SHARE

 
 
 
 
 

ABOUT ANNUAL MEETING

REGISTER

2024 CALL FOR MEMBER-ORGANIZED SESSIONS

2023 CALL FOR PAPERS

2023 CALL FOR POSTERS

2024 RULES FOR PARTICIPATION

HOTEL RESERVATIONS

TRAVEL INFORMATION

2023 SCHEDULES

EXHIBITORS & SPONSORS

COVID-19 INFORMATION

HONORS & AWARDS

PAST & FUTURE MEETINGS

2022 LIST OF APPROVED SESSIONS AND WORKSHOPS

Boston: November 16-19 | Virtual: October 19-23

ASOR’s 2022 Annual Meeting will, again, have both in-person and virtual components. The in-person component will take place November 16–19 in downtown Boston at the Boston Park Plaza. The virtual component will take place online from October 19-23. The sessions and workshops on this page have been approved for the 2022 Academic Program, and more will be added to this list after the Call for Member-Organized Sessions and Workshops.

ASOR Standing Sessions will be offered as part of both the in-person and online components based on the number of submissions. Member-Organized Sessions/Workshops will be offered as part of both components unless otherwise noted in parentheses.

Paper and workshop presentation proposals may be submitted per the instructions on the Call for Papers from February 15th – March 15th, 2022. The SAME paper or workshop presentation can be given as part of both the in-person and virtual components and count as 1 appearance on the Academic Program.

ASOR Standing Sessions

**ASOR Standing Sessions will be offered as part of both the in-person and virtual component

Member-Organized Sessions and Workshops Approved for the 2022 Academic Program

Member-Organized Sessions and Workshops will be offered for both the in-person (Boston) and virtual components unless otherwise noted in parentheses.

Descriptions of Sessions & Workshops

ASOR-Sponsored Sessions

Ancient Inscriptions

Session Chairs: Jessie DeGrado, University of Michigan; Madadh Richey, Brandeis University

Description: This session focuses on epigraphic material from the ancient Middle East, North Africa, and eastern Mediterranean. Proposals may include new readings of previously published inscriptions or preliminary presentations of new epigraphic discoveries, as well as submissions that situate written artifacts in their social contexts and/or engage broader theoretical questions.

Approaches to Dress and the Body

Session Chairs: Neville McFerrin, Ohio University; Josephine Verduci, University of Melbourne

Description: Traces of practices relating to dress and the body are present in many ways in the archaeological, textual, and visual records of the ancient world, from the physical remains of dressed bodies, to images depicting them, to texts describing such aspects as textile production and sumptuary customs. Previous scholarship has provided useful typological frameworks but has often viewed these objects as static trappings of status and gender. The goal of this session is to lluminate the dynamic role of dress and the body in the performance and construction of aspects of individual and social identity, and to encourage collaborative dialogue within the study of dress and the body in antiquity.

Archaeology and Biblical Studies

Session Chair: Stephen Cook, Virginia Theological Seminary

Description: This session is meant to explore the intersections between History, Archaeology, and the Judeo-Christian Bible and related texts.

Archaeology and History of Feasting and Foodways

Session Chairs: Elizabeth Arnold, Grand Valley State University; Jacob Damm, University of California

Description: The Archaeology and History of Feasting and Foodways session addresses the production, distribution, and consumption of food and drink. Insofar as foodways touch upon almost every aspect of the human experience—from agricultural technology, to economy and trade, to nutrition and cuisine, to the function of the household and its members, to religious acts of eating and worship—we welcome submissions from diverse perspectives and from the full spectrum of our field’s geography and chronology.

Archaeology of Anatolia

Session Chair: James Osborne, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago

Description: This session is concerned with current fieldwork in Anatolia, as well as the issue of connectivity in Anatolia. What, for example, were the interconnections between Anatolia and surrounding regions such as Cyprus, Transcaucasia, Mesopotamia, and Europe?

Archaeology of Arabia

Session Chairs: Charlotte Marie Cable, Michigan State University; Lesley Gregoricka, University of South Alabama

Description: This session seeks contributions covering a wide spatio-temporal swath from the Paleolithic to the present centered on the Arabian Peninsula but including neighboring areas such as the Horn of Africa, East Africa, and South Asia. Contributions might be tied to the region thematically (e.g. pastoral nomadism, domesticates, or agricultural strategies), methodologically (e.g. Landscape archaeology, or satellite imagery technologies) or through ancient contacts such as trade along the Red Sea, Persian/Arabian Gulf or Indian Ocean.

Archaeology of the Black Sea and the Caucasus

Session Chair: Lara Fabian, Albert-Ludwigs-Universitaet Freiburg

Description: This session is open to papers that concern the archaeology of the Black Sea and Eurasia.

Archaeology of the Byzantine Near East

Session Chair: Alexandra Ratzlaff, Brandeis University

Description: This session is open to papers that concern the Near East in the Byzantine period.

Archaeology of Cyprus

Session Chairs: Kevin Fisher, University of British Columbia; Catherine Kearns, University of Chicago

Description: This session focuses on current archaeological research in Cyprus from prehistory to the modern period. Topics may include reports on archaeological fieldwork and survey, artifactual studies, as well as more focused methodological or theoretical discussions. Papers that address current debates and issues are especially welcome.

Archaeology of Egypt

Session Chairs: Krystal Pierce, Brigham Young University

Description: This session is open to research on all areas related to the archaeology of Egypt, including current and past fieldwork, material culture, textual sources, religious or social aspects, international relations, art, and history.

Archaeology of Iran

Session Chairs: Kyle Gregory Olson, University of Pennsylvania

Description: This session explores the archaeology of Iran.

Archaeology of Islamic Society

Session Chairs: Ian W. N. Jones, University of California, San Diego; Tasha Vorderstrasse, University of Chicago

Description: This session explores the archaeology of Islamic society.

Archaeology of Israel

Session Chair: Boaz Gross, Israeli Institute of Archaeology and Tel Aviv University

Description: The focus of this session is on current archaeological fieldwork in Israel.

Archaeology of Jordan

Session Chairs: Marta D’Andrea, Sapienza Università di Roma; Barbara Reeves, Queen’s University

Description: This session is open to any research from any period relating to the archaeology of Jordan. The session is open to papers on recent fieldwork, synthetic analyses of multiple field seasons, as well as any area of current archaeological research focused on Jordan.

The Archaeology of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Session Chair: Jason Ur, Harvard University

Description: This session highlights research on all aspects of history and archaeology focused on the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and adjacent areas.

Archaeology of Lebanon

Session Chair: Hanan Charaf, ASOR

Description: The focus of this session is on current archaeological fieldwork in Lebanon.

Archaeology of Mesopotamia

Session Chair: Darren Ashby, University of Pennsylvania

Description: This session seeks submissions in all areas illuminated by archaeology that relate to the material, social, and religious culture, history and international relations, and texts of ancient Mesopotamia.

Archaeology of the Near East: Bronze and Iron Ages

Session Chairs: Pearce Paul Creasman, ACOR and University of Arizona; J. P. Dessel, University of Tennessee

Description: This session is open to papers that concern the Near East in the Bronze and Iron Ages.

Archaeology of the Near East: The Classical Periods

Session Chair: Michael Zimmerman, Bridgewater State University

Description: This session is open to papers that concern the Near East in the Classical periods.

Archaeology of the Southern Levant

Session Chair: Owen Chesnut, North Central Michigan College; Josh Walton, Capital University

Description: The focus of this session is on current archaeological fieldwork in the southern Levant.

Archaeology of Syria

Session Chair:  Caroline Sauvage, Loyola Marymount University; Kathryn Grossman, North Carolina State University

Description: This session is concerned with all areas of Syria that are illuminated by archaeology.
These include a discussion of recent archaeological excavations, history, religion, society, and texts.

Art Historical Approaches to the Near East

Session Chairs: Stephanie Langin-Hooper, Southern Methodist University; Leticia Rodriguez, Trinity University, Department of Classics

Description: This session welcomes submissions that present innovative analyses of any facet of Near Eastern artistic production or visual culture.

Bioarchaeology in the Near East

Session Chairs: Megan A. Perry, East Carolina University; Sarah Schrader, Leiden University

Description: This session welcomes papers that present bioarchaeological research conducted in the Near East. Papers that pose new questions and/or explore new methods are encouraged.

Career Options for ASOR Members: The Academy and Beyond

Session Chair: Emily Miller Bonney, California State University, Fullerton

Description: Applicants for tenure-track positions at universities and colleges confront diminished demand for faculty. Increasingly, junior scholars are forced to look for adjunct or temporary appointments and face the possibility of no appointment at all. This session aims to provide insights into alternative careers for both the next generation of ASOR scholars and those interested in a career change.  Each year one or two panels of four to six scholars who developed careers outside the academy will discuss their careers, answering fundamental questions in 15- to 20-minute presentations. How did they discover the job opportunities that became a meaningful career? Did they begin in the academy and leverage that experience to gain access to a different career or were they able to move from graduate school into this work? How important, if at all, was a post-doc in the choices they had?  How long did it take to get into the position where they have spent most of their professional lives? What additional training did they need? Have they been able to continue their research and/or excavation projects: that is, what was the overall impact of the career choice on their scholarship? Sessions will include time for questions and discussion.

Cultural Heritage: Preservation, Presentation, and Management

Session Chair: Kiersten Neumann, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago

Description: This session explores theory and practice in the areas of archaeological site and collections conservation, presentation, education, and management. Discussion of community-engaged projects is especially welcome.

Digital Archaeology and History

Session Chair: Tiffany Earley-Spadoni, University of Central Florida; Matthew Howland, Tel Aviv University

Description: This session will present papers that describe significant advances in or interesting applications of the digital humanities. Topics may include public digital initiatives, 3D scanning and modelling, spatial analysis (GIS and remote sensing), social network analysis, textual analysis, textual geographies, digital storytelling, data management etc. In addition to methodological topics, the session also welcomes papers that focus on broader debates in the digital humanities.

Environmental Archaeology of the Ancient Near East

Session Chairs: Brita Lorentzen, Cornell University; Elise Laugier, Rutgers University

Description: This session accepts papers that examine past human resource (flora and fauna) uses and human/environment interactions in the ancient Near East.

