CURRENT RESEARCH

HELLAS

UNIVERSITY OF THE AEGEAN

CHINA

HENAN UNIVERSITY

Here at SHAP, between the University of the Aegean and Henan University we are carrying out a number of research activities. Through our cooperation we have developed a unique partnership whose activities will concentrate on the sphere of Sino-Hellenic research through archaeological sciences, archaeology, history, culture, geographical sciences, and environmental sciences. 

As you will see, here we will only give a short account of our activities. If you are interested please feel free to contact us. We will post regular updates about our work and activities, and here we will also advertise and upload relevant material or our publications. 

The website, huaxiahellas, functions as the platform through which our collaboration between institutions and researchers can grow, and furthermore through which we can encourage further development of the field of Sino-Hellenic research.

Hellenistic silk road

From the 4th century BC on, the advent of Alexander the Great’s phenomenal expansion from Greek Macedonia to today’s Kazakhstan, India, Afghanistan and western China’s province of Xinjiang, was the first contact between Greeks and the people of Central Asia and China. The inevitable interaction has been shown through archaeological evidence from art, sculpture, tomb construction, jewelry, etc. This first contact caused a diffusion of ideas and a transfer of knowledge and customs. 

We are currently studying those interactions between the Hellenistic world and China in art and culture.

Sino-HEllenic Comparative Studies during the second and first millenia BC.

To explore the contacts, parallels, and emergence cultures in the Hellenic and Chinese civilization during the 2nd and 1st millennium BC. Important moments of human history with the development of new technologies and social complexities. Our research aims to put societies from these periods into parallels in order to understand the different and similar process of human development and progress.

Work in Progress

  • Comparative mythology
  • Mycenaean vs. Shang Dynasty. Two great distant cultures
  • 1st millennium BC Spiritual axis: China- Greece
  • Two Chinese students Mrs Nuan Li, from Henan University Dept of History archaeology and Culture, and Fengyuan Chen from Southwest University, China, spend one year of their PhD study in Rhodes on comparative archaeological elements between Greek and Chinese civilizations, 1st & 2nd millennium BC.

Global environment and geography

The relationship  between  individuals, society, and the environment is an ever-pressing matter whose importance cannot be understated today. Our research  explicitly explores the conditions that lead to the emergence and  disappearance of cultural events and social groups in human history in China and Greece.

Work in Progress

  • Disaster archaeology on a comparative nature between Chinese and Hellenic deluges (mythological accounts, written records, decipher legends with scientific tools).
  • The non-liner evolution of ancient cultures
  • Environmental impacts to Bronze Age cultures of Anyang (Henan, China) and Kastrouli (Phocis, Greece, see: https://kastrouli.org)

History, science and technology

In the  process of human development, science and technology played an enormous role in pulling ancient societies into new eras of success and development from the Neolithic to the Early Modern Age. We explore history of Science through archaeological, geographical, and scientific means of assessing the historic evidence..

 

ARCHAEOMETRY & SUSTAINABILITY

The application of natural sciences to material culture on a research and application level and the use of the obtained data for the development & sustainability on a regional scale

Work in Progress

  • Archaeomagnetic dating of ancient ceramics (2000- 100 BC) from Greece and Henan area
  • Ancient Auroral records from written sources and correlation with the geomagnetic pole position and geomagnetic field short term variations
  • Archaeometric analysis of pigments, ceramics, floor and habitation samples, and sediments from different cultural layers.
  • Cyber archaeology and Digital Cultural Heritage, Virtual reality