Electra Atlantis: Digital Approaches to Antiquity

A myth-take about Helice, the earthquake, and Diodorus Siculus << Roger Pearse (Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, and more)

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:54:37 +0000

In 373 BC, two years before the battle of Leuctra, an earthquake destroyed two cites of the Achaean league, pitching them into the sea. This evening I received an email about this.

I am writing a book about the science of disaster prediction, and will be making a brief reference to anecdotal evidence (and, more recently, scientific evidence) that some animals do seem to show a premonitory response to earthquakes. The earliest written account seems to be that of the earthquake/tsunami destruction of Helice (Achaea) in 373 B.C., where snakes, rats, weasels etc were supposed to have left beforehand. The account is often attributed to Diodorus, but reading through various translations of his History I have found his account of the earthquake, but no mention of the prior migration of animals. … if you happen to know whether he did give an account of animal migration before the earthquake, I would certainly appreciate the reference so that I can quote it rather than relying on secondary sources.

I would have preferred at least to get a reference to Diodorus! A quick Google search revealed that this is a legend doing the rounds, such as here:

In Rupert Sheldrake’s book, ‘Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home; and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals’ cites many occurrences of “Forebodings of Earthquakes and Other Disasters”, Chapter 15: … The first detailed description from Europe concerns a cataclysmic earthquake in 373 B.C. at Helice, Greece, on the shore of the Gulf of Corinth, which swallowed the city up. Five days before the quake, according to the historian Diodorus Siculus, rats, snakes, weasels, and other animals left the city in droves, to the puzzlement of the human inhabitants.

So … what’s the story? Well, I find from the RealEncyclopadie that Diodorus describes the earthquake in book 15, c. 48:

When Asteius was archon at Athens … great earthquakes occurred in the Peloponnese accompanied by tidal waves which engulfed the open country and cities in a manner past belief; for never in the earlier periods had such disasters befallen Greek cities, nor had entire cities along with their inhabitants disappeared as a result of some divine force wreaking destruction and ruin upon mankind.

The extent of the destruction was increased by the time of its occurrence; for the earthquake did not come in the daytime when it would have been possible for the sufferers to help themselves, but the blow came at night, so that when the houses crashed and crumbled under the force of the shock, the population, owing to the darkness and to the surprise and bewilderment occasioned by the event, had no power to struggle for life.

The majority were caught in the falling houses and annihilated, but as day returned some survivors dashed from the ruins and, when they thought they had escaped the danger, met with a greater and still more incredible danger. For the sea rose to a vast height, and a wave towering even higher washed away and drowned all the inhabitants and their native lands as well.

Two cities in Achaia bore the brunt of this disaster, Helice and Bura, the former of which had, as it happened, before the earthquake held first place among the cities of Achaia. These disasters have been the subject of much discussion. Natural scientists make it their endeavour to attribute responsibility in such cases not to divine providence, but to certain natural circumstances determined by necessary causes, whereas those who are disposed to venerate the divine power assign certain plausible reasons for the occurrence, alleging that the disaster was occasioned by the anger of the gods at those who had committed sacrilege. This question I too shall endeavour to deal with in detail in a special chapter of my history

No mention of animals on the move. I then looked into Strabo, Geographica VIII, 9:

For the sea was raised by an earthquake and it submerged Helice, and also the temple of the Heliconian Poseidon, whom the Ionians worship even to this day, offering there the Pan-Ionian sacrifices. … Helice was submerged by the sea two years before the battle at Leuctra. And Eratosthenes says that he himself saw the place, and that the ferrymen say that there was a bronze Poseidon in the strait, standing erect, holding a hippo-campus in his hand, which was perilous for those who fished with nets.

And Heracleides says that the submersion took place by night in his time, and, although the city was twelve stadia distant from the sea, this whole district together with the city was hidden from sight; and two thousand men who had been sent by the Achaeans were unable to recover the dead bodies; and they divided the territory of Helice among the neighbours; and the submersion was the result of the anger of Poseidon, for the Ionians who had been driven out of Helice sent men to ask the inhabitants of Helicê particularly for the statue of Poseidon, or, if not that, for the model of the temple; and when the inhabitants refused to give either, the Ionians sent word to the general council of the Achaeans; but although the assembly voted favorably, yet even so the inhabitants of Helice refused to obey; and the submersion resulted the following winter; but the Achaeans later gave the model of the temple to the Ionians.

But again there is a shortage of rats in this account.

The answer is to be found in Aelian, De natura animalium, book 11. An English translation does exist in the Loeb, but I have no access to it.

quinque enim diebus priusquam pessum iret Helice, omnes in ea mures, mustelae, serpentes, scolopendrae verticilli, et alia hujusmodi animalia, magnis copiis exibat per viam, quae ducit Coriam. Haec Helicenses cum fieri viderent, admirabantur; neque tamen de ei causa facere conjecturam poterant. Proxima autem ab illorum animalium egressu nocte terrae motu concussa civitas subsedit, et inundantibus aquis abolita est; et pariter cum urbe Lacedaemoniorum naves decem, quae tum forte ad portum appulerant, eadem maris exundatione perierunt.

Which we may render as:

for five days before Helice went down, all the mice in it, the weasels, serpents, scolopendrae verticilli (?) and other animals of this kind, in great numbers flowed out by the road to Corinth. When the Helicians saw this happen, they marvelled; however they were unable to make a guess as to the cause of it. But the next night after the egress of those animals the earth moved violently and the city subsided, and by the inundation of water was obliterated; and likewise ten ships from the city of Sparta, which had put ashore by chance then at the harbour, perished in the same flood of the sea.

So that’s the real source. Nice to see a legend floating around which is NOT about Christian origins for a change!

There and back again << Sean Gillies Blog

sgillies@frii.com (Sean Gillies) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:54:52 +0000

We're back in Fort Fun. After an initial snafu the travel gods smiled on us and the flights and connections went more smoothly than we had expected. There was a bit of airsickness and our poussette went missing, but we got some sleep on the long CDG to ATL leg, Customs didn't balk at the number of wine bottles we brought in our luggage, and we arrived not too burned out to celebrate with take-out pizza and a St. Lupulin. The kids even slept until five o'clock this morning. I'm declaring it a win.

The help and hospitality of many people made our séjour an amazing experience. Thank you, everyone, and particularly our nounou, Célia Mourrut; our hosts and friends at CBGP, Denis Bourguet, Arnaud Estoup, Benoît Facon, Renaud Vitalis, and Miguel Navascues; our friend across the street at the USDA, René Sforza; in Heidelberg the Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg team: Francisca Feraudi-Gruénais, Brigitte Graef, and James Cowey; in Montpellier, René-Luc D'Hont (3LIZ) and Gerald Fenoy (Zoo Project), and Vincent Heurteaux, Adrian Custer, and Martin Deruisseaux from Geomatys; in Torino, Giorgio Borelli and Silvio Tomatis (collective.geo and more), and Stefano Costa (Open Archaeology); in Isère (the Department of), Eric Lemoine. I'm looking forward to returning the favor some day.

Next steps are making some fresh salsa (I could never find ripe tomatoes, onion, cilantro, and chiles simultaneously at Montpellier's Arceaux market), unpacking, and getting some fall season vegetables planted.

EpiDoc Tools Released "as is" << Tom Elliott (Horothesia)

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Elliott) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:52:34 +0000

If you visit http://sourceforge.net/projects/epidoc/files/ you'll now find readily downloadable releases of the following EpiDoc tools:

Guidelines
P5 Conversion Tools
Transcoder
Example P5 XSLTs
Example P4 XSLTs (deprecated; last/final release)
DTD (deprecated; last/final release)
Schema
CHETC JavaScript

These releases reflect the current state of code or documentation as it is to be found in our SVN repository. All of the tools have had README.txt files added in order to help the person downloading them figure out what they are and how to start using them. They also all have LICENSE.txt files that spell out the terms under which they are distributed. If you want to see our agenda, feel free to visit: http://epidocroadmap.pbworks.com/Release-Sprint-July-2010

Some of these packages are out-of-date or not feature-complete (e.g., especially the guidelines). We'll want to marshal volunteers in coming weeks and months to work on these discrepancies. There is in fact, already a group working hard on the guidelines. If you're not part of that group and would like to be, please shout out about it on the markup list.

My hearty thanks to Gabriel Bodard, Hugh Cayless and Charlotte Tupman, who assisted in today's sprint, and to Marion Lame, who also volunteered but could not be available during the time that I had scheduled.

Our next big step is to update http://epidoc.sourceforge.net/resources.shtml so that it properly reports on the state of each tool and links directly to the appropriate release. I'll be issuing a call for volunteers for that follow-up sprint shortly.

More from the Chronicle of Zuqnin, part 4 << Roger Pearse (Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, and more)

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:39:39 +0000

Here is the next section of the 8th century anonymous chronicle, written at the monastery of Zuqnin, just north of ancient Amida, now Diarbekir in Eastern Turkey:

Wonders worked by holy Mar Habib, Bishop of Edessa.

“In these days it is good to hide the secret of the king, but it is always right to publish and communicate to everyone the wonders of the Lord.” (Tobit 12 :7)

It will not seem strange, and the ears of listeners shall not be burdened if I here report a miracle that God’s power worked today through one of his apostles.

There was an Arab in the army, which, when they wanted to invade the territory of the Romans, came to stay at the holy monastery of Mar Habil in the region of Edessa. Finding that the porter of the convent was a God-fearing man, humble, benevolent and adorned with all divine virtues, he gave him a considerable sum of gold, saying: [17] “Keep this for me; if I return alive, I will want my property back; if you learn that I am dead, distribute it to the needy.” Then he left this place. The monk accepted the deposit, and having taken the treasure, he dug in the earth to bury it, without making the matter known to anybody. The Arabs remained a long time, and after a gap of about three years, it happened by the permission of the Creator, that before the Arabs were to leave the territory of the Romans, the porter departed from this troubled world. But he did not even then make known his secret. However, the owner of the deposit returned and asked for the man. He was told that he was dead. “Give me,” he said, “what I left in his hands.” — “We know absolutely nothing of what you speak,” said the monks; he never mentioned it or made any recommendation to any of us saying: I have something that belongs to others.” But this man was powerful and he strongly urged the monks, “Give me my property or I will devastate your monastery.” As this was a considerable sum, they were very embarrassed. The governor forced them to sell everything they had and to deliver the price to the man. And if that sum was not enough to release them, the monks themselves were to be sold until the debt was paid off. All the people of the city and the whole country, learning the severe sentence that had been enacted against the pious monks felt a deep grief to think they would see sold as slaves, their brothers and their children, who from renouncing the world, would have go to servitude among the Gentiles. The bishop of the city, the chaste Mar Habib, felt a great pain in seeing his brothers about to be led into slavery, and after having shed tears of anguish before the Saviour, he mounted his horse and went to the monastery with a great crowd of notables of the city and the country, [18] to intercede with the man. They tried to persuade him for a long time to wait while the monks tried every means to raise the sum demanded, but he would not consent: “They have my property, he said, let them give me what is mine and I’ll go.” And they, in turn, assured him again and again with oaths and distress that they knew nothing of his gold; but he did not believe them. Holy Mar Habib was embarrassed by both sides, some saying: “We know nothing,” the other refusing to accept it. He then donned the saving armour of the true faith of the Lord and, walking in the footsteps of he who at Bethany sought, speaking of Lazarus: “Where have you put him?” he took the censer with incense, and went to the cemetery of the monastery without allowing anyone to accompany him. So he went there and stopped at the grave in which they had laid the blessed monk. There he knelt and prayed; then rising, he offered the incense and made rise before the Lord, the sweet smell of tears from his heart. Standing at the door of the tomb, with that imperturbable faith that God works miracles, he raised his voice and said: “In the name of Our Lord, get up!” He arose on hearing this word and stood before him with a cheerful face as though he had never experienced the corruption of the tomb. Habib said to him: “My son, tell me if such a master of the Arabs has entrusted you with something when he left to enter the territory of the Romans?” — “Yes, sir,” said the deceased .– “How much?” asked the bishop. — “So many thousands of minas;” said the dead man. — “Where are they?” asked Habib. — The dead man replied: “I’ve buried them inside the very gates of the monastery, under such a seat. In fact, if you command it, I will go myself and I will return his property.” The Bishop asked him again: “Is there in the monastery, besides you, anyone who knows where this gold is?” — “No, sir,” he replied. — The saint [19] said to him them: “The time of the resurrection of the dead is not yet come, rest now until the voice of your Lord commands you to arise.” Immediately he changed and became as he was before. The saint, well informed of the case by the dead man, returned and ordered a hatchet brought. He went to the place that had been designated by the deceased, and stopping there, he commanded them to overthrow the seat, dig and search below. His order was executed, and thus was found the gold which he gave to his landlord, and thus procured the deliverance of the holy monastery.

In the year 1034 (722-723). Omar [II], King of the Arabs, died after a reign of two years and four months. He was succeeded by Yazid [II] who reigned four years.

In the year 1035 (723-724), Yazid ordered the destruction of all images wherever they were to be found, whether in temples or in churches or in homes. That’s why he sent out workers charged with destroying images wherever they were found.

In the year 1036 (724-725) Yazid ordered again the killing of white dogs, pigeons and white cockerels. So a rigorous decree was pronounced and dumb animals who were innocent were destroyed. The squares of cities and villages were infected by the smell of their corpses. And while it is written: “Be fruitful and multiply, fill and occupy the land; let birds fly in the sky; let the animals multiply upon the earth,” they, contrary to the order of creation, were destroyed. They wanted to destroy by their cruelty that which had been formed in the womb according to the principle of creation, and established by the will of the Creator at his pleasure, trying to destroy the order of the Creator and to prevent the world from marching under the laws which were imposed by its author. He even ordered the killing of all fair men [lit. with blue eyes]. [20] But the project was aborted because of the attention of God-fearing men, and it did not cause the death of anyone. He also ordered that the testimony of a Syrian against an Arab should not be accepted. He fixed the price [of blood] of an Arab at twelve thousand [dinars] and that of a Syrian at six thousand. This is the origin of these biased laws. He ordered that thieves should be mutilated at the sleeve instead of the wrist. The Arabs despised him and his teachings.

In the year 1038 (726-727), Yazid died. He had as emirs in Mesopotamia first Abourin, whom he deposed, and then Mardas. The latter was disgraced in turn and Abourin returned.

In the year 1039 (727-728), Hisham, son of `Abd al-Malik, ruled over the Arabs for nineteen years and four months.

In the year 1010 (728-729), holy Mar Habib, Bishop of Edessa, died; Constantine succeeded him.

At this time shone holy Mar Elias the Patriarch, Simeon, Bishop of Harran, Constantine of Edessa, and Theodotus of Amida.

About St. Theodotus, bishop of Amida.

This holy Theodotus, bishop of Amida, had grown up in the solitude and the humble labors of monasticism, to which he had constantly given himself, and which he loved: this was a peaceful and benign man, and adorned with all divine virtues: also he abdicated the episcopate of the city. He then retired from his see and leaving the city, he descended into the countryside of Dara, between Dara and Amida. Following in the footsteps of Mar [21] Thomas of Tela, he built a pillar on which he mounted. He also built in this same place a large monastery, which still exists near the village called Qalouq. This is where he ended his life.

After him holy Mar Cosmas received the episcopate.

About holy Mar Cosmas, bishop of Amida.

This holy Mar Cosmas was also a great monk, applying himself to all the virtues: also he did wonders and miracles like Elijah the Tishbite and like the first apostles. But because he was zealous and rebuked both great and poor, he was not liked by the lords of the city, because he vigorously attacked, openly and without respect of persons, the perverse deeds that they carried out continuously; and they feared he might open his mouth to curse them, because he was an austere man. They dared not openly rebel against him; so they stirred up the villagers not to receive him when went to visit them, so as to have a reason thereby to expel him from their city. But that did not profit them in any way, any more than those who followed their advice. When, therefore, according to the rule established by the elders, he left to visit the region, knowing nothing of the ambush that awaited him, he came to a village called Tell-Dakoum, whose inhabitants were detractors. When he rang the bell, as usual, they met and were unwilling to receive him; they did not even judged him worthy of the word of a man, but sent word to him by a [22] old woman: “Go honorably on your way, otherwise you will not get out of here without having been mistreated.” These perverse men “did not know and did not understand, because they walked in darkness,” that the word of our Lord to the Apostles cannot be without effect: “Whoever receives you, receives me. If someone does not receive you, shake off the dust of your feet in testimony against him. It will be better for Sodom on the day of Judgement, for this place.” The saint, learning of their malice from the old woman, ordered his disciples to change the direction of the car in which he was and to pass south of the village. The prophetic word: “The fool does not know and the fool does not understand,” was fulfilled in these wretches. This first sin was not enough for them; but they went to the door of their church that stood on the height to jeer at the saint and to see what he would do. The brave man, seeing all their contempt, was not disturbed; but dressed in the faith and trust in his Lord, he went on his way and passed on. On reaching the eastern edge of the village, he stopped his car, pulled his shoes, and raising them in the direction of the town, shook them at him, saying: “Since you do not receive your bishop, wait and God’s anger will come upon you soon and without delay.” Then, continuing his way quickly, he went to the village which is to the East and called Tarmil-Raba; he came indeed from the west.That was in the time of the barley harvest and no appearance of a cloud covered the sky that day. The divine wrath suddenly and without delay seized the unfortunate village who had wanted to be an instrument of injustice in the hands of the great in the city, [23] so that it became an object of fear and terror to the country and for all those who dare to despise their bishops, and it should serve as a warning to future generations. He entered Tarmil. And now the clouds gathered over the village. While the inhabitants were running to and fro, a tempest and a rush of winds violent enough to topple mountains rose up against them. It fell like a hail of stones, which struck their vines and fig trees, broke the trees of their territory and destroyed in their fields everything that was green, and reduced their crops to dust, to the point that they did not recognize their place, and dispersed also their mules, so they could not collect them and all hope of life was lost to them. The critics, seeing what had happened: “Their words were still on their lips and the anger of God came on them.” They understood the anger of God also weighed on them, and they awoke from a deep sleep, like a drunkard who has slept off his wine; they remembered what they had done to their bishop and recognized that this scourge happened because they had despised him. They were all the more confirmed in this opinion that the scourge had not exceeded the limits of their village. That’s why they all left, young and old, and went barefoot, humbly, weeping bitterly, and covered with shame to the village where the bishop was. The saint, seeing them, like once Elisha in the presence of the children whom the bears devoured, was deeply affected, especially because the scourge had destroyed everything they owned. He returned with them and prayed for them. In this way God poured out his fear and terror throughout all the countryside and on the great of the city, so that when the Bishop left the village [24] where he lived, the inhabitants of the other villages all came, great and small, humbly before him.

To holy Mar Elias, Patriarch of Antioch, Athanasius succeeded.

In the year 1042 (730-731), Maslamah crosses the Gate of the Turks. Because the Huns, that is to say the Turks had left their country and caused immense harm to Armenia, and throughout the northern country, Maslamah marched against them with an innumerable army. Every year they sortied out thus and caused great damage. He therefore advanced toward them and they came to meet him. He gave them battle and destroyed a large number of them. They were frightened and came to his feet and asked for peace. He gave it them, thinking they would keep their word.

In the same year, Maslamah destroyed this Gate which was at the entrance to the territory of the Turks, because, locking themselves inside it, they had fought a battle with him; but he feared to venture into the unknown region that belonged to the Turks, lest they come together against them and make them disappear from the earth. They are a nation without God and they are magicians. Because of this, Maslamah was forced to order the destruction of the Gate of the Turks which had been built by Alexander the Macedonian. They removed and brought out first, all the camels and donkeys, then the workers, they finally left themselves, throwing brambles behind them throughout the defile.

In the year 1043 (731-732), Maslamah assembled a great multitude [25] of artisans and labourers, carpenters, made all the necessary preparations for construction, and went to rebuild the Gate of the Turks which he had destroyed the previous year. After rebuilding, he made a treaty with them, confirmed by oath, after which it was agreed that none of them would cross the boundary of their ally. He then returned: but the Turks who know not God, who did not understand that they are his creatures, who do not admit that there is a God in heaven, did not keep their promise. They despised God, mocked the oath, crossed the border and did much evil in the land which was outside their own territory. Hisham sent against them his general Girah with a large number of horsemen. The latter entered the country during harvest and made by his passage a lot of damage in this area, because he was a madman. Feeling himself secure, he was not just; he devastated their crops and caused many other problems to the poor on his way. The people came to complain to him, but nobody met with relief from him; and so, as everyone had to suffer his passage, everyone also prayed for that to happen to him what he deserved. When he fought against the Turks, they killed many of his soldiers and carried off many captives into their country. After that, he sent to Hisham to get help. Maslamah hurried to reach him with an immense army, but before he could get to him, Girah and all his army had been exterminated by the sword; for the Turks gathered on all sides against them in large numbers and gave them all over to the sword. Nobody escaped. The Lord returned to the robber the harm he had done, and punished the wrongs he had done, [26] he and his army, to the peasants on the way. Everything they had committed during the road was accumulated at one time on their heads. Upon the arrival of Maslamah, the Turks were troubled and filled with fear because they feared his reputation more than his appearance. The latter gave them battle, shed their blood like water on the surface of the earth, and filled with their flesh the birds and beasts of the earth. After having cut them to pieces, he set up in Armenia Marwan Ibn Muhammad – the very man who ruled later over the Arabs – and retired, leaving him with a strong army. The latter caused more losses [to the Turks] than all those who had preceded him.

In the year 1029 (717-718), there was a strong and devastating earthquake that toppled in many places the temples, churches and large buildings, including the baptistery and the ancient church of Edessa. Great and large homes were thrown down on their inhabitants; while those which resisted and did not collapsed in the commotion, showed traces of it. So the people were filled with fear in the presence of the Lord every time they consider these remnants of the earthquake. At that time Hisham canalised the Zeitoun, built [on its banks] towns, castles, many villages which he embellished with numerous plantations of every kind.

He also channeled [the River] Beit Balash on which he built a castle, and there he planted plantations of every kind.

The story of Mar Habib is a depressing one. Despite the pious exclamations of the monkish chronicler, it seemed to me that the monks did indeed intend to swindle the Arab, and kept up the pretence as long as they could, with the connivance of the bishop. The cruelty of the Arabs, prefiguring the methods of Ottoman days, takes us into the Islamic world and away from the ancient world.

The story of holy Mar Cosmas, cursing a village which dares not to give him free lodging, is likewise retailed — by a member of the clerical caste, remember — as a “warning” to others. Superstition flourished in that soil, it is clear. More interesting is that the village had a bell which mendicant monks could ring, and the implication that this was standard. The burden of wandering monastics upon the community must have been considerable.

AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 2: The Oriental Institute Electronic Publications Initiative << Ancient World Bloggers Group

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Ellwood Jones) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:39:22 +0000

The Oriental Institute Electronic Publications Initiative. Originally posted April 9, 2008. Updated April 30, 2007 with the addition of more CAD and CHD volumes; updated September 16, 2008 with the addition of OIP 130; updated January 6, 2009 with the addition of OIP 135; Updated January 27, 2009 with the addition of OIMP 29. Updated March 16, 2009 with the addition of OIS 5. Updated April 28, 2009 with the addition of a suite of older OI volumes on Egyptian subjects. Updated May 1, 2009 with the addition of a suite of older OI volumes on Egyptian subjects. Updated May 12, 2009 with the addition of a suite of older OI volumes on Egyptian subjects. Updated May 14, 2009 with the addition of two recent Annual Reports. Updated through February 18, 2010. Updated March 1, 2010. Updated March 6, 2010. Updated March 9, 2010. Updated March 31, 2010. Updated April 23, 2010. Updated May 26, 2010. Updated May 30, 2020. Updated June 24, 2010. Updated June 25, 20120. Updated 20 July, 2010. Updated 29 July, 2010]

Starting in 2004, the Oriental Institute committed to digitizing all of its publications and making them available online, without charge. The minimum for each volume, old and new, current and forthcoming, will be a Portable Document Format (PDF) version following current resolution standards. New publications appear online at or near the time they appear in print. Older publications will be processed as time and funding permits. About than two hundred and sixty five volumes are now online.

Assyriological Studies (AS) | List of volumes in print

AS 27. Studies Presented to Robert D. Biggs, June 4, 2004 From the Workshop of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, Volume 2. Martha T. Roth, Walter Farber, Matthew W. Stolper and Paula von Bechtolsheim, eds. 2007.
AS 22. Old Babylonian Letters from Tell Asmar. R. M. Whiting, Jr. 1987.
AS 17. Cuneiform Texts from Nippur: The Eighth and Ninth Seasons. Giorgio Buccellati and Robert D. Biggs. 1969.
AS 5. Historical Prism Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal I: Editions E, B1-5, D, and K. Arthur Carl Piepkorn. 1933.

The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD) | List of volumes in print

Volume 1:1, A:1. 1964.
Volume 1:2, A:2. 1968.
Volume 3, B. 1965.
Volume 4, D. 1959.
Volume 5, E. 1958.
Volume 6, H [het]. 1956.
Volume 7, I/J. 1960.
Volume 8, K. 1971.
Volume 9, L. 1973.
Volume 10:1, M:1. 1977.
Volume 10:2, M:2. 1977.
Volume 11:1, N:1. 1980.
Volume 11:2, N:2. 1980.
Volume 12, P. 2005.
Volume 13, Q. 1982.
Volume 14, R. 1999.
Volume 15, S. 1984.
Volume 16, S [tsade]. 1962.
Volume 17:1, S [shin]:1. 1989.
Volume 17:2, S [shin]:2. 1992.
Volume 17:3, S [shin]:3. 1992.
Volume 18, T. 2006.
Volume 19, T [Tet]. 2006.
Volume 21, Z. 1961.

The Chicago Demotic Dictionary (CDD) [Born digital publication]

Completed Letters	Download
Prologue	Download PDF Terms of Use
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Problematic Entries	Download PDF Terms of Use
Problematic Entries 2	Download PDF Terms of Use

The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CHD) | List of volumes in print

L-N 1980-1989.
P, fascicles 1-3 1997.
S, fascicle 1 2002.
S, fascicle 2 2005.
See also The Electronic Chicago Hittite Dictionary (e-CHD). The P Volume, Theo van den Hout and Harry A. Hoffner, ed.

Materials for the Assyrian Dictionary (MAD)

MAD 5. Sargonic Texts in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. I. J. Gelb., 1970.
MAD 4. Sargonic Texts in the Louvre Museum. I. J. Gelb., 1970.
MAD 3. Glossary of Old Akkadian. I. J. Gelb., 1957.
MAD 2. Old Akkadian Writing and Grammar I. J. Gelb., 1952
MAD 1. Sargonic Texts from the Diyala Region I. J. Gelb., 1952.

Oriental Institute Communications (OIC) | List of volumes in print

OIC 30. The Alphabet: Its Rise and Development from the Sinai Inscriptions. By Martin Sprengling. Originally published in 1931.
OIC 29. Catalog of Demotic Texts in the Brooklyn Museum. George R. Hughes. 2005.
OIC 28. Bir Umm Fawakhir Survey Project 1993: A Byzantine Gold-Mining Town in Egypt. C. Meyer, L.A. Heidorn, W.E. Kaegi, and T. Wilfong. 2000.
OIC 27. The Registry of the Photographic Archives of the Epigraphic Survey, with Plates from Key Plans Showing Locations of Theban Temple Decorations (H. H. Nelson). The Epigraphic Survey. 1995.
OIC 23. Excavations at Nippur: Twelfth Season. McGuire Gibson, Judith A. Franke, Miguel Civil, Michael L. Bates, Joachim Boessneck, Karl W. Butzer and Ted A. Rathbun, and Elizabeth Frick Mallin. 1978.
OIC 22. Excavations at Nippur: Eleventh Season. McG. Gibson, with appendices by M. Civil. J. H. Johnson, and S. A. Kaufman. 1976.
OIC 21. The Treasury of Persepolis and Other Discoveries in the Homeland of the Achaemenians. Erich F. Schmidt. 1939.
OIC 20. Progress of the Work of the Oriental Institute in Iraq, 1934/35: Fifth Preliminary Report of the Iraq Expedition. Henri Frankfort. 1936.
OIC 19. Oriental Institute Discoveries in Iraq, 1933/34: Fourth Preliminary Report of the Iraq Expedition. Henri Frankfort, with a chapter by Thorkild Jacobsen. 1935.
OIC 18. Work in Western Thebes, 1931-33. By Harold H. Nelson and Uvo Hölscher with a Chapter by Siegfried Schott. 1934.
OIC 17. Iraq Excavations of the Oriental Institute 1932/33: Third Preliminary Report of the Iraq Expedition. Henri Frankfort. 1934.
OIC 16. Tell Asmar, Khafaje and Khorsabad: Second Preliminary Report of the Iraq Expedition. Henri Frankfort. 1933.
OIC 15. Excavations at Ancient Thebes, 1930/31. Uvo Hölscher. 1932.
OIC 13. Tell Asmar and Khafaje: The First Season’s Work in Eshnunna 1930/31. Henri Frankfort, Thorkild Jacobsen, and Conrad Preusser. 1932.
OIC 12. The Alphabet: Its Rise and Development from the Sinai Inscriptions. Martin Sprengling. 1931.
OIC 10. Medinet Habu Reports, Part 1. The Epigraphic Survey, 1992-31, by Harold H. Nelson; Part 2. The Architectural Survey, 1929/30. 1931.
OIC 7. Medinet Habu Studies 1928/29, Part 1. The Architectural Survey, by Uvo Hölscher; Part 2. The Language of the Historical Texts Commemorating Ramses III
John A. Wilson. 1930.
OIC 5. Medinet Habu 1924-28 Part 1: The Epigraphic Survey of the Great Temple of Medinet Habu (Seasons 1924-25 To 1927-28, By Harold H. Nelson; Part 2: The Architectural Survey of the Great Temple and Palace of Medinet Habu (Season 1927-28), By Uvo Hölscher. 1929.

Oriental Institute Digital Archives (OIDA) | [Online only]

OIDA 1, OIDA 1, Letters from James Henry Breasted to His Family, August 1919 - July 1920. Edited by John A. Larson, 2010.

Oriental Institute Museum Publications (OIMP) | List of volumes in print

OIMP 30. Pioneers to the Past: American Archaeologists in the Middle East, 1919-1920. Edited by Geoff Emberling, 2010.
OIMP 29. The Life of Meresamun: A Temple Singer in Ancient Egypt. Edited by Emily Teeter and Janet H. Johnson, 2009
OIMP 28. Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past. Edited by Geoff Emberling and Katharyn Hanson, 2008
OIMP 27. European Cartographers and the Ottoman World, 1500–1750: Maps from the Collection of O. J. Sopranos. Ian Manners. 2007.
OIMP 26. Daily Life Ornamented: The Medieval Persian City of Rayy. Tanya Treptow.
OIMP 25. Embroidering Identities: A Century of Palestinian Clothing. Iman Saca. 2006
OIMP 24. Lost Nubia: A Centennial Exhibit of Photographs from the 1905-1907 Egyptian Expedition of the University of Chicago. John A. Larson. 2006.
OIMP 23. Ancient Egypt: Treasures from the Collection of the Oriental Institute. By Emily Teeter. Originally published in 2003.

Oriental Institute Nubian Expedition (OINE) | List of volumes in print

OINE 10. Excavations at Serra East, Parts 1-5: A-Group, C-Group, Pan Grave, New Kingdom, and X-Group Remains from Cemeteries A-G and Rock Shelters. By B. B. Williams. Originally published in 1993.
OINE 9. Excavations Between Abu Simbel and the Sudan Frontier, Part 9: Noubadian X-Group Remains from Royal Complexes in Cemeteries Q and 219 and Private Cemeteries Q, R, V, W, B, J, and M at Qustul and Ballana. By B. B. Williams. Originally published in 1991.
OINE 8. Excavations Between Abu Simbel and the Sudan Frontier, Part 8: Meroitic Remains from Qustul Cemetery Q, Ballana Cemetery B, and a Ballana Settlement. By B. B. Williams, et. al. Originally published in 1991.
OINE 7. Excavations Between Abu Simbel and the Sudan Frontier, Part 7: Twenty-Fifth Dynasty and Napatan Remains at Qustul Cemeteries W and V. By B. B. Williams. Originally published in 1990.
OINE 6. Excavations Between Abu Simbel and the Sudan Frontier, Part 6: New Kingdom Remains from Cemeteries R, V, S, and W at Qustul and Cemetery K at Adindan. Bruce B. Williams. 1992.
OINE 5. Excavations Between Abu Simbel and the Sudan Frontier, Part 5: C-Group, Pan Grave, and Kerma Remains at Adindan Cemeteries T, K, U, and J. By B. B. Williams. Originally published in 1983.
OINE 4. Excavations Between Abu Simbel and the Sudan Frontier, Parts 2, 3, and 4: Neolithic, A-Group, and Post A-Group Remains from Cemeteries W, V, S, Q, T, and a Cave East of Cemetery K. By B. B. Williams. Originally published in 1989.
OINE 3. Excavations Between Abu Simbel and the Sudan Frontier, Part 1: The A-Group Royal Cemetery at Qustul, Cemetery L. By B. B. Williams. Originally published in 1986.
OINE 2. Ausgrabungen von Khor-Dehmit bis Bet El-Wali. H. Ricke. Originally published in 1967.
OINE 1. The Beit el-Wali Temple of Ramesses II. By Herbert Ricke, George R. Hughes, and Edward F. Wente. Originally published in 1967.

Oriental Institute Publications (OIP) | List of volumes in print

OIP 136. Medinet Habu IX. The Eighteenth Dynasty Temple, Part I: The Inner Sanctuaries. With Translations of Texts, Commentary, and Glossary. By The Epigraphic Survey. 2009.
OIP 135. Kerkenes Special Studies 1: Sculpture and Inscriptions from the Monumental Entrance to the Palatial Complex at Kerkenes Dag, Turkey. Catherine M. Draycott and Geoffrey D. Summers, with contribution by Claude Brixhe and Turkish summary translated by G. Bike Yazıcıoğlu. 2008.
OIP 134. The Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies, Volume 1: The Foundations of Research and Regional Survey in the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia. Adam T. Smith, Ruben S. Badalyan, Pavel Avetisyan. With contributions by Alan Greene and Leah Minc. 2009.

OIP 132. The Egyptian Coffin Texts, Volume 8. Middle Kingdom Copies of Pyramid Texts. James P. Allen. 2006.
OIP 131. The Amuq Valley Regional Projects, Volume 1 - Surveys in the Plain of Antioch and Orontes Delta, Turkey, 1995-2002. Kutlu Aslihan Yener. 2005.
OIP 130. Chogha Mish, Volume II. The Development of a Prehistoric Regional Center in Lowland Susiana, Southwestern Iran: Final Report on the Last Six Seasons of Excavations, 1972–1978. Abbas Alizadeh. 2008.
OIP 129. The Early Dynastic To Akkadian Transistion: The Area WF Sounding At Nippur. Augusta McMahon. 2006.
OIP 128. The Origins of State Organizations in Prehistoric Highland Fars, Southern Iran: Excavations at Tall-e Bakun. Abbas Alizadeh. 2006
OIP 127. Megiddo 3: Final Report on the Stratum VI Excavations. Timothy P. Harrison, with contributions by Douglas L. Esse, Andrew Graham, Ronald G. V. Hancock, and Patricia Paice. 2004.
OIP 126. Taxes, Taxpayers, And Tax Receipts In Early Ptolemaic Thebes - Demotic and Greek Ostraca from the Oriental Institute Museum, Chicago. Brian P. Muhs. 2005.
OIP 125. Excavations at Tell es-Sweyhat, Syria, Volume 2: Archaeology of the Bronze Age, Hellenistic, and Roman Remains at an Ancient Town on the Euphrates River. Thomas A. Holland. 2006.
OIP 124. Excavations at Tell Es-Sweyhat, Syria, Volume 1: On the Margin of the Euphrates: Settlement and Land Use at Tell Es-Sweyhat and in the Upper Lake Assad Area, Syria. Tony J. Wilkinson. 2004.
OIP 123. Temple of Khonsu, Volume 3. The Graffiti on the Khonsu Temple Roof at Karnak: A Manifestation of Personal Piety. Helen Jacquet-Gordon. 2003.
OIP 122. Neo-Babylonian Texts in the Oriental Institute Collection. David B. Weisberg. 2003.
OIP 121. Cuneiform Texts from the Ur III Period in the Oriental Institute, Volume 2: Drehem Administrative Documents from the Reign of Amar-Suena. Markus Hilgert. 2003.
OIP 120. Excavations at the Prehistoric Mound of Chogha Bonut, Khuzestan, Iran, Seasons 1976/77, 1977/78, and 1996. Abbas Alizadeh. 2003.
OIP 119. Theban Desert Road Survey in the Egyptian Western Desert, Volume 1: Gebel Tjauti Rock Inscriptions 1-45 and Wadi el-Hôl Rock Inscriptions 1-45. J. C. Darnell, with the assistance of D. Darnell. 2002.
OIP 118. Scarabs, Scaraboids, Seals, and Seal Impressions from Medinet Habu. Emily Teeter. 2003.
OIP 117. Seals on the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, Volume I: Images of Heroic Encounter. Mark B. Garrison and Margaret Cool Root, with seal inscription readings by Charles E. Jones. 2001.
OIP 116. Reliefs and Inscriptions at Luxor Temple, Volume 2: The Facade, Portals, Upper Register Scenes, Columns, Marginalia, and Statuary in the Colonnade Hall. The Epigraphic Survey. Originally published in 1998.
OIP 115. Cuneiform Texts from the Ur III Period in the Oriental Institute, Volume 1: Drehem Administrative Documents from the Reign of Shulgi. M. Hilgert. 1998
OIP 114. Nippur, Volume 4: The Early Neo-Babylonian Governor's Archive from Nippur. S. W. Cole. 1996.
OIP 113. The Oriental Institute Hawara Papyri: Demotic and Greek Texts from an Egyptian Family Archive in the Fayum (Fourth to Third Century B.C.). G. R. Hughes and R. Jasnow. 1997.
OIP 112. Reliefs and Inscriptions at Luxor Temple, Volume 1: The Festival Procession of Opet in the Colonnade Hall. The Epigraphic Survey. Originally published in 1994.
OIP 111. Nippur, Volume 3: Kassite Buildings in Area WC-1. R. L. Zettler. 1993.
OIP 107. Reliefs and Inscriptions at Karnak, Volume IV: The Battle Reliefs of King Sety I. The Epigraphic Survey. Originally published in 1986.
OIP 106. The Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, Volume 1, Part 1: The Wall Reliefs. By Harold Hayden Nelson. Edited by William J. Murnane. Originally published in 1981

OIP 105. Prehistoric Archeology Along the Zagros Flanks. L. S. Braidwood, et. al. 1983.
OIP 104. Earliest Land Tenure Systems in the Near East: Ancient Kudurrus. I. J. Gelb, et. al. 1989, 1991.
OIP 103. The Temple of Khonsu, Volume 2: Scenes and Inscriptions in the Court and the First Hypostyle Hall. The Epigraphic Survey. Originally published in 1981.
OIP 102. The Tomb of Kheruef: Theban Tomb 192. The Epigraphic Survey. 1980.
OIP 101. Chogha Mish, Volume 1: The First Five Seasons, 1961-1971. Helene Kantor and P. Delougaz. 1996.
OIP 100. The Temple of Khonsu, Volume I: Scenes of King Herihor in the Court. By the Epigraphic Survey. Originally published in 1979.
OIP 99. Inscriptions from Tell Abu Salabikh. R. D. Biggs. 1974.
OIP 98. Old Babylonian Public Buildings in the Diyala Region. Part One: Excavations at Ishchali, Part Two: Khafajah Mounds B, C, and D. H. D. Hill, et. al. 1990.
OIP 97. Nippur, Volume 2. The North Temple and Sounding E: Excavations of the Joint Expedition to Nippur of the American Schools of Oriental Research and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. D. E. McCown, et. al. 1978.
OIP 94. Medinet Habu, Vol. VIII: The Eastern High Gate with Translations of Texts. The Epigraphic Survey. Originally published in 1970.
OIP 93. Medinet Habu, Vol. VII: The Temple Proper, Pt. III: The Third Hypostyle Hall and All Rooms Accessible from It with Friezes of Scenes from the Roof Terraces and Exterior Walls of the Temple. The Epigraphic Survey. Originally published in 1964.
OIP 92. Persepolis Fortification Tablets. R. T. Hallock. 1969.
OIP 91. Aramaic Ritual Texts from Persepolis. R. A. Bowman. 1970.
OIP 88. Private Houses and Graves in the Diyala Region. Pinhas Delougaz, Harold D. Hill, and Seton Lloyd. 1967.
OIP 87. The Egyptian Coffin Texts 7, Texts of Spells 787-1185. By Adriaan de Buck. Originally published in 1961,
OIP 86. The Tomb of Tjanefer at Thebes. By Keith C. Seele. Originally published in 1959.
OIP 83. Medinet Habu, Volume V. The Temple Proper, Part I: The Portico, the Treasury, and Chapels Adjoining the First Hypostyle Hall with Marginal Material from the Forecourts. By the Epigraphic Survey. Originally published in 1957.
OIP 84. Medinet Habu, Volume IV. The Temple Proper, Part II: The Re Chapel, the Royal Mortuary Complex, and Adjacent Rooms with Miscellaneous Material from the Pylons, the Forecourts, and the First Hypostyle Hall. By The Epigraphic Survey. Originally published in 1963.
OIP 82. The Egyptian Book of the Dead: Documents in the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago. Edited by Thomas George Allen. Originally published in 1960.
OIP 81. The Egyptian Coffin Texts, Volume 6: Texts of Spells 472-787. Adriaan De Buck. 1956.
OIP 80. Demotic Ostraca from Medinet Habu. Miriam Lichtheim. 1957.
OIP 79. Soundings at Tell Fakhariyah. C. W. McEwan, et. al. 1957.
OIP 78. Nippur I, Temple of Enlil, Scribal Quarter, and Soundings: Excavations of the Joint Expedition to Nippur of the University Museum of Philadelphia and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Donald E. McCown and Richard C. Haines, assisted by Donald P. Hansen. 1967.
OIP 74. Reliefs and Inscriptions at Karnak, Volume III. The Bubastite Portal. By the Epigraphic Survey. Originally published in 1954.
OIP 73. The Egyptian Coffin Texts 5: Texts of Spells 355-471. Adriaan de Buck. 1954.
OIP 72. Stratified Cylinder Seals from the Diyala Region. Henri Frankfort with a chapter by Thorkild Jacobsen. 1955.
OIP 71. Coptic Ostraca from Medinet Habu. By Elizabeth Stefanski and Miriam Lichtheim. Originally published in 1952.
OIP 70. Persepolis III: The Royal Tombs and Other Monuments. E. F. Schmidt. 1970.
OIP 69. Persepolis II: Contents of the Treasury and Other Discoveries. Erich F. Schmidt with contributions by Sydney P. Noe et al., Frederick R. Matson, Lawrence J. Howell, and Louisa Bellinger. 1957
OIP 68. Persepolis I: Structures, Reliefs, Inscriptions. Erich F. Schmidt with contribution by F. R. Matson. 1953.
OIP 67. The Egyptian Coffin Texts 4, Texts of Spells 268-354. Adriaan de Buck. 1951.
OIP 66. Post-Ramessid Remains. The Excavation of Medinet Habu, Volume 5. By Uvo Hölscher. Originally published in 1954.
OIP 65. Persepolis Treasury Tablets. George G. Cameron. 1948.
OIP 64. The Egyptian Coffin Texts 3: Texts of Spells 164-267. By Adriaan de Buck. Originally published in 1947.
OIP 63. Pottery from the Diyala Region. Pinhas Delougaz. 1952.
OIP 60. More Sculpture from the Diyala Region. Henri Frankfort. 1943.
OIP 59. Tall-i-Bakun A: Season of 1932. Alexander Langsdorff and Donald E. McCown. 1942.
OIP 58. Pre-Sargonid Temples in the Diyala Region. Pinhas Delougaz and Seton Lloyd with chapters by Henri Frankfort and Thorkild Jacobsen. 1942.
OIP 56. Key Plans Showing Locations of Theban Temple Decorations. By Harold Hayden Nelson. Originally published in 1941.
OIP 55. The Excavation of Medinet Habu, Volume VI. The Mortuary Temple of Ramses III, Part II. By Uvo Hölscher. With contributions by Rudolf Anthes. Originally published in 1951.
OIP 54. The Mortuary Temple of Ramses III, Part 1. The Excavation of Medinet Habu, Volume 3. By Uvo Hölscher. Originally published in 1941.
OIP 53. The Temple Oval at Khafajah. Pinhas Delougaz, with a chapter by Thorkild Jacobsen. 1940.
OIP 51. Medinet Habu, Volume 4. Festival Scenes of Ramses III. By the Epigraphic Survey. Originally published in 1940.
OIP 49. The Egyptian Coffin Texts, Volume 2: Texts of Spells 76-163. Adriaan De Buck. 1938.
OIP 48. Mounds in the Plain of Antioch: An Archeological Survey . Robert J. Braidwood. 1937.
OIP 46. Paleolithic Man and the Nile Valley in Lower Egypt with Some Notes upon a Part of the Red Sea Littoral: A Study of the Regions during Pliocene and Pleistocene Times. K. S. Sandford and W. J. Arkell. Prehistoric Survey of Egypt and Western Asia, Volume IV. 1939.
OIP 44. Sculpture of the Third Millennium B.C. from Tell Asmar and Khafajah. Henri Frankfort. 1939.
OIP 43. The Gimilsin Temple and the Palace of the Rulers at Tell Asmar. Henri Frankfort, Seton Lloyd, and Thorkild Jacobsen, with a chapter by Günter Martiny. 1940.
OIP 42. Megiddo 1. Seasons of 1925-34: Strata I-V. Robert S. Lamon and Geoffrey M. Shipton. 1939.
OIP 41. The Excavation of Medinet Habu, Volume 2: The Temples of the Eighteenth Dynasty. By Uvo Hölscher. Originally published in 1939.
OIP 40. Khorsabad, Part 2: The Citadel and the Town. Gordon Loud and Charles B. Altman. 1938.
OIP 39. The Mastaba of Mereruka, Part II: Chamber A 11-13, Doorjambs and Inscriptions of Chambers A 1-21, Tomb Chamber, and Exterior. By the Sakkarah Expedition. Originally published in 1938.
OIP 38. Khorsabad, Part 1: Excavations in the Palace and at a City Gate. Gordon Loud. 1936.
OIP 36. Medinet Habu Graffiti: Facsimiles. Edited by William F. Edgerton. Originally published in 1937.
OIP 35. Reliefs and Inscriptions at Karnak, Volume II. Ramses III's Temple within the Great Inclosure of Amon, Part II; and Ramses III's Temple in the Precinct of Mut. By The Epigraphic Survey. Originally published in 1936.
OIP 34. The Egyptian Coffin Texts 1: Texts of Spells 1-75. By Adriaan De Buck. Originally published in 1935.
OIP 31. The Mastaba of Mereruka, Part I. Chambers A 1-10. By The Sakkara Expedition. Originally published in 1938.
OIP 25. Reliefs and Inscriptions at Karnak, Volume I. Ramses III's Temple with the Great Inclosure of Amon, Part I. The Epigraphic Survey. Originally published in 1936.
OIP 24. Sennacherib's Aqueduct at Jerwan. Thorkild Jacobsen and Seton Lloyd. 1935.
OIP 23. Medinet Habu, Volume III. The Calendar, the “Slaughterhouse,” and Minor Records of Ramses III. By the Epigraphic Survey. Originally published in 1934.
OIP 21. The Excavation of Medinet Habu, Volume 1: General Plans and Views. Uvo Hölscher. 1934.
OIP 18. Paleolithic Man and the Nile Valley in Upper and Middle Egypt: A Study of the Region during Pliocene and Pleistocene Times. K. S. Sandford. Prehistoric Survey of Egypt and Western Asia, Volume III. 1934.
OIP 17. Paleolithic Man and the Nile-Faiyum Divide in Nubia and Upper Egypt: A Study of the Region during Pliocene and Pleistocene Times. By K. S. Sandford and W. J. Arkell. Originally published in 1933.
OIP 16. Cuneiform Series, Volume IV: Sumerian Texts of Varied Contents. Edward Chiera. 1934.
OIP 15. Cuneiform Series, Volume III: Sumerian Epics and Myths. Edward Chiera. 1934.
OIP 14. Cuneiform Series, Vol. II: Inscriptions from from Adab. Daniel David Luckenbill. 1930.
OIP 11. Cuneiform Series, Volume I: Sumerian Lexical Texts from the Temple School of Nippur. Edward Chiera. 1929.
OIP 10. Prehistoric Survey of Egypt and Western Asia, Vol. I: Paleolithic Man and the Nile-Faiyum Divide: A Study of the Region During Pliocene and Pleistocene Times. K. S. Sandford and W. J. Arkell. 1929.
OIP 9. Medinet Habu, Volume II. The Later Historical Records of Ramses III. The Epigraphic Survey. Originally published in 1932.
OIP 8. Medinet Habu, Volume I. Earlier Historical Records of Ramses III. By the Epigraphic Survey. Originally published in 1930.
OIP 4. The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, Volume 2: Facsimile Plates and Line for Line Hieroglyphic Transliteration. J. H. Breasted. Originally published in 1930, revised in 1991. [and see now the facsimile of this papyrus at the National Library of Medicine]
OIP 3. The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, Volume 1: Hieroglyphic Transliteration, Translation, and Commentary. J. H. Breasted. Originally published in 1930, revised in 1991.

