On 18 and 19 December, the members of the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS gathered at Sandbjerg Gods, near the city of Sønderborg (Denmark), for the first retreat of the cluster.

As a year has now elapsed since the official start of ROOTS, the main intention of this retreat was to foster further dialogue and generate ideas in order to strengthen innovative interdisciplinary cooperation within the cluster. All members of the cluster, and in particular the PhD candidates and the research associates who started their work in the last few months, were invited to introduce themselves and their research projects. Further presentations illustrated the research agendas of the six subclusters, the reflective turn, the three platforms and the young academy, and talks presented the progress of the projects that already started in 2019 and the planned activities for 2020 and the following years. Behind the formal presentations, participants discussed possibilities for the realisation of pilot projects integrating different disciplinary approaches, for example, by combining the study of ancient literary sources and biological studies for investigations on the emergence and spread of diseases, or by analysing cultural material products with cutting-edge equipment of material science to understand how knowledge was produced and transmitted.
Additional activities offered the opportunity for further lively exchange in a relaxed atmosphere. These included an excursion along the western shore of the Als Sund Fjord, with beautiful views of the surrounding landscape, and with a visit to the site Nydam Mose, where the Iron Age Nydam boat was found.

As we look forward to the coming years of exciting investigations on socio-environmental-cultural connectivity of past societies, we wish to you and your families a happy festivity season and a peaceful 2020!