MARCH MADNESS CHALLENGE 2022: WE FILLED THE POTS!
ASOR’s 2022 March Madness Challenge was a success and we “filled the pots” for The Levantine Ceramics Project (LCP)! We met our goal of $10,000 for the ongoing maintenance and hosting of the LCP— an ASOR open-access publication. This incredible resource has been an ASOR publication since 2016. The LCP is an open, interactive website focused on ceramics produced in the Levant from the Neolithic era through the Ottoman period. Thanks to the generosity of three ASOR donors, we received a $5,000 challenge gift that has been fully earned by raising another $5,000 for a total of $10,570 in March to keep the LCP running!
Thank you to each and every one of the donors, members, and Friends of ASOR who helped “fill the pots” for the LCP!
The LCP’s mission
The LCP, an ASOR open-access publication and research project, is a sustainable research tool designed to pull the study of archaeological ceramics into the 21st century.
Why ceramics? Because they comprise the most abundant category of remains found throughout the Near East, and because every excavator must contend with identifying and publishing them, yet the mode by which that is done has not changed in a substantive way since William Flinders Petrie began working in 1880. Constant excavation since then has created unthinkable quantities of data, all disseminated via print (and now digitized versions of print) publications. Print is excellent for many things – but it is remarkably ill-suited for fast exchange of information, collaborative study, and especially the rapid recording of new or changing ideas. Archaeology is a field that is always in a mode of discovery; we need tools that can keep up, that allow us to bring new material into dialogue with that long known, are easy to use, foster sharing, and enable us to readily learn from one other. The LCP is such a tool.
The LCP inspires new questions, and gives us the tools to answer them: Hard borders, civil wars, intractable terrain – these are facts on the ground across the landscapes of the Levant. Swaths of territory that are invisible or inaccessible today were zones of habitation and connection in the past. Archaeological survey and fieldwork fill in the blanks, allow us to see what was, imagine different realities. This is why we pursue such work; this is one of the best rationales for its value now and in the future. The LCP helps deliver on that lofty promise. Four examples of regions, activities, lives able to be seen, mapped, and linked to a wider world via pottery on the LCP:
- the eastern desert of Egypt: >200 vessels from 25+ already on the LCP with another 1000+ from 200 sites, thanks to integration with the EU/CNRS Desert Networks Project (scheduled for submission this summer).
- the Hauran of southern Syria: >1000 vessels from 50+ sites, dating from 1200 BCE-200 CE, from the Lajāʾ survey (2003–2009), the Qarrāṣa excavations (2008–2011), plus published and unpublished data from the French Archaeological Mission to Southern Syria, thanks to Jérôme Rohmer’s 2020 Hauran VI. D’Aram à Rome. La Syrie du Sud de l’âge due Fer à l’annexion romaine (XIIe siècle av. J.-C. – Ier siècle apr. J.C.).
- Rough Cilicia, Turkey: ~200 vessels from 40+ sites, from Nicholas Rauh’s Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey Project (1996-2011).
- the maritime networks linking northern and southern Cyprus with the northern Levant: 400+ vessels dating from the Middle Bronze – Iron Ages, from Cyprus and sites in Cilicia and coastal Syria, including 250+ vessels from Tell Tweini in northern Syria, excavated by the University of Leuven from 1999-2007.
The LCP advances ASOR Strategic Plan and Goals by providing easy and open access to new information: The LCP provides quick access to new finds and current ideas, and helps American researchers connect with foreign scholars. Most LCP contributors are based in Europe, Turkey, Cyprus, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Egypt, and are affiliated with foreign research universities or institutes. Not all users are are members of ASOR, yet their enthusiastic embrace of the LCP helps ASOR members stay abreast of work they would otherwise have a hard time accessing or even knowing about in the first place. Keeping the LCP free and open access is critical; if there was a members-only access policy, we would lose the input of most of these foreign contributors. The LCP provides assistance for ASOR-affiliated excavators: LCP interns work with ASOR-affiliated excavators to prepare and submit their pottery to the site. Using the LCP, interns also regularly make connections with material from other sites that excavators had not known about. This has the double benefit of deepening knowledge from excavated material as well as disseminating new information to scholars and students around the world.