Oriental Institute Seminars (OIS) | List of volumes in print

OIS 6. Divination and Interpretation of Signs in the Ancient World, Edited by Amar Annus. 2010
OIS 5. Nomads, Tribes, and the State in the Ancient Near East: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives, Edited by Jeffrey Szuchman. 2009.
OIS 4. Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond, Nicole Brisch, ed.
OIS 3. Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean. Nicola Laneri, ed. 2007.
OIS 2. Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures. Seth L. Sanders, ed. 2006, 2007.
OIS 1. Changing Social Identity with the Spread of Islam: Archaeological Perspectives. Donald Whitcomb, ed. 2004.

Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization (SAOC) | List of volumes in print

SAOC 63. Beyond the Ubaid: Transformation and integration in the late prehistoric societies of the Middle East. 2010.
SAOC 62. Proceedings of the 51st Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Held at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, July 18–22, 2005. 2008.
SAOC 61. Sacred Space and Sacred Function in Ancient Thebes. Peter F. Dorman and Betsy M. Bryan, ed. 2007.
SAOC 60. Studies in Semitic and Afroasiatic Linguistics Presented to Gene B. Gragg. Cynthia L. Miller, ed.
SAOC 59. Studies in the Archaeology of Israel and Neighboring Lands in Memory of Douglas L. Esse. Samuel R. Wolff, ed. 2001.
SAOC 58. Gold of Praise: Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honor of Edward F. Wente. E. Teeter and J. A. Larson, eds.. Originally published in 2000.
SAOC 57. The Presentation of Maat: Ritual and Legitimacy in Ancient Egypt. By Emily Teeter. Originally published in 1997.
SAOC 56. Portrait Mummies from Roman Egypt (I-IV Centuries A.D.) with a Catalog of Portrait Mummies in Egyptian Museums. By Lorelei H. Corcoran. Originally published in 1995.
SAOC 55. For His Ka: Essays Offered in Memory of Klaus Baer. D. P. Silverman, ed. Originally published in 1994.
SAOC 54. The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice. R. K. Ritner. Originally published in 1993.
SAOC 54, 4th Printing. The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice, 4th Printing. R. K. Ritner. Originally published in 2008.
SAOC 53. Glass from Quseir al-Qadim and the Indian Ocean Trade. By Carol Meyer. Originally published in 1992.
SAOC 52. A Late Period Hieratic Wisdom Text (P. Brooklyn 47.218.135). R. Jasnow. Originally published in 1992.
SAOC 51. Life in a Multi-Cultural Society: Egypt from Cambyses to Constantine and Beyond. Janet Johnson. ed. 1992.
SAOC 48. Egyptian Phyles in the Old Kingdom: The Evolution of a System of Social Organization. By Ann Macy Roth. Originally published in 1991.
SAOC 47. Essays in Ancient Civilization Presented to Helene J. Kantor. A. Leonard, Jr. and B. B. Williams, eds. Originally published in 1989.
SAOC 45. Thus Wrote ‘Onchsheshonqy - An Introductory Grammar of Demotic (Third Edition). Janet H. Johnson. Third edition, 2000.
SAOC 44. Nippur Neighborhoods. E. C. Stone. 1987.
SAOC 42. The Road to Kadesh: A Historical Interpretation of the Battle Reliefs of King Sety I at Karnak. W. J. Murnane. Originally published in 1985.
SAOC 42, 2nd Edition. The Road to Kadesh: A Historical Interpretation of the Battle Reliefs of King Sety I at Karnak, 2nd Edition. W. J. Murnane. Originally published in 1990.
SAOC 40. Ancient Egyptian Coregencies. By William J. Murnane. Originally published in 1977.
SAOC 39. Studies in Honor of George R. Hughes, January 12, 1977. J. H. Johnson and E. F. Wente, eds. Originally published in 1976.
SAOC 38. The Demotic Verbal System. Janet H. Johnson. Second printing, with corrections, 2004.
SAOC 37. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day: Ideas of the Ancient Egyptians Concerning the Hereafter as Expressed in Their Own Terms. Translated by Thomas George Allen. Originally published in 1974.
SAOC 35. Studies in Honor of John A. Wilson. E. B. Hauser, ed.. Originally published in 1969.
SAOC 34. A Study of the Ba Concept in Ancient Egyptian Texts. By Louis V. Zabkar. Originally published in 1968.
SAOC 33. Late Ramesside Letters. By Edward F. Wente. Originally published in 1967.
SAOC 31. Prehistoric Investigations in Iraqi Kurdistan. R. J. Braidwood and B. Howe. 1960.
SAOC 30. Wall Scenes from the Mortuary Chapel of the Mayor Paser at Medinet Habu. Siegfried Schott. Translated By Elizabeth B. Hauser. 1957.
SAOC 28. Saite Demotic Land Leases. George Robert Hughes. 1952.
SAOC 27. Occurrences of Pyramid Texts with Cross Indexes of These and Other Egyptian Mortuary Texts. Thomas George Allen. 1950.
SAOC 26. The Calendars of Ancient Egypt. Richard A. Parker. 1950.
SAOC 20. Animal Remains from Tell Asmar. Max Hilzheimer. 1941.
SAOC 19. The Coregency of Ramses II with Seti I and the Date of the Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak. Keith C. Seele. 1940.
SAOC 16. The Monasteries of the Fayyum. Nabia Abbott. 1937.
SAOC 12. Historical Records of Ramses III: The Texts in Medinet Habu Volumes 1 and 2, Translated With Explanatory Notes. William F. Edgerton and John A. Wilson. 1936.
SAOC 8. The Thutmosid Succession. William F. Edgerton. 1933.
SAOC 5. A New Inscription of Xerxes from Persepolis. Ernst E. Herzfeld. 1932.
SAOC 1. Notes on Egyptian Marriage Chiefly in the Ptolemaic Period. William F. Edgerton. 1931.

Miscellaneous Publications | List of volumes in print

Egypt through the Stereoscope: A Journey through the Land of the Pharaohs. By James Henry Breasted. Originally published Underwood & Underwood in 1908.
The Temple of King Sethos I at Abydos, Volume I: The Chapels of Osiris, Isis and Horus. Copied by Amice M. Calverley, with the assistance of Myrtle F. Broome, and edited by Alan H. Gardiner. Originally published in 1933.
The Temple of King Sethos I at Abydos, Volume II: The Chapels of Amen-Re', Re'-Harakhti, Ptah, and King Sethos. Copied by Amice M. Calverley, with the assistance of Myrtle F. Broome, and edited by Alan H. Gardiner. Originally published in 1935.
The Temple of King Sethos I at Abydos, Volume III: The Osiris Complex. Copied by Amice M. Calverley, with the assistance of Myrtle F. Broome, and edited by Alan H. Gardiner. Originally published in 1938.
The Temple of King Sethos I at Abydos, Volume IV: The Second Hypostyle Hall. Copied by Amice M. Calverley, with the assistance of Myrtle F. Broome, and edited by Alan H. Gardiner. Originally published in 1958.
Letters from Egypt and Iraq, 1954. Margaret Bell Cameron. 2001.
Uch Tepe II: Technical Reports. McG. Gibson, ed. 1990.
Uch Tepe I: Tell Razuk, Tell Ahmed Al-Mughir, Tell Ajamat. McG. Gibson, ed. 1987.
Egyptology at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. 1984.
Persepolis and Ancient Iran. 1976.
Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt: A Study in Cultural Ecology. Karl W. Butzer. 1976.
United with Eternity: A Concise Guide to the Monuments of Medinet Habu. William J. Murnane. With a foreword by Kent R. Week. 1976.
The 1905–1907 Breasted Expeditions to Egypt and The Sudan. 1975.
The Uruk Countryside: The Natural Setting of Urban Societies. Robert McC. Adams and Hans J. Nissen. 1972.
Signs and Wonders upon Pharaoh: A History of American Egyptology. John A. Wilson. 1964.
Flights Over Ancient Cities of Iran. Erich F. Schmidt. 1940.
Quseir Al-Qadim 1978: Preliminary Report. By D. S. Whitcomb and J. H. Johnson. Originally published in 1979.
Ancient Textiles from Nubia: Meroitic, X-Group, and Christian Fabrics from Ballana and Qustul. By Christa C. Mayer Thurman and Bruce Williams. Originally published in 1979.
Most Ancient Egypt. By William C. Hayes. Originally published in 1965.
When Egypt Ruled the East. By George Steindorff and Keith C. Seele, Revised by Keith C. Seele. Originally published as second edition in 1957.
The Culture of Egypt. By John A. Wilson. Originally published in 1956.
Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature. By Henri Frankfort. Originally published in 1948.
Ancient Egyptian Paintings Selected, Copied, and Described. Volume I: Descriptive Text. By Nina M. Davies with the Editorial Assistance of Alan H. Gardiner. Originally published in 1936.
Ancient Egyptian Paintings Selected, Copied, and Described. Volume II: Descriptive Text. By Nina M. Davies with the Editorial Assistance of Alan H. Gardiner. Originally published in 1936.
Ancient Egyptian Paintings Selected, Copied, and Described. Volume III: Descriptive Text. By Nina M. Davies with the Editorial Assistance of Alan H. Gardiner. Originally published in 1936.
The Burden of Egypt: An Interpretation of Ancient Egyptian Culture. By John A. Wilson. Originally published in 1951.
Quseir al-Qadim 1980: Preliminary Report. By Donald S. Whitcomb and Janet H. Johnson. Originally published in 1982.
Egyptology at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. The Oriental Institute. Originally published in 1983.
Lost Egypt, Volumes I. A Limited Edition Portfolio Series of Photographic Images from Egypt’s Past. The Epigraphic Survey of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Originally published in 1992.
Lost Egypt, Volumes II. A Limited Edition Portfolio Series of Photographic Images from Egypt’s Past. The Epigraphic Survey of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Originally published in 1992.
Lost Egypt, Volumes III. A Limited Edition Portfolio Series of Photographic Images from Egypt’s Past. The Epigraphic Survey of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Originally published in 1992.
Mesopotamian Directory 2009.
Database of Late Old Babylonian personal names derived from cuneiform texts chiefly dating to the reigns of the last three kings of the First Dynasty of Babylon, 1683-1595 B.C.
Pioneer to the Past: The Story of James Henry Breasted, Archaeologist, Told by His Son Charles Breasted. By Charles Breasted. Reprint of the Charles Scribner's Sons 1943 Edition with New Foreword and Photographs. Published in 2009.
Oriental Institute Museum Photo Archives Database [Enter as "guest"]

Oriental Institute Annual Reports

1991-1992 Annual Report - 2008-2009 Annual Report.

Oriental Institute News & Notes

Oriental Institute's on-line Photographic Archives (online only)

AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 1
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 2
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 3
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 4
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 5
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 6
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 7

More AWOL - The Ancient World Online

Open Access Publication: The Demotic Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Letter P << Charles Ellwood Jones (AWOL: The Ancient World Online)

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Ellwood Jones) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:32:32 +0000

The Demotic Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago

As part of its ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS ON-LINE, the Oriental Institute Publications Office announces an additional letter, P, for the Chicago Demotic Dictionary, edited by Janet H. Johnson. This document is available as an Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) file.

Letters completed to date include:

Completed Letters	Download
Prologue	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
	Download PDF Terms of Use
Problematic Entries	Download PDF Terms of Use
Problematic Entries 2	Download PDF Terms of Use

For a listing of all Oriental Institute publications available online see: AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 2: The Oriental Institute Electronic Publications Initiative

Open Access Publications of the National Museum of Romanian History << Charles Ellwood Jones (AWOL: The Ancient World Online)

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Ellwood Jones) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:58:47 +0000

Muzeul Naţional de Istorie a României
Publicaţii

Monografii
Crişan Muşeţeanu în colaborare cu Dan Elefterescu, Ateliere ceramice romane de la Durostorum,

Teze de doctorat

Cristina Anton Manea, Structura şi restructurarea marii boierimi din Ţara Românească de la începutul secolului al XVI-LEA până la mijlocul secolului al XVII-LEA, 2003

Valentin Radu , Exploitation des ressources aquatiques dans les cultures néolithiques et chalcolithiques de la Roumanie Méridionale, 2003

Paul Cristian Damian , Geto-dacii în configuraţia demografică a Daciei Romane, 2002

Eugen S. Teodor , Ceramica din Muntenia, de la sfârşitul veacului al V-lea până la mijlocul veacului al VII-lea, 2001

Rapoarte

Raport anual, 2007

Raport anual, 2006

Raport anual, 2008

Difficult decisions or discrimination at Oxford centre for Jewish studies << Roger Pearse (Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, and more)

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:54:51 +0000

There is a curious news report in the Daily Telegraph today here, reprinted at VirtueOnline here. There is also a Telegraph blog by Damian Thompson here.

Oxford University lecturer ‘discriminated against’ after converting to Christianity
A lecturer at Oxford University’s centre for Jewish studies claims colleagues discriminated against her after she converted to Christianity.

Dr Tali Argov says she was overlooked for promotion, stripped of her privileges and cold-shouldered at social gatherings.

She says staff wanted to vet her lectures to make sure that, as a Christian, she would not criticise Israel.

Eventually she claims she was made redundant from her post at the prestigious Oxford Centre for Hebrew & Jewish Studies, despite offering to take on new roles.

Dr Argov is claiming unfair dismissal and discrimination on grounds of religion or belief at Reading Employment tribunal.

I only know what the news report says. Naturally I am opposed to discrimination against Christians, because I am one. But I have mixed feelings about all this.

My first response is to wonder why someone following a religion founded by a Jew cannot hold a post at a centre dedicated to Jewish studies. Presumably the idea is that anyone who becomes a Christian ceases to be a Jew, and that only Jews can hold posts at the centre. This seems a little extreme, unless the centre is really dedicated to studying Judaism, rather like a theological college. It would be quite understandable in the last case that staff should share a certain ethos.

On the other hand, I can’t help feeling that people should be able to employ who they want to. In particular Jewish groups which support Israel are unpopular with the political establishment in the UK, and need to organise themselves to rebut a great deal of obstruction. Shouldn’t they be able to ensure that they’re all singing from the same songsheet?

And there is yet another aspect to this. This is Britain. English Christians are a mild lot, even the most evangelical of us. We do not wear suicide belts. Christianity has been part of the University of Oxford since its beginning (despite various expulsions and harassment in periods of moral decay). Is having a CofE member in the centre really that radical?

In the pyramid of privileged groups that the establishment has erected in modern Britain, Christians are plankton. They really do get targetted by the nastier sort of bureaucrat. But Jewish groups, which have been more privileged, are sliding down the chain and starting to get the same treatment. Most Christians are pro-Israel, for obvious reasons. Is there no way that Christians and Jews can work together?

I have no answers. I have a feeling that no-one will come out of this well. And … I am quite sure that the full story is not in the newspaper article. But well done to the Daily Telegraph for reporting this story.

The Science of Noah’s Ark << Tom Goskar (Past Thinking)

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:53:19 +0000

Noah's Ark from Marxchivist

After ages, a meaty debate has been developing on the Group for Education in Museums Jiscmail list. It centred around an initial post by Richard Ellam on the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom (CLOtC) decision to award their quality badge to Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm. On balance the response from list members has been hostile towards CLOtC’s decision, and highly critical of the educational value of Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm. The gist being that, although much of the publicity about Noah’s Ark claims to offer the learner/visitor the opportunity to both consider creationism (perhaps that should be Capital C Creationism?) and evolution as theories/evidence for the origins of Earth, humans and other animals, Noah’s Ark’s real agenda is to promote Creationism over science (perhaps that should be Capital S Science?) or worse, to give the illusion that Creationism is Science. You can read the responses here and other responses here.

My interest in the debate really did not spring from a desire to tell others what I thought of the decision to award a quality badge to an organisation such as Noah’s Ark but to raise the issue of what we as learners and educators (particularly in museum settings) consider to be good learning and education and the problems we have in over-categorising learning, for example, separating Science and Non-Science (e.g. Creationism belongs in Religious Education not Science). To avoid repeating myself, I have posted my contribution to this debate below but it can also be read in the list archives here.

This debate has also reminded me that long ago I promised some posts on museums as sacred spaces, and as such I have thought an awful lot about it but not yet blogged about it. This might be considered a prelude, then. Can museums cope with presenting Knowledge as Belief as well as Belief as Knowledge?

—–
Message sent Thursday 29 July 2010.

Dear all,

I have read this debate with an enormous amount of interest, not for the points about whether Noah’s Ark is a good or bad thing (however you decide to decide this) but for the problem it has raised over how we go about categorising our information into science and non-science. I have very many scientist friends and family, most of them always questioning what exactly it is we _know_ from empirical measurement and observation and what exactly it is we don’t know and just estimate or guess at. And yet the uncertainties of modern western science are not always presented to the public in whatever forum (and we don’t really question this).

Where subjects like creationism (yet another -ism many learning providers deal poorly with of whatever persuasion) ‘fit in’, is to me a non-issue. Fora should exist where scientific, evolutionary elements of human and earth history are discussed with creationisms, beyond the nutsy approach taken by Noah’s Ark. I am sure they have existed in some places, why don’t we see or hear more of them so sites like Noah’s Ark can be shown up for what they really are? We don’t need to patronise all members of the public, young or old, by worrying that they are going to be misled even if they read misleading information.

Where we came from is a fundamental question we have all asked, particularly as children. Empirical science does not know everything and there is no capacity to know what you don’t know. All those unknown unknowns. Similarly, the kind of biblical creationism we most often hear about in the media is only one (and often skewed) interpretation of a world view held by people past and present; what about all the other creation stories (see Sumerian for example), some of which echo has later been discovered through the theory of evolution, or theories of evolution, should that be?

Learning and education quality marks are subjective, no matter how many guidelines and parameters you set, as the subject matter is inescapable. I cannot see how you can be neutral about the subject of learning. If one was to give the cliched example of, ‘what about if the BNP had an education programme’… etc… what would those respondents who said that the assessment of learning quality should be neutral think then? Why do we have to think so mechanically about learning and its categories? Surely learning outside the classroom should break out of the constraints of the National Curriculum which itself has been shown to be a more than imperfect way of teaching in many subjects, overly compartmentalised, and lacking the encouragement of individual thought and analysis in some areas.

