Edited volumes by Nadia Ben-Marzouk
This volume challenges assumptions about—and highlights new approaches to—the study of ancient Eg... more This volume challenges assumptions about—and highlights new approaches to—the study of ancient Egyptian society by tackling various thematic social issues through structured individual case studies. The reader will be presented with questions about the relevance of the past in the present. The chapters encourage an understanding of Egypt in its own terms through the lens of power, people, and place, offering a more nuanced understanding of the way Egyptian society was organized and illustrating the benefits of new approaches to topics in need of a critical re-examination. By re-evaluating traditional, long-held beliefs about a monolithic, unchanging ancient Egyptian society, this volume writes a new narrative—one unchecked assumption at a time. Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches is intended for anyone studying ancient Egypt or ancient societies more broadly, including undergraduate and graduate students, Egyptologists, and scholars in adjacent fields.
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Journals—special issues by Nadia Ben-Marzouk
This special issue of Near Eastern Archaeology highlights research conducted by members of the SN... more This special issue of Near Eastern Archaeology highlights research conducted by members of the SNSF-funded "Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant" project and forms the second of two issues highlighting new approaches to glyptic from the region.
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This special issue of Near Eastern Archaeology highlights research conducted by members of the SN... more This special issue of Near Eastern Archaeology highlights research conducted by members of the SNSF-funded "Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant" project and forms the first of two issues highlighting new approaches to glyptic from the region.
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Papers by Nadia Ben-Marzouk
Near Eastern Archaeology 87.1: 42-52, 2024
**Please email me for a copy of this article** A distinct feature on many Middle Bronze Age scara... more **Please email me for a copy of this article** A distinct feature on many Middle Bronze Age scarabs from the southern Levant is the presence of chromatic marks on the backs of these objects, often described as longitudinal lines. Previous explanations have fallen into one of three proposals: Either they are the product of production-related techniques related to firing and glazing, intentionally applied marks, or the byproduct of use-wear related or depositional practices. To date, no critical investigation of these enigmatic marks has been published and thus no consensus reached. However, through new high-resolution photography of the stamp seals from the sites of Lachish and Megiddo in the southern Levant, a systematic analysis was recently permitted. This paper presents the results from a study on these enigmatic marks and a discussion on what the new photography reveals about previous interpretations and possible new directions for the study of this corpus.
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In: Stefan Münger, Nancy Rahn and Patrick Wyssmann (eds), „Trinkt von dem Wein, den ich mischte!“ / “Drink of the wine which I have mingled!” (FS Silvia Schroer; Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, 303). Leuven: Peeters, 2023, 50–69., 2023
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***Please email for a full-text version*** While the majority of West Asian glyptic lacks provena... more ***Please email for a full-text version*** While the majority of West Asian glyptic lacks provenance given their purchase on the art market, the southern Levant stands out for its some 12,000 seals and sealings from controlled legal excavations. Swiss scholar Othmar Keel and his colleagues published approximately 7,500 of these objects in his Corpus der Stempelsiegel-Amulette aus Palästina/Israel and Corpus der Siegel-Amulette aus Jordanien, totaling six printed volumes that have served as standard reference works for the region over the last three decades despite their ongoing status. Nevertheless, material from the southern Levant is often peripheralized if not entirely excluded from handbooks teaching the canon of West Asian art—an absence arguably linked to early disinterest in the region given its lack of monumentalizing objects. Such exclusion is compounded by an absence of regional representation in volumes dedicated to new approaches to glyptic art of the ancient world, resulting in a need to reflect on how such material is being studied and by whom.
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Near Eastern Archaeology 86.4: 292-301, 2023
**Please email me for a copy of this article**
Ben-Marzouk, Nadia. 2023. "Some Highlights in ... more **Please email me for a copy of this article**
Ben-Marzouk, Nadia. 2023. "Some Highlights in Local versus Regional Glyptic Consumption in the Southern Levant during the Iron I." Near Eastern Archaeology 86.4: 292-301.
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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Ben-Marzouk, Nadia. 2023. "Othering the Alphabet: Rewriting the Social Context of a New Writing S... more Ben-Marzouk, Nadia. 2023. "Othering the Alphabet: Rewriting the Social Context of a New Writing System in the Egyptian Expedition Community." In Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches, edited by Danielle Candelora, Nadia Ben-Marzouk and Kathlyn M. Cooney, 279-298. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
*Please contact me for the full article.
