Click here to view the embedded video.
I recorded my class on Amos and Hosea. There were no separate slides prepared, and so you can simply listen to the lecture as a podcast. I hope to try recording some things in a smart classroom at some point, so that I can even capture writing on the smartboard, much like one sees in some TED talks.
(a dissertation snip)
Working on archaeological projects is often like living in a fishbowl, and this was especially true at Çatalhöyük (Ashley 2004). When we were not being watched by the daily site visitors, there would be specialists or guards, and sometimes artists or anthropologists would wander through. This feeling of being watched was especially true when videographers or people recording sound would come on site without warning. It was disconcerting to look up and realize that you were being filmed—what was I saying? Chadwick and his colleagues “found the cameras at Çatalhöyük intrusive” (2003:103). The availability of inexpensive video tape allowed a more casual use of filming around the site, and the zoom lenses and directional microphones allowed videographers a false proximity to excavators who may or may not be aware that their actions and conversation were being captured and subsequently used without their knowledge or permission. As previously mentioned in Chapter Three, after conducting a video interview with Roddy Regan, one of the long-time archaeologists at Çatalhöyük, he gave me a direct look and said, “I’ve filmed hundreds of these things but I’ve never ever seen any of the results.”
Surveillance is deeply implicated in the lineage of new media. Lev Manovich traces the history of the computer screen from photography, through radar, and then the development of tracking software by the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) command center that controlled U.S. air defenses in the mid-1950s (2001). With nearly instantaneous online publication available for videos, there is the potential for embarrassing or inappropriate content to become widespread before the subject of the film can take control of the content. This behavior is relatively innocuous compared to the notorious, ubiquitous tracking of social media companies who use and sell data about your interests and your interactions with your friends (boyd 2011). Yet there are “discriminatory social implications of panopticonism” that reveal the differential social status of those under scrutiny and those who hold the cameras (Elmer 2003:232). While this has abated somewhat in light of the growing availability of video cameras, there still remains a certain wariness of archaeologists toward filmmakers.
Film is not the only means to surveil the members of excavations; mandatory site diaries or “blogs” can be framed as a reflexive measure yet without reciprocity throughout the team and an explicit assurance that they will not be used against the individuals who express their opinions, the blogs quickly become dry accounts of stratigraphy. To remedy feelings of surveillance while taking photographs and videos on site there should be a relationship of trust, that the filmmaker would not abuse the trust of the subject by videotaping while the subject was unaware of the person, nor would they publish any media without the permission of the subject. I discuss the issues of assent and Human Subjects Review in regard to video later this chapter, yet it is relevant to note that feelings of surveillance can be mitigated by the position of the filmmaker within the team. If the person is another archaeologist or a long-trusted site media expert, there is an intimacy and trust present in the media that is completely absent in media made by outsiders (see Chapter Three for discussion of this phenomenon in photography).
You call on the Getty to step in, but neglect to mention the important work the Getty and its partners are doing in the Middle East to help countries manage and monitor their cultural heritage.
The Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Antiquities, or MEGA, is a bilingual Arabic-English, Web-based national geographic information system created by the Getty Conservation Institute with its partner the World Monuments Fund to assist heritage officials in inventorying, monitoring, and managing the Middle East’s vast number of archaeological sites. We helped the Jordanian Department of Antiquities (DoA) customize it for Jordan, where it was called MEGA-J. The DoA deployed MEGA–Jordan nationwide in April 2011. (getty.edu/conservation/our_projects/field_projects/jordan/mega_overview.html)
The GCI and WMF also have adapted and made MEGA available for use by the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage. Its implementation in Iraq has been delayed due to administrative changes in the country.
The MEGA system, which incorporates internationally accepted documentation standards, can be customized and is designed for adaptation and use by other countries. It uses open source software that does not impose licensing fees on financially strapped antiquities authorities.
Despite ongoing conflict in the region, we continue to work on projects in the area to aid heritage professionals in a variety of other ways as well.
