Textual Archaeology of the Ancient Near East: Are We Doing It Wrong?

Textual Archaeology of the Ancient Near East: Are We Doing It Wrong?

An interdisciplinary conference to explore viable methodologies for integrating archaeology, text, and image

10th-13th December, 2015 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

University of Cambridge

Textual Archaeology of the Ancient Near East: 10th -13th December, 2015 Are We Doing It Wrong? McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

Statement – Yağmur Heffron [email protected] / [email protected]

Introduction The divide between archaeology and text is a familiar thorn in the side of

ancient Near Eastern scholarship. While textual scholars are habitually dismissive of archaeological evidence which they see as ‘mute’ and therefore limited in informative value, material culture specialists are often mistrustful of written sources which they take to be severely biased and therefore non-representative of wider issues. The insistence to see the debate as a simple dichotomy between text and artefact marginalises the role of image, which must be considered on its own terms. As each side insists on evaluating the usefulness of the other’s data by its own standards, textual archaeology of the ancient Near East remains in an impasse. This impasse is chiefly perpetuated – and dialogues further impaired – by a logocentric tradition legitimising exclusive reliance on documentary sources and relegating material (and pictorial) evidence to a secondary role. The question is therefore not simply one of miscommunication but also of disparity. Relevance

Numerous commentators have time and again pointed to the restrictive nature of the archaeological-textual divide. Especially in recent years, awareness of the value of utilizing archaeology and text together has become a visible trend rather than being confined to isolated efforts of a small number of scholars. Integrative approaches seem more conspicuous, and find varied means of expression. Problem-oriented research, for instance, can be seen to shift focus from singular to multiple strands of evidencei while large-scale long-term projects incorporate both textual and archaeological expertise. ii Most recently, the 61st Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale was organised on the theme of “Text and Image” in a conscious attempt to draw Assyriologists and material culture specialists together.iii Meanwhile, approaching cuneiform texts themselves as material culture grows as a focus of scholarly investigation in its own right.iv

It is therefore a particularly good moment to take stock and evaluate

textual archaeology of the Near East in terms of its theoretical underpinnings, and establish relevant methodological benchmarks. Central to this purpose is a self-reflexive consideration not only of why but also – and perhaps more importantly – how textual archaeology ought to be done within the particular confines of the ancient Near East. Cambridge’s strong tradition of bridging the archaeological-textual divide in the area will provide a unique backdrop for focused discussions on textual archaeology.

Challenges

As efforts towards textually informed archaeologies (and vice versa) appear to be gathering momentum, Postgate’s warning against hasty juxtapositions stands out with heightened relevance: “[W]hen one side decides to make a foray into strange territory, it is just that – a foray, almost a commando raid, which takes some booty, wrenches it from its background and then proceeds to exploit it in their home territory according to their own priorities.”v If textual archaeology is to avoid collating decontextualized information or force square pegs into round holes, a critical awareness of both the possibilities as well as the limitations of each strand of evidence is crucial. The scope and limitations of each strand ought to be defined firmly and rigorously so that neither is overstretched or underexploited, but juxtaposed together in a balanced an appropriate fashion. The material and documentary records offer different resolutions of an already incomplete picture. This is, however, easier said than done. An informed assessment of what information to incorporate into one’s research from ‘the other side’ and how to do so meaningfully requires at least basic skills of navigation outside one’s own field of expertise. Both archaeology and textual scholarship are very much internally heterogeneous fields, with multiple research orientations and area-specific



modi operandi. On the one hand, the dizzying variety of textual corpora, which includes a wide range of documents not only in different genres but also in different languages and with chronological cultural idiosyncrasies of form as well as content, can be very discouraging for the archaeologist. For the textual specialist, on the other hand, the sheer volume of numerous categories of raw archaeological data, couched in increasingly technical discourse and with greater use of scientific methods of analysis, can seem impenetrable. In view of the investment of time and focused effort – not to mention specialised training – necessary for even the preliminary tasks of classification, decipherment, cataloguing, and translation, the “division of labor between archaeologists and philologists/historians” vi is not only justified, but simply necessary. This is all the more reason why, particularly at the broader interpretative stage, purposive dialogues between archaeological and textual fields of expertise ought to be promoted. Scope

With this in mind, the conference aims to highlight a range of archaeological and textual methods and themes, from scientific analyses to interpretative syntheses, for a grounded understanding of the extent to which each side is receptive to the other’s data. Participants will be encouraged to address questions on the varying degrees of complementarity and compatibility between different kinds of textual, archaeological, and iconographic evidence. Dialogues will focus on how to integrate different archaeologies, texts, and images. What are, for example, the particular limitations of combining textual findings with the faunal record; or the challenges of integrating iconographic minutiae with the broad physical landscape – and to what extent can we overcome these? What are potential ‘false’ methodologies? How should the frameworks for establishing correspondence be modified as combinations change?

