With the Midterm Report of the Cluster of Excellence “ROOTS - Social, Environmental, and Cultural Connectivity in Past Societies”, we inform you about the first years of the cluster established in 2019. The Midterm Report was prepared under the special conditions of the last pandemic and thus under extraordinary circumstances, which also applies to the first years of our research. Above all, the report gives you a broad impression of the new and interesting research activities of the cluster, which have developed in many ways in our research space. The joint research on past societies is determined by excavations, laboratory work, archival studies and source interpretations. The diversity of the archives – from soil sediments to human skeletons and from architecture to written evidence – is targeted in our six subclusters. Reconstructing the ROOTS of hazards, diet, knowledge, urbanity, inequality, and conflict and conciliation took us to different areas of the world and very different laboratory depths. The joint research on connectivity started from the basic hypothesis that the degree of connectivity within and between societies, but also between societies and the environment, is crucial for the possibilities to develop resilient and sustainable structures. This is where past societies and environments provide us with a mirror for current and future developments
