2025 LIST OF APPROVED SESSIONS AND WORKSHOPS
Boston & Hybrid: November 19-22
ASOR’s 2025 Annual Meeting will take place November 19-22 at the Boston Park Plaza. The meeting in November will be hybrid with both virtual and in-person participation in a similar format to the 2024 Annual Meeting.
All sessions (and workshops, when feasible) will be able to include both in-person presentations in Boston and virtual presentations online via Zoom. This is subject to change as the meeting develops.
Paper and workshop presentation proposals may be submitted per the instructions on the Call for Papers from February 15 – March 15.
ASOR Standing Sessions
- Ancient Climate and Environmental Archaeology
- Ancient Inscriptions
- Approaches to Dress and the Body
- Archaeology and Biblical Studies
- Archaeology and History of Feasting and Foodways
- Archaeology of Anatolia
- Archaeology of Arabia
- Archaeology of the Black Sea and the Caucasus
- Archaeology of the Byzantine Near East
- Archaeology of Cyprus
- Archaeology of Egypt
- Archaeology of Iran
- Archaeology of Islamic Society
- Archaeology of Israel
- Archaeology of Jordan
- The Archaeology of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq
- Archaeology of Lebanon
- Archaeology of Mesopotamia
- Archaeology of the Near East and New Media
- Archaeology of the Near East: Bronze and Iron Ages
- Archaeology of the Near East: The Classical Periods
- Archaeology of the Southern Levant
- Archaeology of Syria
- Art Historical Approaches to the Near East
- Bioarchaeology in the Near East
- Cultural Heritage: Preservation, Presentation, and Management
- Digital Archaeology and History
- Gender in the Ancient Near East
- History of Archaeology
- Interdisciplinary Approaches to Seals, Sealing Practices, and Administration
- Isotopic Investigations in the Ancient Near East and Caucasus
- Landscapes of Settlement in the Ancient Near East
- Maritime Archaeology
- Prehistoric Archaeology
- Reports on Current Excavations—ASOR Affiliated and Non-ASOR Affiliated
- Recent Work in the Archaeological Sciences
- Theoretical and Anthropological Approaches to the Near East
Member-Organized Sessions and Workshops Approved for the 2025 Academic Program
*Sessions (and workshops, when feasible) will be offered as part of the hybrid program with virtual and in-person participation unless otherwise noted. This is subject to change as the meeting develops.
- Africa in the Ancient World
- Archaeology of Petra and Nabataea
- Archaeology of Religion in the Levant during the Second and First Millennia BCE
- Biblical Texts in Cultural Context
- Cultural Heritage in Crisis: People Oriented (Workshop)
- Glyptic Databases: Collaboration and Integration in the Digital Humanities Transition (Workshop)
- Jerusalem and the Archaeology of a Sacred City
- Rebuilding Antioch: Collaborative Approaches to the Ancient City (Workshop)
- Ritual, Power, and the Power of Ritual in the Ancient Near East
- The Future of Ancient West Asia Collections in Museums (Workshop)
- Urbanism and Polities in the Bronze and Iron Age Levant
Descriptions of Sessions & Workshops
*Sessions (and workshops, when feasible) will be offered as part of the hybrid program with virtual and in-person participation unless otherwise noted. This is subject to change as the meeting develops.
ASOR-Sponsored Sessions
Ancient Climate and Environmental Archaeology
Session Chairs: Brita Lorentzen, Cornell University; Elise Laugier, Utah State University
Description: This session accepts papers that examine past human resource (flora and fauna) uses and human/environment interactions in the ancient Near East.
Session Chairs: Jessie DeGrado, University of Michigan; Madadh Richey, Brandeis University
Description: This session focuses on epigraphic material from the ancient Middle East, North Africa, and eastern Mediterranean. Proposals may include new readings of previously published inscriptions or preliminary presentations of new epigraphic discoveries, as well as submissions that situate written artifacts in their social contexts and/or engage broader theoretical questions.
Approaches to Dress and the Body
Session Chairs: Neville McFerrin, University of North Texas
Description: Traces of practices relating to dress and the body are present in many ways in the archaeological, textual, and visual records of the ancient world, from the physical remains of dressed bodies, to images depicting them, to texts describing such aspects as textile production and sumptuary customs. Previous scholarship has provided useful typological frameworks but has often viewed these objects as static trappings of status and gender. The goal of this session is to illuminate the dynamic role of dress and the body in the performance and construction of aspects of individual and social identity, and to encourage collaborative dialogue within the study of dress and the body in antiquity.
