The aims of the project are to provide new perspectives on the ancient economy of Palmyra, Syria, and will shed light on long-term mechanisms and developments in human societies.The project is based on data collected in the Palmyra Portrait Project (funded by the Carlsberg Foundation).
Circular economy is a regenerative economic system aiming at reducing resource input and waste to a minimum. Although cities are usually classified as “consumer cities”, most urban centres in the past relied on their own resources and were forced to manage the resources based on regional self-sufficiency. As such, they constitute perfect models of circular economies sustained throughout centuries, and Palmyra is an ideal example of a well-defined centuries-long case study of a complex circular economy. The project focuses on the analyses of primary sources revealing economic patterns in Palmyra, including coins, sculptural production, monuments, inscriptions and materials such as pottery, glass, metal and agricultural installations around the city, which also inform us about the fluctuation of the size of Palmyrene society. These resources were all reused and recycled over centuries and thus inform us about the economic patterns of the city – both regarding internal and external developments.
Through a full-quantification approach to the collected data, we can use the data proxies as indications of the economic, social and cultural evolution of the city, and pinpoint how ancient societies dealt with sustainability and resource management.Furthermore, these changes in material culture enable us to identify challenges and threats as well as opportunities generated by this economic system and to investigate them within a multi-causal formal simulation model. These methods will enable the project to generalise the findings on the circular economic systems and the mechanisms that drive them to current socio-political situations. The aims of the project will be achieved by applying methods from the humanities and high-definition methods drawn from the natural sciences and will contextualise the results within culture-historical contexts.