Gender in the Ancient Near East

Session Chair: Stephanie Lynn Budin, Near Eastern Archaeology

Description: This session pertains to on-going archaeological, art historical, and/or anthropological work and research into the construction and expression of gender in antiquity, ancient women/womanhood, masculinities (hegemonic and otherwise), Queer Theory, and the engendering of ancient objects and spaces.

History of Archaeology

Session Chair: Nassos Papalexandrou, The University of Texas at Austin, Art and Art History

Description: Papers in this session examine the history of the disciplines of biblical archaeology and Near Eastern archaeology.

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Seals, Sealing Practices, and Administration

Session Chairs: Sarah Scott, Wagner College; Oya Topçuoğlu, Northwestern University

Description: This session invites submissions touching on any aspect of glyptic studies. Papers may approach seals and sealings as object, text, and/or image, and rely on multiple strands of evidence.  Applied methodologies from a variety of disciplines are encouraged. While seals and sealings form the core subject of investigation for this session, papers that rely on a wide range of comparative objects are welcome. Glyptic-related topics covering the full geographical and chronological horizon of the ancient Near East are considered

Isotopic Investigations in the Ancient Near East and Caucasus

Session Chairs: G. Bike Yazıcıoğlu-Santamaria, University of Chicago; Maureen E. Marshall, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Description: Biogeochemical research on the human condition in the ancient past is a rapidly growing field. Isotopic investigations targeting questions about climate change, human mobility, animal trade, herding strategies, crop management, diet and subsistence, and infant-feeding practices in the broader ancient Near East have increased in number over the past decade. However, biogeochemical techniques and understandings continue to develop and be re-evaluated, necessitating venues for scholarly exchange, comparison, and discussion. The objective of this session is to encourage a dialogue among researchers conducting and using biogeochemical techniques in the region, integrating analytical methods with social and historical questions. In consecutive years the session will incorporate the results of most recent and ongoing research in the region with methodological advances in techniques and approaches, in tandem with the developing agenda of the “Archaeological Isotopes Working Group” Business Meetings.

Landscapes of Settlement in the Ancient Near East

Session Chairs: Jesse Casana, Dartmouth College; Emily Hammer, University of Pennsylvania

Description: This session brings together scholars investigating regional-scale problems of settlement history and archaeological landscapes across the ancient Near East. Research presented in the session is linked methodologically through the use of regional survey, remote sensing, and environmental studies to document ancient settlements, communication routes, field systems and other evidence of human activity that is inscribed in the landscape. Session participants are especially encouraged to offer analyses of these regional archaeological data that explore political, economic, and cultural aspects of ancient settlement systems as well as their dynamic interaction with the natural environment.

Maritime Archaeology

Session Chair: Tzveta Manolova, Université Libre de Bruxelles; Bridget Buxton, University of Rhode Island

Description: This session welcomes papers that concern marine archaeology in terms of methods, practices, and case studies in areas throughout the Near East.

Prehistoric Archaeology 

Session Chairs: Austin “Chad” Hill, University of Pennsylvania; Blair Heidkamp, University of Texas, Austin

Description: This session is open to papers that concern the prehistoric Near East, particularly in the Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Chalcolithic.

Reports on Current Excavations—ASOR Affiliated

Session Chairs: Monique Roddy, Walla Walla University; George Pierce, Brigham Young University

Description: This session is for projects with ASOR/CAP affiliation.

Reports on Current Excavations—Non-ASOR Affiliated

Session Chair: Daniel Schindler, Texas Tech University

Description: This session is for projects without ASOR/CAP affiliation.

Technology in Archaeology: Recent Work in the Archaeological Sciences

Session Chairs: Zachary Dunseth, Brown University; Nathaniel Erb-Satullo, Cranfield University

Description: This session welcomes papers that examine the issue of technology in archaeology.

Theoretical and Anthropological Approaches to the Near East

Session Chair: Darrell J. Rohl, Calvin University; Matthew Winter, University of Arizona

Description: This session welcomes papers that deal explicitly with theoretical and anthropological approaches to ancient Near Eastern and eastern Mediterranean art and archaeology.

Member-Organized Sessions and Workshops approved for the 2022 Academic Program

Member-Organized Sessions and Workshops will be offered for both the in-person (Boston) and virtual components unless otherwise noted in parentheses.

Activating “Mummy Portraits” in Museums (Workshop)

Session Chairs: Susanne Ebbinghaus, Harvard Art Museums;  Jennifer Thum, Harvard Art Museums; Georgina Rayner, Harvard Art Museum

Description: In Fall 2022, the Harvard Art Museums will present an exhibition on funerary portraits from Roman Egypt with a focus on the scientific research carried out in the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies. Funerary Portraits from Roman Egypt: Facing Forward, spurred by the museums’ involvement in the APPEAR Project, is ostensibly centered on the technical investigations of panel portraits, masks, and shrouds—yet it has also come to foreground other pressing issues relevant to all museums where such objects reside. These include questions about balancing scientific inquiry with respect for the often-unnamed deceased individuals in the portraits; how to responsibly convey their archaeological provenance and collection histories; how to do justice to their combination of cultural traits; the very use of the word “mummy” to describe their subjects; and the importance of involving community voices in discussions about their display.
This workshop is designed for curators, museum and classroom educators, conservators, scientists, and others researching, teaching, and otherwise working with “mummy portraits” to share their perspectives and strengthen our community of practice. Brief presentations offering case studies or foregrounding key issues will begin the conversation, followed by ample time to discuss challenges and best practices as a group.

The Amorites: Culture, History, and Archaeology (In-person/Boston Only)

Session Chairs: Gojko Barjamovic, Harvard University; Adam Miglio, Wheaton College

Description: Several recent monographs have reinvigorated the discussion of the Amorites. These studies are noteworthy because they approach the topic from a variety of available data, including linguistic evidence, historical sources, and material culture. This session investigates questions of “the Amorites” from the perspective of historical, linguistic, archaeological, and visual art, and invites scholars who work in the entire region between the southern Levant and Anatolia, and from the Mediterranean to Bahrain. It provides a forum for scholars from an array of specialties and aims to facilitate interdisciplinary conversations about the issues surrounding “the Amorites” in the ancient Near East.

Archaeologies of Memory

Session Chairs: Janling Fu, Harvard University; Tate Paulette, North Carolina State

Description: The concept of memory has come to play an increasingly prominent role in a diverse collection of theoretical conversations that crosscut the discipline of archaeology. From the study of mortuary remains, landscapes, and object biographies to identity, heritage, and community-based archaeology, a series of subdisciplines have built up their own discourses surrounding memory, sometimes along parallel theoretical trajectories. This three-year session seeks to bring these discussions together and establish some common ground in the study of memory in the ancient Near East. The session will explore three overlapping themes, each designed to be accessible to those working with archaeological, art historical, and/or written evidence. In the first year (2022), we will think through space, place, and the built environment. In the second year (2023), we focus on things, bodies, and assemblages. In the third year (2024), we consider events, rituals, and routines. This lengthy engagement with memory should offer ample space for exploring the complex intermingling of past and present and the many modes of remembering and forgetting. Following the sessions, a substantive volume of proceedings is projected.

For 2022, we invite papers that draw upon a variety of theoretical perspectives and case studies to consider memory through the lens of space, place, and the built environment. For example, in what ways is memory embedded within, layered onto, or otherwise entangled with the landscape? How do places incorporate and enact multiple times or temporalities? Why are boundaries, borders, interstices, and other liminal spaces potent sites of memory-making? How does the treatment of ruins in the past and present testify to the durability, persistence, or erasure of memory? In what ways is nostalgia intentionally produced and preserved through deliberate material practices, as opposed to emerging through happenstance? And how might particular spaces, places, or landscapes be haunted or animated by material memories?

Archaeology of the Near East and Video Games

Session Chair: Tine Rassalle, Independent Scholar

Description: For centuries, the written word was the preferred medium for transferring archaeological academic knowledge to the broader public. With the advent of modern communication technology like radio, TV, and the internet the possibilities to interact with the audience were broadened. Video-games have since the 1980’s been a part of this new wave of telecommunication, but they remain underrepresented as a field of study in academic scholarship. In this session, we aim to correct this by offering a multidisciplinary discussion of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of archaeology and video gaming. Archaeogaming, as it is often called, is a systematizing framework that includes the use of archaeological methods within game worlds, the creation of video-games for, or about, archaeological practices, or the critical study of how archaeology is represented in video-games. Themes can include using archaeological tools and methods to conduct archaeological investigations into synthetic worlds, exploring heritage through play, and the use and ethics of virtual reality in digital spaces. In this session, we aim to present a diverse array of topics that sit on the intersection of the archaeology of the Near East and video games, opening up debate on the multifunctionality of this medium for research, education and heritage management.

Archaeology of Petra and Nabataea (In-person/Boston Only)

Session Chairs: Cynthia Finlayson, Department of Anthropology, Brigham Young University; David F. Graf, Department of Religious Studies, University of Miami (Florida)

Description: The purpose of this session is to include projects not only at Petra, but also from throughout the vast Nabataean kingdom and beyond where ever Nabataeans were active (the Mediterranean, Yemen, and Mesopotamia). The capital city of the Nabataeans has been the focus of numerous recent international archaeological projects, including many ASOR projects: the Great Temple, the Temple of the Winged Lions, and the Byzantine Church in the past, and currently the North Ridge, the Hellenistic Petra Project, the Garden Pool and Terrace, and the Ed-Deir complex. The art and architecture of Petra continues to be the subject for art historians. The immediate environs of Petra (Wadi Musa, Baydh, Ba’aja, and Humayma) have also seen renewed interest. In addition, there are recent projects in the Nabataean regions of Saudi Arabia (French, Italian, Polish), Syria (French), the Negev (Israeli), and the Sinai and Egypt (French, American). New Nabataean inscriptions also continue to emerge that illuminate Nabataean culture. We believe the session(s) will attract a host of scholars within ASOR and beyond. Additionally, by separating an independent session on the Nabataeans away from the already existing Jordan Sessions, more scholars will be able to present in all venues.

