December 2015

Resources on the Cultural Crisis in the Near East

The scale of the human crisis in Syria has expanded and now involves Europe. Damage to archaeological and heritage sites also continues at an alarming rate.

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November 2015

King Tut – What We Do and Don’t Know With Marianne Eaton-Krauss

Podcast

In this installment of the Friends of ASOR podcast, I met with Egyptologist and author, Marianne Eaton-Krauss, to discuss King Tut and her upcoming book, The Unknown Tutankhamun — available mid-December, just in time for the holiday season.

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October 2015

Experiencing Ancient Mesopotamian Music and Cuisine for the First Time

By: Kaitlynn Anderson, ASOR Digital Media Specialist

It’s rare that I get an opportunity to experience anything “ancient.” The closest I’ve come is walking the Freedom Trail in Boston, and that’s far from ancient. So, when I heard that the Harvard Semitic Museum was hosting an event on ancient Mesopotamian music and cuisine, I was all in. Not only would I get to learn about the past, I’d get to try new food and listen to music…Read More

Blast from the Past – Photo Submissions

We at ASOR want to see how things have changed — or stayed the same. In the new Blast from the Past blog feature, we’ll post photo submissions of our members throughout the years….Read More

September 2015

Introducing the Manar al-Athar Open Access Photo Archive

The Manar al-Athar open-access photo-archive (based at the University of Oxford, directed by Judith McKenzie) covers buildings and art in the areas of the former Roman empire which later came under Islamic rule (e.g. Syro-Palestine/the Levant, Egypt, and North Africa), from ca. 300 BC to the present, but especially Roman, late antique, and early Islamic art, architecture, and sacred sites. The searchable images are freely-downloadable at high resolution for teaching, research, heritage projects, and publication…Read More

King David Slept Here Thoughts about Evidence and Method in Biblical Archaeology

By: Michael Press

In 1942, Warner Bros. Pictures released the film George Washington Slept Here. Based on a play by the famous team of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, its title alludes to the signs on buildings proudly proclaiming that a famous historical figure (Washington, Napoleon) stayed the night. The movie stars Jack Benny and Ann Sheridan as a married couple: Ann Sheridan buys an old colonial house – without her husband’s knowledge – because it is believed that George Washington once spent the night in the house…Read More

August 2015

They Were Not Mainly “Peasants” Towards an Alternative View of Village Life in Greco-Roman Palestine and Egypt

By: Sharon Lea Mattila

It has been very common for the vast majority of the people in the Greco-Roman world, with the exception of those who lived in the élite urban spheres, to be depicted as a homogeneous mass of “peasants”—members of subsistence-oriented, self-provisioning “peasant family farms,” living in tradition-bound, autarchic village communities, at slightly above subsistence after rents and taxes were paid. Market exchange, according to this received wisdom, was at best peripheral and indeed inimical to this “peasant” mode of existence. Instead, barter was supposedly the predominant and preferred means by which “peasants” exchanged their produce for the few necessities that they themselves could not produce…Read More

News from the Field: CAP visits Israel, Jordan, and Cyprus

“Let’s leave at 4:00 am,” Matt said, in a way-too-cheerful tone of voice. We groaned. Eventually, we talked Matt into 4:30. The “we” here is me, Susan Ackerman, the ASOR President, Tom Levy, the Chair of ASOR’s Committee on Archaeological Research and Policy (CAP), and Alina Levy, Tom’s wife. “Matt” is Matthew J. Adams, the Dorot Director of the W. F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research. The occasion was Day 3 of the three-week tour Tom, Alina, and I made in July to visit ASOR’s three affiliated Overseas Research Centers (the Albright in Jerusalem, the American Center for Oriental Research, in Amman, and the Cyprus-American Archaeological Research Institute, in Nicosia) and to visit archaeological excavations in Israel, Jordan, and Cyprus, especially excavations affiliated with CAP…Read More

