Aarhus University Seal

Introduction of Katharina Zerzeropulos

Visiting PhD sttudent at UrbNet.

Coming to UrbNet as a visiting PhD student for the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence at the Christian Albrecht University in Kiel I will closely cooperate with the team here to continue my PhD thesis. I consider myself a “Digital Classical Archaeologist” although my training is between several archaeological disciplines such as Provincial Roman, Prehistoric, Classical Archaeology and Archaeoinformatics.

My PhD deals with testing theories on the Roman Economy with the help of ceramics in the form of fine wares and amphorae that were distributed on seaborne routes via Agent-Based Modelling. Several network theories for the working of the Roman economy have been proposed which can be modelled and then tested against the actual pottery record from the Mediterranean. Comparing hypothetical models with the actual record, will allow to get some better understanding of the nature of the economy in the time from 50 BCE to 150 CE, which can roughly be considered the duration of the pax romana. Due to the fact that ceramic vessels have a rather well-known origin, their movements can be traced, which hopefully allows us to abandon or adapt certain theories that have been proposed within the last decades on a quantitative basis.

The focus of my thesis will be the analysis of the data on a macro scale for the entire Mediterranean and the conceptionalisation of the modelling algorithms.

Further research interest of mine are spatial configuration of urbans systems, urban development, port infrastructures – mostly in Roman Italy – and economic and sociological approaches to archaeology.