Archaeology and Biblical Studies
Session Chair: Stephen Cook, Virginia Theological Seminary; Alison Acker Gruseke, Williams College
Description: This session is meant to explore the intersections between History, Archaeology, and the Judeo-Christian Bible and related texts.
Archaeology and History of Feasting and Foodways
Session Chair: Jacob Damm, University of California, Los Angeles
Description: The Archaeology and History of Feasting and Foodways session addresses the production, distribution, and consumption of food and drink. Insofar as foodways touch upon almost every aspect of the human experience—from agricultural technology, to economy and trade, to nutrition and cuisine, to the function of the household and its members, to religious acts of eating and worship—we welcome submissions from diverse perspectives and from the full spectrum of our field’s geography and chronology.
Session Chair: TBD – Open Call for Session Chairs: Application Deadline January 8
Description: This session is concerned with current fieldwork in Anatolia, as well as the issue of connectivity in Anatolia. What, for example, were the interconnections between Anatolia and surrounding regions such as Cyprus, Transcaucasia, Mesopotamia, and Europe?
Session Chair: Jennifer Swerida, University of Pennsylvania
Description: This session seeks contributions covering a wide spatio-temporal swath from the Paleolithic to the present centered on the Arabian Peninsula but including neighboring areas such as the Horn of Africa, East Africa, and South Asia. Contributions might be tied to the region thematically (e.g. pastoral nomadism, domesticates, or agricultural strategies), methodologically (e.g. Landscape archaeology, or satellite imagery technologies) or through ancient contacts such as trade along the Red Sea, Persian/Arabian Gulf or Indian Ocean.
Archaeology of the Black Sea and the Caucasus
Session Chair: TBD – Open Call for Session Chairs: Application Deadline January 8
Description: This session is open to papers that concern the archaeology of the Black Sea and Eurasia.
Archaeology of the Byzantine Near East
Session Chair: Alexandra Ratzlaff, Brandeis University
Description: This session is open to papers that concern the Near East in the Byzantine period.
Session Chairs: Kevin Fisher, University of British Columbia; Catherine Kearns, University of Chicago
Description: This session focuses on current archaeological research in Cyprus from prehistory to the modern period. Topics may include reports on archaeological fieldwork and survey, artifactual studies, as well as more focused methodological or theoretical discussions. Papers that address current debates and issues are especially welcome.
Session Chair: Julia Troche, Missouri State University; Jordan Galczynski, University of California, Los Angeles
Description: This session is open to research on all areas related to the archaeology of Egypt, including current and past fieldwork, material culture, textual sources, religious or social aspects, international relations, art, and history.
Session Chair: Kyle Gregory Olson, University of Pennsylvania
Description: This session explores the archaeology of Iran.
Archaeology of Islamic Society
Session Chairs: Ian W. N. Jones, University of California, San Diego; Tasha Vorderstrasse, University of Chicago
Description: This session explores the archaeology of Islamic society.
Session Chair: Boaz Gross, Israeli Institute of Archaeology and Tel Aviv University
Description: This session seeks submissions in all areas of the archaeology of Israel: Current fieldwork and discoveries; new insights on past excavations; history, policy and methodology of the archaeology of Israel.
Session Chairs: Monique Roddy, Walla Walla University; Craig Tyson, Deyouville; and Stephanie Selover, University of Washington
Description: This session is open to any research from any period relating to the archaeology of Jordan. The session is open to papers on recent fieldwork, synthetic analyses of multiple field seasons, as well as any area of current archaeological research focused on Jordan.
The Archaeology of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq
Session Chair: TBD – Open Call for Session Chairs: Application Deadline January 8
Description: This session highlights research on all aspects of history and archaeology focused on the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and adjacent areas.
Session Chair: Email ArchofLebanon@gmail.com with questions
Description: This session is focused on current archaeological research in Lebanon, including the results of fieldwork and/or other research projects. Papers dealing with the archaeology of Lebanon relating to any period, or the protection and promotion of the cultural heritage of Lebanon, are welcome.
Session Chair: Lucas Proctor, J.W. Goethe University Frankfurt; Glynnis Maynard, Cambridge University
Description: This session seeks submissions in all areas illuminated by archaeology that relate to the material, social, and religious culture, history and international relations, and texts of ancient Mesopotamia.
