Historical Archaeology in the Ancient Mediterranean

AIA Conference

This year's AIA conference was a success. The poster session went well and I received a lot of positive feedback on my paper "The Dedication of Roman Arms and Armor in Water as a Religious Ritual."  I met with several people after the session to discuss my use of evidence and arguments.  I received leads to a few relevant sources and supplemental datasets.  All in all it was a very positive experience. 

Off to Philly

Tomorrow morning I will drive to Philadelphia for the 110th Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America.  On Monday I will write an assessment of the conference.

AIA Paper

A week from Saturday (8:30-11:30am) I will present a paper entitled "The Dedication of Roman Arms and Armor in Water as a Religious Ritual" at this year's meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America.  Regular readers of this blog will remember that I have a long history with the topic.  It sprang up in my second MA thesis as a side argument and I used a Roman religion seminar last spring to flush-out my ideas.  Yesterday I finished converting the seminar paper into a 15-20 minute presentation.  Converting lengthy articles into presentations can take some time.  Decisions on what material to condense, remove, expand, and clarify will truly make or break a quality presentation.  In order to present the topic within the allotted time, I ended up removing about 1/3 of the text.  We will see what happens...   

ASOR 2008 from Boston

The poster session at ASOR was a success.  Many people stopped by and showed interest in the poster and project.  There were many great papers presented, a few of which I posted below.  I love these large conferences because you never know who you will run into.  I met up with many friends and colleagues.  I even ran into actor Richard Kiel best known for his role as Jaws in the movie "James Bond: The Spy who Loved Me."  Unfortunately I have not watched the movie but I did recognize him from his role as Mr. Larson in "Happy Gilmore." (Should I have admitted that?)  Anyway all in all it was a great conference.   

Just a few of the excellent papers:

Yehuda Rapuano, "The Church of the Episkopos Johannes and the Date of the Pottery at Baraqa."

Mara Horowiz, "Building an Integrated Typology for the Alalakh Ceramic Assemblage."

Juan Manuel Tebes, "Iron Age Edomite Pottery: A New Typology and Its Relationship with the Midianite Wares."

Eric Welch, "Phoenician Gadir and the Tartessian Hinterland: A Study in Port-Hinterland Interaction."

Unfortunately I was unable to attend Eric's talk because it conflicted with the poster session but knowing Eric I have no doubt it was a great talk.

Off to ASOR

I am off to Boston for ASOR's annual meeting.  As discussed in previous posts I will present a poster on the Mopsos Survey.  I also intend to hear a couple of papers from fellow Penn Staters.  In a few days I will provide an assessment of the conference.

Ancient Military History Panel

Over the past three weeks I, with the help of Jeff Herrick, have put together a panel for the Society for Military History.  Their 76th annual meeting will be held at Middle Tennessee State University on April 2-5, 2009.  I will present my Issus research.  Our list of presenters, moderator, and commentator are listed below.

Moderator: Amanda Iacobelli

Presenter 1:  Brandon R. Olson "New Thoughts on the Location of the Issus Battlefield: A Historical Assessment and Archaeological Proposal"

Presenter 2:  Jeff Rop "The Significance of Greek Mercenaries at the Battle of Issus"

Presenter 3:  Thaddeus J. Olson "Archaeology and Ancient Propaganda: Cicero's Cilician Campaign of 51 BC" 

Presenter 4:  Jeffrey Herrick "The Historical Sources for the Severan Battle of Issus and their Limitations"

Commentator:  Dr. William Caraher

Planned Conference #2

This year the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project (PKAP) will present a poster at the 110th annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America.  Last year's poster received a lot of good feedback (here is a link to the poster).  I have agreed to help Dr. Scott Moore present the poster this year.  Aside from more than four hours of standing by your poster, it is a worth while experience.

Poster Session at ASOR's Annual Meeting

This year Ben Bradshaw, Amanda Iacobelli, and I will be presenting a poster at ASOR's annual meeting in Boston on November 19-22.  Our poster entitled "The Mopsos Survey: Archaeology in the Cilician Plain" will feature GIS maps of site distribution and density through time and our individual projects.  I will present my Issus research while Ben will cover the GIS maps and Amanda will likely work with the use of historic archaeological documents (ie travelers accounts of the archaeology and early surveys) in the Mopsos Survey.  In the next few days I will discuss other conference plans.

Experiences from CAMWS

I benefited greatly from the 104th Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South personally and academically.  Let me discuss the personal first.  My parents, who live in Denver, Colorado, met me in Tucson for the conference.  Since my patents last saw their granddaughter at Christmas, I decided to bring her along.  The only troublesome aspect to our travels was taking a 20 month old on a 6 hour flight with, on the outbound flight, two connections.  I cannot complain too much because Alexis, my daughter, travels very well, see the picture below.  Once we arrived at Tucson, my parents spent as much time with Alexis as possible.  On Saturday we decided to drive to Tombstone, Arizona for a little sight seeing.  My dad really enjoys the history of the Wild West and there is much to see in Tombstone: historic downtown, the OK Corral, various signs describing what event happened where, and of course no old west town is not complete without the cemetery.  All of us had a great time together.

As far as my academic experiences, there were many.  I presented my latest version of my sling-bullet paper.  I listed my basic arguments below.

1.  Through a syntactical analysis of the Greek inscriptions on the Cypriot sling-bullets and a study of David Robinson, Excavations at Olynthus X: Metal and Minor Miscellaneous Finds (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1941) an interpretative model emerges where personal names in the nominative case represent a manufacturer while personal names in the genitive case represent an authority figure ordering the assault or issuing the bullets.

2.  Of the 32 identifiable inscribed sling-bullets from Cyprus there are 7 different names (3 Nominative and 4 Genitive comprising 30 bullets) and 2 symbols (comprising 2 bullets).  Robinson's Olynthian assemblage has 64 inscribed bullets with 4 personal names in the genitive (comprising 51 bullets).  Robinson attributes the bullets inscribed with personal names to Philip II's siege of Olynthus in 348 BC.  The Cypriot sling-bullet bullets, with the diversity of names and cases, allude to prolonged multifarious modes of deposition, not a single event.  This suggests that there was a lot of activity on Vigla, the area of the site where the sling-bullets came from, during the Classical and Hellenistic periods.

3.  There are six categories of inscriptions types on sling-bullets: commands and exclamations, group names, personal names, names of deities, and symbols and signs.

4.  From a careful examination of the inscriptions scholars can investigate specific issues such as ethnic identity and mobility, magical uses of language, literacy, and psychological warfare.  Moreover, inscribed sling-bullets also contributed to general issues such as ancient warfare, social history, and military history.

After I presented my paper I received good questions and feedback.  CAMWS was the fourth professional conference I present my sling-bullet research.  Each conference offered great feedback, interesting questions, and suggestions for bettering and/or furthering my research.  Indeed having presented this work to several people, both specialists in the field and the general public, I feel I am now at the point where I can complete a final draft for publication in the upcoming PKAP monograph.

      

CAMWS Conference

Just a short post today.  Tomorrow morning I will fly to Tucson for the 104th annual CAMWS conference.  At the meeting I will present a revised draft of my sling-bullet paper.  I am in an epigraphy panel and it should be a fun conference.  I return Sunday evening so I will again apologize in advance for the delay between posts.  Please check back Sunday evening to read all about my experiences at the CAMWS conference!