In short, what this debate so far has shown me is that what really needs discussing is not whether creationism as science is a wolf in sheep’s clothing but whether as learners and educators ourselves we have stopped to question our massive assumptions about both.

I suspect this is a gauntlet that no one will pick up ;-)

Punk and Spolia << Bill Caraher (The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World)

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:48:20 +0000

Over the last week or so, I've been listening again to the Detroit Cobras and thinking about some of our first conversations on Punk Archaeology. The Cobras specialize in what they have called "revved up soul". They make this wonderful noise by covering (mostly) lost classics of the MoTown era over the driving rhythms of punk and the fuzzy, distorted lo-fi sound of the punk blues movement. Rachel Nagy's voice succeeds at being both smooth and abrasive at the same time. Some critics have called their sound "Garage Soul".

Their first album, Mink, Rat or Rabbit covered songs by 1950s and early 1960s bands like The Marvelettes, The Shirelles, Irma Thomas, The "5" Royales, and The Shangri-Las. Later albums continue this tradition. (They're first two albums - Mink, Rat or Rabbit and Life, Love and Learning - are, to my ear, their best. (Notice the absence of the "Oxford comma" in both titles.)

The point of mentioning this somewhat obscure band is to consider the relationship between punk and spolia. Spolia is a technical archaeological term for the re-use older fragments of architecture in new construction. It is typically associated with Late Antiquity and was initially regarded by critics steeped in the Classical Tradition as indicative of the lose of technical skills and economic impoverished conditions at the end of Antiquity. Other saw the use of spolia as a conscious decision on the part of Late Antique builders and, at worst, reflective of a taste for a discordant, disorganized, and, ultimately, decadent aesthetic.

Of course hip-hop music withstood similar criticisms as they cut up and sampled R&B classics to form rhythmic backdrop for their poetry. Such reuse of earlier material was unoriginal and indicative of a kind of creative bankruptcy among "today's generation". Punk took their lead from pop music which they sped up and made more up-tempo, raucous and chaotic. The Cobras occupy a third space recently developed by bands like the White Stripes and the Black Keys where punk, R&B, and blues infused with the DIY, lo-fy sound of the garage (which represents a more austere and suburban version of the venerable lo-fy Juke Joint).

The epicenter of this music has been Detroit (or the Rust Belt more broadly) where the punk of the MC Five and the blues Son House and John L. Hooker intersect. The music here has tremendous symbolic significance, as Detroit has become emblematic of the decline of "traditional America" and images of the ruinous conditions of the factories have become images of the decline of America's fortunes as a manufacturing power. The photographs are archaeological in their attention to detail and the need to accommodate history.

The music of the Detroit Cobras provide a counterpoint to the haunting, archaeological photographs of abandoned Detroit. Fragments of the city's earlier days come through in their music, but rather than critique the declining fortunes of America's industrial heartland, the music calls forth the continued vitality of those days in much the same way that spolia maintained a conscious connection with earlier architecture.

The archaeological impulse in of punk rock of the Detroit Cobras reveals a kind of native archaeology of the American city which draws backwards on its unique history to produce critical memory. Such work is the work of archaeologists both of the past and the present who sought to communicate something meaningful from the fragments of the past that remained visible in their present. The spolia preserved in the music of the Detroit Cobras presents a musical museum in much the same way that the fragments of the past in produce meaning in the context of a physical museum today or in the context of monumental architecture in Late Antiquity.

Open Access Journal: Annales d’Université „Valahia” Târgoviste. Section d’Archéologie et d’Histoire << Charles Ellwood Jones (AWOL: The Ancient World Online)

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Ellwood Jones) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:35:57 +0000

Annales d’Université „Valahia” Târgoviste. Section d’Archéologie et d’Histoire

The magazine Annales d’Université „Valahia” Târgovişte. Section d’Archéologie et d’Histoire has appeared since 1999, representing an opportunity to valorize the research work of the academic staff from the History-Archeology Department, and also a chance to valorize the research work of the young teaching staff who carry out their activity at the Research Centers accredited by CNCSIS – „Preistorie, arheologie interdisciplinară şi conservarea patrimoniului cultural mobil” (Prehistory, Interdisciplinary Archeology and Conservation of the Movable Cultural Patrimony) and Centrul de Cercetare al Istoriei Relaţiilor Internaţionale „Grigore Gafencu” (The “Grigore Gafencu” Center for the Research of the History of the International Relations). For objective (especially financial) reasons, in order to maintain our quality standards, from the moment when the Annals of “Valahia” University began to appear on sections, sometimes we have published the results of two years of researches in a single tome, trying to preserve the continuity of the publication. Beginning with 2008, the magazine will appear with two annual issues. The themes have remained constant throughout the issues that were published so far in the domain of history and archeology, always covering all the historical periods – prehistory and archeology, history and archeology of the Middle Ages, modern and contemporary history. The structure of our magazine maintained its classical form: Articles and studies; Notes and Debates; Reviews. The standards of quality have been ensured by the presence in the Publishing Team and Advisory Board of the most representative personalities in the domain of research for each historical period, from Romania and abroad, in the sense that each contribution was submitted to the appreciation of the members of the magazine’s Publishing Team and Advisory Board by means of specialized reviews. The articles and studies published in the Annales d’Université „Valahia” Târgovişte, Section d’Archéologie et d’Histoire have been published integrally in a language of large international circulation (English, French, German, Italian), having a permanent scientific impact, in the sense that they have often been quoted in the studies of our colleagues from Romania and abroad. At the same time, Annales d’Université Valahia Targoviste, Section d’Archéologie et d’Histoire have been included in several international databases. The magazine is remarkable for its extremely original contributions in the domain of prehistoric archeology, produced by a school that has been acknowledged in its domain and whose results have been appreciated not just nationally but also internationally, given the fact that it has carried out many research programs in collaboration with numerous universities from Europe, like those from Liège, Bordeaux I, Aix-en-Provence, the Musée de l’Homme and the Institute of Human Paleontology from Paris, Erlanger and Köln University from Germany etc. The results of such researches have often been the topic of articles included in the Annales d’Université „Valahia” Targoviste, Section d’Archéologie et d’Histoire. At the same time, in this magazine can be found studies of many of our colleagues from other universities from Romania and abroad. The magazine is present in the libraries of many universities from Europe and the U.S.A., in most of the universities from Romania where there is the specialization History and in the libraries of history museums, and of other institutions with which we have had a permanent exchange, which has led to the improvement of the patrimony of publications of “Valahia” University Târgovişte.

List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

Open melodie 1.0-RC1 released << José Paumard (Open Melodie)

noreply@blogger.com (José) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:09:10 +0000

Being silent does not mean remaining inactive, at least it has not been the case for Open melodie ! After nearly a year without any news, I'm glad to announce the publication on Sourceforge of the 1.0-RC1. So no 0.5 (sorry), I also skipped the 0.6, then the 0.7, and found the project was mature enough to be a release candidate. I'll wait a few months more for bug fixes and stuff and package a 1.0-GA after that.

So what's new in this release ? They're so much... I'm not sure I wont forget anything.

First, the interface has been redone from bottom up. We only kept the basic SmartGWT

components and put them in a new layout. The interface is really nice now, much cleaner, less cluttered, I'm quite happy with it. Of course it will undergo another update in the next few months, because there's still room for improvement.

Second, all the core functionnalities of the engine are available through this interface. You can create basic stuff like thesauruses and controled values sets. You can add translations to your keywords in a very convenient way. And then you can build corpuses on those low-level data structures.

You are really free to build any kind of complex file structure in your corpuses : from basic string fields, to complex composite fields, everything is possible. I added the "relation field" that enables you to link objects from other corpuses to the current object.

Once your corpuses are built, you can begin to create objects in them. You can create and index them directly from the display grids, or open complex forms on them. Rich text is supported, we embedded the well-known CKEditor.

Of course the full support of high resolution images is in this release. Take an image, upload it, add fields to it, link to any number of objects, and you're done.

On the data browsing side, I could activate the advanced querying tool

available in SmartGWT, and it works really well ! It has been tested on 5000+ items corpuses, and despite the complexity of the queries entered, the response were instantaneous (well, as it can be over the Internet).

As far as testing is concerned, Open melodie has been online since mid-october '09 and used by non-computer science geek people since that time. Many bugs have been found and fixed, many performances issues have been improved. In those months, about 15 people have been using the server. They have created more than 50k items in a several hundreds of corpuses. There are now in the DB more than 220k indexed fields.

So yes, this 1.0-RC1 release really deserves this 1.0-RC1 status.

As usual, the code is on Sourceforge here (GPL licence) : Open melodie on Sourceforge. What I published are the Eclipse project. If you dont know what an Eclipse project is, it wont be of any use to you, so just drop me a line, and we'll see what can be done for you.

This project wont stop anytime soon, more things will be coming out when I'm back from vacation.

Open Access Egyptology from Waseda University << Charles Ellwood Jones (AWOL: The Ancient World Online)

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Ellwood Jones) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:57:15 +0000

[Originally posted 6/10/10. Revised 7/29/10]

Institute of Archaeology, Waseda University, Tokyo
Publications

MONOGRAPHS

Series of Studies in Egyptian Culture
No.1 The Excavations at Malkata-south 1972-1980, 1985
No.2 The Human Mummies from the 1983 Excavations at Qurna, Egypt, 1985
No.3 Das Sanktuar Amenophis, III im Luxor-Tempel, 1986
No.4 Ancient Human Mummies from Qurna, Egypt, 1986
No.5 The Architecture of “Kom el Samak” at Malkata-south -A Study of Architectural Restoration-,
1986
No.6 Non-Destructive Pyramid Investigation(1) -By Electromagnetic Wave Method-, 1987
No.7 Ancient Human Mummies from Qurna, Egypt II, 1988
No.8 Non-Destructive Pyramid Investigation(2), 1988
No.9 Monitoring Plan and Practical Design Concept for the Restoration of the Great Sphinx through the First International Symposium on the Great Sphinx towards Global Treatment of the Sphinx, Cairo, 29 February-3 March 1992, 1992
No.10 A Survey of the Tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Pictorial Report, 2000

The First International Symposium on the Application of Modern Technology to Archaeological Explorations at the Giza Necropolis - The Substance of Speech, 1987
Comparative Studies of Noble Tombs in Theban Necropolis - Tomb Nos. 8, 38, 39, 48, 50, 54, 57, 63, 64, 66, 74, 78, 89, 90, 91, 107, 120, 139, 147, 151, 181, 201, 253, 295, 1988

Conservation of the Wall Paintings in the Royal Tomb of Amenophis III -First and Second Phases Report-, 2004

Excavating in Egypt for 40 years Waseda University Expedition 1966-2006: A Special Exhibition of Japanese archaeological discoveries in Egypt in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, 2009

PRELIMINARY REPORTS OF THE EXCAVATIONS

Abusir South
‘Waseda University Excavations at North Saqqara: A Preliminary Report on the First Three Seasons,
   December 1991 – September 1993’, 1997 (link to Journal Archive)
‘Waseda University Excavations at North Saqqara: A Preliminary Report on the Fourth to Sixth
   Seasons, August 1995 – September 1997’, 1999 (link to Journal Archive)
‘Waseda University Excavations in Egypt and Recent Works at North Saqqara,’ in Hawass, Z. (ed.),
   Egyptology at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century, vol. 1, Cairo, 2003
‘A Sacred Hillside at Northwest Saqqara: A Preliminary Report on the Excavations 2001-2003,’
   MDAIK 61, 2005.
‘Neue Entdeckungen im Nordwesten Sakkaras, Eine Grabkapelle aus dem Neuen Reich und das Grab
   der Isisnofret,’ Sokar 19, 2009.

Dahshur North
‘Preliminary Report of the General Survey at Dahshur North, Egypt’, 1997
‘Preliminary Report of Excavations at Dahshur North, Egypt-1st and 2nd Field Seasons-’, 1998
‘Preliminary Report of Excavations at Dahshur North, Egypt-3rd Field Season-’, 1998
‘Preliminary Report of Excavations at Dahshur North, Egypt,-4th-6th Field Seasons, 2000
‘Preliminary Report of Excavations at Dahshur North, Egypt,-7th Field Season, 2001
‘Preliminary Report of the Waseda University Excavations at Dahshur North-10th Season-, 2005
Khufu's Second Boat
Leaflet of the project

Logos Bible Software: The Master Plan << Logos Bible Software Blog

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:00:01 +0000

Almost 20 years ago we started Logos Bible Software with the idea of building a tool to help people study the Bible. Over the years Logos has grown from two programmers in a basement with one idea to 200 people offering 10,000 resources for Bible study.

As you can imagine, our mission has changed along the way, too. Today it reads:

To help more people do more and better Bible study.

Okay, so the mission hasn’t changed much; we added some adjectives. We have spent a lot of time on the plan of execution, though, and I thought I should share it with you so you can understand what we’re doing, what we’re going to be doing, and why.

First, the fundamentals:

Logos is all about Bible study. We’ve released software, a paper magazine, and video training materials. We host a conference. We’re on multiple technology platforms. We’re on the desktop and on the web. How does everything fit together? It’s all about Bible study.

Logos leverages technology. We choose projects that leverage our technology expertise. Even if a project isn't software, you can be sure our decision to do it was based on leveraging technology. Of course technology isn’t essential to Bible study; it’s just our particular skill, and a place where we can serve well. We’re following centuries of non-technology-based Bible study tools, and many organizations serve that need well already.

Logos harnesses the network effect. Each e-book we add to our system is extensively tagged and linked to all the others. The scholarly translations and databases we build are both made with and delivered inside our software; the books and articles we commission build on content we offer and help users go deeper with our tools.

Logos is easy. The real work of Bible study is inside the student. We just provide tools and resources, so we need to focus on equipping without obstructing. The easier we make it to get into Bible study, the more people we can encourage to do it. The easier the tools, the more likely people can do better study. Easy means excellent user interface. Easy means elegant design that engages the student. Easy means fantastic customer service so a technical problem or misunderstanding doesn’t get in the way of getting into the Word.

Now, the plan:

Access. An internal joke at Logos goes “If it isn’t in the Passage Guide, it doesn’t exist,” because resources aren’t useful if you can’t find them. Logos Bible Software makes it easy to access the resources in your library when and where you need them. Our “one license, any platform” philosophy means you can access your content on Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, smart phone, and the web. We plan to offer even more interfaces in the future. We are planning task-specific mobile applications that connect to your library and web sites tailored to specific data sets.

Your Logos.com account will let you access your content (and documents you create) wherever you are, with whatever interface you need.

Content. We are planning more content for Bible study. Our scholarly translations and databases already make it easier to study the Bible in Greek and Hebrew; our visual resources are an aid in understanding and teaching others. Behind the scenes, we are building metadata that links content together and improves discoverability. An extensive set of tools lets you create your own content, too, ranging from notes to highlights to sentence diagrams. Synchronization with your Logos.com account connects your content to you, not a specific device.

Community. We study, learn, teach, and share in community with others. We are planning new ways to connect with others around Bible study. We will have ways to collaborate on documents, aids to studying in a group, and tools that help you share the fruit of your study with others. You will be able to link your Logos.com account to multiple groups and choose what you share with the communities important to you. And because we know that Logos Bible Software is itself part of a larger community, we plan new ways to connect our tools with the work of others.

Access, content, and community are interwoven; each both enables and is enabled by the other two. The connection point is your Logos.com account. Already this single login manages your content on multiple platforms and identifies you in communities like the Logos Forums and Sermons.Logos.com. In the future it will be even more valuable. (Is your profile filled in?)

How will this master plan be manifested?

That’s the exciting part: we are going to find out together.

We have some ideas, though, and you can see them starting to come together.

Books.Logos.com shows a content-specific search interface for scanned books from a seminary library. (We plan to link Logos Bible Software 4 to this site in the future.)

Sermons.Logos.com shows how community-created content can be shared with new users on the Internet and (through a section in the Passage Guide) inside Logos Bible Software.

Biblia.com is an alternate interface to most of the content in your digital library that is easy to use over the web. For some users it may be all they need for simple Bible reading; for others it’s a way to check a book when they aren’t at their own computer.

Topics.Logos.com exposes the Logos Controlled Vocabulary to everyone, and lets users contribute web links and share reading lists that will automatically show up in Logos 4.

Almanac.Logos.com lets our community of users search and edit a growing database of information on the Christian world (particularly seminaries, at this point). This database provides a platform for connecting users by school, organization, denomination, and area of interest.

Api.Biblia.com offers the power of Logos Bible Software to other web sites, enabling mashups and creative ideas we never imagined.

And we’re not done. There are new projects coming, and we are experimenting and learning as we go. We need to hear from you about what you need, and your ideas about how we can serve and connect more people who want – who need! – to study the Bible.

I am excited about our “master plan,” and thrilled that we get to play this small part in The Master’s Plan. Thanks for sharing in it with us!

You should follow us on Twitter here.

New Open Access Journal: Open Journal of Archaeometry << Charles Ellwood Jones (AWOL: The Ancient World Online)

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Ellwood Jones) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:29:46 +0000

Open Journal of Archaeometry

Submit your article to the Open Journal of Archaeometry!

The Open Journal of Archaeometry is a new, completely peer-reviewed, Open Access, international scientific journal published by PAGEPress Publications, Pavia, Italy. It is dedicated to the publication of research articles, short communications and review papers on every aspect of archaeometry. Archaeometry, also known as archaeological science, applies scientific techniques to the analysis of archaeological materials. Research topics mainly comprise the following disciplines and analyzing techniques:
physical and chemical dating methods, e.g. 14C and luminescence dating, which provide archaeologists with numerical and relative chronologies
analyses of artifacts, concerning provenance, technology and types of use
environmental approaches, which provide information on past changes in landscape, climate, flora, and fauna
anthropological studies dealing on diet, nutrition, health, and pathology of people
mathematical methods for data treatment including the role of computers in handling, analyzing, and modeling the vast sources of data
remote-sensing and geophysical-survey applications conservation sciences, involving the study of decay processes and the development of new methods of conservation

List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

More from the Chronicle of Zuqnin << Roger Pearse (Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, and more)

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:16:13 +0000

I continue translating part IV of ps.Dionysius of Tell-Mahre. Dates are in AG, but Chabot has added AD to them.

In the year 1008 (696-697), died Constantine, Emperor of the Romans; he was succeeded by Justinian who reigned ten years.

In the year 1017 (705-706), a synod met in the monastery of Mar Silas. The principal members of this synod are known: the Patriarch Julian, Thomas, bishop of Amida, and James [bishop] of Edessa, the Interpreter of books. This holy Mar James, Bishop of Edessa, is famous.

In the year 1018 (706-707), died Justinian, Emperor of the Romans; he was succeeded by Leontius, who reigned three years.

In the year 1019 (707-708), holy Mar Julian, Patriarch of Antioch, died; Mar Elias succeeded him.

[12] In the year 1020 (from 708 to 709), there took place a new census that was added to the first, which greatly increased the evil.

In the year 1021 (709-710), died holy Mar James, Bishop of Edessa, who was succeeded by Mar Habib.

At that time flourished holy Mar Thomas the Stylite, of Tela.

In the year 1022 (710-711), died Leontius, Emperor of the Romans, in place of whom reigned for seven years, Tiberius Apsimar.

In the year 1023 (711-712), Walid died, King of the Arabs; he was succeeded by Suleiman who reigned two and a half years.

In the year 1024 (712-713), died Mar Thomas Saint, Bishop of Amida; Mar Theodotus succeeded him.

After Apsimar, emperor of the Romans, Justinian reigned six years; after him Philip reigned three years; then Anastasius two years, finally Theodosius-Constantine one year. The latter was occupying the throne when Maslamah invaded the territory of the Romans. In the years of the reigns of the Roman emperors added together make twelve years; this calculation is made almost to the year, more or less. The Arabs only count the moons and never the months like the Syrians; most writers even do not make a complete chronology, but counting only the years of the reign, they omit the time of discord between the two kingdoms. As for me, I did the same in this chapter, so that the reader is not disturbed.

[13] In the year 1028 (716-717), Maslamah entered the Roman Empire. The countless troops of the Arabs gathered and began to invade the territory of the Romans. All the countries of Asia and Cappadocia fled before them, as well as the entire coastal region.

They reached mount Maurus and the Lebanon, as far as Melitene, and on the river Arsanias, and as far as Armenia. This whole area was remarkable for the number of its inhabitants and its abundant vineyards, its grain, and its magnificent trees of all kinds. Since then it is devastated, and these regions are no longer inhabited. When the emperor saw the multitudes that came against him and he learned that his general, Leo, had made a pact with them, his heart grew weak and his hands trembled. He abdicated the throne, laid down the crown and had his head shaved. Indeed, it is the custom, if a Roman emperor abdicates, that he has his head shaved and then lives in his house without going out. So he did this. Leo sent to him: “Take courage and do not fear,” but he was not convinced, and he persisted in abdicating the empire.

Now this Leo was a man of courage, strong and aggressive. He was Syrian by race and originally from these confines. Because of his valour, he had been made general. By his skillfulness, he prevented the earth drinking the blood of men. He made a pact with Maslamah, promising to bring him into Constantinople without a fight. The latter, confident in the promise of Leo, no longer made war, made no prisoners, went to Constantinople and vigorously laid siege to this city. Leo came into [14] the city, and seeing that the Romans were desperate and that the emperor had abdicated, he stirred up their courage. “Fear not,” he said to them. They saw his bravery, and fearing that he would reproach them for what they had done to the previous emperor, made him emperor.

In assuming the imperial crown, he also gave strength and courage. He consolidated the city wall. He sent an army to cut the roads that would let through an army from Syria; he also destroyed the pontoon bridge and cut it.

The Arabs and their whole army were thus shut up as prisoners. Maslamah ordered vines planted, but a great and violent famine broke out among them, so much so that bread was absent from the camp and they ate their pack animals and horses. When Maslamah asked Leo, “Where is the oath that you made to bring me into Constantinople without fighting?” the latter replied calmly: “Wait a few days until the nobles of the Empire have submitted to me.” They remained without fighting in their respective positions, one inside, the other outside, for about three years. The famine grew so much among Arabs that they ate their shoes and the corpses of dead, and they attacked each other, so that nobody dared to go alone.

While Maslamah was constantly putting pressure on Leo: “Keep your promise, or I will attack,” the news came that the king of the Arabs, Suliman, was dead and Omar [II] had succeeded him. However, Omar sent him a letter: “Get out of there, lest you perish with hunger, you and all that are with you,” Maslamah, after having received [15] this letter, asked Leo to allow him to enter the city to visit him. He entered with thirty horsemen, went around for three days and admired the royal works. The Arabs retired from there and returned without having achieved anything. They arrived at a certain town called Tounou [=Tyana]; the prefect of the city seeing them starving, emaciated, weak, conceived a contempt for them and sent a message to Leo, “Send me an army and I will attack them by surprise.” But this design did not escape them. When they learned that an army was behind them, a leader of the Arab troops, one of the principal men among them, called `Abbas said to Maslamah: “Give me an army, to go to face them before they arrive, lest they surround us and make us disappear from the earth, and that our end is worse than anything that happened to us in this way.” – He took a large army and went to meet them. The latter were marching in separate groups, were not yet prepared to fight and knew nothing of this army of Arabs coming to meet them. `Abbas went down before them into a large meadow, in which they themselves had intended to camp that day. He put the whole army in ambush, in ditches and patches of reeds that were there.

