Employing citizen science to understand borders and border systems from the Roman period until today
This project is about borders, in particular the border of the Roman Empire, the so-called Lower German Limes. In this project we not only investigate the impact of this border on migration and the import of goods and crops in antiquity, but also focus on how the limes becomes visible as cultural heritage today, and how it has influenced our contemporary views on borders.
We reconnect the white coats of sterile laboratories with the muddy boots of excavations, the dusty historical archives with the expanses of spatial analysis, and use big data to reinterpret and reorder artefacts in depots and museums.
On the one hand, the project will map the limes as a cultural contact zone by studying archaeological data, using various techniques, and with the aid of citizen scientists. This approach will allow us to reconstruct the borderscape in the Roman period in more detail than was possible so far.
On the other hand, the project focuses on the reception of the limes: how is this border (re)constructed for the benefit of the formation of nation states and the creation of regional, national, and European identities.
This approach helps us to better understand contemporary approaches towards borders and allows us to enrich public debates regarding borders and cultural interactions with historic knowledge.
This project brings together a consortium of experts in the fields of ancient history, archaeology, geology, cultural heritage, cultural history and art history, human geography and border studies, and environmental genetics. In this project we collaborate with a large number of public partners to disseminate the scientific results to a wide audience.
News
- Symposium: Current Studies in Roman Settlement and Landscape Archaeology: Exploring Regional Dynamics
The symposium takes place on May 15th 2025 in Utrecht, and is organised as part of the NWO Constructing the Limes project and co-funded by the Archon research school. - ‘A Divine Inspiration for Border Studies; Conceptually Excavating the Polydivine Roman Border Landscape of Terminus, Janus, Mercurius, Trivia and Pluto’ by Paschalina Garidou, Henk van Houtum, Saskia Stevens and Luuk Winkelmolen
Title: A Divine Inspiration for Border Studies; Conceptually Excavating the Polydivine Roman Border Landscape of… - ‘Reception of the limes in cities along the Rhine and the Danube (16th and 17th centuries)’ door Koen Ottenheym
This article, written by Koen Ottenheym, examines how cities in the late 16th and 17th centuries used knowledge about the Roman limes.
C-Limes partners