In a similar vein, the temporal and regional scope of the conference is intended to represent a wide range of issues. Speakers are encoraged to contextualize historical, current or anticipated obstacles for integrating archaeology and text within particular area specialisations. Within the ‘greater’ Near East, focused each area study on ancient Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Levant, and Iran reflects not only its idiosyncratic traditions of scholarship within a wider context, but also rely on varying degrees of data availability and/or accessibility. What may be a ubiquitous problem for one region and/or period may not be so in another – identifying idiosyncratic questions can thus help eliminate red herring problems and work towards real, targeted solutions. Ancient Near Eastern scholarship hardly exists in a vacuum. Likewise, the miscommunication across the archaeological-textual divide is not unique only to it. No historical account of the origins and trajectory of the field can be separated from those of Classics and Egyptology, which, as text-oriented fields with inextricable links to archaeological discovery, are the closest sister disciplines from which Assyriology has received considerable influence. Archaeology’s vicissitudinous relationship with all three provides a crucial common denominator for establishing a meaningful comparative framework. What trends isolating modern cuneiform scholarship from archaeological research have been appropriated from the traditions of Classics, or modelled on Egyptological practice? By recognising such links, how can we develop counter-methodologies of integrating material and documentary evidence? What common challenges are shared by all three disciplines, and can the problems of one suggest solutions for another? Further afield but of particular relevance is Historical Archaeology, which in many ways offers greater theoretical maturity in combining material and documentary evidence while ancient Near Eastern scholarship has a longer history of grappling with similar problems. What can Historical



Archaeology’s self-reflexivity offer ancient Near Eastern scholarship, and what can the diachronic trends of ancient Near Eastern scholarship teach Historical Archaeology? A comparative dialogue between these two fields would also promote mutual relevance of otherwise isolated praxes.

Stance The divide between archaeology and text is not merely a methodological

fault-line. Insofar as it fosters a readiness to accept singular points of reference for overarching accounts, or a tendency to compartmentalize contradictory interpretations without holding one strand of evidence to the scrutiny of others, the divide manifests as an inherently epistemological flaw. This flaw, however, must not be taken for granted – simply because the disconnect between archaeological practice and textual scholarship has a recognisably long history in ancient Near Eastern studies, it is not necessarily an inevitable, static feature of the discipline. Both the nature and extent of the archaeological-textual divide can shift and evolve over time, as justifications for widening or incentives for bridging the gap can change in accordance with research priorities being refined or reformulated.

Strengths or weaknesses of the dialogues between material- and text-based

studies should not be reduced to the sum total of individual attitudes, but must be contextualised in terms of wider trends of how research, teaching, and training are structured across the humanities and social sciences. Equally important is to address issues of communication with the world beyond academia, such as the implications of popular culture and politics on how ancient Near Eastern studies are viewed and understood. Owing to its geographical scope, this is a field particularly fraught by complex politics both within and without the immediate confines of scholarly work, and it would be naïve to isolate the textual-archaeological gap from such dynamics. Especially in the current context of major transformations across the research map of the Middle East, as entire regions and therefore

area specialisms shift in and out of focus, a purposive scrutiny of how textual archaeology – or the lack thereof – reflects the construction and consumption of knowledge, will be a highly rewarding direction to take.

Format An ever-present pitfall for interdisciplinary efforts to bring together a range of expertise is that it is often difficult to go beyond the initial success of having physically gathered and eclectic group of specialists in the same venue. In a conscious attempt to encourage mutual engagement and generate meaningful discussion, the conference format incorporates not only invited speakers, but also respondents, likewise selected on the basis of representing a complementary range of specialisms. Pre-conference papers will be circulated to in advance to give the respondents a chance to prepare their responses. Each session will feature two speakers and one respondent, and conclude with a round-table discussion.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!i See, for instance, E. Frood and R. Raja (eds.) Redefining the Sacred: Religious Architecture and Text in the Near East and Egypt 1000 BC – AD 300, 2014. ii Most notably the University of Heidelberg’s “Material Text Cultures: Materiality and Presence of the Scriptural in Non-Typographic Societies” (MTC) Project (www.materiale.textkulturen.de). iii See www.rai.unibe.ch. iv The British Museum’s “Materialities of Assyrian Knowledge Production: Object Biographies of Inscribed Artefacts from Nimrud for Museums and Mobiles” (oracc.museum.upenn.edu/nimrud/) is a case in point for object-focused interest in cuneiform culture. Likewise, M. T. Rutz and M. Kersel (eds.), Archaeologies of Text: Archaeology, Technology, and Ethics. 2014 on the politics surrounding cuneiform texts as objects opens up a valid avenue of debate in the context of the looting in Iraq and Syria. v J. N. Postgate “Figure and Text in Mesopotamia: Match and Mismatch” in C. Renfrew and E. B. W. Zubrow (eds.), The Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive Archaeology, 1994. vi R. Zettler, “Reconstructing the World of Ancient Mesopotamia: Divided Beginnings and Holistic History.” JESHO 46/1, 2003.


