2024 Approved Roundtable Discussions
The following Roundtable Discussions are being offered at the 2024 ASOR Annual Meeting during the brown-bag lunch hour on Thursday, November 21 from 12:55–1:55pm. Space is limited and advance sign-up is required. Roundtables will be noted as “full” when all of the spaces at the table have been filled. Sign up to attend a Roundtable Discussion here.
1. ASOR and K-12 Education
2. Comics as Research: Adapting Scholarship to Reach New Audiences
3. Community Engaged Archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean and MENA Region
4. Empowering Local Cultural Heritage Organizations in Iraq: Challenges and Opportunities
5. Exploring New Frontiers in Islamic Archaeology
6. Including Non-Academic Professionals and the Public in the Ancient Studies Community
7. Kiosk: Digital Field Recording for Archaeology
8. Moving Forward: ASOR’s Initiative on the Status of Women
ASOR and K-12 Education
Organizer: Erin Darby, University of Tennessee
K-12 teacher training and curriculum development remains a central challenge at both the national and state level. Consistent challenges are well noted by professional societies like the National Council for the Social Studies. At the same time, public universities, federal granting agencies, and nonprofits are increasingly recognizing the need to build bridges between university programs and primary and secondary educational institutions not only to improve the pipeline into higher education, but also as a central component of engaged citizenry and effective workplace environments.
Nevertheless, the resources supporting K-12 instruction in the ancient world suffer from a variety of challenges such as the wording of social studies standards, overly simplistic or one-dimensional treatments in textbooks, and a lack of supplemental instructional materials. Teachers also attest to a lack of confidence in covering several aspects of the ancient world, particularly those that are discussed as part of world religions. At times these topics are perceived as political charged, leading teachers to minimize classroom discussion or rely exclusively on textbooks. In other cases, teachers struggle to find vetted scholarly resources they can use for supplemental instruction.
ASOR members are well-positioned to contribute to both the training of K-12 educators and to the creation of supplemental instructional materials for use in K-12 class settings. This round-table seeks to identify ASOR members already engaged in the K-12 educational arena as well as ASOR members interested in increasing such engagement, and to better identify ASOR and ASOR-adjacent resources that can be used to support K-12 education.
Comics as Research: Adapting Scholarship to Reach New Audiences
Organizer: Glynnis Fawkes, The Center for Cartoon Studies
Comics have the potential to present complex issues and systems with clarity and style, and are an ideal medium to inform, educate, and to reach wider audiences. Comics can be used for outreach, to explain science and analysis, and to give readers a sense of place and discovery.
In this roundtable, I’ll discuss how I created the graphic adaptation of Eric Cline’s 1177 BC The Year Civilization Collapsed for participants interested in exploring, creating, and pursuing the integration of comics practices in their own research and publication.
I’ll show examples of my process in adapting text into the language of comics, from thumbnail drawings to final pages. I’ll discuss elements of visual story-telling, such as dramatizations, maps, data visualization, and more.
Then I will guide participants in a short drawing workshop to create a comic based on their research and/or field experience. No drawing skills are required! I’ll provide pencil and paper, then offer panel-by-panel instructions for participants to draw about an aspect of their research, data collection, and/or field experience. The goal of the workshop is to experiment and share information in a friendly and non-judgemental environment. We’ll end with a show and tell and discussion.
Target audience: anyone curious about comics as a way to express their research, as a potential model for student engagement, and to reach wider audiences of all ages and across cultures.
Community Engaged Archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean and MENA Region
Organizer: Michelle Heeman, Stanford University
As archaeology has contended with its colonial legacy in the 21st century, community engaged practice—the involvement of local communities through collaboration in research and its decision-making process—has taken a central place in conversations about what it means to do archaeology abroad. Using a variety of models to varying degrees of success, archaeologists have begun incorporating community engaged practices focused on cultural heritage preservation, education, tourism, and knowledge exchange into their field projects on an ever-increasing scale globally. As archaeologists experiment with these models, what it means to do effective community engaged work remains a highly debated topic. As we consider how to incorporate community engaged practices into our field projects, what models of successful community engagement projects can we look to for guidance? What have been the successes and shortcomings of these models? What are the particular challenges of doing community engaged work in the eastern Mediterranean and MENA region? We invite archaeologists of all career stages, especially early career scholars, to join us to discuss these questions and share their personal experiences from the field.
Empowering Local Cultural Heritage Organizations in Iraq: Challenges and Opportunities
Organizer: Yaroub Al Obaidi, Duquesne University
This meeting will provide ASOR members with the opportunity to learn about local groups and organizations engaged in Cultural Heritage Preservation and presentation. It will allow these local organizations to showcase their work and share their challenges and expectations. Additionally, the meeting will inform these organizations about ASOR’s initiatives and the benefits of involvement.
I will present work on behalf of these organizations and connect interested ASOR members with their representatives. Furthermore, this meeting will serve as a foundation for future discussions, encouraging these organizations to share their experiences. Ultimately, this meeting will act as a pilot study to explore involvement in other countries where ASOR operates.
