative on-line materials including virtual tours, a forum and social media tools, which will also have archaeology students as members to provide peer-assisted learning.
As CIP students are drawn from disciplines from across the University the module will emphasise the multidisciplinary nature of contemporary archaeological practice and encourage all students to explore the intersections and differences between their core discipline and archaeological field practice. As archaeological field investigations are problem oriented, importance and difficulties of creating an appropriate research design to answer specific questions in a field setting will also be discussed. We hope to complete the module design before Christmas 2012 and to accept students from Semester 2 2012/13.
Providing virtual access to fieldwork
by Graeme Earl
We have learned that a Student Centredness grant application that the Portus Project was a partner on has been funded. The bid led by Dr Rex Taylor will design, test and evaluate a methodology for virtual fieldwork that will be appropriate to disciplines with fieldwork components from across the University. The resulting environment will be particularly suited to students who are limited in their ability to participate in fieldwork projects, for mobility, visual or other reasons. In addition the virtual access, which will work at multiple scales e.g. from the landscape to the object, will be accessible to all students as a means to support their field practice. In the case of Portus we are going to integrate many of the spatial and other datasets we capture on site into a tool that provides them in a contextually relevant way. We anticipate this to make extensive use of web mapping (hopefully informing and benefiting from the new CIP in Web Based Maps) and virtual objects, and also to use the facilities of the Digital Humanities Distributed Lab which was also funded by the Student Centredness fund.
Report on the discovery of the navalia
by Peter Wheeler
Report on the discovery of the navalia from the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.
Discovery of massive building at Portus
by 1
Archaeologists from the University of Southampton and the British School at Rome working at Portus under the direction of Professor Simon Keay, working in conjunction with others from the Cooperativa Parsifal (Rome), have discovered a massive building at the maritime port of Imperial Rome, near Rome’s international airport which they believe may have played a role in shipbuilding centred at the port. The work is part of ongoing collaborative research with Angelo Pellegrino of the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archaeologici di Roma, Sede di Ostia, led by Dottssa Moretti.
Portus in the News
by Peter Wheeler
- ITM Merdian (accessible only from UK)
- RAI TV
- BBC News
- BBC image gallery
- The Daily Mail
- The Daily Telegraph
- Sky News
- Wave FM
- Classic FM
- BBC Radio Scotland (1’21”55)
- BBC Radio Solent (1’21”15)
New excavation season has started
by 1
The fourth season of excavation at Portus takes place between late March and early May 2011. As in previous years these have been undertaken by the University of Southampton, in conjunction with the British School at Rome and the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The area chosen for excavation lies to the south of areas excavated in previous years, but still within the confines of the Palazzo Imperiale. To date they have revealed an extensive series of walls belonging to both the Palazzo itself and a large adjacent building, both of which were demolished in the late antique period, and which further contribute to our understanding of this unique complex. The team is directed by Simon Keay, assisted by Graeme Earl, and with the involvement of Fabrizio Felici (Parsifal Cooperativa, Roma), and staff and students from the Universities of Southampton and Rome and professional Italian archaeologists. The team also wishes to acknowledge the valuable support of Dott. Angelo Pellegrino (Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma, sede di Ostia).
Portus Project Achieves Next Stage in Funding from the AHRC
by 1
The AHRC have awarded three years of funding to continue and develop our work at Portus. The establishment of Portus, the maritime port of Imperial Rome, under Claudius and its enlargement Trajan, refocused Rome’s economic and social relationship with its Mediterranean provinces. It helped ensure the centrality and dominance of Roman power at the City of Rome for over 500 years down to the late antique period. It is difficult, therefore, to over-estimate the significance of this port to our understanding of the Roman empire or, indeed, to the broader history of the Mediterranean. Much remains to be learned about the port, not least in terms of the relationship of the port to Rome, how it functioned, the scale of commercial activity, and the nature of the community that lived and worked there.
New discovery at Portus, the ancient port of Rome, features in the Daily Telegraph
by 1
Archaeologists from the University of Southampton, University of Cambridge and the British School at Rome, have discovered one of the largest canals every built by the Romans. They believe it linked Portus with the nearby Roman river port of Ostia.
Portus Project and the AHRC
by 1
The Portus Project is currently hitting the headlines of AHRC online and print publications.
The Project featues on the home page of the AHRC website, as a podcast interview with Professor Simon Keay and Dr Graeme Earl. Portus is also prominent as a front page and feature in the latest issue of ‘Podium’, the AHRC magazine.
Read more:
- AHRC website
- AHRC Magazine Podium 14, 2010
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