Programme

Thursday, December 10th

16.00 Registration 17.15-17.30 Welcome

Cyprian Broodbank, McDonald Institute 17.30-18.15 Keynote Address –

Richard Zettler, University of Pennsylvania

18.15-19.15 Reception at the McDonald Institute

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Programme

Friday, December 11th

08.40-09.20 Introduction – Yağmur Heffron, McDonald Institute/UCL

Session I: Assyriology and Archaeology Chair: Martin Worthington, University of Cambridge

09.00-09.20 Of Haematite and Apricots: Matching up the Mesopotamian World Nicholas Postgate, University of Cambridge�

09.20-09.40 Mind the Gap! Building a Methodology to Overcome the Text-Artifact Divide in the Ancient Near East Christina Tsouparopoulou, Universität Heidelberg

09.40-10.00 Response Richard Zettler, University of Pennsylvania

10.00-10.30 Discussion

10.30-11.00 Tea/Coffee

Session II: Archaeology and Texts in Syria and the Levant Chair: Augusta McMahon, University of Cambridge

11.00-11.20 Archaeology and Texts find Religion in Early Bronze Syria Marie-Henriette Gates, Bilkent University

11.20-11.40 Biblical Archaeology in The Postmodern Era: Towards A New Dialogue between Archaeology and the Bible Shlomo Bunimovitz, Tel Aviv University

11.40-12.00 Response Susan Sherratt, University of Sheffield


12.30-14.00 Lunch at the University Centre

Session III: Out of Mesopotamia and into Iran Chair: Graeme Barker, University of Cambridge

14.00-14.20 “Man”, “Plough”, “Cow”: Progress and Pitfalls in the Decipherment of Proto-Elamite

Jacob Dahl, University of Oxford� 14.20-14.40 Of Tablets and Bricks: Institutional Landscapes in

Achaemenid Archives and Provinces Wouter Henkelman, École Pratique des Hautes Études

14.40-15.00 Response Cameron Petrie, University of Cambridge



Session IV: Text, Image, and Archaeology Chair: Hratch Papazian, University of Cambridge

16.00-16.20 The (Uninscribed) Material Culture of Dedication in

the Early Dynastic Temple Jean Evans, Ludwig-Maxmilians-Universität München

16.20-16.40 Magical Gems as Material Texts Caitlín E. Barrett, Cornell University�

16.40-17.00 Response

Mehmet Ali Ataç, Bryn Mawr College 17.00-17.30 Discussion 20.00 Conference dinner in Trinity College


Programme

Saturday, December 12th

Session V: Landscapes and Texts Chair: T. Emre Şerifoğlu, Bitlis Eren Üniversitesi

09.00-09.20 Satellite Remote Sensing, Archaeological Survey, and Historical Geography in Northern Mesopotamia Jesse Casana, Dartmouth College

09.20-09.40 The Authority of the Archive: Textual Fabrication of Anatolian Landscapes and Archaeological Resistance Ömür Harmanşah, University of Illinois at Chicago

09.40-10.00 Response Gojko Barjamovic, Harvard University



Session VI: Bioarchaeology and Texts Chair: Tamsin O’Connell, University of Cambridge

11.00-11.20 Title tbc Levent Atıcı, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

11.20-11.40 Reading Bodies and Exhuming Texts: Formulating a

Historical Bioarchaeology of the Near East Megan Perry, East Carolina University

11.40-12.00 Response Walther Sallaberger, Ludwig-Maxmilians-Universität München


12.30-14.00 Lunch at the University Centre

!

