01
Scholarly excellence
Fellowships, conferences, and an annual prize that reward rigorous, methodologically innovative research on the ancient Mediterranean.
Fondazione CASAM · Rome
The ancient world is not a distant past. It is a lens on our present and future.
The Center for Advanced Study of the Ancient Mediterranean is an international non-profit research institute devoted to the societies, economies and environments of the Mediterranean world — from the Bronze Age to the Early Middle Ages.
Wall mosaic with a Roman ship, depicting the port and the great Pharos (lighthouse) of Alexandria.
3,800
years of history studied — c. 3000 BCE to 800 CE
3
founding partners in Rome and Basel
€1,500
awarded each year by the CASAM Prizes
2025/26
first programmes launched
About CASAM
A platform where the humanities and the natural sciences meet
The Center for Advanced Study of the Ancient Mediterranean (CASAM) is an international non-profit research institute devoted to the study of the societies, economies, and environments of the Mediterranean world from the Bronze Age to the Early Middle Ages. Founded as a Fondazione under Italian law, CASAM provides a unique platform for interdisciplinary collaboration across the humanities and the natural sciences.
Its activities are hosted at the American Academy in Rome, Villa Falconieri in Frascati, and Villa Monastero Santa Maria in Casperia (RI), a historic site built upon the remains of a Roman villa and later transformed into a Benedictine monastery.
CASAM brings together historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, and natural scientists working in paleogenetics, paleoclimatology, isotope studies, archaeobotany, and digital modeling. This diverse community pursues joint projects, summer schools, conferences, and fellowships, with particular emphasis on training the next generation of scholars to move confidently across disciplinary boundaries.
Mission
Premodern Mediterranean history as an economic and social science
Central to CASAM's mission is the revitalization of premodern Mediterranean history as an economic and social science. Research focuses on long-term trajectories — such as fiscal regimes, demographic growth, labor organization, inequality, and state power — as well as moments of rupture, from the onset of the Roman Climate Optimum to the climatic, epidemiological, and political transformations of Late Antiquity.
CASAM treats emerging scientific archives not as supplementary, but as constitutive of historical analysis, integrating them with textual and archaeological evidence to build robust models of socio-economic change and resilience.
Research trajectories
- Fiscal regimes
- Demographic growth
- Labor organization
- Inequality
- State power
- Climate & society
- Epidemics & resilience
Three principles
What CASAM stands on
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Interdisciplinary collaboration
History integrated with the environmental and computational sciences — from paleogenetics and paleoclimatology to isotope studies and digital modeling.
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Public engagement
Research results reach wider audiences through digital platforms, publications, and partnerships with museums and cultural institutions.
A critical frontier
Artificial Intelligence and the historian's craft
CASAM engages critically with the role of Artificial Intelligence in historical research — from automated text recognition and pattern detection in large datasets to the ethical and epistemological challenges AI poses for the transparency and reproducibility of historical inference.
- Automated text recognition
- Pattern detection at scale
- Ethics & epistemology
- Transparency of inference
- Reproducibility
The arc of CASAM research
From the Bronze Age to the Early Middle Ages
Select a period to explore
c. 3000–1200 BCE
Palaces, archives, first fiscal states
Palatial economies of the eastern Mediterranean develop the first large-scale record-keeping and redistribution systems. Long-distance exchange binds the Aegean, Anatolia, the Levant and Egypt into a single connective world — the deep background of Mediterranean state power.
c. 1200–500 BCE
Collapse, reinvention, connectivity
After the Late Bronze Age collapse, Phoenician and Greek networks re-knit the sea. Colonisation, alphabetic writing and the first coinages transform exchange — laying the institutional foundations that CASAM research traces across the longue durée.
c. 500–31 BCE
Cities, empires, fiscal experiment
City-states and the Hellenistic kingdoms become laboratories of fiscal policy, monetisation and civic institutions. The fiscal regimes of the Hellenistic states are a core research focus of CASAM's community.
31 BCE–284 CE
Integration and the Roman Climate Optimum
The Mediterranean becomes one political and economic space. Demographic growth, labor organization, urban systems and agrarian production reach a premodern peak — under climatic conditions historians now read through natural archives.
284–800 CE
Climate, plague, and transformation
Climatic shifts, pandemics and political transformation remake the ancient world. CASAM studies these ruptures as tests of societal resilience — integrating paleoclimate, archaeogenetic and textual evidence.
Where we work
A network across the Mediterranean
CASAM's activities are hosted in Rome, Frascati and Casperia, with founding partners in Rome and Basel — and a research horizon that spans the entire ancient sea.
CASAM venues & partners
Heritage sites pictured on this website
CASAM venues: American Academy in Rome · Villa Falconieri, Frascati · Villa Monastero Santa Maria, Casperia (RI). Founding partners: American Academy in Rome, Sapienza University of Rome, University of Basel.
Governance & support
Founded in Rome, supported across Europe
CASAM is governed by an international steering board and supported by its founding partners — the American Academy in Rome, Sapienza University of Rome, and the University of Basel — with contributions from institutions including the Swiss Institute in Rome, the Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, the Norwegian Institute in Rome, and the École Française de Rome. With the support of Italy's Ministry of Culture, CASAM launched its first programmes in 2025/26, aspiring to become a global center for Mediterranean studies.
Founding partners
- American Academy in Rome
- Sapienza University of Rome
- University of Basel
Contributing institutions
- Swiss Institute in Rome
- Institutum Romanum Finlandiae
- Norwegian Institute in Rome
- École Française de Rome
With the support of
- Ministry of Culture — Italy
The ancient Mediterranean, reimagined.
Join an international community of scholars, students and supporters — or help sustain independent research with a gift.