PhD scholarship in ERC-funded WEIGHTANDVALUE project (sub-project for Bronze Age Mesopotamia)
The SAXO Institute, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, invites applications for one 3-year PhD scholarship. The successful candidate will be appointed to the newly established ERC Consolidator project WEIGHTANDVALUE, sponsored by the European Research Commission and based at the SAXO Institute, and will be expected to begin on February 1, 2016 or as soon as possible thereafter.
http://phd.hum.ku.dk/Blivph.d./stipendieopslag/weightandvalue/
http://phd.humanities.ku.dk/how_to_apply/calls/
Description of the project
During the transition from the Copper to the Bronze Age the use of weights and measures emerged in the ‘Greater Near East’, developed significantly and precise value regimes were established. The ERC project WEIGHTANDVALUE which runs from August 2015 to August 2020 will investigated how this effected the conduct of trade, its integration and the dynamics of local economies and its social consequences during the Bronze Age from the wide perspective of European, West and South Asian archaeology, anthropology and economic and social history in a comparative, but meticulous and methodologically novel way. In an integrated approach it will use archaeological data, 3D scanning and statistics. So far, finds of potential weights are generally not identified, or are either ignored or insufficiently published. Their potential use for a direct evaluation of Bronze Age economics is most often missed. Besides ‘canonical’ weights (objects which are well known as balance weights), scales and weight-related artefacts (artefacts which are produced according to certain weight standards), the project is especially interested in identifying so-called ‘uncanonical’ weights of unexpected shapes.
The PhD project will focus on ‘uncanonical’ weights (pebble-, ring-, and other potential weights) in Western Asia. This material evidences shall be investigated for the first time in a systematic way. In addition, coils and rings of silver are known from several hoards of the third and second millennium BC in Syro-Mesopotamia. They are assumed to have been used as a pre-coinage currency building mainly on textual references and very limited data from the objects. The material is available in various museums and excavations storerooms in countries in the eastern Mediterranean/Near East, Europe and Northern America. The advertised PhD scholarship will be part of general project idea of uncovering unidentified data and document insufficiently studied objects relating to weight metrology. We are looking for a candidate specialized in the archaeology of Ancient Near East (Mesopotamia, Syria, Levant, Iran), preferable with an elementary training in the Akkadian language, and interests in economic history and the application of statistical methods. Fluency in English as well as a good command of German, French and Italian in reading is expected. It is desirable that the candidate has already worked closely with ancient Mesopotamian materials and small finds in specific.
Beside mainly writing a PhD under the supervision of the Principal Investigator (PI) and an external Professor, the successful candidate is expected to
- work in close cooperation with the other team members
- present papers at conferences, workshops and public meetings, and represent the research group either with other members of the group or alone
• publish in journals or conference proceedings (individual and/or co-authored)
• participate in yearly workshops organised by the ERC project
It is expected that the successful candidate will be present, part of the team and partake in the activities of the WEIGHTANDVALUE-team on a daily basis. Furthermore, she/he will be enrolled in the PhD School at the Faculty of Humanities, but will also be supervised by a Professor abroad. Hence the successful candidate may obtain a double degree from Copenhagen and another university under the conditions that an agreement is finalized with another university according to the PhD Order.
The European Research Council (ERC) is a European funding initiative, designed to support the best scientists, engineers and scholars in Europe. Its mandate is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe, selected by peer review evaluation, through competitive funding and to support investigator-initiated frontier research across all fields of research, on the basis of scientific excellence.
For further information, please contact the Principal Investigator of the WEIGHTANDVALUE project, Associate Professor Lorenz Rahmstorf nwv899@hum.ku.dk.
Application deadline: December 1st, 2015 at 23.59 (CET).