Since 2012, numerous Palmyra projects have been hosted at Aarhus University. These include the Palmyra Portrait Project (2012–2022), Archive Archaeology: Preserving and Sharing Palmyra’s Cultural Heritage through Harald Ingholt’s Digital Archives (2020–present), and Circular Economy and Urban Sustainability in Antiquity (2020–present). All projects were initiated and are directed by Professor Rubina Raja. Numerous post-doctoral scholars, PhD students, and research assistants have worked within the framework of these projects and have all contributed to many of the publications which have come out of them – research papers, monographs, and works for the general public – bearing witness to the productivity of the projects and the rich material with which the team members have concerned themselves.
Aarhus University was in many ways an appropriate place to host the projects on Palmyra, since the Danish scholar Harald Ingholt (see 3. Harald Ingholt: Life and Career of a Danish Archaeologist) worked at the university for a short while and also donated 8 objects (see 8. Harald Ingholt and the Museum of Ancient Art at Aarhus University) from Syria and Lebanon to the Museum of Ancient Art at the university in the 1950s.
The Palmyra Portrait Project has collected the most extensive corpus of Roman-period portraits from the oasis city Palmyra: almost 4,000 limestone sculptures and portraits stemming from the period of Palmyra’s highest prosperity, the first three centuries CE. These portraits tell us about the local society in Palmyra, primarily the elite families of the city and their self-representations. Most of the material comes from the funerary sphere (see 10. Palmyrene Funerary Culture), but several portraits stem from the public (see 12. Palmyrene Civic Culture) and religious (see 13. Palmyrene Religious Culture) spheres as well.
The Archive Archaeology project has tackled the legacy data (See 5. Harald Ingholt’s Legacy Data: Archive and Excavation Diaries) of Harald Ingholt, which was donated by him to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. The archive material, which includes both Ingholt’s field diaries and his personal photo archive of sculpture and portraits from Palmyra, has already been published by the project members.
The Circular Economy and Urban Sustainability project began by exploring the rich data collected within the framework of the Palmyra Portrait Project. The project explores patterns of reuse and the flow of resources through Palmyra and its hinterland. It expanded from there into detailed research on issues such as the city’s population size and food security, which are essential for understanding the ebbs and flows and the circularity of Palmyrene economy.
The three projects have entailed not only scholarly output but also documentary films, international exhibitions, and podcasts. This rich and diverse research has shown just how relevant the ancient world is to modern societies and individuals and that we can learn much by organizing, reworking, and modelling ancient data. Much of the data from the projects has already been made freely available online to enable others to use it in future research and public engagement events.