Session VII: Comparanda, Near and Far: Egypt and Mesoamerica

Chair: Charles Gates, Bilkent University, Ankara

14.00-14.20 Histories of Decline and Fall: Archaeology, Epigraphy, and the Maya Collapse Nick Carter, Brown University

14.20-14.40 Title tbc Kate Spence, University of Cambridge�

14.40-15.00 Response David Wengrow, UCL 15.00-15.30 Discussion


Session VIII: Lessons from the Aegean Chair: Simon Stoddart, University of Cambridge

16.00-16.20 ‘Blended Administration’: Reflections on the Implication of Written Texts and Palatial Activities in the Late Bronze Age Aegean John Bennet, University of British School at Athens / University of Sheffield

16.20-16.40 The Literary Texts of Classical Antiquity Naoíse Mac Sweeney, University of Leicester

NB. Paper to be delivered via Skype 16.40-17.00 Response

Jonathan Hall, University of Chicago 17.00-17.30 Discussion


Programme

Sunday, December 13th

Session IX: Textual Islamic and Medieval Historical Archaeology

Chair: Susanne Hakenbeck, University of Cambridge

09.00-09.20 Telling Archaeological Stories: Test Cases from the Crusader Arena Scott Redford, School of Oriental and African Studies

09.20-09.40 Historical Archaeology: Bridging between Monuments and Unheard Voices Nanouschka Myrberg Burström, Stockholms Universitet

09.40-10.00 Response Patrick Geary, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton



Session X: Plenary Chair: Yağmur Heffron, McDonald Institute/UCL

11.00-11.15 Providing a Forum David Small, Lehigh University

11.15-12.30 Discussion !!!!!!!!

!


Abstracts

Session I: Assyriology and Archaeology Friday, December 11th

Of Haematite and Apricots: Matching Up the Mesopotamian World Nicholas Postgate, University of Cambridge

My talk will take a retrospective look over the past half century at some of the successes and failures of attempts to reunite the evidence of the cuneiform sources with ancient Mesopotamian iconography and with data recovered from archaeological investigation and from ethnography. Examples will be taken from the fields of agriculture and animal husbandry, metrology and architecture, with a couple of case studies from religious iconography. Having described these cases, I will look at how the collaboration of the disciplines was initiated and managed, and from this possibly draw some lessons and offer

Mind the Gap! Building a Methodology to Overcome the Text:Artifact Divide in the Ancient Near East Christina Tsouparopoulou, Universität Heidelberg

This paper will address the text:artefact divide in ancient Near Eastern studies, and assess the different methodologies used (or not used) in bridging it. Archaeologists working with, and especially excavating inscribed objects have long advocated for their proper documentation in the same way as all other archaeological artefacts, i.e. as contextualized finds (R. Zettler, McG.Gibson, C. Reichel). This is definitely a first step in understanding the nuances of inscribed artefacts as social objects, and in applying a holistic and integrated approach to the material culture of the ancient Near East. Others have looked at the “materials-profiling” of inscribed objects, or “diplomatics,” which entails the meticulous study of the minutiae of inscribed objects (D. Charpin and J. N. Postgate). Here, typologies of text genres and tablet formats are also important, as most recently demonstrated by J. Taylor’s work towards creating the first proper typology of inscribed objects throughout millennia of Mesopotamian history. Is the time to treat inscribed clay documents as pottery sherds, and

study the fabric of clay? I will present preliminary statistics from the literature to assess how many scholars are combining text and artefact in a meaningful way, and who is most interested in doing so - Assyriologists or archaeologists? How many Assyriologists are using visual representations of inscribed objects, discussing the physical characteristics of documents and their materials and is this important? How many archaeologists are willing or able to at least try to use textual material in their studies, how many are doing metatext analysis (i.e. identifying objects described in texts in the archaeological record in the manner of D. T. Potts and P. R. S. Moorey) – and is this important? What are the pitfalls of these methods? Regarding context and texts it is more or less clear that archaeologists digging up texts treat them as materials for archaeological documentation while Assyriologists are there to read them. However, what do we do with texts that are not contextualized, were never properly excavated or were excavated at a time when methods of finds documentation did not apply to texts? After gauging various successful and unsuccessful methodologies, I will promote an approach of “entanglement” as advocated by I. Hodder, which should be treated as a second step in evaluating the material dimensions of inscribed objects. Based on the materiality of texts, this approach would entail components such as context, diplomatics, physical characteristics, minutiae, production technology, and the agency texts). It will be a full assessment of an inscribed object’s use, social life, and agency. I will call it ‘materialitäts-profiling’ of texts, which will hopefully allow us to bridge the gap and not just ‘mind’ it.