Biblical Texts in Cultural Context (In-person/Boston Only)

Session Chairs: Kristine Henriksen Garroway, Hebrew Union College; Christine Elizabeth Palmer, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

Description: This session will focus on the biblical text within its ancient Near Eastern cultural and intellectual environment. Its aim is to provide a forum for collaboration and scholarship across disciplines that contextualizes the Bible in the broader cultural world of the ancient Near East through the three dominant themes of ritual, family, and society. We welcome contributions that utilize a variety of approaches—archaeological (material culture), philological (comparative literature), and iconographic (visual exegesis)—to explore biblical texts as cultural products and “textual artifacts” of ancient Israel Contributors are also invited to explore examples of textual description, or ekphrasis, that may offer a vantage point on relevant cultural practices and institutions attested in the ancient Near East. Year one (2020) of this multi-year session covered biblical ritual in light of ritual practices of the ancient Near East. Year two (2021) will be dedicated to family institutions and household practices, including the role of children, identity formation, and family religion. The third year (2022) will be focused on society, touching on topics of kingship and state, politics, and local economies.

Breaking New Ground in Ancient Studies: Research by Emerging Scholars (CANCELLED)

Session Chairs: Vanessa Workman, University of Pennsylvania; Steve Renette, University of British Columbia; Shira Albaz, University of Haifa and Bar-Ilan University; Owen Chesnut, North Central Michigan College

Description: The session is intended to highlight innovative scholarship from the Early Career Scholar (ECS) community in the broad fields of Ancient Near East (in-person) and the Eastern Mediterranean (virtual) Studies (2022). This unique session is open to graduate level scholars (MA/PhD) wanting to develop presentation skills, receive feedback on active research, and engage with early career and senior scholars in the ASOR community. As a component of this session, we invite presenters to participate in two virtual events prior to the annual meeting: a workshop on effectively communicating one’s research (ECS Brown Bag, Fall 2022) and a practice session with peer feedback (Fall 2022). At the time of the session, a small panel of established scholars from diverse fields will provide written feedback on style and format, intended to help Early Career scholars develop skills for communicating research to a wide audience. In this way, the session will serve as a mentoring and professionalization platform for emerging scholars in preparation for future participation in ASOR Annual Meetings and in the larger scholarly community.

Note that early career scholars are free to submit to any virtual and/or in-person session, and are encouraged to do so. This session is designed specifically to offer extra coaching for first-time presenters or those wishing for closer mentorship at the meeting.

Complexity Without Monumentality: Rethinking Nomads of the Biblical Period

Session Chairs: Erez Ben-Yosef, Tel Aviv University; Zachary Thomas, Tel Aviv University

Description: The treatment of nomads/mobile peoples in biblical archaeology and biblical scholarship has until recently been confined to a narrow range of social interpretations, most of which are heavily based on Bedouin ethnography. Accordingly, the prevailing perception of biblical-era nomads has been one of people that could not form strong political entities, and whose influence on the course of history was marginal. Recent archaeological evidence of a strong nomadic polity in the Arabah Valley calls into question the existing research paradigm, with substantial implications for archaeologically based historical reconstructions and textual issues related to mobile groups, including the sedentarization process of the Israelite tribes and the emergence of a kingdom in the highlands. This session aims at furthering discussions of biblical-era nomads as a multi-dimensional phenomenon, consisting of complex continuums of sedentarization and subsistence practices. Papers include new or revised treatments of such societies in texts and archaeology, research on nomadism in other periods and geographic locations that can contextualize the southern Levantine case, and studies related to the epistemological challenges posed by archaeological and textual sources. This session will serve as a forum for scholars seeking to move beyond the existing paradigms and dichotomies around nomads and their socio-political role in the southern Levant and wider Near Eastern world. Following the fruitful discussion in the 2021 Annual Meeting, we aim to continue exploring this topic from various angles.
2022 Theme: Alternative Forms of Complexity in Ancient Near Eastern Life

CRANE 2.0: Large-Scale Data Analysis and the Reconstruction of Human-Environment Interaction in the Ancient Near East (In-person/Boston Only)

Session Chair: Timothy Harrison, University of Toronto

Description: Advances in the Data Sciences and the rapid proliferation of digital data in Near Eastern Archaeology have created an unprecedented opportunity for collaborative research initiatives that seek to investigate complex questions such as the long-term impacts of climate change and anthropogenic activity at finely grained and localized scales of analysis. The CRANE (Computational Research on the Ancient Near East) Project is a multidisciplinary consortium of archaeologists, climate and paleo-environmental scientists, and computer scientists that endeavors to facilitate such a collaborative research environment. CRANE 1.0 focused on the Orontes Watershed, a cohesive geographical unit and region uniquely situated as a cultural microcosm of the ancient Near East, as an initial operational test case. The success of this initial partnership has positioned CRANE 2.0 to facilitate more systematic investigations of the complex interplay between human communities and their environment in the Eastern Mediterranean and broader Middle East. This session will present a series of papers on these CRANE-initiated collaborative projects and their results achieved to date, with the aim of demonstrating the analytical potential and utility of this collaborative research approach.

 

Cultural Heritage: Before, During, and After Crisis (Workshop)

Workshop Chair: Tashia Dare, Independent Scholar

Description: Cultural heritage can provide people with a sense of identity, dignity, social cohesion, and security. However, all too often that heritage is targeted for these same reasons. As heritage professionals and community members seek to protect this heritage, they frequently find themselves in danger and lacking resources. This multi-year workshop focuses on cultural heritage, heritage professionals, and local communities before, during, and after crisis situations. Two questions in particular to consider are how do we help heritage professionals and local communities be more resilient leading up to, during, and after crisis situations? And how do we empower these groups?

The second year (2022) focuses on ethical questions and responsibilities for heritage professionals before, during, and after crisis situations. The following are possible questions to be considered. In times of armed conflict what responsibilities do heritage professionals have toward affected local communities, if any? Who benefits from this assistance and in what ways (both from the perspective of the professional and the local community)? Should heritage professionals be involved in human rights issues, humanitarian crises, and/or post-conflict peace-building, reconstruction, or reconciliation efforts? Is there a moral and/or professional obligation to assist in these situations, even helping individuals and communities to not only survive but to thrive? If so, what concerns are there in doing this and how should these concerns be addressed? What challenges and questions do heritage professionals face as they work with local communities and other professionals in protecting and preserving heritage in times of crisis? How do heritage professionals engage with local communities and how do members of local communities engage with heritage professionals during and following crises situations?

Cultural Heritage, Contested Heritage: A Workshop Organized by the ASOR Cultural Heritage Committee (Virtual Only)

Session Chairs: Jane DeRose Evans, Temple University

Description:This panel, organized by the ASOR Cultural Heritage Committee, will explore the difficulties surrounding cultural heritage preservation or sites of contested heritage or uneasy heritage. The ideas of the position of the international community in the definition and meaning of World Heritage status; contemporary nationalism and cultural heritage; working with local communities; approaches to heritage in living places; and who makes the decisions about use of the sites will be addressed.

Cultures of Mobility and Borders in the Ancient Near East

Session Chairs: Eric Trinka, James Madison University; Shane M. Thompson, North Carolina Wesleyan College

Description: Studies of movement, mobility, and migration in the ancient world are becoming more numerous. Despite recent growth in some important research areas, a key methodological component remains absent from archaeological and textual studies: Few, if any, present works on mobility or movement in the ancient world integrate findings from modern mobility studies. Failure to do so has left noteworthy lacunae in researchers’ epistemologies of movement and place that require redress. The key contribution of this new session is to provide a more solid theoretical grounding for discussing the processes of human movement and contact. We assert that mobility is to movement as place is to location; social construction lies at the core of their distinction from, and relationship to, one another. Mobility does not simply occur in space. It is a constituent element of spatial production. To this end, we seek scholarly contributions that enable us to better understand ancient perceptions of emplaced-ness, movement, and general cultures of mobility in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Near East. We propose that the first three-year series will center the topics borders, bodies and cultures of mobility.

Yearly Themes
2021: Bringing Mobilities Studies to Bear in the ANE – Theoretical basis
2022: Defining and Controlling Mobile Bodies
2023: Drawing Boundaries / Disrupting Borders

Current Directions in Coroplastic Studies

Session Chairs: Nancy Serwint, Arizona State University; Casey Gipson, Arizona State University

Description: Following on the success of “Figuring Out the Figurines of the Ancient Near East” sessions at the ASOR 2009, 2010, and 2011 meetings, another multi-year session that focuses on sculpture fashioned from clay in the ancient Mediterranean will be offered. The nearly ubiquitous discovery of clay sculpture in a variety of contexts over a chronological and geographic spread has resulted in a surge of research studies that assess the terracotta sculpture from multiple perspectives. The multi-year session will focus on emergent approaches in the discipline and will be titled “Current Directions in Coroplastic Studies.” The first year’s session focused on “Methodologies in the Study of Terracotta Sculpture,”  year two was on “The Materials and Production of Terracotta Sculpture,” and the third year (2022) will be titled “Context and the Relationship with Typologies.”

The Debate over the Identification of Bethsaida-Julias (In-person/Boston Only)

Session Chair: Rami Arav, University of Nebraska at Omaha

Description: The location of the biblical site of Bethsaida was a mystery for almost two millennia. In 1987 Rami Arav excavated both contenders of Bethsaida, E-Tell and El Araj and determined, based on pottery analysis, that Bethsaida should be identified at E-Tell. Excavations at E-Tell since this period revealed a Jewish fishermen village dating from the Hasmonean period (2nd century BCE) to the 4th century CE. The excavations revealed a Hellenistic village that was upgraded to a town, surrounded by a wall. A temple was discovered at the highest place of the mound, finds in the temple indicate that the temple was dedicated to the worship of Julia/Livia the wife of Augustus as was narrated in Josephus accounts.
In the past 5 years this identification was challenged by Moti Aviam and Steven R, Notley. In an elevation of 211 meters below Sea Level remains of a settlement was found dating from the Roman period. On an elevation of 209 meters below Sea Level a church was discovered. Aviam and Notley argue that this is the site of the Biblical Bethsaida. The session will contain at least 4 speakers, two of the E-Tell expedition and two of El Araj expedition.

