A Day in the Life at the East Church, Antiochia ad Cragum
Liza Davis, 2024 Member-Supported Fellowship Recipient
This summer, I had the privilege of working as a trench supervisor at Antiochia ad Cragum, a Roman city located outside of Gazipaşa, Türkiye. Antiochia was an important regional hub and boasted a large colonnaded street lined with shops, multiple baths, areas for the production of olive oil and wine, monumental tombs, and several early Christian churches. In the 2024 season, excavation began on an east-facing apsidal building located on the road approaching the city’s Main Gate from the east. This building has been described as a church by earlier researchers, and so we decided to creatively title this new area of excavation the East Church.
Daily life as an excavator at Antiochia quickly fell into a pleasant routine. We left Gazipaşa around 5:30 and arrived at site by 6:00 AM, early enough to see the sun rising and watch flocks of swallows soaring high overhead. Breakfast is served on site by Ayşe, a woman from the nearby village of Güney and the wife of Rahmi the site guard. For the uninitiated, Turkish breakfast is quite the spread: tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, a variety of cheeses, jams and jellies, and bottomless ekmek (bread). Sometimes there would be hard-boiled eggs, borek (a savory pastry made from phyllo dough, cheese, and parsley), or potatoes with scrambled eggs. And, of course, strong Turkish çay (tea) served in the ubiquitous glass cups and sweetened with as many cubes of sugar as you desire.
After such a feast, it could be difficult to get motivated to go to work, but the sun rose quickly and the relative cool of the morning soon dissipated. It was about a ten-minute trek to the East Church, laden with our field packs, cameras, iPads for digital trench recording, and RTKs (Real-Time Kinematic devices, a kind of super-powered GPS that allows for centimeter-level accuracy). We divided into our two trenches and got to work. One trench was just outside of the building, in what has been deemed the church’s narthex, and the other (my trench) was in the apse of the building. We began each day by going over our daily goals and cueing up the all-important dig playlist. Somehow, our trench anthem ended up being “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” by Meat Loaf… do not ask me why, because I don’t know. But I can tell you that those opening chords will forever remind me of dusty days in the East Church.
We took a çay break at 10:00, huddling in the shade cast by some standing walls south of the church. Twice a week, there would be pişi, fluffy discs of fried bread—delicious and filling. After the break, we would return to work for a few more hours, reassessing our progress toward our daily goals and adjusting as necessary. At the end of the day, my trench mates would clean up our tools as I took some final notes in our iPad-based recording software (called Kiosk) and took closing photos of the trench for the day. Around 12:50, we would begin the walk out, which always felt much longer in the heat of the afternoon than it did at 6:45 AM. Lunch was served at 1:00 and was a veritable feast of Turkish home cooking: stuffed peppers, eggplant and potatoes stewed in a spicy tomato sauce, cacık (a cold yogurt and cucumber soup—very refreshing), bulgur and rice pilaf, and once a week a delicious semolina and peanut cake soaked in honey. Lunch was always a fun, social time, spent discussing the day’s progress with people working in other areas at site.
The four weeks I spent at Antiochia this summer were such an incredible opportunity for me. My dissertation research focuses on early Christian experience in the eastern Mediterranean, so the chance to excavate an early Christian church was so important for me. This fall back at Brown, I will be working on my dissertation, greatly enriched and informed by the days spent at Antiochia this summer.
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Rachel Bernstein joined ASOR on October 1 as Communications Manager. She has a Ph.D. in Desert Studies and Archaeology from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, as well as an M.A. in Desert Studies from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and a B.A. in English from Goucher College.
In the past three decades, curators, educators, and scholars have been actively moving archaeological materials and data beyond the physical limitations of sites and museums into the virtual space. These transitions to new media have allowed archaeologists, researchers, and students unprecedented access to the archaeological record, particularly with regard to far away, at-risk, or vanished heritage. Each of the presenters in this webinar has been successful in implementing VR and other digital media in innovative ways in order to bridge the gap between physical and virtual and to educate the public. The first presentation (Dr. Michael Zimmerman, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Bridgewater State University) focuses on the creation of two virtual environments—the Virtual Museum of Archaeology of South Caucasus (VMASC) and a virtual reconstruction of a Late Bronze Age archaeological site from the Shiraki Plain in the country of Georgia. The second presentation (Dr. Sarah Beckmann, Assistant Professor of Classics, UCLA and Deidre Brin, Director of the Digital Archaeology Lab, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology) presents a digital escape room based on Homer’s Odyssey that was created by university students for a K-12 audience. The third presentation (Dr. Adam Aja, Chief Curator, Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East) will introduce guests to some of HMANE’s freely accessed digital assets, including its virtual gallery tours, 3D artifact scans, and the most recent addition, a Snapchat app-experience that allows the visitor to “step back in time” in a journey to the Assyrian palace of Ashurbanipal. To unite these three presentations, speakers will demonstrate how they creatively used their archaeological knowledge to develop digital tools and educate the public, including how these tools are making real-world impacts in museums, classrooms, and other settings. This webinar will be moderated by Dr. Tine Rassalle (Independent Scholar) and Dr. Debra Trusty (Associate Professor of Instruction, University of Iowa), both of whom strive to facilitate the implementation of new technologies in the study of the ancient world.
