2025 ASOR CANADA
The American Society of Overseas Research in Canada (CASOR) includes all individual members of the American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR) who live in Canada. It was incorporated federally on October 3, 1990, as a non-share capital corporation and registered as a charity by Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (Income Tax registration number BN 891631269RR0001). CASOR was established to promote the archaeology of the Near East in Canada, to support ASOR programs in Canada, and to provide funding from Canadian citizens, institutions, and organizations to ASOR for its overseas institutions which are used by qualified and approved Canadian scholars undertaking research fellowships at any of these overseas institutions. From time to time, CASOR also sponsors or contributes to symposia and conferences that are of interest to its members.
CASOR is pleased to announce the creation of a Student Scholarship program to support undergraduate students participating in archaeological field projects in the Near East.
CASOR’s by-laws stipulate that the organization be run by a Board of Directors elected by the members and headed by four Officers. Clifford Goldfarb of Gardiner Roberts LPP serves as CASOR’s pro-bono legal counsel. Annual meetings of members and directors are held in conjunction with the ASOR Annual Meeting.
Current Officers:
- Lynn Welton, President
- Stanley Klassen, Vice President
- Craig Harvey, Treasurer
- Marica Cassis, Secretary
The texts of the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean Bronze and Iron Ages (including the Hebrew Bible) hint at the use of psychotropic substances (“hallucinogens”) in religious and shamanistic rituals. But the archaeological evidence for this is thin on the ground. This talk will look at the various available hallucinogenic substances and at recent research that indicates their consumption by human beings before examining artifacts that Dr. Ilan (and now others) believe are related to achieving altered states of consciousness. These include ring kernoi, seal impressions from the Aegean region, metal sceptres from the Chalcolithic period, ivory wands from the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, and the altars from the Iron Age temple at Tel Arad. The “high place” takes on a new meaning!
A native of Los Angeles, David llan was the director of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem from 2003 to 2024. He has excavated at Tel Arad, Tel Malhata, Tel Yoqneam and Tel Megiddo and directed the excavations at Tel Dan from 2005 to 2022. He teaches at the Hebrew Union College and has taught at Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University, Johns Hopkins University and spent a sabbatical year in 2019-2020 at the Center for the Study of Origins of the University of Colorado, Boulder. Dr. Ilan specializes in mortuary archaeology, the archaeology of religion and ritual, ground stone artifacts, ceramic typology and technology, and the Chalcolithic period, the Middle Bronze Age and the early Iron Age of the southern Levant. He is the editor of the journal NGSBA Archaeology and the monograph series of the Nelson Glueck School. Dr. Ilan has published three final excavation reports and numerous articles in scholarly journals and in the popular press. His most recent articles deal with the praxis and paraphernalia of ritual action and religious belief in the ancient Near East, including the use of psychotropic substances.
In 1902, Margaret Alice Murray got invited to work in the field—finally. Training with Flinders Petrie for the last eight years, she had taught plenty of students in London, but had never been to Egypt to work herself. She spent only one season at Abydos, working in the Osireion, a special temple that no one had yet fully understood. Two years later, Murray’s publication, The Osireion at Abydos, upended all previous theories about the site. By 1938, Amice Calverley and Myrtle Broome were leaving Abydos, having spent almost a decade copying the art in the Temple of Seti I. Their own publications, The Temple of Sethos I at Abydos, were four volumes of brilliantly painted art from the temple walls in exacting detail. This talk will detail the ways in which the work women did on site at Abydos in the early 20th century impacted our understanding and reception of one of the most important sites in all of ancient Egypt.
Dr. Kathleen Sheppard is Professor in the History and Political Science department at Missouri S&T. Her focus of study is the history of Egyptology. Her most recent book, Women in the Valley of the Kings, tells a history of Egyptology through the perspective of women’s work in the field. Her 2022 book, Tea on the Terrace: Hotels and Egyptologists’ Social Networks, investigates the role of hotels as hubs in the professional and friendship networks of Egyptologists in the late 19th and early 20th century. She received her MA in Egyptian Archaeology from UCL in 2002 and her PhD in History of Science from University of Oklahoma in 2010.
The last phase of the Middle Bronze Age on Cyprus (c. 1750–1650 BC) saw a number of dramatic changes, both in settlement patterns and structure, with many sites abandoned and new sites founded near the coast. At the exceptional long-lived coastal Bronze Age site of Kissonerga-Skalia near Paphos, a settlement established at the transition to the Early Bronze Age (c. 2400 BC), the site was completely restructured during this time and earlier domestic buildings were built over with an industrial architectural array installed in their place. This was only occupied for one or two generations before Kissonerga-Skalia was abandoned for good. Ongoing excavations are revealing a number of large pyrotechnical features and associated finds within this ‘monumental’ complex dating to the transition from the Middle–Late Bronze Age, a period during which we see the first moves towards urbanism 
Dr Lindy Crewe has been the Director of CAARI since 2017. Prior to this, she was Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research focuses on Cypriot prehistory and international interconnections, with a particular interest in the Chalcolithic and the Bronze Age. She is currently directing excavations at the Early–Middle Bronze Age settlement of Kissonerga-Skalia near Paphos. She is the author of two monographs, three edited volumes and over 30 articles, on topics including settlement at Late Bronze Age Enkomi and the Chalcolithic cemeteries at Souskiou. Her most recent work is a volume resulting from a conference organised by CAARI and the British Museum (with co-editors T. Kiely and A. Reeve) entitled ‘Empire and Excavation: Critical Perspectives on Archaeology in British-period Cyprus, 1878–1960’, which will be published in early 2025. She first came to Cyprus and CAARI 30 years ago as an undergraduate student from Australia to excavate at Marki-Alonia and became passionate about the archaeology of the island, spending considerable time staying at CAARI for her doctoral research and beyond.