News
Polonez Bis Blog
Polonez Bis supports the outreach of the projects funded within this initiative. It gives opportunity to spread the information about the research also in forms of interviews and short notes. If you want to learn briefly what we were doing last 2 years, look here to read about Eastern goddesses and social impact.
Open FAIR Data
This project uses the policy of Open FAIR Data, which means the project leader and the research associate are publishing the datasets in Zenodo repository. We link our datasets, metadata, preprints, AAMs to the OpenAIRE repository to be more visible and accessible to the others. Our research is FAIR!
End of the Project
On December 31 2024 the project Al-At. Gods People has ended. It was an amazing 2 years full of research adventure. The micro research team achieved such goals as:
- building and modelling the database with inscriptions and people (see zenodo: Dataset for the paper Goats and Goddesses, Open Archaeology )
- publish an article on the digital method appilied to the project;
- publish results on the goddess Allat and her entanglement with the desert landscape;
- research the Dura-Europos environment connected to the cult of Atargatis;
- research the presence of the women in the cult of Atargatis / Dea Syria (publication in preparation)
We also figured out how much is to do about the organisation of the worship and human management of religious life.
We are looking forward to writing a new project proposal. Stay tuned!
Paper accepted - Milestone achieved!
In the beginning of December 2024 our paper Goats and Goddesses. Digital Approach to the Religioscapes of Atargatis and Allat was accepted for publication in Open Archaeology Journal. It will appear in January 2025 in open access. This paper is a milestone of the project, it describes the database and modelling our data in the NodeGoat. It presents the main results of the project and what resulted from the data collection and visualisation. As soon it appears, we post it here! UPDATE: Please check the tab Publications for Goats and Goddesses for reading very interesting paper on the digital approach to the ancient religions!
Collaboration and dissemination with the Musée Royal de Mariemont, Belgium
In late November 2024 occurred a collaboration with the Musée Royale de Mariemont for the expertise on a Palmyrene relief acquired in 1960′ by the museum. From this knowledge transfer will be a collaborative paper in 2025!
Al-At recruited a doctoral fellow!
After a successful competition for a doctoral student fellow, the project gained in December 2023 a young expert in the Aramaic and Classical epigraphies for the data collection and management. Sebastian Mazurek, MA, from the University of Warsaw obtained a scholarship offered by Al-At project and starts working on the inscriptional material. For more see his short bio in the About Me / Team tab.
Interview (in Polish) with the PI of Al-At
Polish portal Coopernicus which promotes research of Polish scholars published an interview with Aleksandra Kubiak-Schneider about her current research and interests. The article is unfortunately in Polish without English translation.
Polonez Bis 1
The decision of the funding came in late May 2022. This project is realized within the grant Polonez Bis 1 https://polonezbis.eu/pl/ , cofunded by the National Centre of Science (NCN-Poland) with European Comission Horizon 2020 MSCA-COFUND. It got a 7th high note in the classification of the projects.
Goddess as Social Construct now on Youtube!
On March, 21th this project was presented at the Webinar series of TRAC (Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference): now available on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEnLlMlVp_c. The talk was entitled Goddess as a Social Construct.
Emile Durkheim noticed that the religions are social constructs and base on the perception of the societies.[1] This theory was later developed by Peter L. Berger in 1970’. His work “The Social Reality of Religion” became an inspiration to look at the issues of cult of the goddesses in the Near East from Hellenistic times to the edict of Constantine the Great (313 CE). His ideas such as society as a construct of man and mimetics of the reality of that socially constructed world[2] will be reflected through this talk on the issue of the worshippers of the goddess Atargatis, known also as Dea Syria. Her cult was spread in the Near East as well as beyond of this vast region presenting such features, like involvement of eunuchs, presence of women, etc. I will provide highlights on the cultic personnel, but also on the individuals who set up dedications and I will show the geography of her cult, basing on the epigraphical (inscriptions) and archaeological (temples) material. This paper is an introduction of the research on the project Al-At: People of the Gods. The worshippers of Allat and Atargatis in the Near East from the 4th c. BCE to the 4th c. CE funded by NCN MSCA grant Polonez BIS 1 at the University of Wrocław.
Bibliography:
Durkheim, E. 1912 (2008): The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Oxford.
Berger, P.L. 1973: The Social Reality of Religion, Harmondsworth.
Collaborations
The project collaborates with the Italian Archaeological Mission in Hatra: https://hatrasite.com and International (Digital) Dura-Europos Archive https://duraeuroposarchive.org/ Since Summer 2024 the PI of the Project Al-At, Aleksandra Kubiak-Schneider became officially a consultant for the epigraphic material from Dura-Europos at the IDEA Project: https://duraeuroposarchive.org/our-team/. She takes care mostly of the Aramaic inscriptions and graffiti, bringing them to the digital area and Linked Open Data within the Wikidata tools. For an example see: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q100309860
Launching the website of the project
Together with the A.net team, big thanks to Tomasz Żyliński for the layout and the logo, the official website of the project Al-At was launched. This is a place where you can be informed on the project outline, current works, achievements and you can find contact to the PI as well as pictures illustrating the researched topic.
Past events
Aleksandra Kubiak-Schneider gave a talk in December 2022 during the conference “Palmyra in Perspective” (https://projects.au.dk/palmyraportrait/events/palmyra-in-perspective ) organized by prof. Rubina Raja in Copenhagen. A part of the presentation concerned the initial research questions and hypothesis of the project Al-At, People of the Gods, making an emphasis on inscribing Palmyrene religious practices in the broader cultural context.
Press note: In Summer 2022 there was a press note published in Polish and International media on the past research on the votive dedications from Palmyra: https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/warsaw-archaeologist-solves-100-year-old-mystery-surrounding-identity-of-anonymous-god-31058 There are no direct connections to the new projects, however the study of these texts opened the way to look on the religious practices through the social and human factor.