Defining Provenance (Workshop)

Workshop Chair: Morag M. Kersel, DePaul University

Description: In 2016 art historian Elizabeth Marlowe asked us to consider “What we talk about when we talk about provenance: A response to Chippindale and Gill”. Marlowe’s article raised significant issues regarding what we, the archaeological, art historical, and museum communities, mean by provenance, how we assess provenance, why we need provenance, and how some provenances are “better” than others. Uncovering the backstories of objects may add to their allure and enrich their stories yet complicate their legal lives. Is the current home of an object necessarily or lawfully the place where the object belongs? Heeding Marlowe’s call, participants in this workshop will illustrate the use of provenance in the archaeological, archival, collecting, legal, and museum realms. We will consider not only what provenance research is, but how it can be used as a valuable method for understanding the life and itinerary of an object, including its provenience (archaeological findspot), acquisition, and movement through time and space. Ultimately, we will consider why a concise and accepted definition of provenance matters. This proposed workshop will bring together some of the leading practitioners and/or theoreticians who direct their efforts to the complex concept of provenance.

Dialogues Across Landscapes: New Challenges to Practicing Landscape Archaeology in Western Asia

Session Chairs: Ömür Harmanşah, University of Illinois at Chicago; Claudia Glatz, University of Glasgow;  Jenni Bradbury, Bryn Mawr College; Dan Lawrence, Durham University

Description: Landscape archaeology represents an assemblage of field practices that documents and analyzes traces of the past and reconstructs human-environment relationships in a diachronic perspective. Decolonial shifts in the discipline are now beginning to bring to focus the incorporation of public and collaborative archaeologies. In this session we want to take stock and look forward: What is the state of landscape archaeology in the world of climate change, the pandemic, and the displacement of Middle Eastern communities and endangered heritage? We invite landscape archaeologists to debate the state of the discipline and to reflect on what makes Western Asian landscape archaeology unique in global landscape research. What are the challenges landscape archaeologists face in carrying out fieldwork? This session will give voice to creative and resilient landscape research carried out in Western Asia. In 2022, we will focus on the practice of landscape archaeology, the current challenges, and specifically think about resilient/adaptive practices and fieldwork as creative performance.

Digging Up Data: A Showcase of Ongoing Digital Scholarship Projects (Workshop)

Workshop Chair: Tiffany Earley-Spadoni, University of Central Florida; Leigh Anne Lieberman, The Alexandria Archive Institute/Open Context

Description: Building on the successes of Best Practices for Digital Scholarship workshops led by Sarah W. Kansa and Charles E. Jones at ASOR, this workshop will showcase the individual journeys of scholars who spent the previous year developing digital, data-driven, public-facing projects as a part of the experimental professional development program, Digging Up Data: Turning an Idea into Digital Scholarship. Their projects represent a range of methodologies and approaches that have allowed them to develop skills and practices around data literacy and digital storytelling. The workshop will focus on the process of building, storytelling for and in collaboration with multiple publics, and the practical steps needed to realize an idea in an engaging and feasible way. Participants in this workshop will benefit from the panelists’ successes and failures, have an opportunity to interrogate digital tools and methods, and be encouraged to network with other early career scholars interested in digital scholarship.

The Early Iron Age in Canaan, Israel, Judah, and Philistia (In-person/Boston Only)

Session Chairs: Jeffrey R. Chadwick, Brigham Young University; Aren M. Maeir, Bar-Ilan University

Description: The aim of this session will be to provide a forum for presentations targeted to the specific periods encompassed by the phrase “Early Iron Age” – the span between the end of LB II and the beginning of Iron Age II, including Iron IIA – in the areas of the southern Levant which are specifically identified as Israel, Judah, and Philistia. Presentations may focus on issues of archaeological research and historical geography, and a wide-ranging variety of topics may be considered within these parameters, including excavation reports with a primary focus in the Early Iron Age.

Empires of the Broader Ancient Near Eastern World: Settlement Strategies and Infrastructure (In-person/Boston Only)

Session Chairs: Petra M. Creamer, Dartmouth College; Rocco Palermo, University of Pisa

Description: Studies devoted to empires and imperialism in the ancient world have long contributed to modern scholarship regarding political, economic, and cultural organization. This session serves as a space to present research on the empires of the ancient Near East, with a focus on cross-imperial comparison and perspectives. Scholars may approach the topic from a variety of methodological and theoretical standpoints. A wide geographical and chronological extent is included in this session with the aim of facilitating a larger discussion among participants on themes of imperial landscape construction and administration, subsistence strategies, and networks of power. We invite presenters to especially consider spatio-temporal trends within their subjects, in the interest of discussing similar trajectories in imperial development.
The first year (2022) will introduce conversations on settlement strategies and infrastructure within imperial spaces, particularly looking at dynamics of landscape and population. The second year (2023) narrows this conversation into methods of subsistence and its distribution employed by the empires of the ancient Near East – including both agricultural and pastoral components. Finally, the third year (2024) will center ideas of power and control, looking at imperial mechanisms via both top-down and bottom-up approaches to understand both the immediate and lasting effects of imperial hegemony.

Ethics in Archaeological Practice (Workshop) (CANCELLED)

Workshop Chairs: Sarah Lepinski, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Sarah Kielt Costello, University of Houston–Clear Lake

Description: This workshop will explore pressing topics and issues surrounding archaeological ethics as currently practiced, particularly as they relate to the ASOR membership, and address the principles of ethics in practice and professional responsibility surrounding conduct and authority in archaeology. We are building upon a successful initial workshop, which explored topics such as creating ethical and inclusive research communities; harassment and violence in the field; provenance and display practices; ethics in the conservation and preservation of archaeological collections; practices of archaeology, heritage and faith at religious heritage sites; and the “archive-as-subject” within archaeology. This year, we seek a full range of topics relating to ethical practice in archaeology, for example: ethics and the role of excavation director; ethical relationships with local communities and cultures; ethics in digital reconstruction and data management; site preservation.

Experimental Approaches to the Ancient Near Eastern Textual Record (Virtual Only)

Session Chairs: Daniel Sánchez Muñoz – Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Assyriology) & Universidad de Granada (Musicology); Heidi Köpp-Junk – Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures, Polish Academy of Sciences; John Rogers, Swansea University

Description: While surviving texts reveal much information about technology and production in the ancient Near East, the ideological expression within any text inherently skews interpretation of lived experience towards “the official line.” Material sources (namely archaeological and visual) and Ethnography help to corroborate what texts say and are usually employed by researchers, but a further way of exploration remains untouched: experimentation.

Archaeologists typically invoke Experimental Archaeology for shedding new light on material culture, but there is still much to be gained in Philology by testing, via experimental means, the relationship between text and object. Replicating processes of production, consumption, and re-use described in the written evidence not only forms an innovative means of textual criticism beyond linguistic and philological methods but can help identify the boundaries between lived experience and ideological presentation by testing text against object and vice versa.

Therefore, this session will bring together practitioners and scholars involved with experimental approaches, broadly defined, to ancient Near Eastern texts. Examples could include approaches to color production, food, music, fabric, weaponry, etc. In doing so, the session forms a platform for sharing different approaches, identifying common aspects, and improving methodologies for re-engaging with the textual records of the ancient Near East.

Figuring Violence: Images of Terror and Terror of Images (Virtual Only)

Session Chair: Laura Battini, CNRS- Collège de France, UMR 7192

Description: The violence depicted in near-eastern images has been known since ancient times: the Assyrians have thus gone down in history as terrible bloodthirsty people. But the violence is twofold: the one represented and the one experienced by those who look at these images. This session aims to understand the message of these images in the light of new neuroscientific and psychological studies and in the precise architectural context in which they were exhibited. In the first year of the session we will study images from the third and second millennia B.C.

Fostering Dialogue Using Educational and Occupational Datasets (Workshop)

Workshop Chairs: Stacy Davidson, Johnson County Community College; Julia Troche, Missouri State University

Description: It is clear, both from an analysis of educational and occupational data as well as informal conversations, that students and professionals within the fields of Egyptology, Assyriology, Archaeology, Classics, etc. experience barriers, inequities, discrimination, and poor job prospects related to one’s identity (gender/sex, socio-economics, race, ethnicity, nationality, etc.) and/or one’s professional status (contingent/adjunct, tenure-track, R1, etc.). With the steady decline of the number of programs, professors, and positions in these fields as well as who is able to access and participate in them, an honest assessment must be carried out in order to craft models to address current challenges and create pathways for future students and scholars. Since not all fields have robust datasets to draw on, the presentation of extant data in this workshop can help us identify common issues and strategies. A primary goal for this workshop is to highlight the importance of quantifiable data analysis to better facilitate robust discussions of the state of our fields. We encourage submissions for 10 minute presentations on novel datasets from any fields represented by ASOR. These presentations will be followed by substantive conversations surrounding the contextualization and significance of these data.

Grand Challenges for Digital Research in Archaeology and Philology (Workshop) (In-Person/Boston Only)

Session Chairs: Miller C. Prosser, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago; Timothy P. Harrison, University of Toronto

Description: A “grand challenge” is an idea that is meant to generate major changes, expand boundaries, intensify research activities, and mobilize resources. This workshop provides a venue in which researchers collaborate to address a series of grand challenges in the domains of digital archaeology and philology.

Year One: Breaking out of the Table: The Grand Challenge of Digitization
Year Two: Integrating Data Sets
Year Three (2022): Analysis, Publication, Archiving, and Sustainability

Identity, Connectivity and Alterity in the Meroitic and Upper Egyptian Borderlands 

Session Chair: Jennifer Gates-Foster, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Description: Between the late fourth century B.C.E. and the fourth century C.E., Lower Nubia and Upper Egypt—while belonging alternately to competing polities—functioned effectively as a continuous borderland zone where political and cultural edges were deliberately porous, despite periods of intense military conflict. The Meroitic Empire, the successor to the Napatan Kingdom, extended its territorial claims into Lower Nubia, while Ptolemaic and later Romano-Egyptian interest in the gold mines of the region and the Red Sea resulted in episodic attempts to control the same zone.