In 2019, an NSF IRES grant (#1854153) was awarded to Bridgewater State University, Ilia State University, and the Cyberarchaeology Lab at UC San Diego to engage students in interdisciplinary research of human-environmental interactions in the Shiraki Plateau in the country of Georgia. One of the key elements in this project was the creation of two virtual environments by Misha Elashvili and Giorgi Datenashvili—the Virtual Museum of Archaeology of South Caucasus (VMASC), an interactive virtual collection of artifacts from archaeological sites in Shiraki; and a virtual reconstruction of Late Bronze Age Didnauri. We hope to demonstrate future applications of this and other VR environments for archaeology.
Michael Zimmerman is an archaeologist with a PhD from the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University, and a member of the Archaeogaming Collective, Archaeological Institute of America, American Society of Overseas Research, Northeastern Anthropological Association, Council for Northeast Historical Archaeology, the Save Ancient Studies Alliance, and the Society of Historical Archaeology. He holds an MA in Classical Languages from the University of Florida. He has worked extensively on archaeological surveys and excavations in public archaeology in Massachusetts, as well as in Israel, Jordan, and Georgia, where he is a co-principal investigator for the NSF-funded Shiraki International Multidisciplinary Research project and the U.S. Embassy Democracy Commission grant funded Crossroads Virtual Museum Project. He also serves on the Executive Board of the Northeastern Anthropological Association and the Curation and Collections Committee of the Society for Historical Archaeology. His research interests include archaeogaming and virtual technology in pedagogical contexts, antiquities trafficking, cultural heritage law and public policy, and collections-based research, and he 
In winter 2024, UCLA students, faculty, and the Digital Archaeology Lab worked to create a digital escape room based on Homer’s Odyssey. The obstacles faced by Odysseus and his crew, we decided, were excellent fodder for an immersive web-based application: an escape room brings the vividness of the text to life and introduces contemporary students to ancient Greek culture using modern technologies. Despite facing many obstacles in the course of this work (the Cyclops room in particular!), our project offers a model for how other archaeologists and educators might leverage digital applications in the classroom. Thus our talk will survey development of this project and our future goals: 1) outreach beyond the University classroom using this escape room; and 2) the development of a reusable platform so that those without programming experience can design their own escape room.
Deidre Brin is the director of the Digital Archaeology Lab at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and leads the development of DIG, an archaeological data publishing initiative at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. Her experience managing data while working on archaeological projects coupled with the foundation in information science and technology, support her current research on the preservation, dissemination, and reuse of cultural heritage datasets.
Sarah Beckmann is a Roman archaeologist and Assistant Professor of Classics at UCLA. Her research interests include domestic art and archaeology broadly in the early Roman empire and the late antique period. She is currently at work on her first monograph, which examines the Roman villa in late antiquity (mid-3rd – 5th c. CE). Other interests represented by recent publications include statuary collecting in late antiquity, Roman portraiture in provincial contexts, and representations of subaltern groups (e.g. women, enslaved children) in luxury domestic arts.
While physical exhibition space remains limited within the walls of the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East (HMANE), the digital realm provides virtually unlimited opportunities to display and explore its rich archaeological collections. Chief Curator Adam J. Aja will introduce guests to some of the museum’s freely accessed digital assets, including its virtual gallery tours, 3D artifact scans, and the most recent addition, a Snapchat app-experience that allows the visitor to “step back in time” in a journey to the Assyrian palace of Ashurbanipal.
Adam J. Aja is an archaeologist and museum curator with a background in the creative arts. Since 2009, he has managed the collection of the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East (formerly the Harvard Semitic Museum), where he redesigned the storage facilities, implemented new exhibits, and created replicas for display. Dr. Aja started working on archaeological field projects in 1992 and has enjoyed numerous discoveries in the years since, including the Iron Age cemetery of the Philistines at Ashkelon. He is currently the Chief Stratigrapher at the Tel Shimron Excavations. Dr. Aja’s creative projects, combining his love of archaeology and art, have included a full-scale reproduction of the monument discovered between the paws of the Great Sphinx and the creation of an augmented reality app that animates Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs.
Trustee Nominations Committee has selected six highly qualified members to stand for election for four open positions on the Board of Trustees. The Board sets the direction for ASOR and provides oversight for our organization. Among other responsibilities, members of the Board agree to attend two meetings each year, to participate thoughtfully in the governance process, and to contribute financially to ASOR.
