UNEARTHING THE PAST SINCE 1900
UNEARTHING THE PAST SINCE 1900
The following Roundtable Discussions are being offered at the 2026 ASOR Annual Meeting during the brown-bag lunch hour on Thursday, November 19 from 12:55–1:55pm at the Hilton Chicago, Grand Ballroom. Space is limited and advance sign-up is required. Roundtables will be noted as “full” when all of the spaces at the table have been filled. Sign up to attend a Roundtable Discussion here.
1. Building, Training, and Taming Your Own AI Assistant: Opportunities and Challenges for Archaeological Research and Communication
2. Connecting the Codes of Hammurabi to Everyday Life: Then and Now
3. Digital Scholarship and Artificial Intelligence in Early Career Research
4. Whose Gender? Challenges and Silences in the Archaeology of Gender in Ancient West Asia
Organizer: Øystein S. LaBianca (Andrews University)
Artificial intelligence is moving quickly from novelty to necessity in archaeological research and communication, yet the field has few shared norms for using it well. This Roundtable offers an open, practical conversation on how archaeologists can build, train, and tame AI assistants for work ranging from cataloging and context linking to publication drafting, exhibit text, and public storytelling. Discussion leader Øystein S. LaBianca will anchor the session in a concrete case: his recently completed manuscript, Hidden Threads: Three Thousand Years of Life at Tall Hisban in Jordan, a narrative microhistory of five decades of excavation, written in sustained, openly disclosed collaboration with Anthropic’s Claude Fable.
Drawing on what worked, what failed, and which guardrails proved essential, participants will explore building domain-specific assistants; training them on archaeological corpora with attention to data quality and provenance; applications in analysis, writing, and outreach; ethics, including bias, transparency, authorship, and disclosure; and keeping tools collaborative, auditable, and accountable to research goals. The discussion aims to (a) surface pain points and opportunities across field, lab, and publication pipelines; (b) share starter playbooks for responsible adoption; and (c) sketch a community wish-list for AI in archaeology. It will interest dig directors, data managers, collections and publication teams, museum and outreach professionals, editors, and students seeking realistic guidance on where AI helps, where it doesn’t, and how to keep humans firmly in the loop.
Organizer: Philip Halpern (Docent at ISAC, University of Chicago)
Copious academic books, monographs and articles have been written on Hammurabi and his Code ever since his stele was uncovered by French archaeologists in Susa in 1901. Yet, how many people today who even have heard the talionic concept of “Eye for an Eye, Tooth for a Tooth” know that the expression is derived from the Hammurabi’s stele and not the bible? Why is that? One reason may be that the discovery of Hammurabi’s stele predates the bible by centuries. Another reason may be the dearth of accessible literature on ancient Mesopotamia. People like being entertained as well as being educated. While there are many novels and movies focused on Egypt, for example, few realistic and lively tales taking place in Mesopotamia are available.
King Hammurabi is one of the most fascinating historical figures who ever existed. Living nearly 4000 years ago, Hammurabi ruled Babylon as an exceptional diplomatic, military and judicially minded king for 42 years. While the prologue and epilogue of the stele promulgate copious accomplishments, the 280 codes comprising address the chaos and injustices faced by real people. People who farm, trade, soldier, and establish households, and are victims of negligence, theft and violence. Are they so different than today? I think not.
At the ASOR Roundtable, I would like to invite the audience to reflect upon how the Code of Hammurabi links the judicial pronouncements to the imagined šīmtums, or destinies, of people who faced their own chaos and injustice. I believe that this session would appeal to participants interested in how the religious, social and economic life of ancient societies influence their jurisprudence.
Organizer: Melissa Cradic (Alexandria Archive Institute/Open Context, Bade Museum of Archaeology, University at Albany-SUNY); Sarah Kansa (Open Context)
This Roundtable invites early career researchers to a guided conversation about the current landscape of digital humanities in research on the ancient Middle East, with particular focus on emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI). In this space for open reflection and sharing, we will discuss how AI has impacted research, teaching, and publishing for early career researchers, with a focus on challenges and benefits as well as creative, applied, or new approaches for these technologies in ancient studies. We will also ask participants to discuss new work being done in the digital humanities, focusing on the possibilities and pain points of entering into this ever-widening circle of practice. The forum will also provide an informal platform for scholars to introduce their individual projects and approaches, such as the process of building and troubleshooting their projects; storytelling for and in collaboration with multiple publics; and the practical steps needed to realize an idea in an engaging and feasible way. Participants will benefit from the discussion of successes and failures; have an opportunity to interrogate and critique digital tools and methods; and be encouraged to network with other early career scholars interested in digital scholarship.
Organizer: Bita Mesbah (Semnan University and Research Scholar, The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Despite growing interest in gender studies in archaeology, investigating gender in ancient West Asia, remains theoretically and methodologically challenging. A fundamental question is how gender can be interpreted through material evidence when the cultural discourses, symbolic systems, and social categories through which ancient societies understood and expressed gender remain largely unknown. Archaeological interpretations often assign gender to objects, images, and burials through modern assumptions rather than historically and culturally situated frameworks.
This roundtable aims to critically examine these challenges while emphasizing that gender studies extend beyond the study of women. Anthropomorphic figurines, representations of sexual anatomy, ambiguous gender characteristics, and the relationships between gender, ritual, and mortuary practices raise fundamental questions about the intersections of sex, gender, sexuality, embodiment, and identity.
The discussion will explore whether archaeological evidence can reveal gender diversity and alternative systems of gender classification, and how scholars might avoid imposing contemporary categories on ancient societies without overlooking the potential complexity of past identities. Particular attention will be given to silences in both the archaeological record and scholarly discourse, especially concerning ancient Iran.
Envisioned as an open, interdisciplinary exchange, this roundtable invites archaeologists, art historians, historians, gender studies scholars, to question established interpretive frameworks, share methodological concerns, and explore new approaches to studying gender in ancient West Asia.