Respondent Richard Zettler, University of Pennsylvania


Abstracts

Session II: Archaeology and Texts in Syria and the Levant Friday, December 11th

Archaeology and Texts Find Religion in Early Bronze Syria Marie-Henriette Gates, Bilkent University, Ankara

The first textual sources referring to formal religious practice in the northern Levant and inner Syria coincided with the emergence of “urbanism” in the region, during the mid-third millennium B.C. (Early Bronze III). The “urban” archaeological contexts to which they relate are now recognized as largely non-residential. They instead provided civic, storage and religious facilities to tribal communities that chose to emulate some structural features of contemporary Sumer, but otherwise retained a traditional, migrant lifestyle. As part of the same cultural process, their deities came indoors to be housed in built temples, where they assumed two (not necessarily exclusive) forms: anthropomorphic, like their Mesopotamian counterparts; and aniconic, by local custom. The gods’ places of residence likewise alternated with the seasons between enclosed spaces and open-air settings. The two divine forms, long associated with an urban vs. nomadic cultic practice, can better be seen to reconcile the progressive and conservative cultural trends within Syria’s EB III society. These complementary aspects of divinity are well illustrated in the regional archaeological record through the end of the Bronze Age (and beyond), by figural representations of gods and by “standing stones.” On the other hand, the written record is considered the primary source to interpret their religious significance, not least because of biblical interest in aniconism and transcendence. The relevant texts express the official and doctrinal circumstances of literate authorities, however, and may be far removed from unofficial practice involving non-regulated but pervasive beliefs. This paper will examine whether the extant texts can define the various manifestations of these deities, from the perspective of Bronze Age cultures and religions that were located on the peripheries of literacy.

Biblical Archaeology in The Postmodern Era: Towards A New Dialogue between Archaeology and the Bible Shlomo Bunimovitz, Tel Aviv University

For over a century, the archaeology of the southern Levant went hand in hand with the Bible. Biblical archaeology, the outcome of this interaction, has been normally conceived as the handmaiden of the biblical texts, authenticating and illustrating them. Whether motivated by a theological or secular agenda, the main tenet of biblical archaeology was political history. In spite of recent claims for the emancipation of archaeology from the tyranny of the biblical texts, the archaeological agenda is still biblical, pursuing questions related to biblical historiography. Paradoxically, however, due to its problematic nature, the use of the Bible in archaeological discourse is considered today almost illegitimate. Relying on theoretical improvements promoted by the postmodern post-processual/interpretive archaeology, archaeology of the southern Levant can revitalize its dialogue with the Bible. Conceiving of both biblical texts and ancient material artifacts as cultural documents, their inspection provides fruitful and enlightening insights. Words and artifacts give us access to the mindsets of the people of the biblical period. Encapsulated in both are the worldviews, cosmology, perceptions of landscape, ideology, symbolism, etc. of the people who produced them. A series of recent studies practicing this innovative approach manifest the new vistas opened for a postmodern Biblical archaeology.

Respondent - Susan Sherratt, University of Sheffield


Abstracts

Session III: Out of Mesopotamia and into Iran Friday, December 11th

“Man”, “Plough”, “Cow”: Progress and Pitfalls in the Decipherment of Proto-Elamite Jacob Dahl, University of Oxford

Over the past 150 years tremendous advances have been made in the decipherment of Akkadian, Sumerian, and the other languages written with cuneiform. However, as was noted by Damerow (2006), the same progress has not been matched in the decipherment of the very earliest texts from the ancient Near East, and it has become clear that the traditional philological methods of decipherment are progressively less suited for increasingly older texts. However, important improvements in the understanding of the earliest texts from Mesopotamia and Iran, proto-cuneiform and proto-Elamite, have been made through very different methodologies. On the one hand, historians of mathematics have developed a system of decipherment relying on the reconstruction of the context specific numerical systems and notations found in the largely administrative texts from these periods, and on the other hand, philologists working with archaeologists, and using textual and archaeological data, have made advances in decipherment through an understanding of the administrative reality behind the texts. In this brief talk I will first go over two examples of past advances in the decipherment of proto-Elamite using the methods outlined here, whereafter I will propose a range of new topics for future exploration.

Of Tablets and Bricks: Institutional Landscapes in Achaemenid Archives and Provinces Wouter Henkelman, École Pratiques des Hautes Études

Although students of the Achaemenid Empire have generally tended to integrate textual and archaeological materials, the publication and exploration of the Persepolis Fortification Archive has meant a critical breakthrough in terms of interdisciplinary approaches. The archive implies a wilful organisation of the physical space and the reservoir of manpower available in the Achaemenid heartland (roughly the modern province of Fars, Iran). Elements in that documented landscape are increasingly visible in the material record: roads, bridges, plantations, way stations, storehouses, etc. What is perhaps more intriguing, however, is the intentionality of such planning: in the heartland one might still assume an organic development, but particularly in the eastern and northeastern provinces other explanations have to be sought. Here too, there is evidence for large-scale institutional household economies using Aramaic and Elamite for their administration, having well-developed logistic infrastructures and complex hierarchies mimicking those found at Persepolis. Again, these elements may be linked with the results of ongoing excavations in the pertinent regions, which have revealed planned central fortified sites with specialised functions, roads with way stations at regular intervals, canals, etc. That the Achaemenids were willing (and able) to create such institutional landscapes on the model of their heartland, suggests that they could conceive of these as systems that could be instrumentalized to develop and control lands far from the empire's core. The integrated approach brings us, in other words, much closer to the very essence of the Achaemenid empire.