The Romans came in their turn, and went down into the meadow, not knowing anything and not perceiving even what had been done by Arabs. They set up their camp and everyone sent his horse to pasture, as is customary in the army. Then the Arabs sortied out of their ambush and from the valleys in which they were standing all around the meadow. At the signal agreed upon between them, they rushed upon the Romans they were surrounding them and put them all to the sword. Not one of them escaped. However the Romans were about sixty thousand. After having stripped the dead, the Arabs returned to their companions.

[16] Another Roman army who was coming from behind, having learned what had happened to the first, was seized with terror and turned back. The Arabs, after they had plundered and foraged everything that was within their reach, they left this country and came to Syria.

In the year 1032 (720-721), which was the first year of `Omar, King of the Arabs, and the fourth of Leo, emperor of the Romans, Maslamah left the territory of the latter, after having plundered and devastated the entire region, which he changed into a barren desert.

I omit many things that happened in this campaign to avoid prolonging this story.

At this time flourished the patriarch Elias, Mar Habib, [Bishop] of Edessa, Simeon of Harran and Theodotus of Amida.

Open Access Australasian Society for Classical Studies Proceedings << Charles Ellwood Jones (AWOL: The Ancient World Online)

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Ellwood Jones) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:16:50 +0000

ASCS 31 [2010] Proceedings
Refereed papers from the 31st conference of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies
edited by Neil O'Sullivan

These papers were originally presented at the 31st conference of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies, convened by my colleague, Dr Lara O'Sullivan, and held in Perth at the University of Western Australia, 2-5 February 2010. ASCS is the peak body in Australasia for the professional study of the classical world, and its conference is the largest annual meeting in the region for the dissemination of new research in this very international field. The Discipline Group of Classics and Ancient History at UWA wishes to acknowledge the generous contribution of the UWA Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alan Robson, in support of this event...

Contents
M. Beasley A philosophical Gigantomachy in the Metamorphoses abstract full text
F. Billot Hannibal, elephants and turrets abstract full text
D. Blyth Philosophy in the late Latin West abstract full text
D. Burton The role of Zeus Meilichios in Argos abstract full text
M.W. Champion Creation from Gaza abstract full text
J. Davidson Prometheus Bound in Christchurch 2009 abstract full text
S. Ford Spatial context of Odyssey 5.452 to 6.317 abstract full text
S. Gador-Whyte Emotional preaching: ekphrasis in the Kontakia of Romanos abstract full text
P. Garrett Character inheritance in Suetonius' Caligula and Nero abstract full text
M. Gillett The 'Etruscan League' reconsidered abstract full text
K.M. Heineman The chasm at Delphi: a modern perspective abstract full text
D. James Art of gold: precious metals and Chariton's Callirhoe abstract full text
P. Jarvis The politics of fraud: a Seruilius Casca in Livy abstract full text
P. Johnson Fabius, Marcellus and Otacilius - the alliance that never was abstract full text
D. Keenan-Jones The Aqua Augusta and control of water resources in the Bay of Naples abstract full text
B. Leadbetter Galerius, Gamzigrad and the politics of abdication abstract full text
J. Maitland Homer and the Aiakid cousins: kinship celebrated or overlooked in the Iliad abstract full text
B. Marshall 'With friends like this, who needs enemies?' Pompeius' abandonment of his friends and supporters abstract full text
S. Midford From Achilles to Anzac: Heroism in the Dardanelles from antiquity to the Great War abstract full text
G. Miles 'I, Porphyry': narrator and reader in the Vita Plotini abstract full text
P. O'Sullivan Use your illusion: 'Critias' on religion reconsidered abstract full text
K.J. O'Toole The Demosthenic basileus: a phantom in the Ath. Pol.? abstract full text
D.J. Phillips Thucydides 1.99: tribute and revolts in the Athenian empire abstract full text
D. Pritchard War, democracy and culture in classical Athens abstract full text
R. Sing Jury pay and Aristophanes abstract full text
H. Tarrant The Theaetetus as a narrative dialogue? abstract full text
W.J. Tatum Tyche in Plutarch's Aemilius Paulus - Timoleon abstract full text
J. Wallis (Un)Elegiac characterisation in Propertius 3.12 abstract full text
K. Welch Pietas, Pompeiani and Cicero's Thirteenth Philippic abstract full text

Some Thought on Clay Shirk's Cognitive Surplus << Bill Caraher (The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World)

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:10:35 +0000

I downloaded onto my iPad - via the Kindle application - a copy of Clay Shirky's Congnitive Surplus (New York 2010). This book has receive a good bit of attention on the interwebs, in large part because Shirky is unapologetic about the potential of the internet and particularly the potential of the internet for good. In an era where one's status as a pundit almost depends upon a certain cynical view of the world, this book is refreshing and positive.

In short, Shirky argues that the internet provides an outlet for surplus energy that the prosperity of the second half of the 20th century has made available to us. The rise in prosperity has allowed residents of the West, in particular, to enjoy increasing amounts of free-time and leisure. Shirky contends that the number one use of this leisure time over the last 60 years has been watching television. Watching television is solitary, somewhat anti-social, and, most importantly, passive.

The rise of the internet has begun to slowly encroach on the dominance of television. Unlike TV the internet is social, provides a platform for both passive consumption and active production of media, and encourages the formation of communities with shared interests. The dynamic character of the web as a social platform functions to channel energies previously locked away in in the passive relationship between the individual and the television. The web has already begun to channel the "cognitive surplus" unleashed by the West's recent prosperity, but hitherto squandered through passive and more or less solitary leisure-time activities. Shirky's best example of this is Wikipedia which appeared out of the many moments of leisure enjoyed by tens of thousands of individual contributors. The result is a testimony to the aggregate knowledge of global community of individuals which prior to the internet would have found a singular, intellectually substantial expression.

While this is cool thesis, it also caused me to think about a few things:

1. I am not convinced that the "cognitive" activity that Shirky associates with the internet comes directly from surplus time spent in front of the television. It's a great idea, but a relatively unsophisticated argument. First, people always used some of their free time in productive, social ways. Whether it is membership in a community organization, work with a church or other religious group, or serving as an elected official or a volunteer, the cognitive surplus created by economic prosperity poured innumerable areas of social and community life. As the internet allows for communities to extend beyond the institutional and social confines of traditional, place-based communities, surely some of Shirky's apparent "cognitive surplus" comes at the expense of these other, more traditional forms of community and social organization. At the same time, there are those who suggest that the rather diffuse creativity on display on the internet comes at the expense of more economically productive pursuits. The individuals who produce LOLCats for example might otherwise be watching television, but also might be reading a book, working, learning or refining a skill. I am all for these profoundly democratic expressions of creativity, but I'd be reluctant to argue that television and the internet form a kind of zero-sum dyad. The arguments for the evils of the internet, in fact, tend not to be arguments for the watching of television, but rather arguments that the internet undermines more rigorous, local, focused, and ultimately socially responsible uses of time and talent. Shirky does little to undermine these critiques.

2. The notion of channeling surplus is always appealing, but what really matters is how that surplus (cognitive or otherwise) is channelled. The downside of the unfettered and limitless nature of the internet is that it can minimize the impact of a small contribution while still giving the individual the sense of contributing to something larger. (And I say this a blogger who regularly devotes 4 or 5 hours a week launching my two-cents into the void, and with the understanding that these 4 or 5 hours could be spent polishing up a lecture, reading another, important, argument, reading a graduate student's paper just that much more carefully, or any number of professionally and socially responsible (impactful) activities). The radically democratized space of the internet is the most efficient venue for all forms of surplus. The "eat local" movement provides a nice model here. Just eating locally produced foods is not a sure-fire solution to ecological, economic, and ethical problems facing large scale food production in a globalized economy. In the same way, the shear scale of the internet presents significant problems for the efficient use of specialized surplus.

3. Finally, this is the first book that I've read cover-to-cover (so to speak) on my iPad. The most interesting aspect of this experience (aside from the fact that the iPad is a very nice tool for reading a book) is that I could where other people highlighted passages in Shirky's book. Slight, dashed underlines showed me commonly annotated passages and clicking on the passages indicated how many people underlined that particular text. Here is a great example of Shirky's of how the internet takes the solitary act of reading and annotating a text and turns it into a global activity with numerous participants creating a running commentary. While at present (as far as I can tell) the Kindle application only allows readers to share underlining, it would be remarkable in the future for readers to share margin notes, comments, and even links to other passages in other books. The aggregate of these activities would instantly turn any book into a critical edition.

Past lives caught in the dust of trees << Alun Salt (Archaeoastronomy)

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:36:54 +0000

I’m currently working at the Annals of Botany to help out with their social media side. There’s a bit more to it than subtly dropping links to their site, like this one. At the moment I’m struggling with the Facebook integration, but there’s a fun side too. I wouldn’t have browsed AoB if I’d not been hired, and that means I would have missed out on papers like Phytoliths in woody plants from the Miombo woodlands of Mozambique by Julio Mercader and his team at Calgary. I’ll admit the article title doesn’t say much to the layman, but it’s actually something deeply cool that I didn’t find out about till my MPhil.

If megaliths are big stones and microliths are small stones like arrowheads, then phytoliths are clearly phyto-stones. Phyto- in this case meaning plant.

Phytoliths are microscopic stones formed in some plants. When a plant’s roots draw up water they also draw up the minerals dissolved within it. In the case of the silica this gets pulled out of the water and deposited either in the cells or between the cells. The exact shape of the phytoliths varies on the part of the plant the silica is deposited in, the availability of silica and, most excitingly for archaeologists, the species of the plant.

Phytoliths are useful because normally biological material doesn’t hang around long in the soil. Once something is dead it’s lunch for something else. Phytoliths are biological material but not organic, so they don’t break down in the same way. Mercader et al. are clear that’s is not an unambiguous relaltionship. Time still has an effect, but it’s easier to find phytoliths than it is to find organic remains for plants. Still as useful as they are, phytoliths alone are not enough. A handful of phytoliths under a microscope would just look like a nobbly (or smoothish) thing. If you haven’t seen what a baobab phytolith looks like, you’re not likely to guess from simply looking at the phytolith and this is where Mercader et al step in.

Elephants in Miombo woodland. Photo by Jussi Mononen.

If you’re interested in studying the palaeoecology of Africa in the past you’ve been relatively limited to north of the equator. Mercader spotted that the biggest phytochorion (plant ecosystem) south of the Sahara is the Miombo woodlands. It’s huge. It runs from Angola and Namibia in the west to Mozambique in the east and from the Tanzanian shores of Lake Victoria in the north to Botswana and South Africa in the south. The dominant tree is Miombo, hence the name, which refers to a number of trees of the same genus, but with different species. Obviously it’s a crucial zone for understanding the ecology of sub-Saharan Africa, but no-one has described the phytoliths of the region.

Miombos Botanical Transect after Mercader et al.

The area studied was a transect through the forest between the Lake Niassa shore at Metangula and the highlands at Njawala, a distance of 50km and a rise from 465m above sea-level to 1841 above sea-level. They also used indigenous collectors to sample the flora in a 5km radius around Metangula and Njawala. They estimate they got over 90% of the species used by the native peoples. Given that a lot of usage is likely to be dominated by relatively few species, that’s a lot of plant material. There’s then a LOT of listing and description of phytoliths.

The common feature that amazes me is how small many of these phytoliths are. Some are just 20-40 μm long. A micrometre (μm) is one thousandth of a millimetre. Despite this Mercader et al, point to the phytoliths at the other end of the scale, some are around 200μm in length and over half are over 50μm. This means if you use standard techniques to sieve for phytoliths using a 50.238 to 63.246μm cut-off, you’ll miss all these larger phytoliths. That’s going to matter if what you want to find evidence of a ‘Zambezian’ forest at an archaeological site.

It’s the sort of science that is easy to overlook. The authors don’t conclude that whole textbooks need to be re-written or that our understanding of Africa’s past has to be rebuilt from scratch. It’s also the kind of science that’s easy to whine about. Here they are, picking flowers to examine tiny stones in the stems rather than just appreciating the beauty.

But it’s also the kind of science that increases the amount of beauty and mystery in the world.

Until I took my MPhil, I was completely ignorant of phytoliths. I could view the same plants an archaeobotanist, but saw a lot less. Before I read this paper I didn’t know that that the Miobos woodlands were unexamined. Knowing that these things are out there opens up new possibilities for what can be done. At Çatalhöyük they’re examining phytoliths left behind in what are almost shadows of woven baskets to flesh out details of human life in the past. In the case of this paper, it provides a benchmark for measuring future studying against. It’s detailed, meticulous and sometimes opaque to the non-specialist, but it’s also a description with lasting value. Currently publications are often judged on citations garnered over a few years. That misses the value of this paper as it will be important for decades. Indeed, if this ecosystem suddenly becomes a target for economic development it could even be important for centuries as a snapshot of the current state of the Miombos woodlands.

If you want to see the phytoliths they found, you can download the paper for free.

Mercader, J., Bennett, T., Esselmont, C., Simpson, S., & Walde, D. (2009). Phytoliths in woody plants from the Miombo woodlands of Mozambique Annals of Botany, 104 (1), 91-113 DOI: 10.1093/aob/mcp097

Photo credit: Elephants in Miombo woodland. Photo by Jussi Mononen.

Always verify your references << Roger Pearse (Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, and more)

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:28:45 +0000

To Norwich this morning, mainly to escape my cleaning lady. But I went into the cathedral library, where I knew that they had a 1696 edition of the works of Julian the Apostate. This includes the text of Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Iulianum.

According to the Sources Chretiennes edition of books 1 and 2 (only), this edition was the source for Migne’s Patrologia Graeca text. But you can never tell, unless you look.

In I went, accordingly, and asked to see the book. The library was merged with a modern theology library some years ago, and closed to visitors. The new librarian has made it into a rare books room. This is rather a pity. Sitting among the volumes in a library founded some centuries ago was a treat by itself.

Anyway out came the book, a massive folio volume in white leather. As soon as I tried to use it, it became clear that no-one had opened it in years, if not decades or longer. The spine was tight and stiff. Indeed it looked like an original 17th century binding to me. It was almost impossible to open more than about 30 degrees.

But the effort was worthwhile, because it revealed that this cannot be the source for the PG text. The PG text prints the full text of books 1-10, which survive complete. But there were certainly books 11-20 in antiquity, because people like John Damascene quote them! In the PG, therefore, there is a meagre collection of fragments following book 10. I know that there are Syriac fragments, and I would be surprised if there are not Arabic fragments too, and indeed Armenian ones. For Julian’s book attacked the bible; Cyril’s reply necessarily defends it; and such comments must be of interest to catenists. Cyril was such an important figure in monophysite Christianity, that we would expect his work to travel into those languages.

None of this extra material is present in the 1696. Therefore Migne, for these items at least, used some other source.

It all goes to show that you cannot rely on what you read in even the best editions. You must check.

New Testament Textual Criticism Collection << Logos Bible Software Blog

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:00:01 +0000

Anyone who has studied some New Testament Greek, or who has looked a commentary like the Word Biblical Commentary has heard about "textual criticism". But the field is hopelessly technical, with all of its abbreviations and assumed knowledge.

More important than being able to read a textual apparatus (such as that of the NA27 or of Tischendorf) is gaining an understanding of the general nature of the problem that textual critics, through these apparatuses, are trying to describe. And that's what the New Testament Textual Criticism Collection (6 vols) is all about: giving some background to understand the problem.

There are some books geared towards introduction to manuscripts and to textual criticism in general; there are other books that are collections of essays that describe the practice of textual criticism applied to problems found in the New Testament. And there's even an excellent book on the Synoptic problem. Here's the list:

Encountering New Testament Manuscripts by Jack Finegan.
Manuscripts and the Text of the New Testament by Keith Elliot and Ian Moir
New Testament Textual Criticism: A Concise Guide by David Alan Black
Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism Eldon J. Epp and Gordon D. Fee, editors
The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research Bart D. Ehrman and Michael W. Holmes, editors
The Synoptic Problem: A Way through the Maze by Mark Goodacre

Encountering New Testament Manuscripts and Manuscripts and the Text of the New Testament are good introductions to the sorts of documents and evidence we have for the text of the New Testament. David Alan Black's New Testament Textual Criticism: A Concise Guide gives a good starting point in three parts (Purpose, Method and Examples).

Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism and The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research are both sets of essays dealing with the background and application of textual criticism. The essays in these books are routinely cited and are well regarded. They are important works in the field. I've read them, and they are excellent.

The seeming outlier is Mark Goodacre's The Synoptic Problem: A Way through the Maze, but it is one of the gems in this collection (it is also available individually). Goodacre identifies what is known in Biblical Studies as "the synoptic problem" and, unlike many books that only describe a problem, Goodacre posits a way out of it. And (here's the spoiler if you haven't read it) Goodacre's solution does not involve "Q". I've read this book as well (on my iPod!) and it is well written, convincing, and enjoyable to read. You will learn simply by reading this book. It's that good.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

On-demand Virtual Research Environments: a case study from the Humanities (Mike Priddy) << Digital Classicist Seminars

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:32:55 +0000

Virtual Research Environments are often highly specialised concentrating efforts around a single collection. The gMan project aims to demonstrate cross-collection discovery, annotation, reporting and management in an on-demand VRE (using gCube) with three heterogeneous classical collections: The Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis (HGV), Projet Volterra and The Inscriptions of Aphrodisias (IAph).

One more time copyright << Digging Digitally

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:16:03 +0000

In light of the recent triennial review of copyright practice in the US by the US Copyright Office (a division of the Library of Congress) that legalized “jail-breaking” iPhones, I thought it would be a good idea to point out some good, freely-available materials on copyright relevant to archaeology and the humanities in general:

article about “Copyright Urban Legends” from the June 2010 issue of Research Library Issues;
implications of the US Copyright Office exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for educators from Planned Obsolescence;
the Privilege and Property. Essays on the History of Copyright edited book;
The Economics of Copyright report, a last hurrah of a now-suddenly-disbanded Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy (“Providing [UK] government with independent, strategic, evidence-based advice on intellectual property policy”… no longer needed by the new Tory-Lib government perhaps?)

Mobile learning/research user needs << Heritage Bytes

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:16:12 +0000

Most readers of this blog are involved in some form or another in the design, editing or maintenance of web sites/pages/applications. We usually consider first of all regular users sitting behind a desktop or laptop. However, mobile devices are growing ever more capable of meaningful web surfing. The iPad is just the latest example. Mobile versions of websites as well as web applications are gathering momentum. So what are the possibilities and pitfalls coming our way? In May of next year, one of the attempts to address these issues, the Third International m-Libraries Conference, will take place in Brisbane (Australia). The first-conference proceedings (M-libraries. Libraries on the Move to Provide Virtual Access) are now available for free download.

The Chronicle of Zuqnin, part IV — another chunk << Roger Pearse (Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, and more)

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:44:59 +0000

I translated here the start of part IV of the Chronicle of ps.Dionysius of Tell-Mahre, also known as the Chronicle of Zuqnin. I thought I would do a little more. Chabot prints a footnote on most lines, but I have omitted these. He does say that the poll-tax imposed by the Moslems was actually brought in by `Umar, not by `Abd al-Malik, and references Bar Hebraeus (Chron. Syr. p. 103), Cedrenus and Theophanes for this.

Here is the next chunk of the Chronicle of Zuqnin. As before, dates are in Anno Graecorum, the Seleucid Era, but Chabot has added dates AD after them.

In the year 943 (631-632), the king of the Arabs, Abubekr, died and was succeeded by Umar who reigned twelve years.

[7] In the year 944 (632-633), the Roman emperor, Heraclius, went to Edessa. A battle took place at Gabita and the Persians withdrew in disorder from Mesopotamia.

In the year 948 (636-637), the Arabs invaded Mesopotamia and, after they had cut the Romans to pieces, their leader Yâdh reached Edessa.

In the year 952 (640-641), the Arabs besieged Dara and attacked the city. There were many dead on both sides, but especially the Arabs. Finally, a treaty was concluded, the city opened its doors and thereafter nobody else was killed.

That same year, they besieged Adabin, where a great multitude was put to death : up to twelve thousand Armenians [perished].

In the year 953 (641-642), the Arabs took possession of Caesarea in Palestine.

In the year 955 (643-644), the patrician Valentinus, general of the Romans, came to fight the Arabs. He was seized with fear in their presence and fled, leaving all the riches he had with him, which the Arabs seized.

That same year, Procopius and Theodore made an impetuous excursion to Batna-Sarug. They plundered and devastated the city and, having taken possession of everything they wanted, they returned to their country.

The Patriarch Athanasius was succeeded by John, his disciple.

At that time holy John, patriarch of Antioch; John, Bishop of the Arabs; Simeon [bishop] of Edessa, Matthew, Bishop of Aleppo, from the holy monastery of Zuqnin, and Mar Thomas, bishop of Amida, from the same monastery, became renowned.

[8] In the year 956 (643-644), `Umar, King of the Arabs, died. His successor was `Uthman who reigned twelve years.

In the year 960 (648-649), Mo `awia invaded Cyprus, and the same year, Aradus was taken.

In the year 961 (649-650), Mar John, the patriarch of Antioch, died. He was buried in Amida in the church of Saint-Mar-Zo`ara.

The same year, holy Mar John, bishop of the Arabs died, who was buried at Amida in the church of St. John the Baptist.

That same year, also at Amida died holy Mar Simeon, Bishop of Edessa, who was also buried in the church of Mar-Zo `ara.

In the year 962 (650-651), Mar Theodore became patriarch of Antioch. Edessa had as bishop [Cyriacus].

In the year 963 (651-652), the Arabs and the Romans fought a battle at Tripoli.

In the year 964 (652-653), Habib invaded Mesopotamia, and Procopius came to make peace with the Arabs.

In the year 965 (653-654), the Roman emperor, Heraclius, died after a reign of thirty-one years; and he was succeeded by Constantine the Younger, who reigned one year.

In the year 966 (654-655), this Constantine died and was replaced by another Constantine who reigned twenty-seven.

In the year 967 (655-656), `Uthman, King of the Arabs, died.