Archaeology of the Near East and New Media
Session Chairs: Michael Zimmerman, Bridgewater State University; Debra Trusty, University of Iowa
Description: The papers in this session represent a multidisciplinary discussion of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of archaeology of the Near East and New Media. The focus of the session lies in storytelling and historical education through innovative technology, be it through digital or analogue games (“archaeogaming”), movies, immersive experiences, digital apps, escape rooms, or interactive museum exhibitions, for example. This session aims to present a diverse array of topics at the intersection of the archaeology of the Near East and new technologies, opening up for discussion and debate the multi-functionality of these tools for research, education, community engagement, and heritage management.
Archaeology of the Near East: Bronze and Iron Ages
Session Chair: J. P. Dessel, University of Tennessee
Description: This session is open to papers that concern the Near East in the Bronze and Iron Ages.
Archaeology of the Near East: The Classical Periods
Session Chairs: Simeon Ehrlich, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Robyn Le Blanc, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Description: This session is open to papers that concern the Near East in the Classical periods.
Archaeology of the Southern Levant
Session Chair: Sarah Richardson, University of Manitoba
Description: The focus of this session is on current archaeological fieldwork in the southern Levant.
Session Chair: Kathryn Grossman, North Carolina State University
Description: This session is concerned with all areas of Syria that are illuminated by archaeology.
These include a discussion of recent archaeological excavations, history, religion, society, and texts.
Art Historical Approaches to the Near East
Session Chairs: Amy Gansell, St. John’s University; S. Rebecca Martin, Boston University
Description: This session welcomes submissions that present innovative analyses of any facet of Near Eastern artistic production or visual culture.
Bioarchaeology in the Near East
Session Chairs: Sarah Schrader, Leiden University; Rose Campbell, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Luskin Center for History and Policy
Description: This session welcomes papers that present bioarchaeological research conducted in the Near East. Papers that pose new questions and/or explore new methods are encouraged.
Cultural Heritage: Preservation, Presentation, and Management
Session Chair: TBD – Open Call for Session Chairs: Application Deadline January 8
Description: This session explores theory and practice in the areas of archaeological site and collections conservation, presentation, education, and management. Discussion of community-engaged projects is especially welcome.
Digital Archaeology and History
Session Chairs: TBD – Open Call for Session Chairs: Application Deadline January 8
Description: This session will present papers that describe significant advances in or interesting applications of the digital humanities. Topics may include public digital initiatives, 3D scanning and modelling, spatial analysis (GIS and remote sensing), social network analysis, textual analysis, textual geographies, digital storytelling, data management etc. In addition to methodological topics, the session also welcomes papers that focus on broader debates in the digital humanities.
Gender in the Ancient Near East
Session Chairs: TBD – Open Call for Session Chairs: Application Deadline January 8
Description: This session pertains to on-going archaeological, art historical, and/or anthropological work and research into the construction and expression of gender in antiquity, ancient women/womanhood, masculinities (hegemonic and otherwise), Queer Theory, and the engendering of ancient objects and spaces.
Session Chairs: Nassos Papalexandrou, The University of Texas at Austin, Art and Art History; Leticia R. Rodriguez, University of California, Berkeley
Description: Papers in this session examine the history of the disciplines of biblical archaeology and Near Eastern archaeology.
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Seals, Sealing Practices, and Administration
Session Chairs: TBD – Open Call for Session Chairs: Application Deadline January 8
Description: This session invites submissions touching on any aspect of glyptic studies. Papers may approach seals and sealings as object, text, and/or image, and rely on multiple strands of evidence. Applied methodologies from a variety of disciplines are encouraged. While seals and sealings form the core subject of investigation for this session, papers that rely on a wide range of comparative objects are welcome. Glyptic-related topics covering the full geographical and chronological horizon of the ancient Near East are considered
Isotopic Investigations in the Ancient Near East and Caucasus
Session Chairs: G. Bike Yazıcıoğlu-Santamaria, University of Chicago; Benjamin Irvine, British Institute at Ankara
Description: Biogeochemical research on the human condition in the ancient past is a rapidly growing field. Isotopic investigations targeting questions about climate change, human mobility, animal trade, herding strategies, crop management, diet and subsistence, and infant-feeding practices in the broader ancient Near East have increased in number over the past decade. However, biogeochemical techniques and understandings continue to develop and be re-evaluated, necessitating venues for scholarly exchange, comparison, and discussion. The objective of this session is to encourage a dialogue among researchers conducting and using biogeochemical techniques in the region, integrating analytical methods with social and historical questions. In consecutive years the session will incorporate the results of most recent and ongoing research in the region with methodological advances in techniques and approaches, in tandem with the developing agenda of the “Archaeological Isotopes Working Group” Business Meetings.
