COMPUS: Civic community and public space in the ancient Near East. The case of Hittite Anatolia at the end of the Late Bronze Age (14th-13th centuries BCE)

The project COMPUS studies the relationship between public space and political life in the ancient Near Eastern city, with the city of Hattusha, capital of the Hittite Empire, as case-study. The project uses a multi-level, computer-aided methodological toolbox to extract social meaning from ancient urban design, reconstruct the political dimension of urban space, and find out how past communities generated places of gathering, negotiation, and dissent.