Respondent - Cameron Petrie, University of Cambridge


Abstracts

Session IV: Text, Image, and Archaeology Friday, December 11th

The (Uninscribed) Material Culture of Dedication in the Early Dynastic Temple Jean Evans, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

The typologies of objects dedicated to the Early Dynastic temple are organized around a relatively small number of inscribed examples, primarily of stone. Inscribed sculpture, vessels, mace heads, plaques, and other items are designated dedicatory objects foremost by the verb of dedication (a-ru/šarākum) preserved in the inscriptions on an even smaller number of examples within the corpus. But the boundaries for designating an object as dedicatory are more fluid than the existing typology allows and even these typologies are complicated by a consideration of individual inscribed examples. An archaeologically-based methodology has the potential to complement the current typologies with their reliance solely on inscriptions, especially since the evidence preserved in Early Dynastic texts reveals a much broader material culture of dedication. Ultimately, certain depositional patterns in the archaeological record suggest new typologies of Early Dynastic dedicatory objects. Through an examination primarily of the Diyala temples remains, this contribution therefore attempts to widen the sphere of Early Dynastic dedication through a consideration of uninscribed categories of material culture.

Magical Gems as Material Texts Caitlín E. Barrett, Cornell University

In the study of the ancient Mediterranean, attempts to synthesize multiple forms of evidence have often taken implicitly logocentric forms: e.g., treating material culture as an illustration of textually-attested phenomena, or interpreting material data through the lens of linguistic metaphors (e.g. describing the archaeological record as a type of “text” to be “read”). In the wake of the “material turn” in archaeology, however, materiality-focused perspectives provide a productive alternative framework for

putting archaeological, visual, and textual evidence into dialogue. As a case study in the “entanglement” (in Hodder’s terms) of objects, texts, images, and people, the present paper examines a selection of Roman-period amulets engraved with “magical” inscriptions. Throughout the eastern Mediterranean during the Roman empire, many people used amulets inscribed with divine images, “magical” signs, and “names of power” or “voces magicae”: unusual words that often look like gibberish in Greek or Latin, although they are sometimes derived from other languages such as Egyptian or Hebrew. Magical papyri and curse tablets present similar cryptic words as containing great ritual power, often describing them as the secret names of gods. Amulets inscribed with such voces magicae are thus texts – but texts whose uses and “meanings” derive, in large part, from their materiality rather than their semantic content. Since specific types of stones were thought to possess different magico-medical qualities, consumers likely valued amulets for their raw material as much as – or more than – for their inscriptions. And yet those inscriptions’ very lack of semantic content (at least in the primary language of most of their users) often appears as a source of power in its own right: their very unreadability confirms their ability to communicate with supernatural powers. In conjunction with their material media and associated engraved images, these “magical” inscriptions raise questions not only about the relationships between words, images, and objects, but also the relationships between human and object agency. Amulets were perceived as agents in their own right, not only depictions but also embodiments of divinity – yet they also function as extensions of their users’ agency, enabling individuals to exert power over other people and even over the gods themselves. A materiality-based approach to these objects offers not only an opportunity to investigate the interactions of texts and images, but also a set of conceptual tools for interrogating how the material world (including material texts) shapes human experience.

Respondent - Mehmet Ali Ataç, Bryn Mawr College


Abstracts

Session V: Landscapes and Texts Saturday, December 12th

Satellite Remote Sensing, Archaeological Survey, and Historical Geography in Northern Mesopotamia Jesse Casana, Dartmouth College

Traditionally, there has been relatively little communication between archaeologists, who use regional survey and remote sensing methods to reconstruct regional patterns of ancient settlement, and historians, who use texts, inscriptions and linguistic analysis to reconstruct historical toponymy and the political geography of ancient kingdoms. By underutilizing available texts, archaeological research tends towards excessively functionalist and deterministic explanations of settlement, flattening variability and suppressing the potential richness of the material culture record. On the other hand, historical reconstructions of ancient states undertaken without reference to actual archaeological sites or regional patterns of settlement, divorce polities from their physical landscapes and portray them as simplified blobs-on-a-map. Relying on analysis of declassified CORONA satellite imagery, this paper presents results of an effort to map systematically all major archaeological sites across a large study area extending from the Mediterranean coast of Syria to the uplands of northern Iraq. A dataset of more than 15,000 sites, some 11,000 of which are as-yet undocumented by archaeologists, has then been subjected to morphological analysis, classifying these sites in order to find regional patterns in their size, location, and morphology. Focusing on northern Mesopotamia in the second millennium B.C., an integrated analysis of both the archaeological landscape and relevant texts reveals new insights into the spatial dimensions of political power and the territorial manifestations of Bronze Age states, as well as suggesting possible locations for several as-yet unidentified ancient cities.