Discord arose between them, the region was disturbed, and the Arab people full of confusion. Misery multiplied on the earth, there was plenty of bloodshed among them and by them, because they did not want to submit to a single prince, but each one seized power, all wishing to reign. A general named Mo`awia, who was in the western region, was ambitious of power. The West loved him, picked him [9] and submitted to him, but the eastern region of Mesopotamia rejected him and elected another general called `Abbas, whom they established as king. Thus struggles and bloodshed began among them. They each watered the land with their blood. They fought many battles in all places, and a period of about five years passed in the midst of these discords and these struggles.

In the year 968 (656-657), a great battle was fought at Sofa between `Abbas and Mo`awia, and blood flowed freely on both sides.

In the year 973 (661-665), `Abbas was treacherously slain by his own nobles, on a Friday, while he was kneeling in prayer. Thereafter Mo`awia held sole power and reigned twenty-one years, including the five years that the discord and struggle between him and `Abbas lasted.

In the year 976 (664-665), died holy Mar Theodore, Patriarch of Antioch. He was succeeded by holy Mar Severus Bar-Mashka.

[At Edessa, Bishop Mar Jacob succeeded Cyriacus.]

At that time shone the Persian Aaron, nicknamed the Persian interpreter.

In the year 988 (676-677), Mo`awia, king of the Arabs, died and was succeeded by Yazid who reigned three and a half years.

[10] In the year 990 (678-679), on the third Sunday in the month of Nisan (April) there was a great and violent earthquake that toppled Batna-Saroug, and also the ancient church of Edessa, in which a large crowd perished.

In the year 992 (680-681), Yazid, King of the Arabs, died and Merwan reigned in his place for one year.

In the same year Constantine, Emperor of the Romans, died, to whom succeeded another Constantine for sixteen years.

In the year 993 (682-683), died Merwan, King of the Arabs. He was succeeded by `Abd al-Malik, who reigned twenty-one years. In this reign occurred a dissension which lasted nine years during which the Arabs, refusing to obey a single ruler, never ceased to make war and spread misery.

In the year 994 (682 683), holy Mar Severus Bar-Mashka died and the Patriarchate remained vacant for five years because of the disagreements of the bishops.

In the year 999 (687-688), holy Athanasius was elected patriarch.

In the year 1002 (690-691), peace reigned, and, the entire region being willing to recognize `Abd al-Malik as sovereign, he ascended the throne.

In the year 1003 (691-692), `Abd al-Malik invented the Ta`dil, that is to say, he impose dit on the Syrians. He issued a stern edict that everyone should go to his own country to his home village, to register his name, his father, his vineyards, olive trees, his property, his children and all that possessed. Such was the origin of the poll-tax; such was the origin [11] of all the ills common to the Christians. Hitherto, indeed, the kings took tribute from the land, but not from men. Since then the children of Hagar have begun to impose the Egyptian bondage on the sons of Aram. But, woe to us! because we have sinned, slaves rule over us. — This was the first census that the Arabs made.

In the year 1014 (702-703), died `Abd el-Malik, King of the Arabs, after a reign of twenty-one years, including nine years of discord. Walid reigned in his place for nine years.

In the year 1015 (703-704), died holy Athanasius, patriarch of Antioch, who was succeeded by holy Mar Julian.

In the year 1016 (704-705), there was a great and violent plague on the earth, so that men were unable to bury all the dead. It occurred mainly in the region of Sarug. In this scourge seventy-two men died in the monastery of Mar Silas alone.

Journal of Hellenic Studies Online (but not open access) << Charles Ellwood Jones (AWOL: The Ancient World Online)

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Ellwood Jones) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:27:53 +0000

Recent issues of The Journal of Hellenic Studies are now online Art Cambridge University Press. This seems to be a recent development, at least it is not yet mentioned on the website of The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies.

The Journal of Hellenic Studies (JHS)
EISSN: 2041-4099

The Journal of Hellenic Studies (JHS) is recognised internationally as one of the foremost periodicals in the field of classical scholarship. It contains articles on a wide variety of Hellenic topics including Greek language, literature, history and art and archaeology in the Ancient, Byzantine and Modern periods, as well as reviews of recent books of importance to Greek studies.

A subscription to JHS includes the annual volume of Archaeological Reports, which provide fully illustrated accounts of archaeological work in Greece and other parts of the world that are sites of Greek culture.
Published Annually

Published for the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies

2009 Volume 129 Nov 2009
2008 (Volume 128) Nov 2008
2007 (Volume 127) Nov 2007

Back issues of the Journal of Hellenic Studies (from 1880 to 2005) and Archaeological Reports (from 1953 to 2005) are at JSTOR.

The Society also provides some supplementary materials, such as:

Contents of JHS 120 (2000); Contents of JHS 121 (2001); Contents of JHS 122 (2002); Contents of JHS 123 (2003); Contents of JHS 124 (2004); Contents of JHS 125 (2005) Contents of JHS 126 (2006); Contents of JHS 127 (2007); Contents of JHS 128 (2008); Contents of JHS 129 (2009).

A guide to site indices and Regional reports from Archaeological Reports can be downloaded here.

And see also Archaeology in Greece Online / Chronique des fouilles en ligne

The Ancient World in JSTOR

List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

Congratulations to Dr Chris Jordan << ITSEE News

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:13:35 +0000

Congratulations to Dr Chris Jordan, who has been awarded the degree of PhD for his thesis "The Textual Tradition of John in Greek Gospel Lectionaries from the Byzantine period (8th - 11th century)"

where's my dinosaur party? << Melissa Terras' Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:07:42 +0000

From a post on lifehacker, about
How to Deal with Distractions in a Web Worker's World,comes this fantastic cartoon (which came my way via @expertsleepers).

I need to give this to all my MA students who are wading through writing their dissertations right now.

And have it printed out big on my office wall.

In the online money << Melissa Terras' Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:47:25 +0000

My 6 monthly royalty statement came in from OUP for Image to Interpretation today. A cheque enclosed! for the princely sum of £10.23!

... but what is interesting about this is that most of the revenue was my (tiny) cut of the proceeds made from selling access to digital versions of the book. Ten times more ebooks sold than hardbacks in the same period. Admittedly, this is not a sample that you can statistically extrapolate findings about the whole of the book industry from - but its just worth saying that I'm glad I ticked the "can we make this book available in digital form?" box when signing all the paperwork a couple of years ago.

Even More Experiments in Intensive Pedestrian Survey << Bill Caraher (The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World)

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:39:33 +0000

Even more guest-posting brilliance from our esteemed guest blogger, David Pettegrew, the co-director the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project and the 2010 Cyprus Research Fund speaker. Be sure to check out his posts on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and yesterday.

Over the last few days (here and here), we have been discussing the results of an experiment we carried out 2010 in order to assess the relationship between the number of artifacts we see in pedestrian survey and the number actually on the ground. You can read about the first two phases of these experiments here and here.

Today we consider the kinds of artifacts that we observed during total collection and the sorts of material that made up the surface matrix. When we set up the experiment, we consciously decided not to collect artifacts via the chronotype sample as we normally do in our pedestrian resurvey. What crueler thing could one do to the project ceramicist than overwhelm him with 1,000+ surface artifacts? (After all, the logic of sampling is to manage human resources more effectively.) Because we didn’t identify the artifacts from the total collection grid according to chronotype as we did for the survey units, we limited the kinds of comparisons we can make between the pedestrian survey sample and the total collection.

Even still, there were still some things we could do to give us a sense of the kinds of material on the ground, especially their fabric and functional attributes. How much of the surface assemblage of a high-density unit at Koutsopetria consists of cooking ware, coarse wares, coarse wares with surface treatment like combing, and table wares (slipped or unslipped)?

To address this question in part, we sorted all pottery from each total collection unit into three basic fabric classes: semi-fine and fine ware (whether decorated or not), cooking ware, and medium-coarse and coarse wares (including amphora sherds). The results below show the count of each of the categories in each of the total collection grid squares and give in parentheses the percentage of that fabric group in terms of the total number of potsherds in the unit.

Fine ware constitutes 7.6% to 15.4% of the number of potsherds in each subunit; cooking ware only 1.7% to 5.4% of the total number of potsherds; and coarse wares consistently 80.2-87.2% of the overall assemblage. Unsurprisingly, for a predominantly Late Roman assemblage, the great majority of the sherds are coarse, a small percentage are fine, and tiny percentage are cooking. The disparity between coarse wares, on the one hand, and fine and cooking wares on the other would have been even greater had we compared weight instead of count, since most fine and cooking ware sherds are thin-walled and small.

We also counted the “parts” of the vessel according to the standard ceramicist categories of rims, bases, handles, shoulders / necks, and body sherds. Rims represented 2.9-7% of the total sherd count, bases less than 2.2%, handles from 2.2 to 5.3%, neck and shoulders typically less than a percent. Body sherds typically represent over 90% of the surface assemblage.

Finally, we tabulated the data in a slightly different way, breaking down the surface assemblage for each subunit by both fabric group and part. The results shown in the table below suggest that this Late Roman assemblage includes for fine wares mainly body sherds (73.8% of fine wares) and rims (19.5%), for cooking ware mainly body sherds (84.5% of cooking wares) and handles (6.9%), and for coarse ware mainly body sherds (92.9% of coarse wares).

Coarse ware body sherds make up 79.5% (n=1474) of the total number of sherds (n=1,854) counted for all 4 subunits. By contrast, fine ware rims make up 2.2% of the total pottery assemblage and cooking ware rims form only .11% of the total pottery assemblage!!! The 71 fragments of slipped and glazed fine ware (i.e., not including fine ware lacking clear glazing or slip) represent only 3.8% of the total number of potsherds counted (n=1854). These few black glazed Classical-Hellenistic sherds and red slipped Roman-Late Roman sherds are the typical objects used to provide most of the chronological information for dating archaeological sites but they represent less than 4% of our surface assemblage of this unit at Koutsopetria.

Finally, it is worth asking what percentage of coarse body sherds have surface treatments and decorations like grooving, combing, and ridging — the kinds of surface treatments that usually lead to them being collected in most regional surveys. To address this question, we counted the coarse sherds for two of the subunits (G1 & G15) with spiral grooving, combing, or wheel ridging. The 66 sherds represent 12.5% of the 526 coarse body sherds from those subunits and 9.8% of 672 total sherds from those units. These “diagnostic body sherds” then are more visible than glazed and slipped fine ware but still quite unrepresentative of the surface pottery as a whole.

I suppose our next steps with the results of these experiments are to compare them with 1) the chronotype sample from the broader survey, and 2) the data from subsurface excavated deposits. I think the interesting results of the experiment certainly justified the time it took to totally collect the subunits and will allow us to understand how close our chronotype sample is to the population of ceramic artifacts on the ground.

Bible Book Reading Lists: Discover Each Book in a New Light << Logos Bible Software Blog

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 08:00:01 +0000

Today's guest blogger is Annie O'Connor, from the Logos Bible Software Design and Editorial team.

Have you ever heard a pastor mention that reading the letters in the New Testament is somewhat like listening to half of a phone conversation? You don’t know what the person on the other end is saying, you only know how the person on your end responded. Of course, we can’t reconstruct the exact details surrounding each letter in the New Testament, but we aren’t completely in the dark either. Many resources (like the ones in your Logos library!) discuss this information and provide a solid context to help us understand what was happening on the other end of the conversation.

Take for example the book of 1 Peter. What is the major theme of this letter? Here’s an excerpt from one resource:

“Peter elaborated upon the subject of suffering throughout the entire epistle. He offered words of hope to his readers as they faced suffering (1:4–5; 5:4). He pictured suffering as purposeful (3:14; 4:14)” (Holman Bible Handbook).

The theme of suffering is significant when you consider the apostle Peter as author of the letter. His acceptance of unjust suffering is remarkable given his previous abhorrence of it. In the gospels, Peter adamantly rejects the notion that Christ should suffer (Mark 8:31-33), and even denies his personal affiliation with Jesus in order to avoid suffering himself (Mark 14:66-72). What a difference, then, that Peter should say “For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly” (1 Peter 2:19, ESV).

Fortunately, each of our base packages offers an array of resources that provide such information on each book of the Bible. The information is in your library, but it isn’t completely organized the way our other Guides are. In order to find this information, you need to open each commentary, Bible dictionary, or handbook individually and navigate to the desired information. We thought, surely, there must be a better way. We decided to take the first step.

In Logos 4.0 we introduced a new tool called Reading Lists (Tools>Reading Lists). This tool allows you to capture locations in resources and organize those locations as hyperlinks under a chosen topic. Using this format, we have created a Reading List for all 66 books of the Bible. This means that you no longer have to manually locate information on these books; the Reading Lists streamline the process. If you want to learn about the book of 1 Peter, the Bible book reading list will link you to articles in your library that address 1 Peter. You can quickly link to various articles discussing the Date, Historical Context and Recipients (what sort of suffering were the letter’s recipients experiencing?) or Authorship, Message, and Purpose (how is Peter’s affiliation with this letter significant?). These categories, though, are only the start. The Reading Lists have 30 categories pertaining to each book.

To jump start the reading lists, we have linked ten resources that provide maximum coverage of resources in our base packages. The next resources in our queue for linking are Eerdman’s Bible Dictionary, The Summarized Bible, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ISBE, and the New American Commentary Series. The Reading Lists are not limited to these resources, though. Since the Reading Lists are user editable, anyone can add links to any resource they want. That means you! If you don’t see your favorite resource among those already linked, or in our queue, you can add it.

How does that work? Open the Reading List to the book page you want to edit, click “Edit” in the upper right hand corner of the pane. This will open the correct reading list on topics.logos.com. Click “Edit” on that page and you will be able to add links. How do you add links? Open to the introduction for the correct Bible book in your favorite resource, copy the Reading List link, and pasted it in the editing window on topics.logos.com. Divide any headings into the appropriate categories, click “Save” and, presto, your links for your resource are available in the Logos 4.0 Reading Lists.

There are more detailed instructions on our FAQ page.

So, in Logos 4.0, go to Tools>Reading Lists, find the Reading List for the book you want to study and quickly find many articles discussing that book. If you want more resources, just click “Edit” and add them. Happy reading and happy linking!

You should follow us on Twitter here.

Organizing... << Scott Moore (Ancient History Ramblings)

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 03:09:31 +0000

Each summer, after the PKAP season concludes, I spend some time back in PA trying to organize things (my office, my laptop, my desktops, etc.). Usually any new system I adopt does improve my organization......for a while anyway. So, I have been doing some reading online and today ProfHacker addressed this issue in an article entitled "Discover Your Personal Organization Style." This was an informative article that recommends the book How to be Organized in Spite of Yourself: Time and Space Management that Works with Your Personal Style despite its age (last edition 1999). I'd like to read it, but when I looked for it on Amazon I found out that Amazon does not have a Kindle version. So, maybe I can blame the lack of a Kindle version for my lack of organization.

RSM

Another milestone reached << Portable Antiquities Scheme Blog

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:34:23 +0000

On the 26th July 2010, the Scheme recorded the 400,000 record on the database; another Roman coins, this time a nummus of the House of Constantine. We had an internal challenge, with the Deputy Head down to buy the person who recorded this object, a bottle of sparkling wine. The landmark object is show below and was recorded by Tom Brindle, our acting FLO for Staffordshire and the West Midlands.

PAS record number: WMID-D6D183
Object type: Coin
Broadperiod: Roman
County of discovery: Shropshire
Stable url: http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/400298

Several FLOs expressed dismay, that the object was a Roman coin and a metal detector find, I think they were hoping for a lithic or something else found by a fieldwalker for a change… However, coins and metal detectorists are the best represented on our database….

Records	Finds recorded	Year of recording
3476	4588	1998
6128	8201	1999
11323	18106	2000
11481	16368	2001
8164	11996	2002
14657	21684	2003
26383	39000	2004
33919	52202	2005
37502	58311	2006
49308	79052	2007
37455	56449	2008
39981	66481	2009
112893	190091	2010

You might wonder why these figures don’t always match the Annual Reports; well, the database is constantly being worked on, errors corrected, finds removed if duplicate records and so on. There’s some blips in the figures being recorded – 2002 for example being foot and mouth hit, in 2003 the Scheme went National and we phased in our new database and in March 2010 we imported 2 large datasets from IARCW and CCI (and you might have heard about 52,503 coins found in Somerset – only 1 record of those though – April). However the 2010 figures are encouraging when you look at the statistics for recording since we went live with our new database (shown below with a comparison to 2009, same period).

Statistics for 2009
Records	Objects	Month
3638	4395	1
2694	5410	2
2842	3414	3
3191	6284	4
3768	5229	5
3307	4429	6
3152	3819	7

Statistics for 2010
Records	Objects	Month
4290	12274	1
3509	5526	2
88596	90380	3
4191	57775	4
3957	5255	5
4490	14518	6
3860	4363	7

Bye bye << Sean Gillies Blog

sgillies@frii.com (Sean Gillies) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:33:27 +0000

Waiting at the Louis Blanc tram stop after probably our last family dinner in the centre ville – at Le Roule ma Poule in the relatively sleepy north side of the Ecusson – we saw a guy using the tramway as bike lane.

If you keep an eye on the board at every stop and time it right, you can roll along unimpeded.

Into the sunset.

Au revoir, Montpellier.

Non-contact 3D laser scanning as a tool to aid identification and interpretation of archaeological artefacts: the case of a Middle Bronze Age Hittite Dice (Annemarie La Pensée and Françoise Rutland) << Digital Classicist Seminars

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:06:07 +0000

We discuss how the 3D data created by laser scanning a metal fourteen-sided Hittite Dice from the Garstang collection (National Museums Liverpool), in conjunction with historical research, has led to new considerations about how this unusual object may have been manufactured, when, where and for what purpose.

Borrowings from Christianity in late paganism << Roger Pearse (Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, and more)

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:04:11 +0000

Quite by accident I encountered a paper by Andrew Fear in a Festschrift, entitled “Cybele and Christ.”[1] In this article, he makes the interesting suggestion that late paganism started to adopt various features from Christianity. His examples are the cult of Cybele, but probably the trend would be equally visible elsewhere.

There is the well known statement in the Historia Augusta [2] that Alexander Severus had a shrine in which he had statues of Moses, Orpheus, Apollonius of Tyana, and Jesus, alongside his ancestors. This text is now known to be fourth century. Indeed such an attitude towards Jesus is difficult to imagine in the second century, and not that easy in the early third century. Jesus was a disreputable figure in that period, as the accusations of Celsus in Origen’s Contra Celsum, or of Caecilian — possibly copied from Fronto — in Minucius Felix’ Octavian make clear.

In the early fourth century, the idea of the sage was present to all. In Eusebius’ Contra Hieroclem, we find discussion of the cult of Apollonius of Tyana, whom Hierocles had remanufactured as a pagan Jesus as part of the Great Persecution in the reign of Diocletian in the late third century. Eusebius attacks this; but he makes the interesting statement that he would otherwise treat Apollonius as a sage, someone of wisdom and knowledge, advocating virtue, and in a way laying the groundwork for the Christian gospel. In all this we see the germ of the later Byzantine habit of treating pagan philosophers rather like Jewish prophets, both predicting the coming of Christ; although the collections of sayings of the philosophers that were used to prove this all seem to be bogus!

But what of Cybele? Was the cult redesigned in the mid fourth century, to adopt certain elements of Christianity? It’s an intriguing idea. Fear refers to the “resurrection” of Attis, recorded by Firmicus Maternus ca. 350 AD, and dismissed by him as a new fabrication in response to official pressure on a discreditable cult. Julian the Apostate refers to Cybele as a virgin goddess [3]. That description makes nonsense of the key cult myth. This may be summarised as follows.

In this, Attis is the boyfriend of Cybele. One day he goes off and shags a nymph, and his missus finds out. She drives him mad, he chops his willy off while under the influence and dies. Then she calms down and decides this wasn’t a good idea. She asks Father Zeus to resurrect Attis. Zeus, no mean shagger himself, disapproves of this adultery=castration myth, and declines. The most he will do is preserve the dead body. And there the myth ends.

The myth makes no sense if Cybele is a virgin goddess, and still less when the fertility aspects of the cult are considered. But the Christian cult of the Virgin Mary explains all — someone felt it necessary to attribute this idea to Cybele. Julian himself tries to get the pagan priesthoods to do the social work that the Christians do, to try to compete. His Hymn to the Mother of the Gods is still extant.

But the most interesting element of this is the 5th century work, the Life of Proclus by his successor Marinus, online here. Fear suggests that Proclus composed a “bible” for the cult, although the actual statement is more prosaic:

33. But if I was to enumerate all the facts of this kind, and to report the particular devotion which he held for Pan, son of Hermes, the great favors he received, and the numerous times he was, in Athens, saved by intervention of the divinity, and to relate in detail the protections and the advantages he received from the Mother of the Gods, of which he was particularly proud and happy, I would no doubt seem chattering vainly, to those who may light on this book by chance, and some may even think I am saying things little worthy of belief. For there were a considerable number of episodes, that were of almost daily occurrence, when this goddess [Cybele] spoke or acted in his favor; and their number and character are so unusual that I myself do not have their exact and precise memory.

If anyone desires to know with what favor he was attached to this goddess, let him read Proclus’s book on the Mother of the Gods, and it will be seen that with inspiration from on high he has been able to expound the whole theology relative to the goddess, and to explain philosophically all that the liturgical actions and the oral instructions mythically teach us about the goddess, and Attis, so that they will no longer be troubled by those seemingly absurd lamentations [for Attis] and all the secret traditions related in her ceremonies.

Certainly, however, we see the philosopher composing a tract describing a “theology”, and explaining away all the discreditable stuff about Attis and his self-castration by allegory. It is unlikely that any such effort would be felt necessary before the fourth century.

I think we could use a proper list of borrowings, from primary sources. The material given by Andrew Fear is a good start, but it is partial. Paganism was syncretic. If there was useful material to be borrowed, there was no reason not to do so. But specific evidence would be most interesting to see.

1. A. T. Fear, “Cybele and Christ” in Eugene N. Lane (ed.), Cybele, Attis and Related Cults: Essays in Memory of M. J. Vermaseren. Religions in the Greco-Roman World, 131. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996. Pp. vi + 441. $138. ISBN 90-04-10196-9. Mostly online here.
2. “Alexander Severus”, 29.
3. “Against the Galileans”, 262D.

Open Access Journal: e-Sasanika << Charles Ellwood Jones (AWOL: The Ancient World Online)

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Ellwood Jones) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:55:43 +0000

e-Sasanika

One of the most remarkable empires of the first millennium CE was that of the Sasanian Persian Empire. Emanating from southern Iran 's Persis region in the third century AD, the Sasanian domain eventually encompassed not only modern day Iran and Iraq, but also the greater part of Central Asia and the Near East, including at times, the regions corresponding to present-day Israel, Turkey, and Egypt.