As recently as July, a group of Syrian heritage professionals participated in training in Rome as part of MOSAIKON, a partnership of the GCI, the Getty Foundation, ICCROM, and the International Committee for the Conservation of Mosaics to conserve Roman mosaic pavements and manage archaeological sites in the Mediterranean region through strategic targeting of priorities and deployment of resources.
The first phase of MOSAIKON began in 2008. The partners will shortly be undertaking an evaluation to ensure that the strategy is meeting its objectives. The results of this evaluation will inform subsequent phases of work.
If you’re near Penn State and are free Thursday evening, you might want to attend a lecture recently added to the 2012-13 program of the Central Pennsylvania Society of the AIA.
Dr. Amir Golani, Israel Antiquities Authority, “Economic Aspects of Silver Hoards and Jewelry at the End of the Iron Age in the Levant.” Thursday, October 25, 8:00 pm, in 101 Chambers Building
Abstract: The use of precious metals as a means for bartering throughout the ancient Near East dates back to the Bronze Age. The rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire during the latter portion of the Iron Age II period (8th-7th century BCE) witnessed a steep rise in use of silver, appearing as silver ingots, cut silver chunks and whole and broken down silver jewelry. The sources of the silver indicate far-ranging trade contacts and its increased use reflects changing geo-political processes in the eastern Mediterranean and the ancient Near East. The silver, along with various textual sources that specify its use as a form of payment, are witness to the growing reliance on this metal as a medium of exchange. This talk will explore the sources of silver found in the southern Levant, the various forms in which it appears and how and why silver became a preferred medium of payment in the economic systems of the ancient Near East.
HT: Eric Welch
I must get round to setting up a separate category for the battle at Kalefeld/Harzhorn about the battle that took place around AD235 between the Romans under Maximinus Thrax and the Germans. I mentioned a little while ago the exhibition which is planned next year.
Anyway, more on the exhibition at HNA.de along with sight of the poster. I hadn't realised that they are dropping EUR1.8m on the exhibition.
On the same subject, and also in HNA.de, there is debate about how best to display the battlefield. With any luck it will be more attractive and absorbing than Kalkriese and the battle of Teutoburg Forest. Full story here with an image of a proposed tower. On the plus side, they are really throwing money at it.
TECOZAUTLA, MEXICO.- During the excavations in Pañhu, an archaeological zone which will soon open its doors to the public in the municipality of Tecozautla, Hidalgo, archaeologists registered a burn stucco floor, evidence that its main pyramid was desacralized approximately 1,350 years ago.
This coincides with an astronomical event which was thought, by its inhabitants, to be a cataclysm.
Archaeologist Fernando Lopez Aguilar, director of the site’s investigation project promoted by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH – Conaculta), informed that there was a solar eclipse at sunrise the 3rd of August in the year 650 AD.
“To these old societies, the eclipse must have represented a catastrophe which is why they made sacrifices in order to ‘keep the star alive’, since they believed the black sun or hell’s sun had imposed on their sun ‘a giver of life’. This event generated a gradual abandonment in Teotihuacan and also had repercussions in Pañhu”, the investigator explained.
See on Scoop.it – Archaeology News
Last Tuesday the new Digital Classicist in Berlin started with an introductory presentation given by Dr Gabriel Bodard, one of the two co-organizisers of the Digital Classicist in London, a series of seminars which has been running since 2006.
As one of Gabriel Bodard’s main field of interest is Greek epigraphy (e.g. Current epigraphy), his talk was about the progresses and challenges Digital Humanities brings to epigraphy: “A View on Digital Classics Collaboration: from a cacophony of epigraphic databases to a citizens’ web of inscriptions”.