The development of the early alphabet is argued here to be a process entrenched in shifting power relations. However, assumptions about the identity of its inventor(s), the systems of power surrounding its creation, the tacit equation between language and identity, and the possible mechanisms of its transmission have clouded the social context in which the early alphabet was invented. This chapter employs a language ideology perspective and pairs a communities of practice framework with the resistance identity strategies of inclusionary othering and capitalization, to provide an alternative proposal for the development and transmission of the alphabet. Specifically, it is argued multilingual members of the Egyptian expedition community employed a non-standard orthography as part of inclusive practices tied to coalition building. Such efforts appear influenced by both the elite Egyptian language ideology and writing system, as well as the wider processes of elite identity formation and economic exchange during the late third to early second millennium BCE, contributing to the eventual rise of the so-called immigrant dynasties in the eastern Delta. The possibility that the early alphabet was passed on intergenerationally within this community is explored, and the evidence for its transmission is investigated in connection with the intensification of economic power networks in southwest Asia and the broader eastern Mediterranean-wherein the expedition community played a key role.
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Candelora, Danielle, Nadia Ben-Marzouk, and Kathlyn M. Cooney. 2023. "Investigating Ancient Egypt... more Candelora, Danielle, Nadia Ben-Marzouk, and Kathlyn M. Cooney. 2023. "Investigating Ancient Egypt’s Societies: Past Approaches and New Directions." In Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches, edited by Danielle Candelora, Nadia Ben-Marzouk and Kathlyn M. Cooney, 3-7. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
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Ben-Marzouk, Nadia. 2023. "Power and the Study of Ancient Egyptian Society." In Ancient Egyptian ... more Ben-Marzouk, Nadia. 2023. "Power and the Study of Ancient Egyptian Society." In Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches, edited by Danielle Candelora, Nadia Ben-Marzouk and Kathlyn M. Cooney, 11-16. Abingdon and New York: Routledge
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Ben-Marzouk, Nadia. 2020. "Virtual Museum Exhibit: Humanizing the Past in the Present." In An Edu... more Ben-Marzouk, Nadia. 2020. "Virtual Museum Exhibit: Humanizing the Past in the Present." In An Educator’s Handbook for Teaching About the Ancient World. Volume 1, edited by Pinar Durgan, 196-198. Oxford: Archaeopress.
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Ben-Marzouk, Nadia, and Danielle Candelora. 2020. "Podcast for Public Engagement." In An Educator... more Ben-Marzouk, Nadia, and Danielle Candelora. 2020. "Podcast for Public Engagement." In An Educator’s Handbook for Teaching About the Ancient World. Volume 1, edited by Pinar Durgan, 199-201. Oxford: Archaeopress.
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by Aaron A Burke, Amy B Karoll, George A. Pierce, Nadia Ben-Marzouk, Jacob C . Damm, Andrew J Danielson, Brett Kaufman, Krystal V. Lords Pierce, Felix Höflmayer, Brian Damiata, and Heidi Dodgen Fessler American Journal of Archaeology, Dec 2016
Excavations of the Egyptian New Kingdom fortress in Jaffa (Tel Yafo, ancient Yapu), on the southe... more Excavations of the Egyptian New Kingdom fortress in Jaffa (Tel Yafo, ancient Yapu), on the southern side of Tel Aviv, were renewed by the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project from 2011 to 2014. This work is an outgrowth of the project’s reappraisal of Jacob Kaplan’s excavations in the Ramesses Gate area from 1955 to 1962. As the Egyptian fortress in Jaffa is the only one excavated in Canaan, its archaeological record provides a unique perspective on resistance to Egyptian rule from ca. 1460 to 1125 B.C.E., but especially during the second half of the 12th century B.C.E., when Jaffa was twice destroyed. Radiocarbon dates from these two destructions are presented, and it is suggested that they offer the clearest basis thus far for proposing ca. 1125 B.C.E. as a terminus post quem for the end of Egyptian rule in Canaan. The archaeological evidence, taken together with textual sources, yields a picture of local resistance to the Egyptian military presence in Jaffa likely originating in Canaanite centers located throughout the coastal plain.