This geographically diverse empire brought together a striking array ethnicities and religious practices. Arameans, Arabs, Armenians, Persians, Romans, Goths as well as a host of other peoples all lived and labored under Sasanian rule. It is the aim of the Sasanika: Late Antique Near East Project to bring to light the importance of the Sasanian civilization in the context of late antique and world history.

A. Mousavi, A Survey of the Archaeology of the Sasanian Period during the past three decades
T. Daryaee, The Political History of Ērānšahr (224-651 CE)
K. Rezakhani, The Bactrian Collection:
an Important Source for Sasanian Economic History
G. Muradyan and A. Topchyan, The Romance of Artaban and Artašir in Agathangelos' History
T. Greenwood, Sasanian Reflections in Armenian Sources
M. Morony, Should Sasanian Iran be Included in Late Antiquity?
A. Zohrabyan, An Exceptional Gold Coin of Shapur I
T. Daryaee & K. Safdari, A Bulla of the Ērān-Spāhbed of Nēmrōz
H. Emrani, Late Sasanian Imperial Ideology & the Rise of Bōrān to Power
N. Mirir, Historical Geography of Fars During the Sasanian Period
Sasanian Bibliography
Selected bibliography
Bibliography of Late Antique East Iran

Related Articles
Xwedodah

List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

Open Access Avestan Texts << Charles Ellwood Jones (AWOL: The Ancient World Online)

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Ellwood Jones) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:45:30 +0000

Avestan Digital Archive (ADA)

The Avestan Digital Archive (ADA) seeks to be a digital archive containing all Avestan manuscripts spread all over the world. The Avesta, the holy book of the Zoroastrian religion, was last edited at the end of the 90s of the 19th century by the German scholar K. F. Geldner. We claim that presently a new edition is needed. The main reasons are:
In the last decades some manuscripts Geldner did not have access to have become available
Geldner did not check by himself all the manuscripts used for his edition. For some of them he had access only to copies or collations by other colleagues. This was the source of several mistakes in his edition
the methods of textual criticism have strongly changed since Geldner and many methodological decisions of Geldner seem today unacceptable. The most important one is undoubtedly that he does not record systematically all the variae lectiones (or a selection according to well established criteria), but only the variants he considered important for the establishment of a sure text
even when he checked the manuscript by himself and recorded the variae lectiones, he made mistakes more often than expected
For all these reasons it has become a true need to provide the scholars with reasonably sure readings of the extant Avestan texts. But a new edition of the Avesta is a huge task: probably more than two hundred manuscripts scattered all over the world have to be checked. Many of them are not available even as microfilms and are only accessible through long stays in Indian libraries. Also the purchase of microfilms from European libraries is not the best way for single researchers to get access to the manuscripts: a lot of them are needed, so that the undertaking quickly gets too expensive and the result is a not easily manageable amount of microfi lms. A printed publication of such an amount of manuscripts is no more feasible, above all because of financial reasons. So it is easy to understand that yet nobody has seriously tried to undertake a new edition of the Avesta, or al least a serious review of Geldner's edition.
In order to solve this problem we have conceived the ADA project. This project seeks, on the one side, to find, to collect and to digitalize all the extant Avestan manuscripts. On the other hand, the ADA Project is developing a tool to provide all these manuscripts with indexes of the passages and to make them thus available on the web for researchers and for the general public. The electronic tool will allow an easy checking of all the manuscripts containing a concrete passage. This research tool can be useful not only for the Old Iranian studies, but also for the textual criticism based on manuscripts in other languages and fields of research. Furthermore, the ADA project seeks to review the manuscript transmission of the Avestan texts in all its aspects, a task which presupposes the complete ga thering and availability of the manuscripts.

Manuscripts view
Libraries
Avestan written transmission
Search
ADA-Newsletter
Conference
Tools for Avestan Text Criticism

A little light dusting and the Chronicle of Zuqnin << Roger Pearse (Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, and more)

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:14:16 +0000

I have a tendency to have Word documents on my Windows Desktop. A couple of these have been staring at me for a while now, and I decided that I needed to do something about them. What, I wondered, was “denys.doc”?

Well, it related to this post; the opening portion of the fourth part of the Syriac Chronicle of ps.Dionysius of Tell-Mahre, otherwise known as the Chronicle of Zuqnin from the place where the manuscript was found. I must have scanned the opening pages — although I don’t seem to have that scan now — and perhaps I worked on them on another PC. Anyway I have tidied them away. But the material was certainly interesting, relating to the end of the Roman period and the Moslem invasions. The French was easy enough, and online. I may look at this a bit more this evening.

Open Access Journal: Nekhen News << Charles Ellwood Jones (AWOL: The Ancient World Online)

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Ellwood Jones) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:12:14 +0000

Nekhen News

Download and read the back issues of Nekhen News, the Hierakonpolis Expedition's newsletter (which is always chalked full of Predynastic goodness).

Nekhen News, Fall 1985 vol I.1 (0.3 MB)
The first ever edition of our 'ground-breaking' reports of work on site.
Nekhen News, June 1986 vol 2.1 & 2.2 (0.7 MB)
The Hierakonpolis Expedition discovers Egypt's oldest temple, the lure of potsherds and mystery petroglyphs.
Nekhen News, Winter 1986 vol 3.1 (0.7 MB)
'The First Egyptians', Predynastic Lapis Lazuli and 'Excavating Old Archaeologists'.
Nekhen News, Fall 1987 vol 3.2 (1.0 MB)
The Truth about Narmer, Pathways to the Past and Plans for the Hierakonpolis Expedition Center.
Nekhen News, Winter 1987 vol 4.1 (1.0 MB)
HK-64 reveals a well-kept secret; Beads, Borers & Bifaces; Shadows of the Past - The Compound Wall completed.
Nekhen News, Summer 1988 vol 4.2 (1.0 MB)
An archaeologist reconstructs his Past; Mapping Hierakonpolis; Fish stories and Tall Tails.
Nekhen News, Fall 1988 vol 4.3 (0.9 MB)
Details of the start of the 1988-89 season; The first Egyptians; New light on ancient yeast; and updates about the excavations on site.
Nekhen News, Spring 1989 vol 5.1 (0.9 MB)
Hierakonpolis comes to Beverly Hills; Zooarchaeology at Hierakonpolis; an engineer's view of Hierakonpolis.
Nekhen News, Fall 1990 vol 6 (1.3 MB)
In Memoriam to Michael Hoffman - remembering a friend and colleague.
(There was no volume 7 of Nekhen News)
Nekhen News, Fall 1996 vol 8 (1.5 MB)
We're back! Pharaonic rock art; Dig-house update; human remains at HK43; Elephants, hippopotami and pigs; Hierakonpolis in Dublin.
Nekhen News, Fall 1997 vol 9 (1.6 MB)
Read about the first mummies, excavations at the Predynastic cemetery HK43, the plant macro remains at HK43, the conservation of the Old Kingdom and Second Intermediate period tombs, the Hierakonpolis Centenary, and more!
Nekhen News, Fall 1998 vol 10 (1.5 MB)
Read about 100 years of discovery at Hierakonpolis, discoveries at the Elite Cemetery (HK6), excavations at the Predynastic cemetery HK43, giraffes in ancient Egypt, archaeobotanical studies at HK43, the continuing conservation of the Old Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period tombs, Hierakonpolis at the Cairo Museum, and much more! The first edition in colour!
Nekhen News, Fall 1999 vol 11 (2.6 MB)
Learn about the exciting new discoveries at the Elite Cemetery (HK6), the investigation of the Fort of Khasekhemwy, the geophysical survey of Hierakonpolis, the lower Second Intermediate Periods tombs, the artists at the tomb of Hormose, conservation at the tomb of Djehuty, the Painted Tomb at Hierakonpolis, and more!
Nekhen News, Fall 2000 vol 12 (2.8 MB)
Read about perspectives on the Elite Cemetery (HK6) finds, the analysis of the human remains from HK43 and HK6, the exciting excavations at HK11, Hierakonpolis' chipped stone animal finds, lithic analysis from Dr. Michael Hoffman's excavations at 10N5W, the plant remains from HK43, mapping the Fort of Khasekhemwy, and the ongoing work at the Old Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period tombs.
Nekhen News, Fall 2001 vol 13 (1.9 MB)
The Season of Surprises. Locality 6:amazing revelations, The home of the giant cafish, Buried in her bark pyjamas, Excavating in the Nubian cemeteries, Adornment circa 1700BC.
Nekhen News, Fall 2002 vol 14 (3.0 MB)
A memoriam issue to Barbara Adams, former co-director of excavations on site. Ma'asalama Mudira, Barbara and the boxes in Brussels, Funerary Textiles of the rich and poor, Saving the Fort, Return to the temple, Barbara Adams-a reminiscence
Nekhen News, Fall 2003 vol 15 (4.1 MB)
Return to the Temple: Excavations at HK29A, Excavating an elephant, The case of the curious cones, A basket of delights: The 2003 Excavations at HK43.
Nekhen News, Fall 2004 vol 16 (4.4 MB)
Farewell to HK43, Searching for temple walls, Predynastic kilns at HK11C, Close encounters with HK Potters, Nobody can eat 30 eggs.
Nekhen News, Fall 2005 vol 17 (3.5 MB)
Exceeding Expectations, Excavating Egypt's earliest kings, Lifestyles of the Hierakonpolis rich and famous, Finding Lost Souls, Monuments in Mud, Fort within a Fort.
Nekhen News, Fall 2006 vol 18 (4.4 MB)
The Fort Fixers, It's the pits!, An enigmatic bird from HK25, When is a tomb not a tomb? A Scorpion for Eternity, Mapping Hierakonpolis, The Forgotten Potter of Horemkhawef, Pillow Talk, and much more besides...
Nekhen News, Fall 2007 vol 19 (0.8 MB)
Nekhen News, Fall 2008 vol 20 (0.7 MB)

List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

Open Access Journal: Annali del Dipartimento di Filosofia << Charles Ellwood Jones (AWOL: The Ancient World Online)

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Ellwood Jones) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:06:06 +0000

Annali del Dipartimento di Filosofia
ISSN (online) 1824-3770

Gli Annali del Dipartimento di Filosofia dell'Università di Firenze riflettono le ricerche scientifiche e le iniziative di studio legate all'attività del Dipartimento. Pubblicati dal 1979 al 1984 con il titolo di Annali dell'Istituto di Filosofia dell'Università di Firenze (Olschki, voll. 1-6), hanno successivamente assunto l'attuale denominazione (Olschki, 1985-1993, voll. 1-9). La nuova serie, iniziata col vol. I del 1995 presso le edizioni LED, è pubblicata dalla Firenze University Press a partire dal vol. VIII del 2002.

La pubblicazione beneficia di un contributo del Dipartimento. Il Direttore della rivista è il Direttore del Dipartimento in carica.

XIV (2008)
XIII (2007)
XII (2006)
XI (2005)
IX-X (2003-2004)
VIII (2002)

List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

Netlogo and GIS – Backspaces.net << Shawn Graham (Electric Archaeology)

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:14:35 +0000

If you’re at all interested in the intersection between GIS and Agent Modelling, you need to be following Andrew Crooks’ GIS Agents blog. I haven’t been there in a while, but this morning discovered courtesy of Andrew the ‘Netlogo Bag of Tricks‘ from Backspaces.net. My Antonine Itineraries model was built on the back of one of the Backspace models a number of years ago. In the ‘Bag of Tricks’, they show how to have the agents move on the pattern of a network architecture, rather than by following the patches themselves. This is a far more elegant solution! Their example model simulates the movement of water-borne traffic in Venice. It would be interesting to reimplement my Antonine Itineraries models according to this method (rather than the raster patch), and see if I end up with similar results.

Jeff Schank: Compiling the ABM world << Shawn Graham (Electric Archaeology)

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:40:45 +0000

Jeff Schank at University of California, Davis, is compiling a website of as many researchers and scholars working with agent-based modeling as he can find. If you’re interested in being listed on his site, drop him a line. A brief glance at the list shows he’s got many of the leading lights, so if you’re interested in seeing the range and depth of applied ABM, it’s well worth a stop. Jeff also has a number of thoughtful essays on the nature & intellectual role of ABM for understanding human behavior:

[...] In this sense, performing simulations of agents with memory and using different strategies based on an agent’s memory, is the erection of new scaffolding for building insight and understanding into the evolution of cooperation. Of course, the scaffolding may be faulty and our apparent understanding and insight may collapse or the scaffolding may allow us to only build insight and understanding in only a limited respect. Nevertheless, it is a starting point from which other work can be compared.

EES Delta Survey << Charles Ellwood Jones (AWOL: The Ancient World Online)

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Ellwood Jones) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:11:36 +0000

The Egypt Exploration Society DELTA SURVEY
An information centre for the archaeological sites of Lower Egypt
A British Academy Research Project

Information on the archaeological sites of the Delta is presented here in the form web-pages containing an alphabetical listing of sites. Where a substantial amount of information is available, or photographs of the site exist, links are provided to supplementary pages. The site-names in most cases are those of the Survey of Egypt maps. The material is offered as a source of reference and a tool for the planning of new projects. The letters 'T' and 'K' in the lists stand for 'Tell' and 'Kom' respectively, Arabic words for 'mound', describing the usual appearance of archaeological sites in the region.

View sites in Google Earth^TM
Development of the Survey
Sites by SCA register numbers
Bibliography
EES main site

SITE NAME ALPHABETICAL INDEX

AB-ABU ABU-AHM AHM-ARA ARA-BAH BAH-BEN BEN-DAB DAB-DO DU-GAR GAS-HAD HAE-IBQ

IBR-KHA KHA-MAH MAH-MIR MIT-NUS NUS-QUT RAD-SAL SAL-SHE SHE-SOW SUL-TUR UMM-ZU

A V I : Attic Vase Inscriptions : Attische Vaseninschriften << Charles Ellwood Jones (AWOL: The Ancient World Online)

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Ellwood Jones) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:05:57 +0000

[First posted 9/24/09. Updated 7/26/10]

A V I : Attic Vase Inscriptions : Attische Vaseninschriften
Wachter, Rudolf

AVI (Attic Vase Inscriptions / Attische Vaseninschriften) is an extended and web-based continuation and development of Henry R. Immerwahr's CAVI (Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions). AVI's main part is the interactive database, which is now ready in its preliminary version, but we also provide informations about the project's prehistory (by Henry Immerwahr), protohistory, and present and future aims, bibliography (more than 3000 titles), as well as some texts on alphabets and phonology of the Attic dialect.

You can download Henry Immerwahr's original CAVI as a pdf (version of January 2008, 7.7 MB, new versionof January 2009, 6.8 MB, here mirrored from the original website). CAVI has been completely integrated into the AVI database, whereby, as a first step, the bibliographical references and many more things have been unified in order to make them searchable. The content has not been changed, however, except for small additions by R.W., added in double square brackets [[...]], and quite a few corrections, mainly in the bibliographical sections. The final surface of the database is not yet there, but you can already view the corrected material and search it within your browser.

On 17 February 2010, I was happy to present our new site, designed and programmed by Simone Hiltscher. It replaces the first site of 2004. In the meantime many new features have been added, mainly in the bibliographical section. More will follow soon, so please come back regularly.

We hope you will find AVI useful and interesting, and we will welcome all contributions and comments, made by e-mail for the time being, but soon also directly into the database.

From my diary: Problems with the Nielsen UK ISBN Agency << Roger Pearse (Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, and more)

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:49:32 +0000

One of the minor pieces of bureaucracy in publishing a book is getting an ISBN for it. The International Standard Book Number is something all books need to have.

The translation of Eusebius Gospel Problems and Solutions will be published in the UK, which means that I have to apply to the Nielsen UK ISBN Agency for a block of 10 ISBNs. They have a website, with a form. Unfortunately it is the sort of PDF form you have to download, print off, and fill in by hand. But you can send the result in as a scanned PDF by email. They also expect you to fill in your credit card details in that PDF form and send it in, insecurely. I didn’t like that bit at all!

They don’t seem very efficient, tho. I emailed in a form on Thursday. I heard nothing on Friday. On Saturday I emailed one page again with a correction, and asked for an acknowledgement. This morning (Monday) I got a note that they had received the one page, but not the rest. So I email in the original PDF again. I get no reply. A couple of hours later I email asking whether they got it. And I get a note from someone else “thanking me for my application.” What’s the betting that my correction gets lost?

These people charge $150 for this trivial service, which could (and should) be a webpage automatically allocating them. And they want me to wait 10 days. I don’t know who made these muppets into the gods of the UK book industry, and I need to be on holiday, not worrying about it. Oh well.

Decoding Digital Humanities - Melbourne Chapter << Melissa Terras' Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:20:51 +0000

I said in the post below that I would post more details about the Decoding Digital Humanities reading group who will be meeting in Melbourne, Australia, on thurs 29th July, at the Prince Alfred Hotel, 191 Grattan Street, 5.30- 7.30pm. More information here.

They'll be discussing my plenary at DH2010. Gulp.

Decoding Digital Humanities is an informal gathering for those who are interested in all things digital, providing an opportunity to mingle, share ideas, discuss readings and raise questions surrounding the field of digital humanities. If anyone else feels like setting up a Decoding Digital Humanities group at their own institution (the aim would be to do the same readings each month as the London group, and piling in to the discussions online later) then do get in touch with the organisers of the first group, Claire Ross and Kathryn Piquette, here at UCLDH.

More Experiments in Intensive Pedestrian Survey << Bill Caraher (The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World)

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:54:54 +0000

More guest-posting brilliance from our esteemed guest blogger, David Pettegrew, the co-director the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project and the 2010 Cyprus Research Fund speaker. Be sure to check out his posts on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Last Thursday, we introduced the survey experiment that PKAP conducted in June 2010 to assess the relationship between the number of artifacts that we see when we walk across a survey unit and the number of artifacts actually on the ground. In other words, we wanted to assess how effective our survey methods are in actually assessing what was on the ground. On Thursday, we compared the artifact densities detected by the project’s untrained student fieldwalkers to those counted by trained senior staff members. Today we will discuss the second phase in our 2010 experiment, an assessment of the total population of all artifacts on the surface of select subunits. This part of the experiment was designed to give us a total count of all surface artifacts that can be compared with the artifact counts reported in yesterday’s discussion.

We began by selecting four 10 x 10 m subunits based on the densities of the 10 x 10 m artifact densities counted by the experienced senior staff members. As with past experiments (published in the RDAC 2007), we selected our 4 subunits to represent the range of density variation: the lowest density quartile (G15), highest density quartile (G9), and two middle quartiles (G1 and G6). Each total subunit was 10 x 10 m, representing 1/16 (6.25%) of the 1,600 sq m survey unit.

To vacuum a high-density unit, you really have to spend a lot of time picking individual artifacts off the ground. For each of our units, students Andrew, Zane, Valerie, and Luke, and I walked very slowly in adjacent passes across each selected square gathering together in 1 or 2 corners of the unit all the artifacts present. An initial pass was never enough for we observed how many artifacts we missed initially. Usually two additional passes were necessary to vacuum the surface completely, and each pass involved either crawling on hands and knees, or bending so that you had a closer view of the ground. I have to admit that my back and neck got sore after a while of this.

The results of this “total collection”, shown below, are interesting to compare with the “pedestrian survey counts” discussed yesterday. You have to keep in mind with the comparison that the pedestrian counts represent a 20% sample of each subunit while the total collection counts represent a 100% sample. You have to multiply the pedestrian count by a factor of 5 to estimate the “total putative count” (i.e., an estimation of what the total count would be for 100% of the unit) for the pedestrian-walked unit.

The first outlined set of grid units below shows the total counts from each of the total collection units.

The second set of grids compares the total collection counts with the pedestrian survey counts in parentheses (multiplied by 5 to create the 100% putative sample).

The third shows the factor difference between these two types of counts.

Here is where it gets even more interesting. We can estimate that the 940 artifacts experienced fieldwalkers counted through pedestrian survey across the entire unit (i.e., the pedestrian counts from 4 walker swaths) would produce a putative pedestrian survey count (factoring for the 20% sample) of 4,700 artifacts. In other words, had we walked 100% of the unit, we would have counted about 4,700 artifacts. Now, if total collection (vacuuming) produces on average 2.96 times the number of artifacts as pedestrian survey, we can estimate that there were 13,212 artifacts actually on the surface of the ground. To provide some perspective, we collected and brought back to the museum 8,788 total artifacts from the 252 grid squares of Koutsopetria and 19,657 total artifacts from our survey of the entire Pyla-Koutsopetria area. A single survey unit at Koutsopetria totally collected would produce 1.5 times the number of artifacts sampled from all 252 grid squares at Koutsopetria and .67 of the total artifacts sampled across the entire Pyla area. If we were to apply the same multipliers to all 252 forty x forty meter grid squares, i.e., the main part of the site of Koutsopetria, the total artifact count of 19,182 would produce a putative total count of 95,910. Our estimated total population of artifacts (based on the 2.96 factor) is at least 284,894 (and in reality, poor visibility in many units often limited our sample to 50% of the ground). This is *why* sampling is important!

As for TIME, total collection requires a huge commitment. Although we (for clarification here, "we" means David - Bill) initially considered surveying all 16 subunits, i.e., an entire 40 x 40 m unit, this proved unrealistic given the time it took for 5 individuals to vacuum a single subunit: 1.5 hours each for G1 and G6, 2 hours for G9, and 1 hour for G15. Using the total time it took to hoover 25% of the grid square (6 hours) as an index for hoovering this unit, we estimate that 5 individuals could hoover a high-density 40 x 40 m unit in about 24 work hours or well over 100 work hours! If the typical survey work day is 6 hours long (say, 6AM-noon), it would require 4 full days of a team collecting artifacts from the surface. Truly this would be an incredibly time intensive task! By contrast, sampling 20% of the unit through pedestrian survey takes about 20-30 minutes. In this perspective, total collection requires 72 times more time than pedestrian survey collection!

One final comparative result is interesting to note here. The “other” category increases dramatically through total collection, including numerous pieces of ancient glass (9), lithic stone artifacts (7), shells (24), slabs (13), gypsum (141), ceramic bricks (2), stone vessel (1), marble revetment (3), and a ceramic tessera or gaming piece. Although total collection was time intensive, this sort of qualitative information is quite useful in filling out our picture of the overall survey unit and indicates something of the functional variability within each survey unit.

Tomorrow, we will conclude our discussion of experiments with an overview of ceramic fabric categories. Stay tuned!

Religious persecution in Britain today << Roger Pearse (Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, and more)

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:47:26 +0000

I happened to see this item, which succintly highlights why Christians in the UK are in trouble. The writer omits to mention the attempt by the last government to make any statement about homosexuality other than warmest approval liable to prosecution. Attempts to introduce a free speech clause were repeatedly voted down. A government minister gloated that the churches had better start hiring lawyers — in a country where no-one other than the privileged can afford to go to law.

