CAncAn
Communication in Ancient Anatolia

Annick Payne

Principle Investigator 

Annick Payne, the PI of the project, is associate professor of Anatolian Studies at Ca' Foscari University. She studied Classics and Ancient Near Eastern languages at the University of London, gained her PhD at the Free University of Berlin and has since held positions at the Universities of Basel and Bern. Her primary focus for many years has been on writing systems, especially the Anatolian hieroglyphic script. Her qualification as a Hittitologist places her at an intersection of different academic fields which all contribute to the ERC project: Classics, Ancient Near Eastern Languages, Linguistics and Ancient History. She is pursuing interdisciplinary work with the neuro-sciences on processes involved in reading and writing through joint teaching courses and reading experiments. She cooperates with the Egyptological Digital Humanities project, ‘iClassifier’ at the University of Jerusalem. She is currently involved in research on the use of Artificial Intelligence, i.e. neuronal networks to the study of Ancient Writing systems. She represents the Swiss Society for Ancient Near Eastern Studies as a board member at the International Association for Assyriology, the largest scientific society of her field. She is also a member of the editorial board of the prestigious Hittitology series ‘Texte der Hethiter’. Her books include 'Hieroglpyhic Luwian. An Introduction with Original Texts' (Harrassowitz 2004; 2010; 2014), 'Hieroglyphic Luwian Texts in Translation' (SBL 2012) and 'Schrift und Schriftlichkeit. Die anatolische Hieroglyphenschrift' (Harrassowitz 2015). 

Sveva Elti di Rodeano

Postdoc

Sveva Elti di Rodeano is a historical linguistic whose primary interests focus on Ancient Anatolia and writing systems. She graduated in Linguistics at Sapienza University in 2015 with a thesis on the New Phrygian corpus. She completed her PhD at the University of Udine - Trieste in 2020, where she defended a dissertation on alphabetical scripts of first millennium Anatolia entitled “Scritture in contatto: gli alfabeti delle Anatolische (Rest)sprachen a confront”. Her research interests include socio-historical linguistics, grapholinguistics and semiotics of writing systems, language contact and multilingualism.

For the CAncAn Project, Sveva is investigating the communicative force of inscribed objects and their potential original audiences in Hieroglyphic Luwian, Lydian and Phrygian. She is undertaking the most suitable methods from Semiotic studies and categories from Narratology in order to contextualize the communication in Ancient Anatolia within the frame of interlinguistic and intercultural semiosis. 

Nathan Lovejoy

Postdoc

Nathan Lovejoy is a historian and archaeologist whose primary interest lies in Bronze and Iron Age Anatolia. He graduated from Brown University in 2016 with concentrations in Archaeology and Classics and completed his PhD at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University with a dissertation entitled "Political and Cultic Landscapes in the Northeast Mediterranean, ca. 1175-675 BCE: Institutional Change and Identity Making." Additionally, Nathan is currently acting as an Operation Director for the Turkmen-Karahöyük Archaeological Project in Konya, Turkey.

As a member of CAncAn, Nathan is investigating the use and impact of political discourse on community identity making during the Iron Age. He is examining messaging through textual sources in Hieroglyphic Luwian, Phrygian, and Lydian, but also communication in the form of visual media, like relief representations and statues, and modifications to landscapes and urban spaces that served as expressions of political power, influence, and control. As such, Nathan is applying theoretical approaches and methodologies suited for history, philology, archaeology, and art history, also drawing upon the fields of anthropology and sociology where relevant. His research aims to distinguish between expressed political identities and the many local responses to them throughout Iron Age Anatolia and in diachronic perspective. The results of Nathan's work will be considered alongside those of his team members to understand the intersection between political and religious discourse in the making of community identities, as well as the communicative force of narratives and semiotics in the context of political discourse.

Šárka Velhartická

Postdoc

Šárka Velhartická studied Languages and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East at the Free University Berlin, and Comparative Linguistics and Ethnology at Charles University in Prague (PhD 2011). Her research topics deal mainly with preclassical Anatolia, comparative linguistics, bilingualism and multilingual education. In 2015, she prepared a large project to mark one hundred years since the decipherment of the Hittite language by Bedřich Hrozný and the beginnings of Hittitology, during which she began processing the archival documents from the estate of Bedřich Hrozný, which she published extensively. Her books include Beyond All Boundaries. Anatolia in the First Millennium BC (Peeters, 2021), Audias fabulas veteres. Anatolian Studies in Honor of Jana Součková-Siegelová(Brill, 2016), Bedřich Hrozný and 100 Years of Hittitology (National Gallery in Prague, 2015), Dopisy Bedřicha Hrozného literárním osobnostem (Památník národního písemnictví Prague, 2015), Justin Václav Prášek a Bedřich Hrozný. Počátky české staroorientalistiky a klínopisného bádání (Academia, 2019), Bedřich Hrozný: Texty a přednášky (Academia, 2022) and 100 let české staroorientalistiky(LIBRI, 2021). 

For the CAncAn Project she is currently analyzing the text sources from Ancient Anatolia regarding the religious environment of the region (religious practices and artefacts, sacred spaces, deities and cult, ritual traditions and their transmission), based primarily on Lydian, Phrygian and Luwians texts. Creating a shared database will help place all this information in a cultural and historical context.

Nicolò Bordoni

PhD Student

Nicolò Bordoni is a historian of the ancient world with a particular interest in ethnography and religious-folkloric studies. He studied at the University of Bologna where he obtained his bachelor and master degree. His master thesis analyzed some ethnographic passages in Herodotus Book IV.  He is currently pursuing his PhD in Ancient Heritage Studies at Ca' Foscari.

As a member of the CAncAn team, he focuses on the analysis of classical sources dealing with ancient Anatolian peoples and their cultures, trying to detect possible narrative biases. The aim of his work is to clarify how cultural differences influenced the ways and the forms of communication, and to lead to a deeper knowledge of intercultural references and interconnections between the Greek world and Anatolia.

Gabriele Biancalani

PhD Student

Gabriele Biancalani is an archaeologist and philologist who is focused on Bronze and Iron Age Anatolia. He first graduated at the University of Florence in history and then in archaeology of the Ancient Near East with a thesis about the identification of the hilammar building in Hittite and Neo-Hittite cultures. He is a member of the Zincirli archaeological excavation. He is currently pursuing his PhD at the University of Venice under the supervision of Annick Payne.

For the CAncAn Project he is investigating the loss of importance of mountains as the internal frontier of Anatolia, looking for continuity and discontinuity in kingship and population and Anatolian influence on the Greek world. 

Isidora Freris

Research Manager

Isidora Freris is a Research Manager specialising in EU fund project management. She has a Ph.D. in chemistry (Monash University, Australia) and over twenty-five years of combined experience in academic research, technology transfer, grant writing, and industrial R&D. Her post-doctoral research fellowship undertaken at Ca' Foscari University (Italy) from 2007 to 2013 evolved into the creation of a co-founded technology-based start-up company in 2012, and an independently managed scientific editing company in 2015. In 2023, she returned to Ca’ Foscari University, joining the Research Unit within the Department of Humanities to support ERC grantees with post-award grant management and administration.