Welcome to a symposium at Pufendorf IAS 26 May
How can we experience the past? Truly experience it, with all our senses?
How can we capture for ourselves the sights and sounds, the odors sacred and profane, the play of light from an open window or a flickering oil lamp – the entire sensorial range experienced by the people of previous centuries and millennia?
The Ancient Synagogues and the Human Sensorium Theme welcomes you to a symposium and take you on a digital tour of their recent fieldwork at the site of the Theme’s case study, the archaeological remains of the synagogue at the Roman city of Ostia.
In simulating the sensations of the past, is it possible to understand the feelings of awe or comfort, anticipation or familiarity, or even the memories invoked by the experience of gathering together within the walls of a sacred space?
The team invites you to engage with the results of their interdisciplinary journey over the past year, during which they worked with advanced computational methods (including VR and 3D-based technology) as well as with the practical and theoretical challenges involved in creating and using these models to study ancient cultures.
The event will be held in English and is free of charge, open to all. Refreshments will be served during the entire day
Link to the programme and registration:
Ancient Synagogues and the Human Sensorium
Lunch lecture 20 May (12.15-14.00)
Sensational Synagogues: Reconfiguring Jewish Worship in the Dura Europos Synagogue
By: Professor Karen Gabbay-Stern, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.
By adopting distinctive approaches from several fields, including the history and archaeology of the senses, this talk promises novel and otherwise unprecedented insights into experiential dimensions of Jewish worship and holiness in Syria and in other areas of the Mediterranean throughout late antiquity.
More information and link to registration:
Lunch lecture 27 May (12.15-14.00)
Mechanisms of Fascination? – exploring Neolithic monumentality through the lenses of world-building, alterity and affect
By: Mark Gillings, Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol.
Professor Mark Gillings will seek to draw inspiration from recent theoretical work on alterity and process-ontologies (from anthropology) and world-building (from gaming and creative technologies) to offer a different take on monumentality as a process. This is one that stresses dynamism (instead of timelessness), affective power (instead of function) and performance (instead of metaphor).
More information and link to registration:
Read more about the Pufendorf Theme hosting all these three events on our website:
Ancient Synagogues and the Human Sensorium | The Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies