Sanctuaries are nodes of interactions of all kinds. Humans engaged with the gods, but they did this through animals, objects, and of course each other. As centers of healing, Asklepieia attracted a wide variety of interactions and are particularly vibrant as lived spaces, on top of their role as ritual space. The Asklepieion of Pergamon is a special case in this regard. Located in a water-rich basin outside the polis, the shrine began as a place of cult centered on natural features, but soon gained momentum as a state cult through the endorsement of the Attalid kings, later to emerge as the prime point of contact between Pergamon and Empire and mirror of Rome. Meanwhile, it's function as a place of healing never ceased, as we know from the colorful stories of Aelius Aristides but also the many private votives.
The project ‘Deep-Mapping the Asklepieion of Pergamon' seeks to localize the richness and variety of personal narratives at the shrine by modeling these interactions over time. The model is built in a GIS environment in which all of the published sources are incorporated, including architecture, epigraphy, material culture, and of course literary references, allowing for a transdisciplinary analysis over time and space. This is made available to the public via an online interface (as an ESRI Story Map) through which users can see the data on the map and run simple queries of their own based on data type, location, or time frame. In a second phase, we will apply semantic modeling in combination with a 3D model that will highlight the shrine as a lived space with a kaleidoscope of intersecting memories for a wide variety of people, allowing users to recover some of the localized narratives and so experience the sanctuary themselves.
This project is supported through a grant from the Netherlands Research Council (NWO) as part of the larger project ‘Connecting the Greeks. Multi-scalar festival networks in the Hellenistic world' at the University of Groningen. The project is further supported by the DAI Istanbul, and through fellowships at the University of Uppsala and the DFG project ‘Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations' (FOR 2779) at the Max-Weber-Kolleg of the University of Erfurt.
Panel 35 - 'Digitally Enlivening Ancient Space' - A. Muller & M. Kim
| Type : | : | Résumé |
| Thématiques | : | Session 35. L'animation numérique de l'espace ancien (org. A. Müller, M. Kim). |
| Mots-Clés | : | Deepmapping ; GIS ; public engagement ; Greek sanctuary ; Asklepieion ; Pergamon |
| PDF version | : |  PDF version |
