ERC Advanced Grant for Jost Gippert

22 April 2021, by Webmaster

Photo: ERC

CSMC and the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’ congratulate visiting professor Jost Gippert  on the new ERC Advanced Grant for the project titled ‘The Development of Literacy in the Caucasian Territories (DeLiCaTe)’.
The development of alphabetic scripts in the context of Christianisation in the early 5th century CE meant the beginning of literacy and was a decisive step towards independent statehood for three ethnic groups in the Caucasus: Armenians, Georgians, and the so-called ‘Caucasian Albanians’. Over the last 20 years, considerable progress has been made in the analysis of the oldest written materials of the three languages preserved in palimpsest form. In a novel interdisciplinary approach, the project combines investigations into palaeography, historical linguistics, codicology, and philology, addressing, e.g., the structure of the alphabets, manuscript types and their chronological development, and the emerging literary canons, in order to gain new light on the emergence of literacy in the southern Caucasus.

The project will be placed at CSMC and we look forward to future cooperation!