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Research presentations by Nadia Ben-Marzouk
ASOR Annual Meeting, Chicago, 2021
Scientific research has long confirmed that the human brain is wired to categorize. While it is ... more Scientific research has long confirmed that the human brain is wired to categorize. While it is therefore natural to group features in glyptic studies, what underlying assumptions do we make when doing so? The objective of this paper is to provoke discussion on the methods and categories by which groups are established, as well as the larger social implications of shared features. First, this paper will briefly survey the history of grouping in stamp seal production in the southern Levant and then raise the following questions for discussion: What assumptions do we make when grouping features? Are these objective categories? How does the process of grouping allow us to better understand the relationship between seal use and a community? A new framework will be proposed for moving from descriptive categorizations of features to an approach that allows for the explanation of continuities and points of divergence in social practice as they pertain to stamp seals.
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ASOR Annual Meeting, Chicago, 2021
Investigations into the nature of interaction between communities in Egypt and the southern Leva... more Investigations into the nature of interaction between communities in Egypt and the southern Levant during the late fourth millennium B.C.E. have traditionally explored contact through the lens of culturally bounded identities tied to geographic place. More recent research on such intercultural interaction has tempered this picture, exploring the blended identities and practices that materialized as a result of the uneven interaction across the landscape of the southern Levant. This paper seeks to provide further nuance to this complex picture by reexamining specific elements of the Nahal Mishmar hoard, a cache of over 400 metal objects hidden in a cave in the Judean Desert. While the hoard has long been dated to the Chalcolithic, several lines of evidence warrant a reconsideration of such a date. As such, this paper will raise the possibility that the cache was deposited during the late fourth millennium, and reflects a complex communal identity that was the product of economic cooperation between groups in the southern Levant, Nile Valley and Delta over the course of a millennium. By reevaluating selected objects in the hoard, I maintain we can complicate our understanding of the interaction, identities, and power dynamics between individuals from Egypt and the southern Levant during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze I.
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AIA Annual Meeting, 2019
Prior investigations into the graphemes selected for use in the early alphabetic script have focu... more Prior investigations into the graphemes selected for use in the early alphabetic script have focused largely on the correspondence between specific Egyptian hieroglyphs and the names of these objects in the West Semitic lexicon. More recent suggestions have argued that the images employed in the inscriptions may have reflected the importance of these objects to the Semitic-speaking producers. However, most interpretations fail to fully investigate the social context of the world into which this new writing system was born, and thus why the script was invented nor how it may have functioned for its creators.
This paper will further develop and nuance previous suggestions that the new writing system was an Egyptian invention. By combining archaeological, iconographic, and textual data with a sociolinguistic approach to script selection, it will be argued that some of the icons selected for the new script were part of a stock cultural repertoire Egyptians employed to depict Aamu (Asiatics). By incorporating these culturally charged icons into the new script and distorting certain principles governing the Egyptian writing system, it therefore reflected the purposeful attempt to mark the script as non-Egyptian in its use, essentially “Othering” the alphabet. I explore the reasons for this and examine the potential influence of this new script in its wider eastern Mediterranean context.
[An expanded version of this paper was presented at the Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting in Helsinki, 2018]
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Crossroads III-A Stranger in the House, 2018
The cultural contacts that crystallized during the early second millennium BCE resulted in the in... more The cultural contacts that crystallized during the early second millennium BCE resulted in the increased mobility of individuals between regions, spurring the exchange of numerous foreign practices between Egypt and western Asia. Past studies have investigated the movement of foreigners as merchants, mercenaries, and prisoners of war, as well as the diplomatic exchange of foreign specialists between international courts. However, only recently have studies begun to consider new models for exploring the social implications embedded within the process of integration, examining the crucial interaction between non-locals and their local counterparts. Investigating these interactions raises a number of critical concerns for the study of immigration in the archaeological record: At what point does a foreigner become a local? How might the local reception of and interactions with foreigners affect an immigrant’s ability to contribute to the community? When does this outsider’s specialized practice cease to be viewed as such and become incorporated into the local repertoire? This paper will explore the blurring of these boundaries through the continuous process of identity negotiation that occurs among individuals on the ground within local communities.