Landscapes of Settlement in the Ancient Near East
Session Chair: George Pierce, Brigham Young University
Description: This session brings together scholars investigating regional-scale problems of settlement history and archaeological landscapes across the ancient Near East. Research presented in the session is linked methodologically through the use of regional survey, remote sensing, and environmental studies to document ancient settlements, communication routes, field systems and other evidence of human activity that is inscribed in the landscape. Session participants are especially encouraged to offer analyses of these regional archaeological data that explore political, economic, and cultural aspects of ancient settlement systems as well as their dynamic interaction with the natural environment.
Session Chairs: Tzveta Manolova, Université Libre de Bruxelles; Traci Andrews, Texas A&M
Description: This session welcomes papers that concern marine archaeology in terms of methods, practices, and case studies in areas throughout the Near East.
Session Chairs: Austin “Chad” Hill, University of Pennsylvania; Blair Heidkamp, University of Texas, Austin
Description: This session is open to papers that concern the prehistoric Near East, particularly in the Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Chalcolithic.n.
Recent Work in the Archaeological Sciences
Session Chair: Zachary Dunseth, Brown University
Description: This session welcomes papers that apply one or more archaeological sciences, broadly defined, to investigate aspects of the ancient world.
Reports on Current Excavations—ASOR Affiliated & Non-ASOR Affiliated
Session Chair: Daniel Schindler, Bowling Green State University
Description: This session is for excavation reports from projects with or without ASOR/CAP affiliatio
Theoretical and Anthropological Approaches to the Near East
Session Chairs: TBD – Open Call for Session Chairs: Application Deadline January 8
Description: This session welcomes papers that deal explicitly with theoretical and anthropological approaches to ancient Near Eastern and eastern Mediterranean art and archaeology.
Member-Organized Sessions and Workshops approved for the 2025 Academic Program
*Sessions (and workshops, when feasible) will be offered as part of the hybrid program with virtual and in-person participation unless otherwise noted. This is subject to change as the meeting develops.
Session Chairs: Brenda J. Baker, Arizona State University; Michele R. Buzon, Purdue University
Description: This session, co-sponsored by the American-Sudanese Archaeological Research Center, builds on the successful Reintegrating Africa in the Ancient World workshop. This session allows paper contributions on the archaeology, bioarchaeology, and history of northeast Africa, engaging with a specific theme each year to highlight the rich prehistory and history of ancient Sudan and the greater northeast Africa region. The session welcomes work on a range of ancient northeast African cultures, including but not limited to Nubia (Kush), Aksum, Garamantes, and Egypt. Themes addressed are designed to have relevance in the modern world.
In the first year (2024), we consider conflict and its consequences in both the past and present. What evidence is there for conflict in the region through time? What impact did/does conflict have on the local populace? What is the variability in interactions? The second year (2025) focuses on mobility and migration into, within, and out of Africa. Different methods for reconstructing population movements, such as funerary behavior, artifact distributions, paleogenomics, and isotope analyses, are considered. How might various methods be integrated to investigate identity? What circumstances may result in different mobility patterns? The third year (2026) emphasizes identity and community through time. How does identity manifest through time? What factors affect identity and formation of communities? How does archaeology contribute to community and identity formation in the present?
The 2024 Annual Meeting Session comprises contributions on the archaeology, bioarchaeology, and history of northeast Africa, engaging with a specific theme each year to highlight the rich prehistory and history of ancient Sudan and the greater northeast Africa region. The session welcomes work on a range of ancient northeast African cultures, including but not limited to Nubia (Kush), Aksum, Garamantes, and Egypt. Themes addressed are designed to have relevance in the modern world. In the first year (2024), many presentations (including all in the second session) focus on conflict and its consequences in both the past and present. What evidence is there for conflict in the region through time? What impact did/does conflict have on the local populace? What is the variability in interactions?
Age, while the second year (2025) will be focused on the Iron Age.