Exploring New Frontiers in Islamic Archaeology
Organizer: Kathleen Forste, Brown University
In 2023 ASOR saw the “crest of the wave” in Islamic archaeology (as Asa Eger described it), where at the annual meeting more than 40 papers and 5 sessions were dedicated to the field. Riding that momentum, this round table would bring scholars studying Islamic archaeology across the eastern and western Mediterranean (and beyond) into conversations with each other about thematic, methodological, and theoretical advancements in this subfield. Building off of the goal of my co-chaired session, Islamic Society in the Western Mediterranean and Atlantic Coast, this round table would provide a venue in which to discuss questions such as: What are fruitful lines of inquiry and comparison across the medieval Islamic world? What are shared ideas and themes of investigation? How can we better understand the mechanisms of diffusion and adoption of agrotechnology, foodways, architecture, among others? What are current issues or limitations in making such regional comparisons? This will be a rare opportunity for dialogue and collaboration-building between scholars from multiple countries who do not often have the opportunity to interact in-person, but who will be attending the ASOR annual meeting, as it is increasingly an important venue for Islamic archaeology.
The targeted audience includes participants and attendees of 3 specifically Islamic sessions, (Archaeology of Islamic Society I and II, and Islamic Society in the Western Mediterranean and Atlantic Coast), and those in regional sessions interested in later periods (such as Archaeology of Israel, Archaeology of Jordan, and Archaeology of Egypt).
Including Non-Academic Professionals and the Public in the Ancient Studies Community
Organizer: David Danzig, New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World & Save Ancient Studies Alliance
This roundtable discussion will explore pathways for maintaining engagement with/for individuals who have studied formally or informally in an ancient studies field and who wish to stay engaged in our intellectual community, regardless of the directions of their career paths. Participants will discuss and brainstorm ways to stay connected through online platforms, professional networks, social media, seminars, and local events, as well as how ancient studies-related organizations might best engage those individuals.
The goal of the meeting is to encourage an open exchange of ideas and experiences, allowing attendees to learn from each other’s journeys and share strategies for maintaining community and engagement outside of academia. By fostering dialogue between those who have taken a range of career paths and those still exploring their options, we aim to build a network of support and continued learning.
This event is targeted at recent graduates, mid-career professionals in archaeology, language and literature, history, and cultural heritage, as well as academics interested in bridging the gap between academic and non-academic communities. Ultimately, the roundtable will offer a space for individuals to share, learn, and create lasting connections within the field of ancient studies, regardless of career path.
Kiosk: Digital Field Recording for Archaeology
Organizer: Laurel Bestock, Brown University
Do you have a field project? Are you looking for a more efficient way to gather your data and analyze it for publication?
Digital recording is relatively common in archaeology, but it has faced hurdles to widespread adoption, particularly by academic archaeologists. These hurdles are not only or even primarily technical, but rather range from the theoretical, to the physical and the administrative. This roundtable will introduce Kiosk, a free and open-source integrated iPad recording platform and browser-based data manager for field archaeology that solves many of the issues common to other digital recording options. The roundtable’s goals are to allow project directors and others interested in digital recording to ask questions about the software, try out many of its features, and suggest additions that would facilitate their work in the field.
Kiosk is used in the recording of excavation and survey data in projects from Egypt to Peru and Cyprus. It allows for the recording and integration of data in the field, from field journals and photographs, to context information and the automatic rendering of Harris Matrices, to object registration. Kiosk also enables the analysis of data for publication by allowing users to easily query and search through their data online post-season. Kiosk is available to anyone who wishes to use it, including tech support for customization and while in the field. It is suitable for everything from a one-summer project run by a graduate student, to a field school, to ongoing excavations with decades of data to digitize.
Moving Forward: ASOR’s Initiative on the Status of Women
Organizers: Beth Alpert Nakhai, University of Arizona | Jennie Ebeling, University of Evansville
Over the course of the cumulative decades that we (Jennie and Beth) have been members of ASOR and regular attendees at its annual meeting, we – and others – have worked for – and seen – positive changes related to the status of women in the organization and in the field. Many women, by now, attend annual meetings. ASOR’s leadership, its Board of Trustees and its many committees, now include significant numbers of women. The annual meeting has a standing session on women and gender in the Near East. For most of us, it is hard to remember the time when none of this was the case. Fieldwork too, reflects changes that are not just “signs of the times” but rather, the consequence of hard work undertaken by members of ASOR’s Initiative on the Status of Women (ISW) and by other concerned people.
Over the thirteen years since the ISW was established, many people (primarily women) have come together annually to conceptualize goals and strategize action plans. We acknowledge all that has been accomplished, both at the meetings and in each long year between one meeting and the next, but we also know that there is still more work to be done. This ASOR Roundtable offers attendees the opportunity to brainstorm goals and to make plans. What do you want to see happen, in the short and long terms? How will you contribute to making these things happen? Join us, as we renew our commitment to building equality in our field.