Exchange of material objects or stylistic elements has for many years formed the basis for evaluating degrees of influence and emulation in this zone. Particular attention has been paid to the incorporation of imported objects and Egyptian elements in elite performance at Meroitic cultic and political centers, often privileging the notion of Egyptian influence on later Kushite elites. Recent decades, however, have seen an explosion of archaeological fieldwork and epigraphic study that has reoriented our understanding of this era away from questions of military control and fundamentally questioned the bipolarity of the Meroitic-Egyptian model of elite exchange.

This session aims to bring together scholars working along and across the porous and shifting boundary between Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia in the Meroitic period (late 4th c B.C.E.-4th c C.E.). In so doing, we will consider the structures and conditions that encouraged and supported the movement of ideas, objects and people between Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia considering a range of contexts, social groups and modalities.

Interdisciplinarity at SiMUR – the Shiraki International Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Project (Workshop)

Workshop Chair: Misha Elashvili, Ilia State University

Description: The Shiraki International Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research (SIMuR) project is a new NSF-funded 3-year project born from a collaboration between faculty and students at three public universities (Bridgewater State University, University of California-San Diego, and Ilia State University in Georgia) and the National Academy of Sciences of Georgia. This project is designed to explore the reasons behind depopulation of the Shiraki Plateau in eastern Georgia in the Caucasus in the Bronze Age, the site of a recently discovered early civilization. The focus of this workshop is to explore how interdisciplinary work in the fields of archaeology, geological sciences, cyber-archaeology, computer engineering, information management, and data science contribute to the answering of this important archaeological question.

Investigating Ancient Societies: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches

Session Chairs: Danielle Candelora, SUNY Cortland; Nadia Ben-Marzouk, University of Zurich; Kara Cooney – University of California, Los Angeles

Description: Investigating aspects of ancient societies is a central component in our scholarship, yet underlying assumptions that have circulated in the scholarship can drive our interpretive frameworks, resulting in skewed views of the identities, power dynamics, and practices of the communities we study. Likewise, new theoretical and methodological approaches can overturn such assumptions, resulting in paradigm shifts for the field. As such, this session seeks to create a space for challenging assumptions about, highlighting new approaches and methods to, and discussing the future direction for the study of ancient societies in southwest Asia, northeast Africa, and the broader east Mediterranean. Papers should challenge a long-standing assumption and/or incorporate a new theoretical or methodological approach that has broader implications for the study of ancient societies in general. We welcome papers from any field, time, or region, to demonstrate an assumption that you have come across in your work that has broader implications for others working on similar issues. By surveying interdisciplinary approaches to past societies, we hope to bring specialists from different regions together to explore how we can push the field in a new direction regarding how we think about and study ancient society.

Islamic Seas and Shores: Connecting the Medieval Maritime World

Session Chairs: Veronica Morriss, University of Chicago; Asa Eger, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Description: While the importance of Islamic seafaring has been historically overlooked, a new wave of research is revealing the many ways that the Islamic world was shaped by water. Outdated paradigms, such as the decline of maritime commerce following the conquest, and old tropes such as the “Arab fear of the sea” are being overturned by studies focusing on how the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean connected far-flung cultures, communities, and economies. This multi-year session will explore these connections region-by-region, to create a broader understanding of the development, expansion, and impact of Islamic maritime networks. This session aims to create a comprehensive view of the Islamic maritime world through archaeological and historical studies on seaborne trade and travel, mercantile networks, commodity production and maritime industry, as well as ports, coastal communities, and their associated hinterlands.

This session will be organized around the following the regions:
2021: The Red Sea and Western Indian Ocean
2022: The Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean
2023: The Mediterranean

The Journey to Document Minorities’ Heritage in the Maghreb

Session Chair: Emna Mizouni, Carthagina

Description: In this session we will present the urge need to document the minorities heritage across the Maghreb. We will be able to go through the process from mapping to selection then to the storage and availability to the world (academia, historians, architects, individuals…). The speakers will cover the project’s process, the observations from the field work, the importance of the community to preserve that endangered heritage and of course we will cover the historic findings. Through this session the speakers, who work on this project, will be able to raise awareness about the importance of the minorities’ heritage sites and their current situation in order to influence the work of protection and preservation. Attendees will walk out of the session with a better idea about the minorities background in the Maghreb as well as the specifics of interfaith cooperation to protect religious and ethnic minorities’ heritage. In Year Two (2023) we will present the full state of ethnic and minorities’ heritage sites across the Maghreb with shedding light on the role of local communities to help finalize the work and protect some of those sites.

Let Me Tell You a Story: Reflections on Archaeological Story-Telling (Workshop)

Workshop Chairs: Leann Pace, Wake Forest University; Emily Miller Bonney, California State University Fullerton

Description: Archaeologists, in one way or another, aim to construct a narrative about the past whether it’s a finer-grained understanding of major events attested by literary sources or a past whose unfolding can be known only from artefacts produced by otherwise unknown people. Magisterial accounts (think Arthur Evans), apparently scientific excavation reports, or the stories of human thought and action a la Ruth Tringham exemplify the diversity of how we tell those stories. This session seeks reflections on archaeological story-telling. What is/should be the role of ancient accounts in that work and what are the potential perils? Whose stories do we tell and what are the limits? How do we tell those stories in our publications and presentations in the academy? How do we use story-telling in our teaching or communicating with the broader public? What stories do we tell about our discipline(s)? What is the impact of those choices? In papers of no more than six minutes in length and using only six slides participants are invited to reflect on the issues raised by archaeological story-telling wherever it takes place and to consider doing so by focusing on a single object.

Manners, Etiquette, and Protocols in the Ancient Near East

Session Chair: Ludovico Portuese, Università degli Studi di Messina, University of Pennsylvania

Description: During the European Middle Ages and in Renaissance courts and cities, writers and intellectuals began to reflect on manners and protocol practices, leaving an abundance of precepts on conduct and socially acceptable behavior for many levels and genders of society. The ancient Near East does not provide us with written treatises of this kind that explicitly address such protocols, but an examination of textual sources, archaeological evidence, and visual artefacts may support today scholars reconstructing norms of conduct, etiquette, and protocols in ancient societies. The purpose of this session is to include textual, archaeological, and visual analyses which explore the way that correct behavior and protocols were codified and imposed in every aspect of life, at all socio-economic levels of society. Topics may include analyses of meetings – both religious and lay – gestures, postures, proxemic interactions, the choice of language, table manners, hygiene, especially concerning the practices of proper handwashing, bodily washing, facial cleanliness, and bodily purification from a religious point of view. The session also welcomes papers that focus on how etiquette and protocols become a means both for men and women to display their social status and gender roles, and papers that explore these topics beyond courtly/elite contexts.

Meaningful Copies: Virtues beyond Originality

Session Chairs: Pınar Durgun, Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin State Museums; Felipe Rojas, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Department of Egyptology and Assyriology, Brown University

Description: From the very moment humans made things, they also made successive iterations of them. And yet, in different times and places, for different reasons, copies have been valued differently—often undervalued—with respect to originals. This session aims to celebrate the power and virtues of copies in the history of ancient western Asia. Our temporal scope is vast: from prehistory to the present—from Ubaid seal impressions to 3-D printed cuneiform tablets. Rather than a critique of material iterations, we invite scholars to identify and discuss the positive affordances of copies, replicas, reproductions, and fakes. Our driving questions: What have copies done in specific times and places? Have they ever been preferred to their “originals” ? In other words, what is susceptible of being copied and what is not? What ethical responsibilities do copiers today have in reproducing the past? What can copies still do?

Methodological and Theoretical Advances in the Study of Pastoral Mobilities in the Ancient Near East

Session Chairs: Siavash Samei, The College of Wooster; Laurel A. Poolman, John Hopkins University

Description: Since the advent of agriculture, societal, political, and cultural dynamics in the Near East have been shaped by two co-evolving and mutually dependent subsistence adaptations: agriculture and pastoralism. Pastoral societies, in general, and mobile pastoralists, in particular, have been invoked as critical agents of political, cultural, and environmental change throughout Near Eastern history. Undoubtedly, pastoral societies have been profoundly influential on the development of human landscapes, cultures, and histories, but research of these groups in the ancient past has been heavily shaped by a constrained number of ethnographic models. This problem is confounded by issues of equifinality: different modes of pastoral mobility leave behind similar archaeological footprints. Recent advances in theoretical approaches, specialized archaeological techniques, and the evaluation of the visual and textual records have improved our abilities to detect diversity in past pastoral practice. It is only through interdisciplinary approaches, that combine the collective efforts of archeologists, anthropologists, and historians, that we can enrich our understanding of the influential role of these groups in the history of Southwest Asia. In this session we invite scholars from diverse disciplinary and theoretical backgrounds with the goal of updating our notions of how mobile pastoral societies shaped the longue durée of cultural and societal dynamics across the ancient Near East.

Multidisciplinary Explorations of Fifth-Millennium Economy and Society at Chalcolithic Surezha (Kurdistan Region, NE Iraq) (Workshop) (Virtual Only)

Workshop Chair: Gil J. Stein, The Oriental Institute, University of Chicago

Description: In five excavation seasons between 2013 and 2019, excavations at Surezha have investigated the 5th millennium BC roots of social complexity on the Erbil Plain in the Kurdistan region of NE Iraq. Multi-disciplinary approaches have used microarchaeology, Neutron Activation Analyses, petrography, zooarchaeology, archaeoobotany, glyptic analyses, and technological analyses of ceramics to explore our excavation data. This workshop brings together excavators and specialists who will integrate our results to develop a shared understanding of fifth millennium economic and socio-political developments at Surezha. Discussions will also identify areas of continuing debate to develop an agenda for the next phase of research at Surezha.