The LCP brings disparate, hard-to-find data together, able to be mapped, studied, arranged and re-arranged for connections, ideas, insights. It is worth emphasizing that much of this material crosses borders and links regions that are currently impassible. All appear on the LCP thanks to ASOR’s neutrality as an American-based organization. In this way, ASOR helps frame a vision of the Levant that rises above the current political fray, and enables a new generation to ask and answer new questions, to understand the past – and perhaps therefore also the future – in different ways.
Read More About The Levantine Ceramics Project (LCP)
Lorenzo d’Alfonso is a Professor of Archaeology and History of ancient Western Asia at ISAW-NYU and Associate Professor of Archaeology of ancient Western Asia at Pavia University. He has published several books and papers on the history and archaeology of Anatolia and Syria, focusing on the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. His most recent publication is the volume Borders in Archaeology: Anatolia and the South Caucasus Ca. 3500-500 BCE (Peeters 2021) co-edited with K. Rubinson, which was published three months ago. Dr. d’Alfonso has excavated at different sites in Italy, Syria, and has directed an archaeological survey in south Cappadocia, Turkey from 2006-2009, before starting the excavations at Niğde Kınık Höyük in 2011.
Kathryn Grossman is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University. She is an archaeologist and zooarchaeologist with expertise in the complex societies of the Near East and eastern Mediterranean. She earned her BA in Archaeology from Tufts University and her PhD in Near Eastern Art and Archaeology from the University of Chicago. Her current research focuses on resistance to state-making, the biographies of early cities, and human-animal relationships in early complex societies. She directs the Makounta-Voules Archaeological Project in Cyprus and has been a senior staff member on archaeological projects in Syria, Cyprus, Egypt, and Iraq. This summer, in addition to directing excavations at Makounta-Voules-Mersinoudia in Cyprus, she will spend two months as a CAORC fellow at the American Center of Research in Jordan, where she will be analyzing animal bones from Petra.
James R. Strange has directed the Shikhin Excavation project since 2012, with Motti Aviam, Tom McCollough, and David Fiensy (2012) as Associate Directors. Dr. Strange is the Charles Jackson Granade and Elizabeth Donald Granade Professor in New Testament at Samford University. With David Fiensy, he is co-editor of the two-volume set Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods (Fortress, 2014 and 2015). His book, One Problem After Another: An Introduction to Archaeology, the Gospels, and First Century Roman Galilee is scheduled to come out in 2022.
ASOR’s Annual March Madness Challenge continues! This year we are “filling” a different need: supporting the ongoing cost and maintenance of 
The LCP, an ASOR open-access publication and research project, is a sustainable research tool designed to pull the study of archaeological ceramics into the 21st century.
Christine is a fifth-year university student double majoring in Archaeology and Heritage Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. She has always been interested in archaeology since she was a kid and has gotten the opportunity to pursue her studies in this topic. Christine has developed a particular interest in bio-archaeology and looks forward to advancing her research in this field.
Debora Heard is a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology specializing in the archaeology and history of ancient Nubia at the University of Chicago where she has also studied the history and language of ancient Kemet. She situates her research at the intersection of anthropology, archaeology, Egyptology, Nubian Studies, African Studies, and Africana Studies. Her dissertation research engages in a regional and temporal analysis of the inscriptions and iconography of the Upper Nubian Kushite temples dedicated to the gods Amun and Apedemak.
Stephen Batiuk is a Senior Research Associate and Lecturer with the Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto, and co-director of GRAPE – the Gadachrili Gora Regional Archaeological Project Expedition (Republic of Georgia) as well as Director of Excavations for the Tayinat Archaeological Project (Turkey) and the Project Manager for the Computational Research on the Ancient Near East (CRANE) Project. He holds his degrees from the University of Toronto (Ph.D.) and the University of Ottawa, and his areas of specialization include Near Eastern archaeology with a focus in the Bronze and Irons Ages of Turkey, Syria and the Caucasus.
