For a century after the Norman Conquest of Sicily (1061-1091), the Italian island flourished. \u201cUnder the Normans, Sicily was at the height of its power,\u201d says Montclair State University Associate Professor of History Dawn Marie Hayes. \u201cThe Norman period was an incredible time \u2013 and one that produced an extraordinary culture.\u201d To this day, the Sicilian landscape is dotted with hundreds of monuments \u2013 from castles to monasteries \u2013 built during Norman rule.<\/p>\n
Hayes has recently received a nearly $50,000 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Humanities Collections and Reference Resources (HCRR) grant for her project, \u201cDocumenting the Past, Triaging the Present and Assessing the Future: A Prototype for Sicily\u2019s Norman Heritage, ca. 1061-1194.\u201d The award supports Hayes\u2019 Norman Sicily Project<\/a> \u2013 an ongoing digital archival compilation of Sicilian monuments begun by Hayes and her husband, Joe, who is a software engineer in the private sector.<\/p>\n While he will serve as the new project\u2019s chief technical architect, the University\u2019s acting Earth and Environmental Studies Chair Greg Pope is the project\u2019s co-director.<\/p>\n The one-year grant supports a pilot phase that will produce an online prototype that documents the 147 monasteries known to have been built between 1061 and 1194.\u00a0 The team will provide historical and site-specific data for all of the monasteries, as well as photographic and video documentation and relevant genealogical data for the 52 surviving structures.<\/p>\n For historian Hayes, the project has special significance. \u201cIt\u2019s important because it calls attention to a special society that was culturally rich \u2013 one where Christians, Muslims and Jews lived side-by-side in relative harmony and where a fascinating cultural fusion occurred over a century or so.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Hayes, while the project is rooted in medieval history, it also draws on 21st-Century STEM disciplines. \u201cThe Norman Sicily Project represents a society from almost a millennium ago via cutting-edge technologies that will be connected to other data sets on the web,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n It also has a sustainability component that will be guided by Pope. \u201cWe\u2019ll enter information from field visits, seismic data and, whenever possible, results from on-site sustainability assessments of the conditions of the monuments\u2019 stones and the greatest environmental threats to their survival,\u201d Hayes explains.<\/p>\n Hayes looks forward to beginning work on the project in September. \u201cWe\u2019re not just exploring these monuments as relics of a past age; we\u2019re also assessing their ability to endure climactic, geologic, seismic and \u2013 in some cases \u2013 volcanic threats.\u201d<\/p>\n