Preservation and Community Engagement at Umm el-Jimal in 2014 A retrospective of the presentation made in Session 1D at ASOR’s 2014 Annual Meetings in San Diego

By: Bert de Vries, UJP Director, Calvin College

In 2007 the Umm el-Jimal Project (UJP) made a thematic shift away from stress on academic archaeological research to site management with twin foci, preservation and community engagement. Site preservation on the ground was complemented with the virtual kind, digital documentation and archiving of information on the internet. The new visibility of Umm el-Jimal in virtual reality opened new opportunities and directions in site preservation, especially the engagement of the modern community in that process. For we became convinced that all the preservation one could manage to do would be dead-ended as long as the modern community remained disengaged…Read More

History of Conservation in Kaman-Kalehöyük, Turkey

By: Alice Boccia Paterakis

Kaman-Kalehöyük is a rural settlement along the ancient Silk Road trade route dating from the Bronze Age (2300 BCE) through the Ottoman Empire. The site is located 100 km southeast of Ankara and 3 km east of Kaman (Figure 1). Excavation has been conducted annually by the Japanese Institute of Anatolian Archaeology (JIAA) of the Middle Eastern Culture Center in Japan (MECCJ) since 1986. One of the objectives of the excavation at Kaman-Kalehöyük has been to construct a cultural chronology of the site. Cultural levels have been traced through the second millenium BCE from the Assyrian Colony Period, the Old Hittite Kingdom, and the Hittite Empire Period…Read More

Different Faces of Gender in the Marlik Cemetery (Northern Iran)

By: Sepideh Saeedi

Embracing the embodiment and performance of gender, partially portrayed in the tangible archaeological data, provides an opportunity in order to make gender visible and to illustrate some details of all genders’ lives in the past. The mortuary rituals are the objective representations of the individuals in the past and ultimately reside in the consciousness of the living members of the society. The quality of a burial represents how the buried individual was perceived among the community members…Read More

July 2015

Syrian Heritage Initiative Volunteers

The ASOR Syrian Heritage Initiatives has 13 volunteers who support our project in a variety of ways. These volunteers come from all walks of life and have interests ranging from archaeology, conservation, geographic information systems, anthropology, classical studies, Middle East history, international relations, political science, as well as many more diverse fields…Read More

What’s in Your Dig Bag, James R. Strange?

In our “What’s in your dig bag?” series, we asked working field archaeologists what they carry with them out in the field. We wanted to know what gear they love and what items might be unique to them…Read More

June 2015

What’s in your dig bag, Morag Kersel?

In our “What’s in your dig bag?” series, we asked working field archaeologists what they carry with them out in the field. We wanted to know what gear they love and what items might be unique to them…Read More

Where are ASOR members?

[INFOGRAPHIC]

Kaitlynn Anderson, our ASOR Digital Media Specialist, just put together a fascinating graphic that shows where our ASOR members are and just how international ASOR’s membership has become! While the majority of ASOR’s membership is in the United States (1264), ASOR members can be found in 38 other countries as well!…Read More

What’s in your dig bag, Norma Franklin?

In our “What’s in your dig bag?” series, we asked working field archaeologists what they carry with them out in the field. We wanted to know what gear they love and what items might be unique to them…Read More

Reckoning With David In Scholarship and Media

By: Zachary Thomas, Department of Ancient History, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

Oh how the mighty had fallen! As our college Juan Manuel Tebes recently described here on the ASOR blog, the too-and-fro over the historicity of David and Solomon’s kingdom may recently have begun to tip just that much back towards a positive historical reconstruction of our biblical description of the United Monarchy. Of course there are not a few scholars out there, such as Amihai Mazar, Thomas Levy and Baruch Halpern, who would probably say that David and Solomon never went away…Read More

