Artefact Profiling
Starting in 2018, there has been an intensifying cooperation between DESY as one of the world’s leading accelerator research centres and the University of Hamburg’s Cluster of Excellence “Understanding Written Artefacts” (UWA) / Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) as the leading international centre for research on written artefacts. The cooperation draws on the huge potential of the large-scale analytical facilities at DESY offering unprecedented experimental capabilities for cultural heritage objects and the long-standing experience of UWA/CSMC to create sustainable research links bridging Humanities, Natural Sciences and Computer Sciences. While the challenge for many analytical research centres engaged in cultural heritage science is that they lack Humanities partners of matching institutionalised weight to build up a solid, broad and credible research profile beyond archaeology/archaeometry, the two partners DESY and UWA/CSMC are in a unique position to combine their complementary strengths to create additional synergies.
The cooperation is expected in particular to lead to new methodologies in material analysis and fingerprinting towards systematic approaches in provenance research that will substantially contribute to the societally most relevant debates on the provenance of cultural objects. Of particular relevance for the collaboration is also the shared interest in internationalising research beyond the standard venues in Europe and North America. For instance, DESY’s close links with synchrotron radiation research labs and research communities in the Middle East and Asia, such as SESAME in Jordan, SLRI in Thailand, SSRF/HEPS in China and at other locations perfectly match UWA/CSMC’s emphasis on working with partners across Asia and Africa.
Acknowledging the unique character and large potential of the truly cross-disciplinary collaborative research activities between DESY and UWA/CSMC, the PIER Executive Board decided in 2023 to establish artefact profiling as a PIER Emerging Topic in order to embed the various joint projects and activities in an institutional framework and give them greater visibility on campus.