Among the many interesting topics, I would however like to mention one which is of particular significance for my own research projet on Demetrios of Scepsis. It is the presentation of Prof. Jenny Strauss Clay about the mapping of the Catalogue of the Ships. She has already show in a recent study ( Homer’s Trojan Theater) how combining the new tools of Digital Humanities and conventional scholarship enables scholars to provide amazing new approaches, especially for Homeric scholarship. She has created for instance a visual representation of the so-called battlefield books in the Iliad. One of the many interesting aspects of her results was, to my opinion, the fact that the representation could work without being linked to any kind of map or real landscape. I am looking therefore forward to hear more about her project.
Finally I would like to mention a second series of seminars inspired by the Digital Classicist in London. The Univeristy of Leipzig is organizing in parallel the 2012 Leipzig eHumanities Seminar . Their programme has serveral highlights too and completes the one of the Berlin seminar in a most interesting way.
Sota Project’: Sealed With a KissThe kiss is a kiss of death.
by Jonathan Maseng, Contributing Writer [JewishJournal.com]
The Talmud is on display this month at the USC Fisher Museum of Art, but if you’re expecting a dry examination of rabbinic law and ethics, you’ve come to the wrong place. Ofri Cnaani’s “The Sota Project” offers a daring and even graphic take on Jewish views of adultery, sexuality and sisterhood through a little-known but fascinating piece of talmudic text.
Sitting in a conference room at the Fisher Museum’s offices, Cnaani was excited to discuss “The Sota Project,” though a little disappointed to hear she’d missed out on Los Angeles’ long-running heat wave. Born in Israel in 1975, Cnaani immigrated to the United States a decade ago to study art at New York’s Hunter College MFA program, and though she apparently misses the warm Israeli summers, she’s found great success in the States and in the New York art world, where her work has been on display at prestigious places like MOMA’s PS1 and the Andrea Meislin Gallery. Her exhibition at the Fisher Museum marks her Los Angeles debut, and she seems particularly excited to be showing a piece like “The Sota Project,” which is so close to her heart.
[...]
Kabbalah, Volume 28 (2012)
320 pp. [English and Hebrew] ISBN 1-933379-31-6
ORDER HERE: ATLAS BOOKS
Studies in English
Daniel Abrams: ‘The Becoming of the Hasidic Book’ – An Unpublished Article by Joseph Weiss: Study, Edition and English Translation
Jonatan Meir: Marketing Demons – Joseph Perl, Israel Baal Shem Tov and the History of One Amulet
Moshe Idel: Solomon Maimon and Kabbalah
Studies in Hebrew
Daniel Abrams: Gershom Scholem and the Book Bahir
Gideon Bohak: Gershom Scholem and Jewish Magic
Shraga Bar-On: The Yom Kippur Lots – Rationalism, Manticism and Mysticism
Leore Sachs Shmueli: Seder Gan Eden – Critical Edition and Study (with annotations by Gershom Scholem)
Avraham Elqayam: Nudity in the Sanctus Sanctorum: Philo and Plotinus on Nudity, Esthetics and Sanctity
Entrance to TT1, the Theban Tomb of Sennedjem.
This kind of pyramid structure is characteristic of Rammesside elite tombs.
Photograph courtesy of Aegyptus on Facebook.
"Indiana Jones Meets Harriet the Spy in this action-packed adventure series. Twelve-year-old Samantha Sutton joins her uncle on his archaeological project at the ancient site of Cerro Sechin in Mexico. But when excavated areas, artifacts, and equipment are destroyed, it is up to Samantha to try and solve the mystery of who is responsible. Is it the Legend of Loco seeking revenge? Are locals looting the site? Or maybe one of Uncle Jay's jealous students? Filled with exotic atmosphere and an array of sharply drawn characters, this is an Agatha Christie mystery for tweens".When I first heard of an archaeologist setting out to write a book for youngsters with a moral and mentioning the antiquities trade, I thought uh-oh... but I found the teaser extract a pleasant surprise, I wish the author success. I have not read the book (yet) but am really hoping that the "labyrinth of lies" of the title refers in part to the antiquities trade. That would be a really good thing to get over to young people reading this book.