Taking a more holistic approach to this question of human interaction, technological transmission, and practice, we will present two case studies incorporating both textual and archaeological evidence of foreign and local specialists interacting in diverse settings. Situated in the regions of central Anatolia and the eastern Nile Delta, the case studies will investigate how interactions between local and immigrant practitioners worked to both maintain and transform aspects of foreign and local identities within the community. We argue that the study of the presence of non-local practices and specialists is one way to begin probing the issue of who was a foreigner, how that foreign identity and practice was maintained (or not), and how long this distinction between foreigner and local would have persisted. By accepting that practices reflect specific decisions made by an individual that was part of a larger community, we re-focus the discussion on the immigrants themselves, considering the human networks through which knowledge transfer may have traveled and how identities may have been transformed in the process. Furthermore, we explore the social implications and significance inherent within the maintenance of these practices, and how these affect the local community as a result of interaction and integration.
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ASOR Annual Meeting, Creative Pedagogies Session, San Diego, CA, 2019
While the disciplines represented by the ASOR community are filled with educators developing thei... more While the disciplines represented by the ASOR community are filled with educators developing their own creative pedagogies for student and public engagement, the field has largely lacked a venue in which to share best practices. With the establishment of the Creative Pedagogies session at the 2018 ASOR Annual Meeting, however, we have begun the process of developing a common forum to discuss what it means to teach in the 21st century. In order to move toward establishing a permanent space in which to engage one another in ongoing dialogue, we are in the process of creating an online pedagogical resource to serve members of the ASOR community in collaborating and sharing best practices. Given that it is important that the design of any potential resource reflect the needs of the diverse community of users, we developed a survey to query members of the academy on their pedagogical needs and interests, as well as the potential utility of such a resource. This paper will briefly share the results from that survey in order to foster discussion around next steps toward establishing such a space.
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ASOR Annual Meeting, 2018
Technological investigations tend to marginalize discussions of producers, reducing them to the t... more Technological investigations tend to marginalize discussions of producers, reducing them to the techniques they employed during the production process. By dehumanizing these active agents (e.g., the potter, the weaver, the smith), we are left with one-dimensional characterizations that ignore the other networks within which producers were embedded. When we consider that these dynamic individuals functioned in a variety of roles outside of the production contexts we investigate (e.g., as priests, mercenaries, merchants), and that they often collaborated across trades, we make room for discussions on how advances or alterations in one industry may have instantly affected and infused other industries and areas of society. Ignoring the social context of technological production therefore severely limits our understanding of how both production systems and producers were entangled in systems of dependency, simultaneously overlapping and interacting with, relying on, and influencing one another. It will be argued that, if we are to understand the impacts of technologies, we must begin with a consideration of the complex social, economic, political, and ideological webs within which these active individuals were embedded. This paper will first survey textual records from the second millennium in order to establish the interconnected nature of producers within their broader social environment, and then draw on archaeological data from specific case studies¬–combining a cross-craft approach with theory on communities of practice–to demonstrate the need to shift toward a more holistic, people-oriented approach to the study of technological interconnectivity.
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ASOR Annual Meeting, Creative Pedagogies Session, Denver, CO, 2018
Given current higher education trends, almost every seat in the Ancient Near Eastern Studies clas... more Given current higher education trends, almost every seat in the Ancient Near Eastern Studies classroom is occupied by non-major students satisfying general education requirements. These transient students should not however be seen as representative of the plight of our discipline, but rather an opportunity for public outreach. For many of them, our course will be their only exposure to humanistic and social scientific study of the ancient world, and as such we must present them with an accessible, dynamic, and engaging curriculum primed to let them explore the current relevance of the past. The traditional model of instruction, a master narrative of facts delivered by the lecturer-as-sage, is unsuited to the task. That said, a reform-minded instructor will find precious few pedagogical resources within our discipline to redesign class and curriculum—even if they extend their search to sister fields. As such, this paper will first explore classroom-tested methods for the development of a critical and engaged pedagogy that both explores ANE subject matter and uses it as a vehicle to explore broader themes of humanistic relevance. It will then present a discussion on the assignation of a multimodal project at UCLA–an outward-facing, student-generated podcast series. The assignment was designed to engage students by charging them with the responsibility of educating the public on a topic from the past that has relevance for the present. Thus, the goal of public outreach comes full circle, and the students become active participants in the creation and distribution of knowledge about the ANE.