Studies on Revealing the Mystery of the Urartian Red Polished Pottery

By: Dr. Atilla Batmaz

To learn how the production chain of the Urartian pottery was, Dr. Atilla Batmaz and his team carry on studies on an experimental scale in the Bardakçı Village of Van (Eastern Turkey).In 2014, they began experiments about how the Urartian red polished pottery might have been made together with a potter, Osman Eşme, in the Bardakçı Village of Van, which is famous for pottery making. As the knowledge of the technology and production of this type of pottery was limited, they decided to make such an experimental archaeology study...Read More

May 2015

Rediscovery with Reflectance Transformation Imaging – Annual Meeting Poster

[VIDEO]

During the Projects on Parade Poster Session at the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting, Brown University Ph.D. student, Jennifer Thum, was busy discussing her poster with the many interested attendees. Her poster, “A Rediscovery with RTI: Reading an Old Kingdom Relief in the Haffenreffer Museum, Brown University,” covered her research and the origin of an overlooked limestone block at the Haffenreffer Museum storage facility in Bristol, Rhode Island. Take a look at Thum’s poster, as she describes her work in this short video...Read More

What’s in your dig bag, Samantha Lindgren?

In our “What’s in your dig bag?” series, we asked working field archaeologists what they carry with them out in the field. We wanted to know what gear they love and what items might be unique to them...Read More

From the Nile to the Desert and Back

[VIDEO]

At the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting, Darlene Brookes Hedstrom, of Wittenberg University, met with ASORtv to present her paper, “From the Nile to the Desert and Back: Writing a New History of Egyptian Monastic Site Formation.” She first presented her paper for the crowd at the Archaeology of Monasticism session on Friday…Read More

What’s in your dig bag, Yorke Rowan?

In our “What’s in your dig bag?” series, we asked working field archaeologists what they carry with them out in the field. We wanted to know what gear they love and what items might be unique to them...Read More

Mini-Alexandrias or Local Continuity?

[VIDEO]

Anyone who has ever been to a conference knows how difficult it can be to eat, let alone fit in all the things you want to do. That’s why we at ASOR are so grateful to all of the volunteers who took time during the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting to meet with ASORtv as part of one of our open access projects…Read More

Radiocarbon Dating the Fourth and Third Millennia BCE in Iran

[VIDEO]

At the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting, Cameron A. Petrie of the University of Cambridge, volunteered to present his paper for ASORtv. “Radiocarbon Dating the Fourth and Third Millennia BCE in Iran: Lessons Learned from the ARCANE Project,” was the third presentation during the Archaeology of Iran I session on Saturday morning…Read More

What’s in your dig bag, Mark Schuler?

In our “What’s in your dig bag?” series, we asked working field archaeologists what they carry with them out in the field. We wanted to know what gear they love and what items might be unique to them...Read More

April 2015

What’s in your dig bag, Jeff Blakely?

In our “What’s in your dig bag?” series, we asked working field archaeologists what they carry with them out in the field. We wanted to know what gear they love and what items might be unique to them...Read More

Setting the Archaeo-Chemical Record Straight Regarding Tyrian Purple Pigments and Dyes

[VIDEO]

Prior to the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting, I never would have thought someone could make snails interesting, but that is exactly what Professor Zvi C. Koren did. His paper, “Setting the Archaeo-Chemical Record Straight Regarding Tyrian Purple Pigments and Dyes,” was engaging, entertaining, informative, and full of snails…Read More

What’s in your dig bag, Aren Maeir?

In our “What’s in your dig bag?” series, we asked working field archaeologists what they carry with them out in the field. We wanted to know what gear they love and what items might be unique to them...Read More

Green Pigments: Exploring Changes in the Egyptian Pigment Palette

[VIDEO]

At the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting, the Pigments, Paints, and Polychromies in the Ancient Near Eastern Context session was jam packed with a lot of wonderful presentations. Caroline Roberts (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), Joanne Dyer (The British Museum), and Anna Serotta (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) co-authored the paper, “Green Pigments: Exploring Changes in the Egyptian Pigment Palette from the Late to Roman Periods (712 BCE–364 CE) through Multispectral Imaging and Technical Analysis,” and Caroline Roberts was nice enough to volunteer to present her paper for ASORtv…Read More

