Changes Project

🌍 CHANGES at the European Researchers' Night 2026!

📅On Friday 25 September, the project took part in the European Researchers' Night in , organised by the Research and Innovation Foundation (RIF) at the Cyprus State Fair. This year marked the event's 20th anniversary in Cyprus, under the theme "CELEBRATE 2.0 – Two Decades of STEAM-Powered Inspiration".

At the Eratosthenes Centre of Excellence stand, our team showed visitors of all ages how exploring the past can help us tackle today's climate challenges. With a hands-on circuit game, visitors matched each animal to the footprint it leaves behind, the same kind of detective work archaeologists do when they read the traces left by animals, plants and people to reconstruct past environments. From there, every conversation was a chance to show how , , and satellite work together to reveal how ancient societies adapted to a changing climate.

A big thank you to everyone who stopped by, played, asked questions and shared ideas, and to RIF for twenty years of bringing science closer to society in Cyprus. 🔬

CHANGES is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.

𝗠𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮

✅Model methodological pilot site in Poland: Drewnica, Vistula Marshes

👉In accordance with WP2 and WP3 activities undertaken by JD ARCH PROSPECT and the Uniwersytet Warszawski University of Warsaw, a set of actions has been implemented to develop a detailed methodological framework for researching landscape and environmental changes in Poland. Based on the activities carried out in 2025 and the data collected, the village of Drewnica, located in the coastal part of the Vistula Marshes, has been selected as the model site.

📅From late June to early September, detailed archival research in State Archives in Gdańsk was conducted in order to extract files for further analytical work and field investigations.

➡️"Work Opportunity Day" workshops
📍Gdańsk, Poland

👉Wisłoujście Fortress is a modern Dutch-style military fortress located in Gdańsk, in the coastal area of the southern Baltic Sea, Poland. The history of the fortification dates back to the medieval period. It survived the Swedish wars, the Napoleonic wars, and the Second World War, and still exists today. Today, it is the only preserved modern fortress in the coastal area of Poland and is protected as a national monument.

✅The ERASMUS CHANGES project provided an opportunity to investigate the Eastern Sconce of the fortification geologically and to include it as a pilot study on land-use changes.
During the “Work Opportunity Day” workshops, held within the earthen embankments, spatial prospection, metal-detector surveys, and geological drilling were carried out. The site provided an excellent opportunity to exchange practices, with the participation of partners from JD ARCHPROSPECT, the University of Warsaw Uniwersytet Warszawski, and Eratosthenes Centre of Excellence

The second Work Package 4 workshop on Earth Observation and Remote Sensing took place yesterday.

Thanks to the Eratosthenes Centre of Excellence, the Institute for Mediterranean Studies - FORTH and all the partners involved.

📌Second Work Package 4 workshop on Earth Observation and Remote Sensing
📆Monday, 10 August 2026
⏱️11:00–13:00 EEST
📍online
🔗https://tinyurl.com/4awa888r

As part of the CHANGES Project, our partner, the Eratosthenes Centre of Excellence (ECoE) and the Institute for Mediterranean Studies - FORTH of the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas, organized the second Work Package 4 workshop on Earth Observation and Remote Sensing, held online on Monday, 10 August 2026 (11:00–13:00 EEST).

The workshop forms part of WP4's activity on the use of optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data for landscape studies, and serves as a direct dissemination event: its aim is to share ongoing research findings with the academic community and project stakeholders, fostering the exchange of ideas and collaboration between partner institutions. As such, it also supports capacity building and technology transfer across all academic levels, from undergraduate and graduate students to PhD candidates and faculty members involved in the consortium.

CHANGES Project: joined event of dissemination at Iuvanum and at Novae during a joined Summer School with students from Chieti, Napoli, Molise and Warsaw Universities. For a wider dissemination in hybrid mode, concerning the results of CHANGES in progress
Eratosthenes Centre of Excellence
Archeologia-uda Università Chieti

🎯We're glad to share a new publication connected to the CHANGES project: "𝘽𝙮𝙯𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙚 𝙁𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙛𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 𝙉𝙖𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙖𝙡 𝙎𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 𝙞𝙣 𝘾𝙧𝙚𝙩𝙚: 𝘼 𝙂𝙚𝙤-𝙎𝙥𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝘼𝙣𝙖𝙡𝙮𝙨𝙞𝙨," now out in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

✅The study examines three Middle Byzantine fortifications in the Kissamos region of northwest Crete (Polyrrhenia, Malathyros, and Rokka), asking how they sat within their landscape. Using GIS, remote sensing, and historical sources, the authors explore their relationship to farmland, grazing land, coastal access, and the routes that connected them, showing that these sites worked less as isolated strongholds and more as an interconnected system that balanced defense with resource management and communication.

🤝Congratulations to the authors, Konstantinos Roussos, Mahmoud Mardini, and Maria Cristina Salvi, on this contribution.
The research was carried out at the Eratosthenes Centre of Excellence under the EXCELSIOR project, and we're proud that it also acknowledges the CHANGES project and its mission of learning from the past for a better awareness of environmental and social change in antiquity.

🔗The paper will be open access soon. In the meantime, it's free to read and download for the next 50 days here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X26003822?dgcid=coauthor