FRANKFURT. Goethe
University is sending researchers to Oman: As the Gerda Henkel Foundation has
announced, Dr. Stephanie D枚pper will receive funds of almost 鈧� 300,000 for the
duration of three years in the framework of its 鈥淟ost Cities" programme.
In Oman, the economic upturn of the past
three decades thanks to oil and gas production has also had an impact on
housing construction. In many cases, people have moved out of their traditional
mud-brick settlements into new concrete houses nearby, yet without completely
abandoning the original settlements: High time to preserve this cultural
landscape. Stephanie D枚pper is head of an interdisciplinary team of
archaeologists, Islamic studies researchers and cultural sociologists from Frankfurt,
Bochum and Leipzig. Together, they want to find out what social relevance the
abandoned mud-brick settlements have for today's society and for creating
Oman's identity.
To this end, the archaeologists in the project will be
responsible over the coming years for mapping three mud-brick settlements in
Central Oman and documenting the history of their buildings. This will take
place in the framework of research visits lasting several months. In addition,
by examining the artefacts they find, such as ceramic shards, they will be able
to identify the former functions of the individual buildings in these
settlements. Of particular significance here are their later uses, for example
the repurposing of a house as a goat shed. The research team's hypothesis is
that the abandoned mud-brick settlements are not only the deserted backdrops of
a past way of life but instead still very lively and bustling places with a future.
Dr. Stephanie D枚pper has been studying settlements and
settlement systems in Central Oman for several years now, starting from the
early Bronze Age in the 3rd millennium BC up until the mud-brick
settlements in the research project approved by the Gerda Henkel Foundation,
which were probably built in the 18th or 19th century AD
and are today abandoned. In the back of her mind is always the question of what
caused people in this region to settle and why such settlements were abandoned
again.
Funding from the Gerda Henkel Foundation will make it
possible to finance a doctoral scholarship and the research visits on site.
In total, the foundation has included 53
new research projects in its sponsorship programme, for which its committees
approved 鈧� 8.6 million at their autumn meeting. This means support for researchers
from almost 30 countries.
Pictures
can be downloaded under:
Captions:
Picture 1: House in the abandoned mud-brick settlement of Al-Mudhaybi. Photo: Stephanie D枚pper
Picture 2: Ceramic
vessels in the abandoned mud-brick
settlement of Al-Mudhaybi. Photo:
Stephanie D枚pper
Picture 3: House with collapsed ceilings in the abandoned mud-brick settlement
of Sinaw.
Picture 4: Abandoned mud-brick settlement of Sinaw. Photo: Stephanie D枚pper
Picture 5: Abandoned mud-brick settlement of Sinaw. Photo: Stephanie D枚pper
All pictures
courtesy of Stephanie D枚pper.
Further information: Dr. Stephanie D枚pper, Institute of Archaeological Sciences, Archaeology,
Westend Campus, Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1, D-60629 Frankfurt am Main, +49(0)69-798-32320,
doepper@em.uni-frankfurt.de