Archaeology of Petra and Nabataea
Session Chairs: Cynthia Finlayson, Brigham Young University; Anna Accettola, Hamilton College
Description: The purpose of this session is to include projects not only at Petra, but also from throughout the vast Nabataean kingdom and beyond where ever Nabataeans were active (the Mediterranean, Yemen, and Mesopotamia). The capital city of the Nabataeans has been the focus of numerous recent international archaeological projects, including many ASOR projects: the Great Temple, the Temple of the Winged Lions, and the Byzantine Church in the past, and currently the North Ridge, the Hellenistic Petra Project, the Garden Pool and Terrace, and the Ad-Deir Plateau complex. The art and architecture of Petra continues to be the subject for art historians. The immediate environs of Petra (Wadi Musa, Baydh, Ba’aja, and Humayma) have also seen renewed interest. In addition, there are recent projects in the Nabataean regions of Saudi Arabia (French, Italian, Polish), Syria (French), the Negev (Israeli), and the Sinai and Egypt (French, American). New Nabataean inscriptions also continue to emerge that illuminate Nabataean culture.
In 2024, the Annual Meeting Session explores the multi-faceted and wide spread manifestations of the Nabataean Kingdom and culture both in Petra and in the farthest flung regions of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East, as well as Nabataean trade with Asia and Asia Minor.
Archaeology of Religion in the Levant during the Second and First Millennia BCE
Session Chairs: Lidar Sapir-Hen, Tel Aviv University; Ido Koch, Tel Aviv University
Description: The Archaeology of Religion in the Levant during the Second and First millennia BCE is a three-year session aiming at fostering a scholarly stage for an interdisciplinary discussion on a wide range of approaches, perspectives, and interpretative frameworks of religion and its materiality. We encourage papers covering aspects of religion, such as belief, ritual, cosmology, and ontology, based on studies of material remains as well as their reflection in textual and pictorial sources.
The first year is dedicated to introductory papers on methodological and material aspects of the study of religion. Papers will deal with the developments in the study of religion and their impact on the archaeological discourse, the extrapolation of religious texts in the understanding of material remains, current approaches in the study of statuary and figurines, and domestic cult.
The second and third years will be thematic-based sessions: the second dedicated to human–animal relations, and the third to sacred spaces.
Biblical Texts in Cultural Context
Session Chairs: Christine Palmer, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary; Kristine Garroway, Hebrew Union College
Description: This session explores the biblical text within its ancient Near Eastern cultural and intellectual environment. Our aim is to provide a forum for collaboration and scholarship across disciplines that contextualizes the Bible in the broader world of the ancient Near East through the three overarching themes of memory construction, ethnicity and identity formation, and biblical ritual. We invite contributions that utilize a variety of approaches — archaeological (material culture), philological (comparative literature), and iconographic (visual exegesis) — to explore biblical texts as cultural products and ‘textual artifacts’ of ancient Israel. A secondary aim is to pursue publication of the themed papers presented in the three-year session.
The first year (2023) of this multi-year session will focus on memory construction. We welcome papers that consider social memory through texts and inscriptions, monumentality, and embodied practices. The topic for year two (2024) will be ethnicity and identity formation, inviting scholarship on conceptualizations of self and the other that intersect with the biblical text. The final year (2025) will be dedicated to biblical ritual in light of ritual spaces, personnel, and practices of the ancient Near East.
Cultural Heritage in Crisis: People Oriented (Workshop)
Session Chairs: Tashia Dare, Independent Scholar; Jenna de Vries Morton, Umm al-Jimal Archaeological Project
Description: This multi-year workshop centers on the people behind cultural heritage before, during, and after conflict: heritage professionals and local communities. The workshop is concerned with mitigating risk, building resiliency, and forging and maintaining healthy and meaningful relationships.
The first year’s theme (2023) explores the needs of cultural heritage professionals. Questions to consider include: How do we mitigate the risks heritage professionals face? What resources are needed to protect heritage professionals? How do we prepare local heritage professionals before conflict happens? How do we build resiliency and assist heritage professionals as they move forward post-conflict?
The second year (2024) focuses on the local community. When everyday survival and livelihoods may be at risk due to conflict how do we meet the needs of local communities and the preservation of cultural heritage? What impacts does conflict have on local communities being able to access, participate, and contribute to their cultural heritage (including archaeological sites and museums)? What role do archaeologists and other related professionals have in addressing these issues and other similar concerns? How do we build resilient communities?
