SPP 1630: Harbours from the Roman Iron Age until the Middle Ages - Archaeology and History of Regional and Supra-regional Traffic Systems

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Harbours are the crucial link between land and sea; they were the corner stone of the economic infrastructure behind regional and supra-regional shipping and the transportation of people, goods and information in prehistoric and early historical times. They were, indeed, what first made it all possible. Given the progressive processes arising from the correlate "Ship and Harbour", harbours permit important insights into the history of technological development. Moreover, they are highly complex systems, in which ecological, logistical, economic, social, legal, military and religious sub-systems overlap and influence one another. In order to be able to properly evaluate the full extent and depth of the phenomenon "harbour" over the course of time, it is necessary to identify these sub-systems and their implications for the development of settlements. The strength of the Priority Programme not only lies in its geographically wide-spread study area, which stretches from Iceland to the Aegean, but also in its chronological depth, covering several epochs, and the diversity of its research projects, which results in a high degree of interdisciplinary cooperation. The Priority Programme tries to move away from the level of small-scale analyses: instead, in an overarching comparative analysis, it attempts to understand harbours as highly complex systems by defining and analysing their system-relevant components. This is the only way for harbours to be fully understood, comparatively analysed and interpreted as system-relevant structures. As well as establishing a standardised terminology and investigating the reciprocal effects exerted by the topography and the way harbours were constructed, the analysis concentrates above all on evaluating the influence of the environment on historical developments and analysing the various economic regions and traffic systems. This should finally result in the generation of models of cultural evolution over time.