Honors and Awards Committee Seeks New Members
The Honors and Awards Committee seeks nominations to serve on the G. Ernest Wright Book Award and Frank Moore Cross Book Award sub-committees. ASOR invites nominations, including self-nominations, from ASOR members who are interested in being considered by the committee for these openings. Committee members will serve a three-year term with the possibility of two consecutive terms. Nominees must fill out the online form by February 23, 2024. The Honors and Awards Committee takes responsibility for determining the awardees for the three book awards, the field archaeology award, the “best poster” and “best student paper” awards, and the multiple membership service awards that ASOR gives annually; conducting the awards ceremony during the Members’ Meeting at the ASOR Annual Meeting; and discussing and advising the ASOR Board of Trustees about ASOR’s awards, including recommending to the Board the creation of new awards as deemed appropriate.
One candidate is sought for the G. Ernest Wright Award sub-committee. This award is given to the author/editor of the most substantial volume(s) dealing with archaeological material, excavation reports and material culture from the ancient Near East and Eastern Mediterranean. This work must be the result of original research published within the past two years. (One award is given annually.) This candidate will also serve on the Joy Ungerleider poster sub-committee.
One candidate is sought for the Frank Moore Cross Award sub-committee. This award is presented to the author/editor of the most substantial volume(s) related to the history and/or religion of the ancient Near East and Eastern Mediterranean. Primary consideration will be given to historical, epigraphic, textual, and comparative literary studies; or to works that advance and/or evaluate new methodological approaches to the literary record(s). This work must be the result of original research published during the past two years. (One award is given annually.) This candidate will also serve on the Student Paper Award sub-committee.
Preference will be given to candidates who complement the research specialities of the existing committee members.
In order to receive full consideration by the committee the online form must be submitted by noon EST on February 23, 2024. For questions and concerns, please contact Marta Ostovich (programs@asor.org)
Curating an exhibition of contemporary art comes with the incredible opportunity of collaborating with living artists to realize together how to give voice and vision to their work. Doing so in the space of an archaeological museum brings with it the added opportunity to revisit and reevaluate traditional object narratives and museological methods. For centuries Western cultural institutions and museum exhibitions have advanced historical narratives of ancient West Asia with a singular, authoritative voice, predominantly disconnected from the present. Contemporary installations have the power to forefront and celebrate the complexity and continuity of this rich cultural heritage, presenting postcolonial perspectives and thought-provoking artistic responses that draw on diverse lived experiences, memories, and imagination.
In this webinar, Kiersten Neumann will discuss powerful examples of the pairing of contemporary art and archaeological objects from her own experience as an art historian, archaeologist, and curator, demonstrating some of the ways in which such contemporary interventions, including those by local and diaspora artists and communities, can bring a uniquely humanizing perspective to this history.
The Bat landscape of northwestern Oman is one of dense archaeological remains and diverse ecological conditions. The site has been a centre for human activity since the Paleolithic, most famously attested by the Early Bronze Age tombs, towers, and settlement of the UNESCO World Heritage zone. With the support of the US National Endowment for the Humanities, ongoing work by the Bat Archaeological Project aims to reconstruct the site’s Umm an-Nar period (ca. 2700-2000 BC) cultural landscape and the human-environment interactions that led to its creation and resilience.
The concept of resilience, or the ability of a system to persist and thrive even in the face of perturbations, can be applied to both natural ecosystems and human communities in ancient and modern times. A program of interdisciplinary collaborations integrating geomorphological, archaeobotanical, and phytolith analysis with remote sensing and traditional excavation of domestic spaces on the Bat landscape allows us to trace the arc of Umm an-Nar period activity at Bat alongside its changing environment. A parallel program of ecological survey assessing modern biological (floral and faunal) and hydrological resiliency provides a framework for understanding Bat’s history as a centre for human-environment interaction in the Umm an-Nar period. This lecture will discuss preliminary results of three seasons of resiliency studies at Bat and consider what lessons in adapting to aridity we, as a modern community, can learn from the people of third millennium BCE Arabia.
Jennifer Swerida holds a PhD from the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University with a focus on the archaeology of Arabia. Her research reorients traditional disciplinary boundaries by using insights from the Environmental Humanities to investigate the impact of mobile peoples in the formation of the cultural landscape(s) that shaped the history and culture of West Asia in the third millennium BCE. Her work specifically addresses groups that are underrepresented in modern scholarship, particularly those that occupied areas traditionally considered marginal or peripheral to state-level societies. Working within the landscape-household continuum of social archaeology, Dr. Swerida studies how people in these areas developed cultural mechanisms and socioecological strategies that enabled them to thrive and interact as peers with neighboring states. As Director of the Bat Archaeological Project, she is investigating the emergence of social complexity and cultural adaptations to aridity at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bat in Oman. She is a Consulting Scholar for the University of Pennsylvania Museum and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Kennesaw State University.
Syeda Sukena Zehra is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto specializing in archaeology with a keen interest in South-Asian and Near and Middle Eastern civilizations. Sukena aims to explore the transnational interrelationships which build culture and politics.