Museums and Social Justice

Session Chairs: Katherine Larson, Corning Museum of Glass; Caitlin Clerkin, Harvard Art Museums

Description: Public museums originated in 17th century Europe as trophies of imperialism, colonization, and proclaimed European supremacy. As such, they are monuments to white supremacist ideologies. In buttressing racist hierarchies and narratives of “Western Civilization,” museums have alienated many stakeholder communities from cultural heritage materials and from authority over the stories these materials can tell. Yet, museums retain potential as places where diverse publics can gather and access the materials of ancient cultures.

Museums have been negotiating this complex heritage for decades, but calls for museums to diversify their collections, their staff, their audiences, their stories, and their role in society are becoming louder and more frequent. The problem is clear and well defined; solutions are myriad and urgently needed. This session will explore current practices and future possibilities in museums and collections through the lens of social justice. We invite papers offering theoretical and practical perspectives on ways museums, particularly those with ancient middle eastern holdings, can reckon with their legacies to become spaces of and for equity. Potential topics could include collaboration and co-creation, accessibility, countering old and problematic narratives, integration of modern art with ancient objects, provenance, repatriation and restitution, and more.

Navigating the Indian Ocean and Its Inlets: The Red Sea in the First Millennium C.E. (CANCELLED)

Session Chairs: Valentina A. Grasso, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) – New York University; Divya Kumar-Dumas, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) – New York University

Description: The ancient kingdoms of South Arabia, Aksūm and Nubia were among the greatest civilizations of the first millennium CE. This session aims to investigate their connections with a wider Indian Ocean world by highlighting an attested exchange of goods and ideas in these regions during the first millennium CE. We will look closely at archaeological finds and epigraphic texts suggestive of contact with other distant cultures and practices. In doing so, this session aims to provide a fresh perspective on late antiquity highlighting relationships between the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, and maritime routes of the western Indian Ocean. Participants will emphasize interactions between the various cultures that populated the fluid Afro-Eurasian world of the first millennium by focusing on themes such as religion, ethnicity, slavery, trade, and mobility, without resorting to a reductive West-East dichotomy.

Network Thinking and Methods in Near Eastern Research (Workshop) (In-person/Boston Only)

Workshop Chairs: Ioana A. Dumitru, Centre for Urban Network Evolutions, Aarhus University; Christine Johnston, Western Washington University

Description: In this workshop, we will reflect on the advantages, disadvantages, and challenges of applying methods from network science to the study of Near Eastern archaeology and history. The application of formal network analysis has a lengthy history within the social, physical, and behavioral sciences (e.g. study of the internet, neural networks, animal and human social networks, etc.), however within archaeology, network thinking has been adopted at a slower rate with a marked increase in the last ten years. Foundational to formal network approaches is the acceptance of the relational perspective according to which network structure, the position of an actor or node within the network, and the relational ties that bind actors to each other have important explanatory and predictive power beyond the intrinsic attributes of actors.

This workshop minimizes formal presentations (max. 10 minutes) and encourages conversation, debate, and brainstorming on topics that may include (but are not limited to):

• The benefits, challenges, and caveats of applying formal network analysis methods to historical and archaeological research questions;
• Logistics of building networks, identifying entities, and revealing relationships;
• Case studies involving the application of network science in Near Eastern history

Over the Mountains and through the Grass: Collaborative Archaeology in the Southern Caucasus and Central Asia, Papers in Honor of Karen S. Rubinson

Session Chairs: Megan Cifarelli, Manhattanville College; Siavash Samei, College of Wooster

Description: As is well known, Karen S. Rubinson is an art historian and archaeologist who has, since the 1970s, been one of the most important and collaborative voices in the archaeology of the ancient Near East, South Caucasus, Central Asia, and beyond. In many ways, her career path and her scholarship have defied conventions of our field. Resistant to pigeon-holing, the reach of her scholarship extends to the visual and material cultures of the southern Caucasus and adjacent regions: be it at Hasanlu and Dinkha Tepe in NW Iran, the frozen tombs of Pazyryk in the Altai, or the nomadic peoples of Central Asia. Bolstered by anthropological research, her art historical eye, close attention to visual detail, interest in gender issues, and resolute championing of the sophistication of deliberately non-literate cultures across these regions have made her work critical reading in these fields. Working a region fractured by politics, Karen has worked tirelessly to bring people together across modern political and institutional borders, in part illustrating the potential complexities of ancient cultural interactions from the peaks of the Caucasus mountains to Iran and Mesopotamia to the south and west, and to the Eurasian steppes and beyond. Her support and mentorship have been critical to many in the field, a single example of which is the South Caucasus Colloquium that she has convened in New York City for many years, gathering junior and senior scholars from all disciplines working in the area to share resources and research and fieldwork and analysis, in a collaborative, informal environment.

This session invites those who have benefited from Karen’s scholarship, generosity, honesty, and support to join us in honoring her, paying tribute to her work and to her critical role as mentor and exemplar of excellence in scholarship and collaboration in action.

Palace Clan Relations in Ancient Israel: A View from the Jezreel Valley (In-person/Boston Only)

Session Chair: Omer Sergi, Tel Aviv University

Description: Recent studies have demonstrated that kinship was the dominant ideology for social interaction in the ancient Near East. In a kin-based society, political hegemony is practiced through alliances between communities in a network of patron-client relations, centered on the ruling elite, often residing in a palace. The ability to extract a portion of the clan’s agricultural surplus, to accumulate it and then to further redistribute it, served as the economic mechanism by which the palace could exercise and materialize political hegemony over lower ranked socio-political units. Ḥorvat Tevet, a small (ca. 5 ha) site in the Jezreel Valley, provides us with a rare glimpse for such socio-political structure: during the late Iron Age IIA (ninth century B.C.E.) Ḥorvat Tevet was transformed from a small rural site inhabited by a local clan (Iron Age I), to a royal estate, where agricultural products were accumulated and further distributed in the service of the Omride rule over the Jezreel Valley. The proposed session aims to explore the role of Ḥorvat Tevet as an economic mechanism by which the Omride family, from their residence in Samaria, could practice political hegemony over communities inhabiting the Jezreel Valley. By illuminating the economic aspect of political hegemony we wish to contribute to the ongoing discussion of “state formation” in the Iron Age Levant.

Perspectives on Chalcolithic Surezha (Kurdistan, Iraq) from the 2013-2019 Field Seasons (In-person/Boston Only)

Session Chair: Samuel Lee Harris, Purdue University

Description: Since 2013, excavations at Tell Surezha have provided important evidence for understanding the Late Chalcolithic period on the Erbil Plain in the Kurdistan region of NE Iraq. A range of complementary methodological approaches are allowing us to investigate the economy and socio-political organization of the site. This session brings together participants in the Surezha project and interested scholars to share ideas, data, and preliminary conclusions in order to develop an integrated view of the site and its implications for Late Chalcolithic northern Mesopotamia.

Presenting Palaces: Reconstruction and Touristic Reception of Ancient Elite Structures

Session Chair: Peter Lacovara, The Ancient Egyptian Heritage and Archaeology Fund

Description: For much of the ancient world the palatial structures represent some of the most important historical and cultural monuments, but pose problems in interpretation, reconstruction and preservation beyond those facing temples and tombs. This proposed session will bring together case studies from several regions of the ancient world Egypt, Crete and the Middle East to address how these difficulties are being addressed and the role of local communities and foreign tourism can be leveraged in a positive way to ensure their protection.

Preserving the Cultural Heritage of the Madaba Region of Jordan (Workshop)

Workshop Chairs: Douglas R. Clark, La Sierra University; Suzanne Richard, Gannon University; Andrea Polcaro, Perugia University; Marta D’Andrea, Sapienza University of Rome; Basem Mahamid, Department of Antiquities of Jordan

Description: This workshop, in its second three-year iteration, seeks to encourage collaborative presentations, panel discussions, and structured conversations focused on issues in the Madaba Region of central Jordan, as defined by the Department of Antiquities: the area between southern Amman, the eastern desert, the Wadi Mujib, and the Dead Sea. Archaeological issues—whether generically archaeological, geo-political, architectural, anthropological, ethnographic, conceptual and theoretical, cultural heritage- or community-related, technological, or museum-related—are enlarged, enriched, and enhanced when approached collaboratively in a regional context. The first three-year version of this workshop began with a view toward the entire Madaba region, then Madaba itself, then the Madaba Regional Archaeological Museum (MRAM). During this second cycle, we anticipate a more integrative approach throughout, tentatively scheduled as follows:

2022 – From a broad Madaba regional perspective, this year’s workshop will focus on archaeological excavations in the region and the emerging narrative themes excavators use to provide context and interpretive content for their projects. At present, the Madaba Regional Archaeological Museum Project (MRAMP) has proposed themes deriving from “Global History” approaches; these have been defined and, for now, embedded into the museum architectural floor plans to frame exhibits and the flow of visitors. While traditional historical/chronological (geo-political) approaches will appear in the Introductory Hall near the Burnt Palace in the Madaba Archaeological Park West (II), Global History has been proposed for the new museum itself. How, this year’s workshop asks, do regional archaeological projects envision the narrative themes best describing the cultural heritage of their sites and how might these relate to those of the proposed new museum? How can we foster a regional perspective on ancient life in and around Madaba? Is a Global History approach the best suited for this task or traditional geo-political? Or something else that would help to maintain a regional perspective?

2023 – Following on discussions from the 2022 component of this workshop, this year will carry the conversation directly into the proposed new museum. We encourage presentations on galleries, layout, displays, and themes, deriving from excavation project perspectives on the one hand and the museum’s architectural concept design and display themes on the other. In what ways might excavation teams recommend displays that reflect their site themes, while at the same time maintaining a regional approach and themes, as well as coherency and consistency, in the new museum? And how, following on the outcomes of 2022 conversations, will discussions about Global History and more traditional Geo-political/Chronological approaches inform regional and museum narrative themes?

2024 – This year’s workshop will encourage presentations and conversations on the relationship between the current (DoA) Madaba Archaeological Museum and excavation projects in the region. Thanks to generous grants from the US Department of State (Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation and the Cultural Antiquities Task Force), the current museum has been repurposed and renovated into a best-practices facility for the storage and conservation of the region’s 14,000 artifacts, in addition to a smaller but more focused and enhanced interpretive display area. What would conversations among DoA personnel and excavation teams contribute to best practices in onsite artifact handling and the storage and curation of those artifacts in Madaba? How would this more intentionally framed collaboration work? And, since the newly renovated display area maintains its former arrangement, as in the past, with each display cabinet dedicated to a site in the region, how would excavation directors and teams envision their displays and how they are organized? New labeling (artifact ID labels, cabinet site labels, interpretive cabinet panels with site summaries, maps, and timelines) has been designed by partners at the American University of Madaba and implemented by the DoA/MRAMP team.

