March 2014
Vol. 2, No. 3
Welcome to The Ancient Near East Today, Vol. II, No. 3! This month, Peter Herdrich brings us up-to-date on recent international efforts to prevent looted Egyptian antiquities from reaching antiquities markets. Lorenzo Nigro describes the important Palestinian-Italian project at Jericho. Two contributions by Kamal Badrashany and Michael Toffolo reveal how different types of microarchaeology are revolutionizing our understanding of the past. Michael Press examines the unusual story of Shia Islam’s venerated Hussein. Finally, Nava Panitz-Cohen and Bethany Walker each discuss the challenges and rewards of being women in Near Eastern archaeology.
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Egyptian Ministry Signs First Ever Public-Private Partnership Agreement with International Coalition to Protect Egyptian Antiquities
By Peter Herdrich
Washington, DC – The Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities has signed a public-private partnership agreement with the U.S.-based International Coalition to Protect Egyptian Antiquities (ICPEA) to protect Egyptian cultural heritage sites and antiquities from looting and cultural racketeers.
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Tell Es-Sultan – A Pilot Project for Archaeology in Palestine
By Lorenzo Nigro
In a few weeks students and young scholars of Rome “La Sapienza” University, along with Palestinian colleagues from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, will return to Tell es-Sultan.
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Taking a Closer Look at the Past: the Microanalysis of Ceramic Artifacts in Archaeology Today
By Kamal Badreshany
When you walk across almost any Near Eastern tell, pottery sherds are likely to crunch under your feet. The enormous amount of pottery found on archaeological sites in the Near East is the result of two factors.
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Microarchaeology: Seeing More Than What Meets the Eye
By Michael B. Toffolo
If you worked on an archaeological excavation in Israel as a volunteer, at some point you probably saw people collecting dirt into little plastic vials from a blue-tagged section that were then brought to a folding table with scientific instruments and a laptop.
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Hussein’s Head and Importance of Cultural Heritage
By Michael Press
In recent years archaeologists have sounded a nearly continual warning about threats to cultural heritage, from artifacts to buildings to sites, in the Middle East. This began with Iraq and now, after the events of the Arab Spring, continues especially in Egypt and Syria.
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The Female Marshalltown
By Dr. Nava Panitz-Cohen
My name is Nava Panitz-Cohen. I have my Ph.D. from the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I have worked for some two and a half decades at field excavations such as Tel Miqne, Tel Batash, Tel Beth-Shean, and Tel Rehov in Israel and have several site reports and articles to my credit.
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Choosing Islamic Archaeology, Mentoring and Directing, and Looking to the Future
By Dr. Bethany J. Walker
When I was asked to contribute to ASOR’s blog posts celebrating women in Middle Eastern archaeology, I was honored and perplexed. My personal story is not particularly special or interesting, in my eyes.
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The Ancient Near East Today features contributions from diverse academics, a forum featuring debates of current developments from the field, and links to news and resources. The ANE Today covers the entire Near East, and each issue presents discussions ranging from the state of biblical archaeology to archaeology after the Arab Spring.