Logos 4: Vividly Display Repeated Words << Logos Bible Software Blog

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:00:01 +0000

Today's post is from Morris Proctor, certified and authorized trainer for Logos Bible Software. Morris has trained thousands of Logos users at his two-day Camp Logos training seminars.

As we read a biblical passage and make observations, one of the items we look for is repeated words. Normally words or phrases mentioned multiple times in a passage have particular importance. For example, in John 15 notice the occurrences of fruit. In Philippians 1 take note of the frequent use of gospel. When you locate such a reoccurring word within a given passage, Logos 4 contains a tool, Word Tree (in Original Languages Library and above), that vividly displays the word along with the words in relationship to it. Here's how to use this helpful feature:

Choose Tools | Passage Analysis
Select Word Tree
Type a biblical reference in the passage box like John 15.1-7
Type a word in the box to the right of the passage such as fruit

You'll notice Logos presents your word and as well as the words in relationship to it. To control the display use the three drop down lists.

In the first list select:

Reverse to see all the words leading to your word
Forward to see all the words flowing from your word

In the second list select your desired Bible.

In the third list select how to present the words used in relationship to your word. Select:

Occurrence to arrange the words in the tree in their biblical order
Alphabetical to arrange the words in the tree in their alphabetical order
Frequency to arrange the words in the tree by the number of times they appear in the biblical text

Once the tree is generated, you can click on any word in the display to rebuild the tree according to that word. Try using this feature in the observation phase of your Bible study. I think it will help you ask some interesting questions of the text.

Update: Please note that the Passage Analysis tool is only included in the following base packages: Original Lanuguages Library, Scholar's Library, Scholar's Library: Silver, Scholar's Library: Gold, Scholar's Library: Platinum, and Logos Bible Software 4: Portfolio Edition. To find out which base package is right for you, and see what discounts you qualify for, visit our upgrade page!

You should follow us on Twitter here.

From my diary << Roger Pearse (Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, and more)

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 22:19:17 +0000

We all need to take our holidays, if we wish to remain in good health. I’m feeling very tired indeed, and the last three weeks have been nightmareish. I’m going to take some downtime over the next week, so don’t expect a lot of posting or replies to emails.

Severian of Gabala, sermon 1 on Genesis online << Roger Pearse (Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, and more)

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 19:03:41 +0000

A little while back I started translating the six sermons of Severian of Gabala on Genesis from the French version of Bareille. Not that this process has any scholarly value, but it should help to get Severian better known. Unfortunately I had to stop after the first sermon for pressure of other things.

I found the first sermon on disk this afternoon, and I have tidied it up and uploaded it here. I place it in the public domain. Have fun!

A proper academic translation of the sermons of Severian on Genesis will be coming out at the end of the year. Translated by Robert C. Hill, it’s published by IVP.

IVP have a big programme to translate patristic bible commentaries. I know it needs doing; but I’m not sure that I approve. IVP has a defined mission, to publish popular books to support people doing the Lord’s work through evangelism at our universities. I really do not see patristics as part of that. SPCK once had a mission for the gospel. It too once went down the patristic route.

IVP is doubtless accustomed to sharing in the hostility that its Master attracts. Preaching the gospel is hard, in our selfish age, and living it still more so. It is very easy to linger on the “plain of ease”, doing stuff for which men will mostly only praise. I hope that this venture does not mark the dilution and extinction of the key Christian publisher of our days.

Yet more Eusebius << Roger Pearse (Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, and more)

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 16:12:17 +0000

I do need to take a week off and just potter around. But I’m still hacking away at the Eusebius.

I sometimes go out to a local restaurant. I tend to find that it takes them a while to take my order, to serve each course, and so on, so I tend to take a book with me. In this case I took the print-off’s of the Eusebius volume, and a red pen, and worked through the Syriac fragments. I came back and typed them up, and then did similar changes to the Coptic and Arabic. And … somehow it’s 5 O’Clock!

Looking at the Coptic made me realise how little related these were to the rest of the fragments. I suspect that a good many of them are spurious.

I’ve passed the manuscript across to someone to advise on whether to get it professionally edited or to go straight to typesetting.

The Archimedes Palimpsest Online << Charles Ellwood Jones (AWOL: The Ancient World Online)

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Ellwood Jones) — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 15:39:42 +0000

The Archimedes Palimpsest

The Archimedes Palimpsest is a medieval parchment manuscript, now consisting of 174 parchment folios. While it contains no less than seven treatises by Archimedes, calling it the Archimedes Palimpsest is a little confusing. As it is now, the manuscript is a Byzantine prayerbook, written in Greek, and technically called a euchologion.

To make this prayer book, scribes used parchment that had already been used for the writings of other books. They used a book containing at least seven treatises by Archimedes, a book with two speeches by Hyperides, fragments of a philosophical text most likely written by Alexander of Aphrodisias, fragments from a Life of St. Pantoleon, fragments from a Menaion, and two unidentified texts.

You can choose to view a specific work (i.e. On Floating Bodies, which is one of the seven works by Archimedes), or you can choose to view a specific folio (i.e. the undertext or overtext.)

FreeBookPreview.com Goes Live - Celebrate with an iPod Touch! << Logos Bible Software Blog

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 08:00:01 +0000

On Monday, July 26, 2010 we will launch FreeBookPreview.com. To celebrate this event we are giving away a free iPod Touch!

FreeBookPreview.com

Now you can sit back and really check out a book on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch before you purchase it and not be confined to a couple of pagescans. Free Book Preview works with the free Logos Bible Software app allowing you to preview entire Christian books for a limited time. At FreeBookPreview.com you can see a calendar of upcoming previews, read descriptions of previewed books, and see an archive of previously previewed books.

Getting your Free Book Preview is as easy as 1-2-3:

Download the free Logos iPhone app
Sign in or create a free Logos.com account
Enjoy your Free Book Preview!

With the free Logos Bible Software app you already have access to a ton of great features. There are many of the Bibles featured on Bible.Logos.com, lots of free books when you are signed into your Logos.com account, Text Comparison, Word Study Guides, and over 4,000 Logos Bible Software titles that coincide with your Logos 4 Base Package. . . . and that's just the beginning. Free Book Preview adds another great component to an already incredible app! Seriously, we're just giving this away!?

But wait, there's more!

No one likes reading books they can't talk about. When you “like” the Free Book Preview Facebook page you can join a community of others who are previewing the same book at the same time. You can write reviews and take part in discussions that will be read by fellow previewers all over the world. And you will get news about current and upcoming previews right into your news feed.

The key to getting newer and higher profile books in Free Book Preview is in sharing the service with all of your friends through tweets and posting it on your Facebook pages. In fact, we are so convinced that sharing this website with your friends will keep FreeBookPreview.com alive that we are giving away a free iPod Touch and all you have to do to enter is head over to FreeBookPreview.com/giveaway, share us, and send a link to your Facebook profile page to fb@Logos.com. to win!

So what are you waiting for? Head over to FreeBookPreview and check us out. I would love to be able to send you an email saying you've won an iPod Touch!

You should follow us on Twitter here.

Do we need an Industrial Archaeology? << Alun Salt (Archaeoastronomy)

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 07:00:35 +0000

Cromford Canal. Click for larger image.

It’s easy to take a World Heritage Site for granted when it’s on your doorstep. I had thought of shooting a short portfolio of Cromford for a competition. They required ten photos. After looking into the project I’ve decided that the competition isn’t going to happen for me, but a short photo essay on Cromford, or possibly the Derwent Valley Mills, remains an interesting idea.

Industrial Archaeology can get short shrift from other archaeologists. Often there’s written records, plans and for some places oral accounts of work at a site. Is Archaeology necessary? Mark Henshaw, the Archaeology Dude, makes a good argument that Archaeology can draw multiple lines of evidence to inform histories of the past. I wouldn’t discount that, and I think his point, Archaeology isn’t just about digging, is very important from an American perspective because there Archaeology is seen as a branch of Anthropology. In the UK you’re more likely to see Archaeology paired with History or Classics. So do we really need Industrial Archaeologists when there so many Early Modern Historians.

I think another factor Archaeology brings is spatial thinking. Looking at the early days of the professionalisation of Archaeology in Britain, one of the features is an attempt to distinguish Archaeology from History by taking on ideas of Geography. People like OGS Crawford were keen to emphasise that Archaeology studied human activities in space as well as time. Again, in the UK, when Processualism was taking off in the USA, the British academics took inspiration from it, but also from the ‘New’ Geography.

The Manager's House, Cromford.

Applying this practically, it’s easy to say what the positioning of the Factory Manager’s house, opposite the main gate of Arkwright’s Mill at Cromford, means by its location. There are other more subtle questions though. What did drawing a second water channel through the Derwent Valley mean for land use and accessibility? Why was Willersley Castle, a grand house that Arkwright built for himself, placed where it was? How did it relate to the church he built? If you want to know why a mill owner would want to build a church for his workers then, as Mark Henshaw says, you have to look at historical records too.

You can write a history purely from historical records and archives, but if you want to examine the human experience, especially of humans that weren’t writing much, then an Industrial Archaeology can yield a richer, more four-dimensional experience, than Anthropology or History alone.

From my diary – book completion day << Roger Pearse (Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, and more)

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:42:32 +0000

Today is the day that the Eusebius book must be completed and sent to typesetting. Up early and on with it!

First I’ve reread the contract with the Sources Chretiennes and made sure I acknowledge them in the proper way on the title page and reverse.

Next I’ve applied for a block of 10 ISBN’s from the Nielsen Agency, here in the UK. I’ve decided on “Chieftain Publishing”.

And I’ve also emailed a friend who runs an online shoe-selling business to ask for recommendations for a commercial website designer – I’m not going to attempt it myself, when money rests on it.

UPDATE, 10:39. Deep into it now, dealing with all the little notes scattered throughout the text where I marked (with “qqq”) that I needed to come back and deal with some cross-reference. I’ve also converted a cross-reference table to the PG and Mai editions into Word format and am updating it with Cramer references. Finding the odd bit of sloppy work by some hired editorial people, unfortunately, as well; trouble is that checking they did it is as much work as doing it myself again. Trudge trudge trudge…

UPDATE, 11:38. Most of those notes dealt with, the cross-references added. The only “qqq”s are in files like indexes and so on that need populating. It’s been a slog but worth it.

Bad news in the Latin materials; I originally intended to footnote each page in the CSEL text that we printed. That’s probably 2 days work, and we haven’t got the time. Indeed if I was ever to do it, it would already have been done. Too late now. Just do without.

Time for some lunch. After that, process in the last batch of translator changes, then print the whole lot off and sit down with a coke and read it all!

UPDATE, 13:37. All the “qqq”s done, and some sort of minimal index of the main biblical passages created. I’ve also tracked down all the uses of theotokos in the text and highlighted them with a note. It is, after all, highly unlikely that Eusebius used in 300 AD this battle-cry of the 5th century, so it suggests interpolation. Both the ecloge and the fragments have it, which suggests that the addition was made early on. Now to process in the translator’s comments.

UPDATE, 15:54. All the translator’s comments processed, and a bit of to- and fro- over a couple of them. Now printing it all off; or trying to! The Greek text (which I got from Claudio Zamagni and the SC) is all over the place; paper size wrong, paper tray set to manual, varying margin sizes. Fixed it all now, but it all cost time. Still printing…

UPDATE, 16:13. All printed, and a pile of paper an inch and a half thick on the side. Now to read through it all…

UPDATE, 17:53. I’m getting a definite impression that some professional copy editing would be a good idea.

UPDATE, 19:00. Enough! My eyeballs are giving out. The manuscript is complete. It just needs some professional copy editing by someone NOT so far involved. Then it can be typeset. So I am contacting people who might be willing to do that. Let’s see if we can get that done in a week or two and then get on.

This human weakness thing is a nuisance. I’ve decided that if we get a choice in the New Jerusalem, I’m opting to come back as a dalek.

It would give the cherubs a shock, anyway…

Eusebius the liar << Roger Pearse (Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, and more)

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:15:15 +0000

The testimony of Eusebius of Caesarea about Christian origins has often been found inconvenient by those determined to attack the church. Ever since Gibbon, the accusation has been made that Eusebius deliberately suppressed material that might throw discredit on the church. Indeed Gibbon insinuated, and fools have believed, that Eusebius actually made a policy of such activity; that telling lies for the glory of God was acceptable.

In Eusebius’ Gospel Problems and Solutions, To Stephanus question 4, I find the following statement on precisely that issue:

May such an argument, that a falsehood has been composed to the praise and glorification of Christ, never by any means prevail in the church of Christ and of God, the fathers of the strict truth!

Worth remembering, I think, when the headbangers howl.

FYSM 1405 A: Digital History << Shawn Graham (Electric Archaeology)

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:36:24 +0000

My first course at Carleton this year will be part of the first year seminar series. I’m exploring a subject dear to my heart: Digital History. From the course calendar…

Instructor: Shawn Graham

Description:

3000 years ago, literacy and the power to record history were the privileges of the few. To record the past was to control it. 3000 years later, and the inverse is true: literacy is widespread, and every voice has an outlet on the internet… or does it? We will look at what Digital History is, the ways it changes the questions we can ask, the way digital methods change what it is even feasible to ask, and how we communicate this research to a wider public. Given that many digital tools are also new media tools, the practice of digital history is also often a kind of public history. This course will survey various concepts and tools currently being used in Digital History. Topics to be discussed include data mining, agent based modeling, geographic information systems, and serious games. These topics will be set in their broader historical contexts.

Organization:

Each week, we will use the first session to set up some of the major themes and questions we will want to explore; in the second session we will look at current research projects, websites, and other materials in the light of those themes. Come prepared each week by reading and investigating the weekly materials, which will be posted on the course website.

The syllabus is divided into parts to illustrate the broad thematic goals. We begin in Part I by examining the sheer mass of historical materials now available on the internet. How do we find our way through these things? How do we visualize or otherwise identify what is important?

This leads to the observation that in digital work, everything is an argument (Part II). We never observe the past directly; we are always building models to fit what we ‘know’ into a system of explanation. In digital work, these models are explicitly written in computer code. Understanding how the code forces a particular worldview on the consumer is a key portion of becoming a ‘digital historian’. Computer games are another kind of model of the world; historical computer games are some of the best selling games on the market today. How do they represent history? Can we subvert or challenge these representations?

Some of the most interesting discussions about history on the internet occur in the game fan-sites; this leads us to Part III, the ‘wisdom of crowds’. We will take a close look at the way ‘crowd-sourcing’ is used to write history and pseudo-history: what is the difference? How ‘true’ is a crowd-sourced history anyway – is Wikipedia good or evil?

In Part IV, we look at some of our local ‘crowds’ – digital history in the Ottawa Valley & the local new media and heritage industries. What face are we presenting to the world? What stories are being told – or not told? Who has access to digital media, and does it matter?

Finally, in Part V, we draw the various strands together to understand the current state of Digital History, where we stand, where we are going, the potentials & the pitfalls. The map is still being drawn; there are still places marked ‘here be dragons’.

Assessment:

Digital History is rarely produced by a single individual working in isolation; accordingly, the major project in this course will be a group project to create a work of digital history centred on some aspect of the Ottawa Valley’s human heritage that needs promoting or protection. The groups will document their work publicly using a research blog. At the end of the project, each member of the group will assess the contributions of the other members’ of the group. Each group project will also be assessed by the remainder of the class. These peer reviews will form a substantive portion of the final grade for the project. There will be no final exam.

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: eHumanities Workshop at 40th Annual Meeting of the German Computer Science Society in Leipzig, Germany << The Stoa Consortium

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:30:11 +0000

Marco Büchler asked me to post the following notice:

Workshop: eHumanities – How does computer science benefit?
Organiser: Prof. Gerhard Heyer and Marco Büchler (Natural Language Processing / CS, University of Leipzig)

SPECIAL HINT:
————————–
The workshop is compiled NOT only by presentations of computer scientists BUT researchers from humanities and infrastructure as well. HUMANISTS ARE VERY WELCOME!!!

Dates:
———
Conference Sept. 27th – Oct. 1st, 2010
eHumanities workshop: Thursday Sept. 30th.

Registration details:
——————————–
**Early bird registration: July 30th, 2010**
Registration page: http://www.informatik2010.de/480.html

Workshop description:
————————————
In recent years the text-based humanities and social sciences experienced a synthesis between the increasing availability of digitized texts and algorithms from the fields of information retrieval and text mining that resulted in novel tools for text processing and analysis, and enabled entirely new questions and innovative methodologies.

The goal of this workshop is to investigate which consequences and potentials for computer science have emerged in turn from the digitization of the social sciences and humanities.

The workshop starts with a series of four invited talks by leading researchers in the field of eHumanities. Their presentations will revolve around the question “How can computer science benefit from eHumanities?”. The afternoon will focus on demonstrations and discussions of different solutions to an open challenge, which aims to contrast and compare methods used in computer science with those in the humanities.. In this section, members from both fields of the eHumanities community will apply their own methods and tools on data of their choice to solve a set of previously announced problems. The exact challenges will be made public with the official announcement of the workshop and will be focused on current issues of unsupervised semantic analysis of text which are relevant to computer science, e. g. the handling of unexpected relations and associations, the treatment of rare textual patterns, or the merging of heterogeneous sources.

The date for the workshop has been fixed on Thursday, September 30th, 2010. Prof. Dr. Stefan Wrobel (Director IAIS, Bonn/St. Augustin), Dr. Helge Kahler (Federal Ministry of Education and Research – Department of Humanities), Peter Wittenburg (MPG Nijmegen – Project CLARIN) and Prof. Dr. Gregory Crane (Tufts University, Boston – Project PERSEUS) will be the speakers for the morning session.

The fixed schedule is as follows:
—————————————————-

9.00 – 12.30 Talks: “How can computer science benefit from eHumanities?”

9.00 – 10.30
Talks section I
Gerhard Heyer, Marco Büchler: eHumanities – How does computer science benefit?, Natural Language Processing Group, University of Leipzig, Germany.
Peter Wittenburg1, Erhard Hinrichs2, Dan Broeder1, Thomas Zastrow2: eHumanities – can we manage the complexity? 1MPI für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen, Netherlands, 2University of Tübingen, Germany.
Gregory Crane: The Work of the Humanities and Digital Philology. Editor-In-Chief Perseus Project, TUFTS University, Boston, USA.

10.30 – 11:00
Coffee break

11.00 – 12.30
Talk section II
Sven Becker, Marion Borowski, Melanie Gnasa, Kai Stalmann, Stefan Wrobel: eHumanities: Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems in Humanities and Cultural Sciences. Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems (IAIS) and University of Bonn, Germany.
Helge Kahler: eHumanities from a funder’s perspective. Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany.

Open discussion 30 min.

12.30 – 14.00
Lunch break

14.00 – 17.30
Semantic challenge: qualitative versus quantitative methods

14.00 – 15.30
Team 1: Marie-Christine Bornes Varol1, Marie-Sol Ortola2, Jean-Daniel Gronoff3: Specific polysemy of the brief sapiential units. 1Inalco, Paris, 2Université Nancy, 3Dir. Méthodologies sémantiques annotatives, DualSemantics, Paris, France.

Team 2: Ingelore Hafemann, Simon Schweitzer: The Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae – an interplay between an electronic corpus of Egyptian texts and the Dictionary of Ancient Egyptian Language. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Germany.

Team 3: Marco Büchler, Gerhard Heyer: Salton and Wittgenstein in the Humanities: About Semantics in Philosophical Texts. Natural Language Processing Group, University of Leipzig, Germany.

15.30
Coffee break

16.00 – 17.00
Team 4: Christoph Schlieder: Digital Heritage: Semantic Challenges of Long-term Preservation. Computing in the Cultural Sciences, University of Bamberg, Germany.
Team 5: Alexander Mehler, Nils Diewald, Rüdiger Gleim and Ulli Waltinger: Time Series of Linguistic Networks. Text Technology, University of Bielefeld, Germany.

17.00 – ca. 17:30
Round table with subsequent open discussion

Estimated number of participants: 40
Special requirements: internet access, beamer, stage/podium for round table

*All welcome*

M. Beasley	A philosophical Gigantomachy in the Metamorphoses	abstract	full text
F. Billot	Hannibal, elephants and turrets	abstract	full text
D. Blyth	Philosophy in the late Latin West	abstract	full text
D. Burton	The role of Zeus Meilichios in Argos	abstract	full text
M.W. Champion	Creation from Gaza	abstract	full text
J. Davidson	Prometheus Bound in Christchurch 2009	abstract	full text
S. Ford	Spatial context of Odyssey 5.452 to 6.317	abstract	full text
S. Gador-Whyte	Emotional preaching: ekphrasis in the Kontakia of Romanos	abstract	full text
P. Garrett	Character inheritance in Suetonius' Caligula and Nero	abstract	full text
M. Gillett	The 'Etruscan League' reconsidered	abstract	full text
K.M. Heineman	The chasm at Delphi: a modern perspective	abstract	full text
D. James	Art of gold: precious metals and Chariton's Callirhoe	abstract	full text
P. Jarvis	The politics of fraud: a Seruilius Casca in Livy	abstract	full text
P. Johnson	Fabius, Marcellus and Otacilius - the alliance that never was	abstract	full text
D. Keenan-Jones	The Aqua Augusta and control of water resources in the Bay of Naples	abstract	full text
B. Leadbetter	Galerius, Gamzigrad and the politics of abdication	abstract	full text
J. Maitland	Homer and the Aiakid cousins: kinship celebrated or overlooked in the Iliad	abstract	full text
B. Marshall	'With friends like this, who needs enemies?' Pompeius' abandonment of his friends and supporters	abstract	full text
S. Midford	From Achilles to Anzac: Heroism in the Dardanelles from antiquity to the Great War	abstract	full text
G. Miles	'I, Porphyry': narrator and reader in the Vita Plotini	abstract	full text
P. O'Sullivan	Use your illusion: 'Critias' on religion reconsidered	abstract	full text
K.J. O'Toole	The Demosthenic basileus: a phantom in the Ath. Pol.?	abstract	full text
D.J. Phillips	Thucydides 1.99: tribute and revolts in the Athenian empire	abstract	full text
D. Pritchard	War, democracy and culture in classical Athens	abstract	full text
R. Sing	Jury pay and Aristophanes	abstract	full text
H. Tarrant	The Theaetetus as a narrative dialogue?	abstract	full text
W.J. Tatum	Tyche in Plutarch's Aemilius Paulus - Timoleon	abstract	full text
J. Wallis	(Un)Elegiac characterisation in Propertius 3.12	abstract	full text
K. Welch	Pietas, Pompeiani and Cicero's Thirteenth Philippic	abstract	full text