Research Area C Medical Systems (C14)
Medical Systems in Transition: The Case of the Ancient Near East
Project Leader: Stefan M. Maul, Joachim Friedrich Quack
Project Members: María Érica Couto-Ferreira, Friedhelm Hoffmann, Susanne Töpfer, Juliane Unger
In the second phase of the project, C14 focused on the specific case study provided by the topic of women’s healthcare in the Ancient Near East. Inscribed in a broader historical and epistemological frame developed during the first funding period, this topic allowed strongly transcultural perspectives based on the universalizing experience of motherhood by way of bringing together history, philology, anthropology, iconography, and art history. This trend of thought, which has been already pursued and discussed at lenght during the first phase of project C14 (formerly C1), now got deep into the pathways and frameworks of transmission, transference, and adoption and adaption of practices, images, and tropes concerning fertility, pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood within the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean setting. Within the new re-formulation of RA C as “Knowledges”, we explored common and disagreeing aetiological models concerning female physiology, women’s healthcare and patterns of medical intervention in a changing and rather flexible historical setting.