A Typical Day with the Vayots Dzor Fortress Landscapes Project
In the morning, we would wake up and have a filling breakfast prepared by our host. This started with lavash (soft flatbread), cheese, and fresh herbs such as basil and chives, which were combined together into a rolled sandwich. This staple of Armenian cuisine was accompanied by eggs, tea, and honey.
Next, we would split into two teams: one for the excavation, and one for survey. I was usually excavating, although on some days, I stayed at the dig house to illustrate finds, and on other days, I joined the survey team. The drive to the excavation featured beautiful glimpses of the Armenian countryside and a winding final stretch up into the hills. At the end of the drive, we unloaded the van and carried picks, buckets, trowels, and other tools up to the trench.
Once we got to the site, my role was to record sketches of the trench and daily summaries on the record-keeping sheets, and to excavate with pick and trowel. The area we were excavating had already been excavated in a previous season; our goal was to expand the pre-existing trench and to reach bedrock, thereby documenting all layers of habitation of the site.
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We ate lunch in the field and ended fieldwork in the mid-afternoon. After returning to the dig house and having our daily break, lab work commenced. My lab job was to illustrate the artifacts, mostly ceramics. I illustrated new ceramic finds by pencil, and digitally inked scans of penciled drawings from a previous season. I also had the opportunity to teach other students how to illustrate archaeological artifacts.
One question I am often asked is, why illustrate artifacts at all, when photography is faster? One answer is that illustration makes it possible to show objects in section. If one were to slice a vessel from top to bottom, the section is what the slice would look like. The section makes it easier to compare vessels from multiple sites and publications to see whether they are similar. Trying to record a vessel’s section with a photograph would result in a distorted image, and it would require damaging the vessel.
Illustration also makes it possible to re-create what a complete, or nearly complete, vessel would look like from only a few sherds. If one were to simply photograph a sherd, it would not reveal much about what the vessel looked like as a whole.
Meanwhile, photography has complementary uses: it can show the colors of glazes and surface decorations, and close-up photographs are able to show the composition of the clay. Together, photography and illustration create a balanced visual record of an archaeological artifact.
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ACOR: Awarded to John P. Oleson, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of Victoria; Member of ACOR’s Board of Trustees.
Awarded to Richard L. Coffman, Managing Director at the Coffman Law Firm; outgoing Chair of ASOR’s Board of Trustees.
Awarded to Glenn Schwartz, Whiting Professor of Archaeology at Johns Hopkins University.
Awarded to Helen Dixon, Assistant Professor of History, East Carolina University; outgoing Co-Chair of the ASOR Program Committee.
Awarded to Ann-Marie Knoblauch, Associate Professor of Art History and Associate Director of the School of Visual Arts, Virginia Tech University; Secretary, ASOR’s Board of Trustees and Executive Committee.
Awarded to Carolina López Ruíz, Professor, University of Chicago Divinity School and Department of Classics, for Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean. 
Marsha Rozenblit is the Harvey M. Meyerhoff Professor of Jewish History at the University of Maryland. She is a specialist in the history of the Jews in Austria-Hungary and its successor states, and she has written several books and many scholarly articles on such topics as the Jews of Vienna, the impact of World War I on the Jews, and Jewish marriage and courtship practices. She is the moderator of this session because her late husband Kenneth Holum directed the land excavations on the Temple Platform at Caesarea for many years. After his death in 2017, she oversaw the publication of the final reports from his excavations at Caesarea.
Yael Arnon is a Professor of Archaeology at Oranim College in Israel. At the beginning of her academic career, she focused on early Islamic archaeology, especially material culture. Over the years, she has expanded her studies to include artistic and architectural aspects of archaeology as well as more recent periods of history in the Islamic world in general and the Land of Israel in particular. In 2008, Arnon published a book about the material culture of the early Islamic and Crusader periods in Caesarea, and the relationship between pottery styles and coin dating (Oxford University Press). Arnon’s future research includes changes in Islamic art over time, in particular in Israel and the Galilee. For many years she worked as registrar and ceramicist at Caesarea.
Anna Iamim was a long-time friend and colleague of Ken Holum. At Caesarea, she produced the graphic field documentation, contributed chapters, and drew the architectural reconstructions on the cover of Caesarea Maritima: Excavations in the Old City 1989-2003, Final Reports, Vol. 1, edited by Kenneth G. Holum, ASOR, Archaeological Reports 27 (2020).