The third year (2025) is dedicated to cultural heritage and peacebuilding. What does cultural heritage as a peacebuilding tool look like on the ground? What issues might there be to this? What are the benefits? What can we learn from successes and failures of efforts already taken in this area? Can cultural heritage be a proactive tool to preventing conflict? If so, what does this entail?
The Future of Ancient West Asia Collections in Museums (Workshop)
Session Chair: Pinar Durgun, The Morgan Library and Museum
Description: Many departments and museums with ancient Western Asian collections are or will be going through renovations and interpretive updates. This workshop aims to bring together museum professionals and scholars to exchange ideas and brainstorm on the presentation of AWA collections in museums today and in the future. Following the discussions in the Museum Professionals roundtable and the Museums and Social Justice session at ASOR, the need for a working group around best practices and blindspots has become apparent. The idea of this workshop is to discuss issues that museums with AWA collections are concerned with including (but not limited to) languages, diverse perspectives, multivocality, labels, citation practices, accessibility, provenance, restitution and repatriation, community curation and engagement, interactivity, digital approaches, ethics, and political issues.
The first year of the workshop aims to discuss ongoing renovation projects and their outcomes. In the second year (2025) the discussion will center around what is missing and what can be done to recognize and respond to the blind spots in the presentation of collections. As a result of these two year discussions, in the third year, the workshop will center big picture ideas on the future directions of AWA collections. The overall goal is to prepare a “AWA collections-museum best practices” document for ASOR consideration.
Glyptic Databases: Collaboration and Integration in the Digital Humanities Transition (Workshop)
Session Chairs: Ben Greet, The University of Zurich; Nadia Ben-Marzouk, The University of Zurich
Description: As we move through the digital humanities transition, the study of glyptics in Southwest Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean is entering a new phase focused on establishing databases that foster collaborative, integrated, and standardized data to facilitate assessing broader questions of production, distribution, and other historical trends. As such, several projects have established outward-facing glyptic databases across various institutions in the Americas, Europe, and Southwest Asia, yet these projects often operate in silos, pursuing similar goals and facing the same challenges. This workshop aims to bring together both researchers involved in these projects and those working in independent databases within the broader discipline with several aims: (1) To discuss, collaborate, and troubleshoot existing databases in order to work toward establishing a shared methodology; (2) To move towards a standardized and shared descriptive glyptic typology and iconographic taxonomy that fosters robust and integrated data across platforms; (3) To broaden the potential research questions on glyptics by using these databases as new analytical tools. 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
Jerusalem and the Archaeology of a Sacred City
Session Chairs: Prof. Yuval Gadot, Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures, Tel-Aviv University; Dr. Yiftah Shalev, Israel Antiquities Authority
Description: This session wishes to explore the sacred past and present of Jerusalem as it revealed and manifested through the archaeology of the city and its surrounding. Jerusalem, a city that is sacred for all three major monotheistic religions, is a place were the past is ever present in the current sanctified landscape. From its inception and until nowadays Jerusalem’s natural and urban landscapes were dotted with landmarks, buildings and burial places, each of them commemorating an event or a figure and serving for ritualistic needs. As such these places were webbed within a wider narrative regarding the city’s place and within different nation’s past. Furthermore, the sacred has always been intertwined with the economy, politics and social realia, thus shaping and being shaped by all those aspects.
Aspects of architecture, landscape archaeology, archaeology of the senses, pilgrimage, temple related economy, ritualistic objects and all other manifestations of the sacred within the archaeology of the city, will be presented and discussed. We also welcome presentations related to heritage management in today’s contested city: how to conduct research in a place that is actively being worshiped and visited by tourists?
The first year (2024) focuses on studies aiming at identifying the personal experience expressions of worshipers and pilgrims who visited Jerusalem’s holy places throughout the ages. During the second year (2025) we wish to explore how the city was physically, economically and symbolically shaped by sacred sites. The focus of the third year (2026) will be the interface between heritage and worship.
