In the first phase of funding, poetic Greek texts – especially Hesiod and Arat – were studied from different perspectives. The focus was on their metapoetic reflection of agricultural and cultural resources on the one hand, and on the modern evaluation of these discourses on the other hand. In addition to agriculture, astronomy and seafaring, the central topics were the mythical narrative tradition and the mythical presentation of resources as well as the representation of mobility and migration.
The second phase focused on the analysis of the literary and rhetorical (re)construction of resource knowledge about the past in Athens in the 4th cent. B.C. Specifically, the project investigated what role real, reconstructed or fictional – that is, constructed – historical knowledge played in philosophical and political discourses about (social) concepts of order and how it was generated. At this period, Athens was engaged in an intense debate about various concepts of order and its own (imaginary) past, which is well documented in the written testimonies.
The third phase focuses on a different period and a new field of research. The two case studies deal with religion as a central resource in the Roman Imperial Period and in Late Antiquity. Religion encompasses symbolic and material aspects, forms complex infrastructures and constitutes material as well as (religious) political and intellectual discourses. The concept of religion is used in both studies in a functionalist and heuristic way at the same time: The focus is on the one hand on religious and theological tensions and differentiations between established pagan/Hellenic religious cultures and locally different Christianisation processes in the Imperial Period and in Late Antiquity, and on the other hand on the question of which ResourceComplexes religion was integrated into and how these changed over time. The spread and establishment of Christianity meant a serious paradigm shift for the people of this time, both theologically and politically; terms such as transformation or acculturation probably describe the situation better when it comes to the shaping of religious culture in everyday life. Exemplary centres in the province of Achaia as well as in the East of Asia Minor (in Case Study 1 'Oracles in Transition: Greek Oracles in the Imperial Period and Late Antiquity as a Case Study in the Period of the Imperial Period and Late Antiquity') as well as the province of Syria on the eastern edge of the Roman Empire (Case Study 2 'On the Edge of the Empire: Religious Culture(s) in the Province of Syria from the Imperial Period to Late Antiquity') are analysed in close interaction and cooperation with regard to these problem areas. The interdisciplinary cooperation between Greek Studies and Ancient History is considered particularly fruitful here. A further unifying element is the question of how the relationship between centre and periphery changed during the period and what effects the increasingly polycentric structures emerging in the Imperium Romanum had on the sphere of religion.