The Authority of the Archive: Textual Fabrication of Anatolian Landscapes and Archaeological Resistance Ömür Harmanşah, University of Illinois at Chicago

The Middle Bronze Age in the Central Anatolian Plateau (modern central Turkey), roughly between the beginning of the second millennum B.C. to the emergence of the Hittite Empire in the mid-seventeenth century B.C., is often discussed as the “Assyrian Colony Period” in academic literature. This naming itself presents us not only an example of a colonial naming practice, documenting a spatial as well as temporal occupation of the underdeveloped Anatolian landscapes, but also the canonical practice of maintaining this colonial discourse in the contemporary academic parlance. The archives and written documents excavated from the “Old Assyrian trade” settlements in Turkey, primarily from the mound of Kültepe near Kayseri, have long been used authoritatively as the primary source for imagining and reconstructing the history of this marginal landscape, while the archaeological evidence only come under consideration either to affirm that imagination or fill its gaps. Therefore the dominant narratives of this “colonial episode” in the Near Eastern history derive heavily from mercantile, elitist, and statist perspectives of capitalist modernity, which is rarely questioned. This paper interrogates the uncritical use of texts as authoritative in thinking about the nature of settlement and the political ecology of the Central Plateau, and calls for an alternative, place-based, postcolonial rethinking of this cultural geography through the independent use of archaeological evidence drawn from intensive and extensive regional survey projects.

Respondent - Gojko Barjamovic, Harvard University


Abstracts

Session VI: Bioarchaeology and Texts Saturday, December 12th

Title tbc Levent Atıcı, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

[Abstract forthcoming]

Reading Bodies and Exhuming Texts: Formulating a Historical Bioarchaeology of the Near East Megan A. Perry, East Carolina University

The field of Near Eastern archaeology forms the nexus of varied methodological traditions for exploring the past: philology, epigraphy, art history, classical archaeology, biblical archaeology, and anthropological archaeology, to name just a few. Bioarchaeology, one aspect of anthropological archaeology, is a growing approach in the Near East to answer historical and archaeological questions through the analysis of human skeletal remains. The human skeleton not only provides a palimpsest of an individual’s life experiences, but can illuminate community-level differences in adaptation to particular environments and the impact of political, economic, and climatological change. As bioarchaeology as a discipline matures, scholars are considering its intersection with social theory and text-based approaches to exploring the past. In particular, the bioarchaeological analysis of historical-period populations needs to include sound scientific analysis of the body in addition to deep historiographical analysis of the texts. Here this discussion is brought within the context of the Near East, with its long history of philological and epigraphic analysis, to explore “best practices” for incorporating these two data sets.

Respondent - Walther Sallaberger, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München


Abstracts

Session VII: Comparanda, Near and Far: Egypt and Mesoamerica

Saturday, December 12th

Histories of Decline and Fall: Archaeology, Epigraphy, and the Maya Collapse Nick Carter, Brown University

Beginning in the late 8th century A.D., royal dynasties disintegrated and cities were abandoned across the southern Maya lowlands, even as areas to the north underwent fluorescence and population growth. Recent archaeological findings point to climate change as the major "big picture" driver of the collapse. For many sites, they also suggest that subroyal elites coordinated and survived the end of kingship. Epigraphers have searched in vain for historical accounts of those events written by the ancient Maya themselves. Yet improving understandings of Classic Maya monumental rhetoric, and careful attention to monuments as artifacts, elucidate the collapse as a historical processes by connecting late inscriptions - what they say, how they say it, what they omit - with the rest of the archaeological record. This paper presents such connections from three parts of the Maya world: the Petexbatun and Pasión drainages, the southern city of Copan, and the metropolis of Tikal with its neighbors.

