Docent Joanna Töyräänvuori will start as a researcher at FIME on 1 June, following Nina Maaranen moving on to the University of Warsaw. Töyräänvuori is an Adjunct Professor (Docent) of ancient Near Eastern studies at the University of Helsinki and Adjunct Professor (Docent) of cultural history at the University of Turku. She has researched the history, cultural heritage, and literature of the ancient Near East, focusing particularly on the Late Bronze Age, when the eastern Mediterranean was dominated by an international trade and cooperation network formed by several highly developed civilizations. This era is interesting because it has left a wealth of written and material evidence, and especially because it preceded the almost complete collapse of this cooperative world order at the turn of the Bronze and Iron Ages, Töyräänvuori tells.
Töyräänvuori’s speciality is the Ugaritic language and culture. Ugarit, located on the coast of present-day Syria, was a major trading city in the late Bronze Age and experienced complete destruction when the world system collapsed, disappearing completely from the world map. A wealth of literature and pictorial sources have been found in the ruins of the city, with which Töyräänvuori examines the prospects of climate change in the everyday lives of ancient people in his research project. In particular, the variation that occurred in seals and seal impressions, which were closely related to people’s personal identities, can be observed in these and its relationship to changes in the environment. Studying the attitudes, reactions, and opinions of people in the Bronze Age gives us the opportunity to examine people’s attitudes to a changing environment, climate change and the increase in extreme weather events, she says.