Protecting Libyan Cultural Heritage

Session Chairs: Ahmad Emrage, University of Benghazi, ASOR Cultural Heritage Initiatives; Aida Ejroushi, Texas Tech University and ASOR Cultural Heritage Initiatives

Description: Since 2017, ASOR has partnered with Libyan colleagues to protect cultural heritage around the country, including archaeological sites, historic cities, and rare manuscripts as well as to counter and prevent the illicit trafficking of Libyan antiquities. This session provides members of the Libyan Department of Antiquities, local universities, law enforcement, and civil society organizations to present the latest results of these efforts and build greater collaboration with ASOR members with aligned goals. This session will also provide opportunities to discuss similar initiatives recently launched in other countries across North Africa and the Middle East. Regarding our session in ASOR’s 2023 Annual Meeting: we anticipate continued and increased efforts in documentation and protection of Libyan cultural heritage following new elections and the continuation of grants funded the U.S, the EU, and other foundations. These efforts will be taken by Libyan authorities, civil organizations, and local community groups. Therefore, the paper proposed for the 2023 session will very likely be including considerable updates. Moreover, ASOR’s cultural heritage initiatives plans activities to take place during this year in Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco. Undoubtedly, the results of these projects will provide an opportunity to make comparisons of the general state of the cultural heritage in countries of the Maghreb and Libya and the different methods of protection that can be adopted. We plan for these comparisons and regional conversations to be the subject of some papers that can be discussed in Chicago 2023.

Reintegrating Africa in the Ancient World (Workshop)

Workshop Chairs: Brenda J. Baker, Arizona State University; Geoff Emberling, University of Michigan

Description: The archaeology of ancient northeastern African societies has been dominated by a focus on Egyptian civilization, viewed through the lens of western heritage that separates it from Africa. This session aims to confront this colonialist legacy by emphasizing archaeology, bioarchaeology, and history of northeast Africa. Presentations will identify perspectives rooted in colonialism and structural racism that persist in scholarship of the region. Themes addressed include formation and decline of ancient African states and cities, the role of pastoralism in complex African societies, and aspects of identity and interconnections (both cultural and biological) within and beyond Africa in antiquity. The session welcomes work on a range of ancient northeast African cultures, including but not limited to Nubia (Kush), Aksum, Garamantes, and Egypt. Presentations and discussion will be organized around a specific theme each year to highlight the rich prehistory and history of ancient Sudan and northeast Africa.

Year 1: Colonial and anticolonial perspectives on ancient societies of northeast Africa
Year 2 (2022): Ancient northeast African interconnections
Year 3: African models of social complexity

This session is sponsored by the American-Sudanese Archaeological Research Center (AmSARC), a nascent organization that aims to support archaeological research in Sudan (https://amsarc.org/).

Revisiting Royal Inscriptions: Definition(s), Variations and Functions (Workshop) (Virtual Only)

Workshop Chair: MEI Hualong, Peking University

Description: Different cultures in the ancient Near East (ANE) have bequeathed us with what is usually termed “royal inscriptions”. It is often believed that they shared common features, e.g. titles, motifs, terminologies, the structure and the function. However, “royal inscriptions” from different cultures and within the same traditions can vary greatly: some may lack certain motifs (e.g. accounts of campaigns or building activities), while others can employ a “peculiar” structure. Also, the function of what is categorized as royal inscriptions in renowned research projects can be either commemorative or dedicatory. So what exactly makes an inscription a “royal inscription”? Is it the simple fact of being composed in the name of a royal figure? Or the presence of certain terms, motifs or an ideological core? To what extent were monumental scribal products inherently “royal”? Can commemorative, monumental inscriptions about public events be “non-royal” in the ANE? This session aims to revisit some basic questions about the definition and characteristics of royal inscriptions and investigate whether one can speak of an established literary tradition of royal inscriptions in various ANE cultures.

The Royal Gardens of the Mediterranean and the Ancient Near East – A New Perspective

Session Chair: Rona Shani Evyasaf, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology

Description: Gardens have been part of the human habitat from the dawn of civilization, linked to gods, stories of creation, myths, kings, and laypeople. Gardens evolved into one of the symbols of power and success of ancient rulers, the place to show their might, boldness, enterprise, and creativity. The importance given to gardens as a ruling tool is seen from the days of the Mesopotamian kings, Egyptian pharaohs, Achaemenid and Hellenistic kings, Roman and Byzantine emperors, Muslim rulers, and even up until today. Until the middle of the 20th century, most of the research on ancient gardens (royal, private, or public) was conducted by landscape/architecture/art historians. However, the development of garden archaeology in the last decades, new excavation methods, and interdisciplinary collaboration have yielded a significant amount of new information and a better understanding of ancient gardens. This session has three aims: 1) to raise awareness of the importance of gardens as a ruling tool and symbol of status and to their presence as an integral part of palaces and elite villas; 2) to present new interpretations of royal gardens; and 3) to introduce new methods in garden archaeology and evidence provided by recent or legacy excavations.

Scribal Hands and Habits in Cuneiform Texts (In-person/Boston Only)

Session Chairs: Nicholas Reid, Reformed Theological Seminary (Orlando) and ISAW, New York University; Klaus Wagensonner, Yale University

Description: With increased access to collections and ongoing digitization projects, the opportunity has arisen to embark on new primary research related to scribal hands. These observations have been largely hidden in the field of Assyriology, since textual copies were produced freehand by scholars. This great service to scholarship that moved the field forward through copies also hid other important data points, since copies are often interpretive and look like the hand of the scholar rather than the scribe. On the basis of the available evidence, scholars organized texts by provenance, personal names, dates, and topics, depending on the internal data of the texts. This approach to the vast number of cuneiform texts produced significant results, but we have not exhausted the available information, as there are other ways to consider these texts. By comparing handwriting, texts that were not able to be linked prospographically, topically, or chronologically may be linked through the handwriting of the scribe. By identifying scribal hands, much can be learned about archives, writing, literacy, and scribal arts. The session consists of papers related to various periods, that can explore scribal techniques, diagnostic features, orthography, textual division, and handwriting. These papers will seek to establish the prospects, limitations, methodological approaches, and early findings related to the study of scribal hands.

Sea of Change: Climate and Environmental Change on the Shores of the Sea of Galilee

Session Chairs: Miriam Belmaker, The University of Tulsa; Michal Artzy, Haifa University

Description: To fully understand the social landscape, we need to integrate it with the natural landscape. There is a wealth of evidence for the effects of climate change in Europe on the human sociopolitical economy; however, in Syro-Palestine, the situation is more complex. In this proposed series of ASOR sessions, we will discuss climate and environmental change in and around the Sea of Galilee throughout the past three millennia. Furthermore, we ask if changes in the natural landscape had a measurable impact on the socio-economy of the population or if the regional climatic conditions were mitigated by technological advances such as extensive trade networks and logistic infrastructures. These interdisciplinary sessions will bring together paleoecologists and environmental archaeologists specializing in a range of proxies with presenters with expertise on the social landscape to discuss the intersection of the social and natural landscape around the Sea of Galilee. The three-year sessions series will encompass three themes:
• The 2022 session will focus on the environmental landscape.
• The 2023 session will focus on the social landscape.
• The 2024 session will integrate both and focus on understanding the social landscape through the environment and climate change lens.

Secure Your Data! Security and Data Management in the Ancient Near East

Session Chairs: Jana Mynářová, Charles University, Prague; Jacob Lauinger, The Johns Hopkins University

Description: Since the earliest historical periods, when cuneiform began to be used to record economic transactions in the ancient Near East, the practice of securing information became an essential aspect of communication and bureaucracy, indispensable for the very existence of the early state. Over the next three thousand years, a sophisticated system developed that allowed state authorities to maintain the integrity of the message, to ensure its authenticity, and to limit unwanted access to the data. Exploring the ways and tools employed to secure data represents a unique and largely unexplored option to understand how the states functioned. Thousands of administrative, legal, and epistolary documents allow us to follow the process of the development of methods employed to secure data, starting in Mesopotamia in the early 3rd millennium B.C. and subsequently spreading throughout the wider regions of the ancient Near East. The main objective of the session is to introduce the topic by historically situating the emergence and development of data security to administrative and political structures in time and space (3rd–1st millennium B.C).

Sharing Palmyra in 3D (Workshop) (Virtual Only)

Workshop Chairs: Patrick M. Michel, University of Lausanne Switzerland

Description: 3D models have become common-place, but are rarely shared in a way which preserves their complexity or enables collaborative use. File size and ever-shifting proprietary software dependencies present significant barriers to the use of 3D data outside of the creator’s computing ecosystem. We build upon recent virtual reconstruction projects in Palmyra, Syria. Using new reconstructions of the Temple of Bel , Baalshamin , and Tower of Elahbel, we employ versatile multi-resolution web-viewers to present 3D data in an open, streamable, and interoperable framework which promises to make these important datasets accessible across devices and borders.

The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) has provided a foundation on which we can view, share, and annotate images. Files are reduced to small component tiles. These same capabilities are extended to 3D data using the WebGL based Three.js viewer and powerful multiresolution asset loaders like Potree. Through collaboration with the Collart-Palmyre Project, UC San Diego, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland and OpenHeritage3D, we present a system by which we can extend this new collaborative model to 3D data. This new method allows for close collaboration over great distances, and promises to innovate the field of archaeology research in Syria and beyond.