Title tbc Kate Spence, University of Cambridge

[Abstract forthcoming]

Respondent - David Wengrow, University College London


Abstracts

Session VIII: Lessons from the Aegean Saturday, December 12th

‘Blended Administration’: Reflections on the Implication of Written Texts and Palatial Activities in the Late Bronze Age Aegean John Bennet, British School at Athens / University of Sheffield

The Aegean is ‘quantitatively challenged’ in comparison to many areas of the western Old World in the number of preserved written documents: of the three scripts attested in the region, only Linear B offers a significant number, its almost 6,000 texts unevenly distributed in time (14th-13th century B.C.) and space (Crete and southern mainland Greece). Because Linear B has been deciphered, allowing us to read most of its content, and because texts are relatively rare, their presence in any particular archaeological context generates considerable archaeological attention and, as a result, we have good spatial control on their recovery in most sites excavated since the mid-20th century. It follows from the above that context and association play an important part in maximising the information the Linear B documents can offer about the operation of the palatial polities of the 14th-13th century Aegean. In this paper I draw on this appreciation of context to explore the relationship between writing (including sealing practices) and some areas of palatial activity implicated with written administration. I consider what was documented (and what was not – hence ‘blended’) with a view to determining at which points in two areas of palatial activity writing ‘intervened’ and in what manner: the chaîne opératoire of production processes and processes of provisioning and collection through obligation. The concept of administrative ‘reach’ (e.g., Postgate 2001) is useful here. I hope this examination will generate fruitful points for discussion among Aegeanists and those working on less ‘quantitatively challenged’ textual-archaeological traditions elsewhere in the western Old World.

The Literary Texts of Classical Antiquity Naoíse Mac Sweeney, University of Leicester

Students of classical antiquity, no less than those of the Ancient Near East, have long grappled with how to make use both texts and archaeology. Significant debates remain over how evidence from different sources can sensibly be combined; how far individual scholars are ever able to achieve full interdisciplinarity; and to what extent methodologies and approaches can be transferred from one discipline to another. In this paper, I will focus on the last of these three issues. I will first consider how classical archaeologists in the last three decades have used the idea of ‘material culture as text’ to develop nuanced ‘readings’ of objects in their wider social contexts. I will also consider how literary scholars have employed the idea of ‘text as material culture’ to re-contextualise their sources as objects with a physical existence in antiquity. Finally, I will argue that there is another area in which literary scholars might fruitfully adopt archaeological approaches – specifically, in the archaeological concept of the assemblage. The analogy of the archaeological assemblage bears striking resemblance to certain bodies of literary material; in particular, corpora of fragmentary texts or subject-specific references. I will illustrate this with reference to the ‘assemblage’ of literary texts that discuss the Ionian Migration – a movement of people between the western and the eastern Aegean that was presumed to have occurred in the Early Iron Age.

Respondent - Jonathan Hall, University of Chicago


Abstracts

Session IX: Textual Islamic and Medieval Historical Archaeology

Sunday, December 13th

Telling Archaeological Stories: Test Cases from the Crusader Arena Scott Redford, School of Oriental and African Studies

Chris Wickham is one of the contemporary medieval historians who uses archaeological data the most. His opinions on archaeology, and archaeological method, are based on more reading and analysis of archaeological data than most historians. It is perhaps surprising, then, to read in his The Inheritance of Rome (2009) that he believes that history has to do with “causations” and archaeology with “functional relations.” Although he states that ideally the two (historical and archaeological data) should be used together, he also writes that “Archaeological and material evidence is at least free from the constraints of narrative.” This paper will attempt to use archaeological data (survey and excavation) from the medieval eastern Mediterranean to test Wickham’s assertions, and try to tell stories (write narrative) using archaeological data.

Historical Archaeology: Bridging between Monuments and Unheard Voices Nanouschka Myrberg Burström, Stockholms Universitet

The field ‘Historical Archaeology’ grew out from the urge to make explicit the specific conditions certain archaeologists work under – using methods developed for prehistory within periods with an increasing number of written sources – in order to make more conscious and fruitful use of those specificities. A fundamental insight is that ‘historical archaeology’ refers not to one specific chronological period or to a specific cultural context, but to all archaeology dealing with periods with extant written sources – working ‘between artefact and text’. This includes diverse contexts like the Classical periods in different parts of the world, the European Middle Ages, as well as the recent past. Focus within the field has thus been theoretical and methodological issues of general relevance, such as how to

work with contrasts as well as complementary, or the relation between material culture and texts and other sources of evidence like images. Historical archaeologists studying the Classical periods and the Middle Ages have, due to the nature of extant sources, often focused on monumental architecture, major religions, and the upper classes. Much Historical Archeology is however conducted in former colonial areas. Therefore, one important line of inquiry interplays with post-colonial theory and has generated a more political tradition, aiming to forward ‘voices less heard’ and to question the present out from the past. In practice this tends to divide the field into medieval and post-medieval studies, despite the outspokenly non-chronological definition. However, it has also refueled the historical archaeology world-wide, opening up for the present development to include the recent past into archeology. Some of the major issues and lines of inquiry of the historical-archaeological field will be traced and exemplified here to inspire comparisons and encourage inter-disciplinary exchanges.

Respondent - Patrick Geary, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton !

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Textual Archaeology of the Ancient Near East: Are We Doing It Wrong?

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