Friends of ASOR present the next webinar of the 2024-2025 season on February 19, 2025, at 2:00 pm EST, presented by Dr. David Ilan. This webinar will be free and open to the public. Registration through Zoom (with a valid email address) is required. This webinar will be recorded and all registrants will be sent a recording link in the days following the webinar.

The texts of the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean Bronze and Iron Ages (including the Hebrew Bible) hint at the use of psychotropic substances (“hallucinogens”) in religious and shamanistic rituals. But the archaeological evidence for this is thin on the ground. This talk will look at the various available hallucinogenic substances and at recent research that indicates their consumption by human beings before examining artifacts that Dr. Ilan (and now others) believe are related to achieving altered states of consciousness. These include ring kernoi, seal impressions from the Aegean region, metal sceptres from the Chalcolithic period, ivory wands from the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, and the altars from the Iron Age temple at Tel Arad. The “high place” takes on a new meaning!

A native of Los Angeles, David llan was the director of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem from 2003 to 2024. He has excavated at Tel Arad, Tel Malhata, Tel Yoqneam and Tel Megiddo and directed the excavations at Tel Dan from 2005 to 2022. He teaches at the Hebrew Union College and has taught at Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University, Johns Hopkins University and spent a sabbatical year in 2019-2020 at the Center for the Study of Origins of the University of Colorado, Boulder. Dr. Ilan specializes in mortuary archaeology, the archaeology of religion and ritual, ground stone artifacts, ceramic typology and technology, and the Chalcolithic period, the Middle Bronze Age and the early Iron Age of the southern Levant. He is the editor of the journal NGSBA Archaeology and the monograph series of the Nelson Glueck School. Dr. Ilan has published three final excavation reports and numerous articles in scholarly journals and in the popular press. His most recent articles deal with the praxis and paraphernalia of ritual action and religious belief in the ancient Near East, including the use of psychotropic substances.

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