IntranetGerwulf Schneider is a research associate of the Archaeometry Workgroup at the Institute for Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry of the FU Berlin. His research contributes to the work of Group A-III-3 “Economic Spaces: Scientific Analysis of Wheel-Made Pottery”.
Together with Dr Malgorzata Daszkiewicz (ARCHEA) Warsaw, he carries out chemical, mineralogical and technological research on ceramics. His research goal is to classify and determine the origins of ceramics, on the basis of which questions regarding the transfer of technology and the organization of production and distribution of ceramics can be discussed. The examples provided range from the Neolithic to the Modern Era.
Special Work Areas: Central Europe, Mediterranean Hellenism up to late antiquity. The Near East, the Sudan.
Kerstin P. Hofmann studied Archaeology at the Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel and at the University of Cologne. After completing her PhD in 2006 on Thanatoarchaeology and Bronze and Early Iron Age cremation burials in the Elbe-Weser-Triangle, Germany, she held a foreign exchange scholarship from the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), Department Rome. From February 2009 to October 2012 she worked as coordinator of the Cross Sectional Group V “Space and Collective Identities” within the framework of the Excellence Cluster Topoi at the German Archaeological Institute, Berlin Head Office. Now she is junior research group leader of the key topic group “identities: space and knowledge related identification” within the research group B-4 “Space – Identity – Locality”.
In this context she is conducting research on ancient discourses of identity and their study and presentation within Archaeology. The research is carried out by means of case studies (including death rituals in southeast Sicily under the influence of Greek colonies; hogbacks, i.e. stone monuments in Great Britain dating from the Viking age, which are considered as testimonies of acculturated migrants; the Bronze Age tomb Anderlingenin Northern Germany as example for heritage management and identity discourses on a regional level). Her further interests lie in the fields of burial archaeology, material culture studies, cultural change and temporality.
Svend Hansen is Direktor of the Eurasia-Department of the German Archaeological Institute and Honorary Professor for Prehistoric Archaeology at the Freie Universität.
Currently he excavates at the Neolithic settlement of mound Aruchlo/Georgia and at Pietrele in Romania, a Copper Age settlement. In research he focuses on social archaeology, the circumstances of technological innovations and on prehistoric techniques. He is member of the network “Forging Identities: The Mobility of Culture in Bronze Age Europe” of The European Commission. In Topoi Svend Hansen is working about Bronce Age depositions (Hoards).
For further projects – not related to TOPOI, see Svend Hansen in profile.
Research group A-II is dedicated to the interplay between technological and social changes and the dynamics of human-environment interaction. The focus of research is on the genesis of spatially oriented and spatially effective innovations (ceramic production, animal domestication, wagons and draft, animals, early herding, mounted nomadism) and the mechanisms of their spread. Spatial and social mobility as a consequence of certain innovations, on the one hand, and as a condition for the dissemination of innovations, on the other hand, will be the central aspect analyzed. Furthermore, the broad impacts of innovations on demographic, social, economical, climatic and spatial parameters will be investigated in different projects and sites in the Eurasian Steppe and in Central Asia.