Kent V. Bramlett is a Professor of Archaeology and the History of Antiquity at La Sierra University where he has taught since 2010. He is Chair of the Department of Biblical Studies and Archaeology and Director of Graduate Studies in Archaeology. He is Curator of the Archaeology Collections and Associate Director of the Center for Near Eastern Archaeology at La Sierra University. He earned a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Toronto, specializing in the Late Bronze Age. He is co-director of the Madaba Plains Project excavation at Tall al-‘Umayri and the Balu‘a Regional Archaeological Project, both in Jordan. At La Sierra, he teaches Akkadian, Hieroglyphic Egyptian, and other ancient languages in addition to archaeology classes.
Michael Given is a Senior Lecturer in Archaeology in the School of Humanities, University of Glasgow, Scotland. His research interests include archaeological survey and landscape archaeology, the historical periods in the Eastern Mediterranean, post-Medieval Scotland, the relationship between people and the environment, and conviviality theory. He has carried out fieldwork in Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Scotland and Turkey. From 2000 to 2012 he was co-director of the Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project, Cyprus, and he is currently director of the publication phase of the Excavations at Kourion’s Amathous Gate Cemetery, Cyprus. His books include The Archaeology of the Colonized (Routledge, 2004), and Landscape and Interaction: The Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project, Cyprus (with A.B. Knapp, L. Sollars, J. Noller and V. Kassianidou; 2 volumes; Council for British Research in the Levant, 2013).
Michael Hoff specializes in Greek and Roman archaeology, particularly of Asia Minor in Turkey where he currently conducts research. From 1997 to 2004, Hoff co-directed the architectural survey team of the Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey Project that documented ancient Roman sites in Turkey. Since 2005, Hoff has served as Project Director for the large-scale excavations of the ancient Roman-era city of Antiochia ad Cragum on the south coast of Turkey. Hoff has excavated previously at the Athenian Agora, Corinth, Crete, and at the Sanctuary of Zeus at Nemea, Greece. In addition to his work on the archaeology of Asia Minor, Hoff also conducts research on the history and topography of Roman Athens. Hoff has authored many articles in international journals and has co-edited several books, including Rough Cilicia: New Historical and Archaeological Approaches (Oxbow Press). Professor Hoff received his B.A. from the University of Missouri, M.A. from Florida State University, and Ph.D. from Boston University. Hoff joined the art history faculty at the University of Nebraska in 1989.
Xenia-Paula Kyriakou is a Lecturer in Legal Studies in the Department of Justice Studies at Gulf Coast University, in Florida. Her research interests include the reconstruction of health and demography in ancient societies, paleoepidemiology, paleo-oncology, the development of standards and methods in forensic anthropology, humanitarian forensics, and necropolitics. She was involved in numerous archaeological excavations as a bioarchaeologist and worked on many forensic cases, including those that address violation of human rights, both in Cyprus and abroad. She is the director of Odyssey Field School, which has been running since 2014 to present day, and offers training and research opportunities to students in the disciplines of bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology.
Friedbert Ninow (Ph.D. 2000, Andrews University) is the Dean of the Richards Divinity School, La Sierra University, and co-director of the Balu’a Regional Archaeological Project. He also directed the Wadi ash-Shkafiya Archaeological Survey as well as excavations at Khirbat al-Ma’mariyah.
Monique D. Roddy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy at Walla Walla University. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago with a dissertation on household archaeology in the Early Iron Age in the southern Levant. She worked with the Madaba Plains Project at Tall al-‘Umayri in Jordan from 2004 to 2016 and continues to work as an editor on the final publication series for ‘Umayri. She has co-directed the Balu’a Regional Archaeological Project at Khirbat al-Balu’a since 2017. She has also excavated at Zincirli in southeastern Turkey, Keros in the Cycladic Islands, and Cartagena in southern Spain.
ASOR’s Annual March Madness Challenge is back! This year we are “filling” a different need: supporting the ongoing cost and maintenance of 
The LCP, an ASOR open-access publication and research project, is a sustainable research tool designed to pull the study of archaeological ceramics into the 21st century.