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Edited volumes by Nadia Ben-Marzouk
Journals—special issues by Nadia Ben-Marzouk
Papers by Nadia Ben-Marzouk
Ben-Marzouk, Nadia. 2023. "Some Highlights in Local versus Regional Glyptic Consumption in the Southern Levant during the Iron I." Near Eastern Archaeology 86.4: 292-301.
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.
*Please contact me for the full article.
The development of the early alphabet is argued here to be a process entrenched in shifting power relations. However, assumptions about the identity of its inventor(s), the systems of power surrounding its creation, the tacit equation between language and identity, and the possible mechanisms of its transmission have clouded the social context in which the early alphabet was invented. This chapter employs a language ideology perspective and pairs a communities of practice framework with the resistance identity strategies of inclusionary othering and capitalization, to provide an alternative proposal for the development and transmission of the alphabet. Specifically, it is argued multilingual members of the Egyptian expedition community employed a non-standard orthography as part of inclusive practices tied to coalition building. Such efforts appear influenced by both the elite Egyptian language ideology and writing system, as well as the wider processes of elite identity formation and economic exchange during the late third to early second millennium BCE, contributing to the eventual rise of the so-called immigrant dynasties in the eastern Delta. The possibility that the early alphabet was passed on intergenerationally within this community is explored, and the evidence for its transmission is investigated in connection with the intensification of economic power networks in southwest Asia and the broader eastern Mediterranean-wherein the expedition community played a key role.
Research presentations by Nadia Ben-Marzouk
This paper will further develop and nuance previous suggestions that the new writing system was an Egyptian invention. By combining archaeological, iconographic, and textual data with a sociolinguistic approach to script selection, it will be argued that some of the icons selected for the new script were part of a stock cultural repertoire Egyptians employed to depict Aamu (Asiatics). By incorporating these culturally charged icons into the new script and distorting certain principles governing the Egyptian writing system, it therefore reflected the purposeful attempt to mark the script as non-Egyptian in its use, essentially “Othering” the alphabet. I explore the reasons for this and examine the potential influence of this new script in its wider eastern Mediterranean context.
[An expanded version of this paper was presented at the Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting in Helsinki, 2018]
Taking a more holistic approach to this question of human interaction, technological transmission, and practice, we will present two case studies incorporating both textual and archaeological evidence of foreign and local specialists interacting in diverse settings. Situated in the regions of central Anatolia and the eastern Nile Delta, the case studies will investigate how interactions between local and immigrant practitioners worked to both maintain and transform aspects of foreign and local identities within the community. We argue that the study of the presence of non-local practices and specialists is one way to begin probing the issue of who was a foreigner, how that foreign identity and practice was maintained (or not), and how long this distinction between foreigner and local would have persisted. By accepting that practices reflect specific decisions made by an individual that was part of a larger community, we re-focus the discussion on the immigrants themselves, considering the human networks through which knowledge transfer may have traveled and how identities may have been transformed in the process. Furthermore, we explore the social implications and significance inherent within the maintenance of these practices, and how these affect the local community as a result of interaction and integration.
Ben-Marzouk, Nadia. 2023. "Some Highlights in Local versus Regional Glyptic Consumption in the Southern Levant during the Iron I." Near Eastern Archaeology 86.4: 292-301.
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.
*Please contact me for the full article.
The development of the early alphabet is argued here to be a process entrenched in shifting power relations. However, assumptions about the identity of its inventor(s), the systems of power surrounding its creation, the tacit equation between language and identity, and the possible mechanisms of its transmission have clouded the social context in which the early alphabet was invented. This chapter employs a language ideology perspective and pairs a communities of practice framework with the resistance identity strategies of inclusionary othering and capitalization, to provide an alternative proposal for the development and transmission of the alphabet. Specifically, it is argued multilingual members of the Egyptian expedition community employed a non-standard orthography as part of inclusive practices tied to coalition building. Such efforts appear influenced by both the elite Egyptian language ideology and writing system, as well as the wider processes of elite identity formation and economic exchange during the late third to early second millennium BCE, contributing to the eventual rise of the so-called immigrant dynasties in the eastern Delta. The possibility that the early alphabet was passed on intergenerationally within this community is explored, and the evidence for its transmission is investigated in connection with the intensification of economic power networks in southwest Asia and the broader eastern Mediterranean-wherein the expedition community played a key role.
