Kaper (Leiden) will study the archaeological and social aspects of the Michigan excavation. The tasks are divided as follows: Hoogendijk (Leiden, organiser of the project) and Verhoogt (Ann Arbor) will focus on the textual and material aspects of the Greek documentary papyri from the Michigan excavation in 1931-32, while Capasso and Pellé (Lecce) study the literary papyri. hosted by Leiden University (planned for fall 2019).hosted by University of Salento (19-20 March 2019).hosted by University of Michigan and Kelsey Museum, Ann Arbor (September 2017).Three plenary meetings of the project members are planned. Work on the project has officially started on Januand will last for three years. Project meeting September 2017: Visit of the papyrus collection of the University of Michigan ©Text in Context Project The project will forge a network of world-class specialists in the field of Papyrology, Archaeology and Egyptology, and develop a large-scale research project on the broader topic of the materiality of written sources from Soknopaiou Nesos. Through the study of the papyri and their archaeological context, the project aims to set the agenda for further research in the nascent field of the materiality of written sources. The Soknopaiou Nesos papyri will thus be virtually placed back into their original archaeological setting so that a fuller picture emerges of the world in which the texts were written than could ever be obtained by the study of texts and excavation documentation in isolation. The results will be integrated with the extensive site documentation assembled by the ongoing excavations by the University of Salento (Lecce). It includes the renewed study of the contents of the relevant papyri from Soknopaiou Nesos – a considerable part of the mainly Roman-era texts is still unpublished –, the renewed study of the other archaeological finds according to modern insights and with the help of new techniques, and the new study of the site’s archaeological documentation which is still kept in numerous boxes in the archives of the University of Michigan and the Kelsey Museum in Ann Arbor. Their joint research focusses on the 1931-1932 excavations by the University of Michigan. This project has brought together an international group of papyrologists and archaeologists from Leiden, Ann Arbor and Lecce.

Text context