Table of Contents for Near Eastern Archaeology 86.4 (December 2023)
Pp. 256–265: “Honoring a Legacy, Inviting a New Generation: A Very Brief Introduction to the Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant Project,” by Christoph Uehlinger
The aim of this introductory article is threefold: (1) to situate the Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant (SSSL) project in the broader history of twentieth-century glyptic research, especially with regard to Othmar Keel’s multivolume Corpus of Stamp Seals from Palestine/Israel launched in the 1980s; (2) to explain the SSSL project’s research design as a strategic response to that unfinished initiative, the intrinsic potential of stamp seals research, and the demands of a specific funding opportunity that emphasizes interdisciplinarity; (3) to consider SSSL as a trans-generational project, attentive to both transmission and innovation. The digital humanities transition offers crucial opportunities and challenges regarding all three aspects.
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Pp. 266–273: “A Tale of Twelve Thousand Cards: Stamp Seals’ Scholarship History with Social-Material Lenses,” by Silas Klein Cardoso
This article discusses the cognitive influence of cataloging tools in the stamp seals research project carried out between 1981–2013 at the Department of Biblical Studies of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. As visual knowledge tools, the roughly twelve thousand index cards used by the Fribourg school helped to analyze, translate, and deconstruct visual artifacts into historical/archaeological data in the form of textual descriptions. In terms of media theory, the process entailed the translation of structural (nonlinear to linear), cognitive (synthetic to consecutive), and syntactical (dense to nondense) features. The semiotic analysis of the cards seen against the group’s socio-academic context shows that the cards were not only central methodologically but supported the group’s conceptual and methodological transition with direct outcomes in their historiography. The case study thus addresses an important issue in and for digital humanities, namely the conceptual role of knowledge tools in scholarship interpreting the past.
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Pp. 274-283: “The Corpus of Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant Database: A New Research Tool for Glyptic Studies,” by Stefan Münger, Nadia Ben-Marzouk, Ben Greet, and Ido Koch
The Corpus of Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant (CSSL) database comprises some twelve thousand items from controlled excavations in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, transforming and bringing to completion Othmar Keel’s pioneering vision to publish all seals and sealings from the region. The CSSL platform not only represents a newly available digital research tool for southern Levantine studies and related fields, but also aims at exploring innovative approaches to advance the digital study of glyptic more broadly. As the SNSF-funded Sinergia project Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant (SSSL) completes its goal, we ask: What comes next? This article provides an overview of the CSSL database; situates this new resource alongside other contemporary digital tools for the study of glyptic; and briefly reflects on the possibilities for more collaboration and integration across digital humanities projects.
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Pp. 284–290: “New Precedents and Insights from Stamp Seal Photography,” by Ben Greet
As part of the Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant (SSSL) project, a program of photography of ca. 1150 stamp seals and seal impressions was undertaken over the course of 2022. Through the implementation of this large-scale photography program, two aspects came to the fore: (1) the necessity of publishing our photographic methodology to give context to the images of these stamp seals and seal impressions; and (2) several new insights into the seals were gained from this program concerning their material identification, perforation forms, and misalignment of base iconography. This article presents the publication of our photographic methodology, which we hope will not only serve to counteract potential misinterpretations of stamp seals and seal impressions from the region (e.g., color, orientation), but also set a precedent for the transparent discussion of these photographic processes in the future.
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Pp. 292–301: “Some Highlights in Local versus Regional Glyptic Consumption in the Southern Levant during the Iron I,” by Nadia Ben-Marzouk
The southern Levant comprises a patchwork of diverse landscapes and communities whose connectivity fluctuated with the reorganization and termination of various economic, political, and social networks, at times expressing more similarity than difference among sites and regions. During the Iron I, communities in the southern Levant experienced the dissolution of Egypt’s colonial network, resulting in a range of responses. Building from previous research, this article utilizes the newly developed Corpus of Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant database to survey all stamp seals from excavated contexts dated to the Iron I to explore how the withdrawal of Egyptian power from the region affected the consumption of stamp seal amulets related to seal type, iconography, and stylistic date of production. Some highlights from that study are presented here to situate consumption practices within the broader landscape and to nuance our understanding of community response in the wake of political reorganization.
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Pp. 302–310: “Hebrew Seals: Updated Corpus and Typology,” by Eythan Levy
The number of provenanced Iron Age Hebrew seals and seal impressions has seen a dramatic increase during the past decades. Avigad and Sass’s classical Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals, published in 1997, comprised 130 provenanced Iron Age Hebrew seals (including seals known only from impressions). Today, this number has risen to over 300 items, mostly owing to a wealth of new material from recent excavations in Jerusalem. The completion of the Stamp Seals of the Southern Levant (SSSL) project offers an opportunity to look back at the corpus of provenanced Hebrew seals and to reflect on the nature of the material. This article comprises a short introduction to Hebrew glyptics, a survey of the updated corpus, and a new typology of Hebrew seals.
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