This paper will further develop and nuance previous suggestions that the new writing system was an Egyptian invention. By combining archaeological, iconographic, and textual data with a sociolinguistic approach to script selection, it will be argued that some of the icons selected for the new script were part of a stock cultural repertoire Egyptians employed to depict Aamu (Asiatics). By incorporating these culturally charged icons into the new script and distorting certain principles governing the Egyptian writing system, it therefore reflected the purposeful attempt to mark the script as non-Egyptian in its use, essentially “Othering” the alphabet. I explore the reasons for this and examine the potential influence of this new script in its wider eastern Mediterranean context.
[An expanded version of this paper was presented at the Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting in Helsinki, 2018]
Taking a more holistic approach to this question of human interaction, technological transmission, and practice, we will present two case studies incorporating both textual and archaeological evidence of foreign and local specialists interacting in diverse settings. Situated in the regions of central Anatolia and the eastern Nile Delta, the case studies will investigate how interactions between local and immigrant practitioners worked to both maintain and transform aspects of foreign and local identities within the community. We argue that the study of the presence of non-local practices and specialists is one way to begin probing the issue of who was a foreigner, how that foreign identity and practice was maintained (or not), and how long this distinction between foreigner and local would have persisted. By accepting that practices reflect specific decisions made by an individual that was part of a larger community, we re-focus the discussion on the immigrants themselves, considering the human networks through which knowledge transfer may have traveled and how identities may have been transformed in the process. Furthermore, we explore the social implications and significance inherent within the maintenance of these practices, and how these affect the local community as a result of interaction and integration.
The final conference will take place on Friday, May 31, 2024 (online; during two time windows to accommodate the various time zones) and Saturday, June 1, 2024 (in-person; University of Zurich, Asien-Orient Institut, Rämistrasse 59, Aula G-01).
While the first day of the conference is devoted to the demonstration of the new digital “Corpus of Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant” (CSSL), the second day is dedicated to presentation of the main achievements and the results of several sub-projects. Also during this in-person event, Dr. Daphna Ben-Tor will deliver a keynote on “Ideological Differences between Representations of the Pharaoh during the 18th and 19th Dynasties as Reflected on Scarabs and Stamp-seals”.
To register for the online component: https://levantineseals.org/index.php/final-conference/
This workshop will be held over the course of three years, with each year focusing on a new topic as follows:
Year 1 (2023): Assessing the needs, challenges, and best practices of glyptic databases
Year 2 (2024): Toward establishing a shared and standardized taxonomic language
Year 3 (2025): Asking new questions with digital technologies: Moving towards broad glyptic studies
1. How do we define “local”, “regional”, and “interregional”? What limitations do they possibly impose on the data? How do these definitions translate into the classification of data, and classifications into models? How do we evaluate data which seem to be in tension with or contradict our models?
2. What methods and theoretical frameworks are currently employed to investigate conceptions of place at different scales of analysis? Does the distribution of different materials and objects reflect different regionality? How might new databases of material influence these methods and frameworks and their results?
3. What creates locality and regionality? Are geographical and ecological features paramount to the shaping of locality and regionality? How, under certain conditions and circumstances, do other factors gain traction alongside or over geography and ecology, even to the degree that they can relegate them to a secondary role?
4. What are the primary challenges we face in studying interaction? What do we mean by interaction in the first place, and what models can we apply to study it via material remains? Is “connectivity” useful as an alternative or complementary concept? And how do we identify (or model) agents of interaction?
This two-day, in-person workshop seeks to bring together regional glyptic specialists and scholars working on craft production more broadly to workshop issues related to how we study systems of stamp seal production, including the criteria, methods, and terminology we employ. The following three questions serve to guide these discussions:
1. What challenges do we face when investigating systems of stamp seal production?
2. What assumptions do we make about production and are these valid?
3. How can we access the social factors behind the seals we study?
The digital humanities turn provides new tools and thus potential pathways to revisit and ex-pand approaches to glyptic typology. This two-day workshop aims to bring together regional glyptic specialists and early career scholars to foster discussion around the following three questions:
1. What should a meaningful typology look like in the 21st century?
2. How can digital tools aid in developing new typological schema?
3. How can we build an overarching typology that will produce specific results for different periods and regions?