Rune Rattenborg

Project title

FOODPOWER: Domesticate Diversification of the Emergent State through Mass Semantic  Annotation and Environmental Archaeological Benchmarks

What is your project about?

My project investigates the role of emergent states in the use, proliferation and dissemination of plant and animal resources in the ancient Middle East. The project combines archaeobotany and zooarchaeology, namely the study of plant remains and animal bone from archaeological excavations, with philology and computational linguistics, which allow us to mine data from many thousansds of texts written in cuneiform, a writing system used across much of the Middle East from ca. 3500 BCE to 100 CE. In this way, we can study and analyse the character and scale of food production within early political economies from multiple angles over a period of several thousand years. The overall aim is to explore how early state structures have worked to shape the material basis of our existence, namely the plants and animals that feeds us today.

How did you become interested in your particular field of research?

The study of economic structure and relationships in the deep human past has always interested me. Combining textual sources and archaeological evidence allows me to draw on my twin expertises in cuneiform writing and archaeological analysis. Given the enormous amount of textual sources represented by the cuneiform corpus, the Middle East offer unique opportunities for the detailed analysis of the emergent state in the ancient economy, especially with regards to the quantification of food consumption across time and space. Archaeology can help illuminate past climate and landscape, and contribute with analyses of plant and bone remains from archaeological excavation. In this way, the project integrates multiple approaches for the study of the human past.

What are the scientific challenges and perspectives in your project?

The groundbreaking nature of the project lies in the integration of archaeology, philology and computational linguistics with the use of digital tools for the study of agriculture and animal husbandry in the earliest periods of recorded human history. For example, we will develop a procedure for the automated retrieval of structured data from cuneiform inscriptions. There are more than half a million cuneiform texts in various museums around the world. Most of these are concerned with economic and administrative matters. Reading them requires a set of highly specialised skills, however, which means that such texts do not form as significant a part of current research as they should. Using digital tools for data retrieval on a large scale, the project will provide researchers with access to a far greater database on plants and animals in the ancient world than previously possible.

What is your estimate of the impact, which your project may have to society in the long term?

Much of the food available from your local supermarket originated in the Middle East, for example such essential species as barley, wheat, peas and beans, or sheep, goat, cattle and pig. The project builds a better understanding of how early human societies made use of such natural resources and what role the early state played in the agrarian economy. Given contemporary global climate change, food security and sustainable agriculture have become increasingly critical for the future safeguarding of our society and the protection of global biodiversity. The project offers a modest contribution to the solving of such essential problems.

Which impact do you expect the Sapere Aude programme will have on your career as a researcher?

The Sapere Aude: DFF Starting Grant provides a unique opportunity for building a research group in Denmark and strengthening my interdisciplinary research profile. During the last ten years, I have been engaged as a doctoral student, a researcher and a teacher at universities in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden, and established a strong international network. The project includes leading researchers at the National Museum of Denmark and the University of Copenhagen, as well as advisors from Oxford University, Universität Augsburg and Moesgaard Museum. With this grant, we will be able to foster a strong and innovative research environment with a potential for further development reaching many years into the future.