Sea Peoples in North Syria and the Mediterranean Coast

Podcast

In this installment of the Friends of ASOR podcast, I met with Egyptologist and author, Marianne Eaton-Krauss, to discuss King Tut and her upcoming book, The Unknown Tutankhamun — available mid-December, just in time for the holiday season…Read More

Bin There, Done That: Storage Bins at Tell en-Nasbeh and the Role of the State

[VIDEO]

At the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting, Jeffrey Zorn of Cornell University presented his paper, “Bin There, Done That: Storage Bins at Tell en-Nasbeh and the Role of the State,” during the Archaeology of the Southern Levant I session…Read More

The Return of David and Solomon? Biblical Archaeology and the Quest for the Ancient Israelite States’ Oldest Remains

By: Juan Manuel Tebes

Buried beneath the houses of Silwan, a small neighborhood south of the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, lie the remains of four thousand years of human history. As elsewhere in the Middle East, in Silwan history is counted by ages. But the key to this site, what sets it apart most prominently from other places in this part of the world, lies in a short period of time in its history, no longer than a century, situated in the tenth century BCE…Read More

What’s in your dig bag, Jennie Ebeling?

In our “What’s in your dig bag?” series, we asked working field archaeologists what they carry with them out in the field. We wanted to know what gear they love and what items might be unique to them...Read More

Changing Lives: Object Biography and Law

[VIDEO]

At the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting, Morag Kersel presented her paper, “Changing Lives: Object Biography and Law.” She did so during the Object Biography for Archaeologists: A Practical Workshop session on Thursday, November 20, 2014…Read More

March 2015

Udhruh and Its Hinterland during the Nabataean and Roman Periods

[VIDEO]

At the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting, Sarah Wenner presented her paper, “Udhruh and Its Hinterland during the Nabataean and Roman Periods.” Her paper was 19 minutes long, and presented during the Archaeology of Jordan III Topaz session…Read More

What’s in your dig bag, Eric Welch?

In our “What’s in your dig bag?” series, we asked working field archaeologists what they carry with them out in the field. We wanted to know what gear they love and what items might be unique to them...Read More

A Bibliography that Matters

Podcast

In our final podcast introducing the Syrian Heritage Initiative, we spoke with former Cultural Heritage Specialist, Kurt Prescott about an important aspect of the Syrian Heritage Initiative … the bibliography…Read More

Keeping Fieldwork Safe from Sexual Harassment and Physical Violence

[VIDEO]

At the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting, Beth Alpert Nakhai not only chaired the Women at Work: Making One’s Way in the Field of Near Eastern Studies session, but also presented a paper and was a discussant for another presentation…Read More

Breaking In: Women’s Representation in Archaeology

[VIDEO]

During the Women at Work: Making One’s Way in the Field of Near Eastern Studies session at the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting, Valerie Schlegel presented as a discussant. Her presentation, “Breaking In: Women’s Representation in Archaeology,” was well researched and thought provoking…Read More

Presenting a Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea (TAO)

[VIDEO]

During the Ancient Inscriptions Diamond 2 session at the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting Bazalel Porten presented his paper, “Presenting a Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea (TAO).” He also took the time to meet with the ASORtv team to present his paper for the ASOR YouTube channel…Read More

Conservation and Heritage Preservation of the Syrian Heritage Initiative

[PODCAST]

In continuing our discussion on the cooperative agreement between the U.S. Department of State and ASOR, known as the Syrian Heritage Initiative, we’re discussing the preservation projects of the initiative. The initiative’s Project Manager for Conservation and Heritage Preservation, LeeAnn Barnes Gordon sat down with me to talk about her portion of the project…Read More

Heritage Mapping and Data Integration

[PODCAST]