So What? Finding Meaning in Near Eastern Studies (Workshop) (CANCELLED)

Workshop Chairs: Susan Cohen, Montana State University; Marwan Kilani, Swiss National Research Foundation, Basel University; Regine Pruzsinszky, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

Description: We believe that this seemingly simple question is in fact fundamental and should lie at the very core of our work. Asking “so what?” both challenges us to explicitly define the purposes of our disciplines and provides an effective framework in which to develop innovative and widely relevant research. We welcome submissions that explore these questions:

    1. Presentations that focus on the “so what?” question from a conceptual perspective. These presentations may examine the role of this question in the context of academic publications, or explore what purpose(s) our disciplines have (or might have) in today’s societies, or discuss how the aims and goals of these disciplines have (or have not) changed since their inception.
       
    2. Presentations that present original research, novel archeological interpretations, theoretical approaches and that explicitly define and explore a “so what?” question pertaining to open questions in current ancient Near Eastern studies.
    3. Presentations that discuss the intellectual reasons that drive how and why the “so what?” questions at the basis of such studies were chosen, or why these questions are relevant.

The workshop is organized by the co-editors of BASOR; however, it is important to stress that it will not focus only on BASOR and is not meant to be restricted to people involved in the publication of the journal. Every voice is welcome, as the goal is to stimulate discussion and reflection about what we do as Ancient Near East scholars, and why we do it.

So Wicked and So Wild: Aging, Old Age, and Bodily Representation in the Ancient World and Modern Academy

Session Chair: Alison Acker Gruseke, Union Presbyterian Seminary

Description: Theorists now recognize identity, including ethnicity, age rank, and gender as “a construct and a shifting and mutable terrain” (Greenberg, 2013). And while gender, ethnicity, and now childhood have all been subjected to sustained enquiry among scholars of the ancient world, the nexus between the body and ancient discourses on aging, especially old age, has been more lightly explored. Older women, for example “like the disabled, are mostly nonexistent in records and traditionally invisible…in science, philosophy and the arts” (Juárez-Almendros, 2017), and the biblical Sarah finds her own and Abraham’s aged bodies laughable as vehicles for late-life parenthood (Gen 17–18, 21).

In the wake of the postmodern, scholars now recognize the situatedness of all kinds of knowing. Two decades after Rivkah Harris’ Gender and Aging in Mesopotamia, the panel invites papers on age, representation, and the body in the context of lived experience— of ancient societies, the modern academy, and the spaces in between.

Style and Identity in Ancient Near Eastern Art (In-person/Boston Only)

Session Chair: Elizabeth Knott, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University; Kate Justement, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University

Description: Style and stylistic analysis play a foundational role in the study of ancient Near Eastern (ANE) visual culture. Earlier approaches have built stylistically-based geographical and chronological classifications for both objects and the individuals thought to produce them. Though style has often been understood to be an indicator of culture and therefore identity, ancient Near Eastern scholars (e.g., Silvana Di Paolo, Marian Feldman, and Constance von Rüden) have shown that style is not reflective of identity in a straightforward way. Instead, artistic style can be used to explore the dynamics of craft training, social practices, political or ideological constructions, and more.

Papers in this session are asked to explore the relationship between style and identity through specific case studies, using individual artworks, groups of objects, or elements of craft practice. Papers could, for example, work to define the relationship between craft training and practice, analyze the utility of modern stylistic classifications, or explore style as a conscious/unconscious reflex as informed by existing discussions of intentionality and habitus.

Tracing Transformations in the Southern Levant – New Research in the Chronology and Archaeology of the Middle and Late Bronze Age (In-person/Boston Only)

Session Chair: Katharina Streit, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austrian Archaeological Institute

Description: This session aims to summarize and contextualize results of the ‘Tracing Transformation’ project hosted by the Austrian Academy of Sciences that explored the history and archaeology of the Late Middle and Early Late Bronze Age in the southern Levant. This critical transitional period saw the demise of the Middle Bronze Age city-states, the end of the Hyksos Empire in Egypt, and the rising interest and involvement of the Pharaohs in the Levant, culminating in the military campaigns of the Thutmosid period and leading eventually to the ›International Age‹ of the Late Bronze Age Amarna Period. Recent transregional chronological research provides a new backbone to the discussion of the material culture sequences and political history of the region. Renewed excavations at Tel Lachish provide new archaeological and chronological data and further shed light on the development of administration in this period. The workshop will examine critical developments of the period and set them in a wider context.

Trade, Entanglement, and Cultural Interconnections in the Greater Hesi Region: Interdisciplinary Approaches (In-person/Boston Only)

Session Chairs: Geoffrey E. Ludvik, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Kara Larson, University of Michigan

Description: Much recent theoretical work has emphasized the “cultural entanglement” experienced between even distant groups and regions engaged in trade and other forms of cultural exchange. Today, the cultural repercussions of such interconnectivity are an important avenue of investigation. This session explores new studies in the social significance of both intra- and interregional interaction in the Greater Hesi Region, examining the “entangled” relationships that shaped the development of the region over millennia. Located at the juncture of the northern Negev, the western Shephelah, and the eastern Coastal Plain, the Greater Hesi Region provides an ideal testing ground for analysis of socio-political, economic, and ideological interconnections from the Early Bronze Age through the Ottoman period. This session welcomes papers focused on interdisciplinary, scientific approaches to trade and cultural connectivity in the Greater Hesi Region and linked areas. We particularly invite case studies from different periods of occupation in these areas from both senior and junior scholars, emphasizing a continuation of diverse scholarship from a range of perspectives. This session likewise aims to craft interconnections between archaeological projects in and near the Hesi region to engage in critical, interdisciplinary conversations about trade and entanglement impacting the wider Southern Levant and ancient Near Eastern world.

The Transition from the Neo-Assyrian to the Neo-Babylonian Periods (In-person/Boston Only)

Session Chair: Christopher W. Jones, University of Helsinki; Jonathan Gardner, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Description: This session seeks to inspire new research into the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its replacement by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BC. While of tremendous historical importance to the history of the ancient Near East, this transition remains little-studied and poorly understood. Can we better define the nature of this transition? To what extent does the Neo-Babylonian empire represent a continuation of Assyrian administrative and ideological practices? What were the effects of this transition in the Levant and other peripheral regions of the empire? Why was the Neo-Babylonian empire able to rapidly absorb Neo-Assyrian territory in the west without extensive fragmentation? We are interested in papers examining all aspects of this transition and its effects, including papers focusing on Babylonia, Media, Elam, Syria, Egypt, the Levant, and the Aegean. We are especially interested in bridging disciplinary boundaries between Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian specialists which have heretofore inhibited historical interpretation of this period. We plan for this to be a multi-year session, with the first year (2022) focusing on Babylonia, the second (2023) focused on regions beyond Mesopotamia, and the third (2024) to better understanding the significance of social and cultural changes after the transition.

Understanding Power in the Ancient World: Approaches, Manifestations, and Responses

Session Chair: Jessica Tomkins, Wofford College; Shane M. Thompson, North Carolina Wesleyan College

Description: “Power” is referred to frequently in scholarship on the ancient Near East, but the meaning of the concept remains severely underdeveloped. Undertheorized and used heterogeneously by scholars, power is one of the most fundamental yet understudied concepts of the ancient Near East. This session brings together scholars of the ancient world to clarify different approaches and definitions used to study concepts and manifestations of power in the various subfields of the ancient Near East.

This three-year session seeks, first, to collaboratively define “power.” Subsequent years will use new approaches to this broad topic, focusing on how powerful entities exerted themselves in ways that aimed to alter the cultural fabric of society, as well as the responses and resistance to by those in lesser stations. The sessions will bring scholars of Anatolia, Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia into dialog with one another in order to synchronize our understanding of the complex mechanics of power across the ancient Near East. Topics may be broad, focusing on trends in the longue durée, or narrow, focusing on a specific locale, text, and/or time period. We will actively promote interdisciplinary discussions about the concept, use, and study of power across the ancient Near East.

Yearly Themes
2021: Approaches to Power in the Ancient Near East
This session will emphasize interdisciplinary discussions on the modern theories and methods by which scholars of the ancient world (broadly writ) can analyze power in the ancient Near East.

2022: Exerting Power in the Ancient Near East
In this session we seek papers which focus on the means by which certain entities dominate others. These strategies may be either intentioned and active, or tacit interventions to the cultural fabric of society (i.e. acts of social/religious/cultural/economic change).

2023: Resistance: Responses to Power in the Ancient Near East
In this session we seek papers which investigate how power is resisted and responded to. Papers may focus on active resistance to power, or on methods of acceptance of power.

Working with Law Enforcement and the Military to Combat Trafficking and Preserve Cultural Heritage (Workshop) (In-Person/Boston Only)

Session Chair: Catherine P. Foster, U.S. Department of State

Description: Representatives from the U.S. government will discuss the many activities, programs, and initiatives currently being undertaken to combat the trafficking in international cultural property and to preserve heritage sites and objects. Topics for discussion will include seizures and repatriations, investigations and prosecutions, private sector funding and partnerships. Participants will learn how they can contribute to these efforts and the most effective ways to work with law enforcement. Future workshops will explore the role of the military and how the U.S. government, in partnership with the private sector, preserves heritage in conflict and post-conflict situations.

Yerushalayim, Al Quds, Jerusalem: Recent Developments and Dilemmas in the Archaeological and Historical Studies from the Bronze Age to Medieval Periods (In-person/Boston Only)

Session Chairs: Yuval Gadot, Tel Aviv University; Yiftah Shalev, Israel Antiquites Authority

Description: This session will be devoted to the presentation of new archaeological and historical research related to the political, social and economic history of Jerusalem from theBronze Age to the Medieval periods. The importance of Jerusalem for the history and archaeology of the Southern Levant cannot be overestimated. For over three millennia the city has stood as a center of political, economic and religious affairs. As such it has attracted the attention and imagination of scholars across the globe and finds from the city and its region echo in the public realm. The session will present an assortment of studies relating to the most recent finds from the many excavations conducted within the city and its hinterland, focusing on several major topics in which significant contribution to the knowledge of Jerusalem’s history has been made. The 2022 planned session will be partly devoted for discussing the nature of 10th and 9th centuries Jerusalem in light of newly published data from the Ophel excavations. At the same time, we will welcome contributions by scholars working in the field or researching Jerusalem’s past.

BROWSE THE NEWS ARCHIVE