Rebuilding Antioch: Collaborative Approaches to the Ancient City (Workshop)
Session Chairs: Nicole Berlin, The Davis Museum at Wellesley College; Elizabeth Molacek, The University of Texas at Dallas
Description: The material culture of Antioch, one of the largest cities in the ancient Mediterranean, provides tantalizing insights into the lives of those living thousands of years ago. Recent digitization of the excavation archives and museum exhibitions about the city’s mosaics have made Antioch more accessible than ever before. Pedagogically, a number of universities now offer seminars focused on Antioch and its legacy. Antioch’s cultural heritage is an especially pressing topic after the devastating 2023 earthquakes in the Hatay Province, Türkiye. Previously, most of the Antioch material in the United States has been relegated to museum storerooms for the last eighty years. The majority of objects have never been on view. Even scholars dedicated to the field have struggled to locate or access all of the material, due to the complex and isolated nature of archives, institutions, and museum collections.
This two-year workshop brings together researchers involved in recent Antioch-related projects, as well as scholars currently working in the Hatay Province, with the following goals: 1) To discuss approaches for researching, displaying, and teaching with material from Antioch. 2) To facilitate conversions between scholars and museum professionals working in the United States or Europe and our Turkish colleagues, especially in the Hatay Province. 3) To propose collaborative approaches that continue to make Antioch’s cultural heritage accessible and tangible. The first year (2024) focuses on current museological and pedagogical approaches to Antioch while the second year (2025) highlights the current research happening in Antakya, Türkiye and ways of “re-building” the ancient city, digitally or otherwise.
Ritual, Power, and the Power of Ritual in the Ancient Near East: Ritual and Kingship
Session Chairs: Céline Debourse, Harvard University; Elizabeth Knott, College of the Holy Cross
Description: Rituals are powerful tools that can make or break the socio-political status quo, and those who command ritual hold a special kind of sway over other people. But what does it mean to wield ritual as a socio-political tool? In this two-year session, we will explore who harnessed the power of ritual, how they did so, to what aims and ends, and how reliable these ritual strategies were. During the first year we will focus on ANE kingship and its rituals (“Ritual and Kingship in the Ancient Near East”), asking what royal ritual can teach us about the institution of kingship. In the second year, we will expand our outlook to understand how any ANE person or social group could use ritual to exert and subvert social or political power (“Power and Ritual in the Ancient Near East”). For both sessions, we welcome papers from archaeologists, art historians, and philologists.
The 2024 “Ritual and Kingship in the Ancient Near East” Session explores royal ceremonies, and the intrinsic links between ritual performance and kingship. Ernst Kantorowicz described the Medieval European king as having “in him two Bodies, viz., a Body natural, and a Body politic” (The King’s Two Bodies, 1957), and as one point of discussion we consider how ritual was a powerful tool for reconciling these two Bodies. Rituals were often exclusively designed for kings and kings participated in rituals as both performers and audience members. But what purposes did these ceremonies serve? What desired outcomes did they have, and how did they achieve those? What can these rituals tell us about the institution of kingship in different Ancient Near Eastern cultures? And what do they tell us about the individual who sat on the throne? In this session, we will explore royal ritual from different perspectives – through texts, ritual theories, aspects of materiality, and architecture.
Urbanism and Polities in the Bronze and Iron Age Levant
Session Chairs: Omer Sergi, Tel Aviv University; Daniel Master, Wheaton College; Karen Covello-Paran, Israel Antiquities Authority
Description: Urbanism and urban centers were at the heart of political and economic life during the Bronze and Iron Ages, and throughout most of this time, they constituted the basic socio-political unit of the Levant. Urban centers throughout the Levant flourished and demised in the shadow of imperial forces from Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Egypt. Yet, there are profound differences between urbanism in the northern and the southern Levant. Moreover, the face of urbanism changed in the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, bringing about new socio-political formations, at least in the southern and central Levant, which are mostly thought of in terms of territorial polities. This session aims to discuss and ponder the formation and demise of Levantine urbanism within its socio-historical context. These session will call for papers discussing the changing faces of Levantine urbanism during the Bronze and Iron Ages, and how these were related to the formation of Levantine polities. It aims to scrutinize the relations between urban landscape and political hegemony, but also between the urban centers and their rural hinterlands. Thus, we hope, to provide a holistic view of Levantine urbanism from its very inception. We intend to dedicate the first year (2024) to discuss the formation of the urban landscape of the Middle Bronze Age and its impact on socio-political life in the Levant. Special attention will also be given to the formation of “Canaan” as a concept of social belonging. The second year (2025) will be dedicated to discussing Levantine urbanism under the empires of the Late Bronze Age (Mittani, Hittites, Egypt), and the third year (2026) will be dedicated to discussing the changing face of urbanism in the world of the Iron Age kin-based territorial polities.