In continuing our discussion on the cooperative agreement between the U.S. Department of State and ASOR, known as the Syrian Heritage Initiative, we focus now on the initiative’s remote sensing, mapping and arches. I’m speaking with Dr. Scott Branting, the Director for Geospatial Initiatives at ASOR and the Syrian Heritage Initiative Project Director for Heritage Mapping and Data Integration….Read More

“Cultural Heritage Monitoring and the Syrian Heritage Initiative,” Featuring Dr. Michael Danti

[PODCAST]

In continuing our discussion on the cooperative agreement between the U.S. Department of State and ASOR, known as the Syrian Heritage Initiative, we spoke with Syrian Heritage Initiative Director for Cultural Heritage Communications, Michael Danti…..Read More

February 2015

Inscribed Statue Bases from Ptolemaic Alexandria

[VIDEO]

At the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting, Fathia Gaber Ebrahim presented her paper, “Inscribed Statue Bases from Ptolemaic Alexandria.” She also took the time to meet with the ASORtv team to present her paper for the ASOR YouTube channel…Read More

“Syrian Heritage Initiative a Natural Fit for ASOR,” Featuring Dr. Susan Ackerman

[PODCAST]

Last year ASOR had two firsts – our first female president, and a $600,000 cooperative agreement with the Department of State. At the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting, I sat down with ASOR President Dr. Susan Ackerman to discuss ASOR’s work with the Department of State…Read More

ASOR’s Journey to be Green

The ASOR office staff has made some efforts to be a little greener as we do our part to further Near Eastern archaeology….Read More

ASOR Survives the Storm

This winter has been an eventful one. In Boston, where our main office is located, we’ve seen more than 100 inches of snow. Only 5.8 inches shy of the all-time record of 107.8 inches that fell in 1995-96!…Read More

Celebrating Carol Meyers

By: Beth Alpert Nakhai

Together with Susan Ackerman and Chuck Carter, I was privileged serve as editor of the new festschrift honoring Carol Meyers, Celebrate Her for the Fruit of Her Hands (Eisenbrauns 2015), and to have contributed an article to it (“Plaque Figurines and the Relationship between Canaanite and Egyptian Women in the Late Bronze II”)….Read More

Syrian Heritage Initiative Symposium – Luncheon Presentation

[VIDEO]

On November 23rd, the Syrian Heritage Initiative hosted a public Symposium at the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA. The more than 80 attendees included ASOR members, representatives of other groups working to safeguard Syrian heritage, area residents, scholars, students, and members of the press…Read More

Life and Happiness: A Petitionary Reading of the Horizontal Wadi el-Hôl Inscription

[VIDEO]

At the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting, Aren Wilson-Wright presented his paper, “Life and Happiness: A Petitionary Reading of the Horizontal Wadi el-Hôl Inscription.”…Read More

January 2015

Priestly Initiation in Ancient Israel

The following post was submitted by an ASOR member, and may not reflect the views of ASOR. We encourage all discussion related the Ancient Near East…Read More

Pathologies by the Bone: Making Meaning from Commingled Remains

[VIDEO]

At the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting, Debra Martin presented the paper, “Pathologies by the Bone: Making Meaning from Commingled Remains at Tell Abraq, UAE (2200–2000 BCE),” during the session on mortuary perspectives from outside the Levant…Read More

Kani Shaie: An Early Bronze Age Center in the Bazyan Valley, Sulaimaniya

[VIDEO]

At the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting, Steve Renette presented the paper, “Kani Shaie: An Early Bronze Age Center in the Bazyan Valley, Sulaymaniyah,” during the Archaeology of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq III session. The session focuses on recent excavations being conducted in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq….Read More

Transcendent Occultation of the Divine in Neo-Babylonian Art

[VIDEO]

At the 2014 ASOR Annual Meeting in San Diego, Constance Gane chaired the Archaeology of Mesopotamia session. This session had submissions in all areas illuminated by archaeology that relate to the material, social, religious culture, history and international relations, and texts of ancient Mesopotamia…Read More