We will pursue three research objectives, each connected to specific issues that the project aims to address:
- RO1. Analyse material culture, especially ceramics, from Late Antique Sicilian domestic contexts in order to acquire new information about people’s attitudes, tastes, consumption habits, diet, and productive capacity (WP1).
- RO2. Build a semantic data structure integrating both newly generated and long-known data, ensuring proper storage, robust verifiability, efficient exploitation, and rapid information sharing (WP2).
- RO3. Explore intra-site and inter-site artefact distributions in order to shed new light on the factors that triggered change or resilience in trade patterns, social behaviour, and cultural practices at different scales and levels of analysis (WP3).
The expected results will benefit the international scientific community through the rapid co-publication of the contexts discussed above (RO1), the development of a broader theoretical framework (RO2), and the creation of the first Sicilian digital atlas of the Late Antique and Early Byzantine periods (RO3). They will also have a positive impact on the wider public and the local economy by promoting awareness of important, but often neglected, aspects of Sicilian cultural heritage. This is a key priority within Horizon Europe’s Pillar 2, Cluster 2, Destination Heritage.
WP: Work Packages; D: Deliverables; M: Milestones; P: scientific papers; Da: dissemination activities; Ca: communication activities.