2023 ANNUAL MEETING HIGHLIGHTS
17吃瓜Annual Meeting attendees will be treated to a full academic program with more than 130 sessions and more than 600 presentations on our first-ever hybrid program. The Program-at-Glance can be found on the 2023听Annual Meeting Schedules听辫补驳别.
There are a number of special events and meeting highlights for those of you who will be attending the meeting in Chicago. All meetings and functions will take place at the Hilton Chicago (720 South Michigan Avenue) except for those at the Field Museum and the ISAC Museum when noted.
Highlight:听17吃瓜Annual Meeting attendees will receive complimentary general admission to the听听with their 17吃瓜name-badge from Wednesday, Nov. 15 鈥� Tuesday, Nov. 21.
Wednesday, November 15
3:00pm CST
Lecture and First Kings Exhibit Walk-through (Ward Hall, The Field Museum)听
Free for 17吃瓜Annual Meeting attendees with your name-badge.听 Advance sign-up is required as space is limited in the lecture hall.听Learn more and sign up here.
7:00pm CST
17吃瓜Annual Meeting Plenary Address (Grand Ballroom, 2nd Floor)
Dr. Rubina Raja (Aarhus University and director of the Danish National Research Foundation鈥檚 Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions) will present, 鈥淒eath by Data? Or What Has a Decade of Research on Palmyrene Funerary Sculpture Taught Us about the Ancient World?鈥� Also available online for virtual attendees.听Learn more here.
8:30pm CST
Welcome Reception (Grand Ballroom, 2nd Floor)
Following the Plenary Address, 17吃瓜Annual Meeting attendees are invited to network, socialize, and enjoy light refreshments as we get ready for a busy three days of sessions, workshops, posters, and fun.
Thursday, November 16
6:30pm CST
Celebration in Honor of Thomas E. Levy鈥檚 Festschrift (Continental Ballroom A, Lobby Level)
The event is sponsored by the听Koret Foundation,听the Murray Galinson San Diego-Israel Initiative (MGSDII), and the听Lapidus,听Levy, Meyer, and Rosenberg听families. There is no cost to attend, but space is limited so please听
9:00pm CST
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Reception (Grand Tradition, Lobby Level)
Friday, November 17
12:55pm CST
17吃瓜Members鈥� Meeting, Sharon Herbert, Presiding (Waldorf, 3rd Floor)
Bring your lunch and come for an update on the business of 17吃瓜and the 2023 Honors & Awards.
6:30pm CST
Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (CAARI) Reception (Grand Tradition, Lobby Level)
8:00pm CST听听
Early Career Scholars鈥� Reception (720 Bar, Lobby Level)
This event is for registered 17吃瓜attendees who are Early Career Scholars. There is no cost to attend, but space is limited and ECS members must听.
Saturday, November 18
10:25-10:40am CST
17吃瓜Raffle Drawing (Hilton Chicago)
A fun event to highlight 17吃瓜Exhibitors during the morning coffee break on the last day of the meeting.听 Join us in the Exhibit Hall (Normandie Lounge, 2nd Floor) to see if your raffle ticket is a winner.
12:45-2:00pm CST
17吃瓜Poster Session (Grand Ballroom Foyer, 2nd Floor)
Visit the 17吃瓜Poster Hall throughout the Annual Meeting to see all of the research projects being presented, and come to the Poster Session on Saturday to talk with the presenters and ask questions.
12:45-2:00pm CST
Initiative on the Status of Women in ASOR: Mentoring Lunch (Boulevard, 2nd Floor)
ISW is holding a Mentoring Lunch during the 2023 17吃瓜Annual Meeting. Come have lunch for discussions with 4 women in leadership roles at ASOR. There is no cost to attend, but space is limited and advanced sign-up is required.听.
7:00-8:00pm or 8:15-9:15pm CST
Private Reception for 17吃瓜Attendees at the ISAC Museum
After the Annual Meeting ends, head over to the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures to enjoy a beverage and explore the galleries. Advanced sign-up is required as space is limited.听Learn more and sign-up here.
Friends of 17吃瓜present the next webinar in the 2023-2024 season on听December 14 2023, at 6:00 pm EST, presented by Dr. Jennifer Ramsay. In the summer of 1994 I embarked on my first archaeological excavation to King Herod鈥檚 Palace at the site of Caesarea Maritima in Israel, where I was thrilled to be bestowed with the title of assistant bone person! 听After excavating many bones that summer, the director took me aside and said, 鈥榚veryone is doing bones, you should study plant remains鈥�. 听And just like that, an archaeobotanist was born. 听Little did I know those many years ago that plant remains recovered from archaeological sites could tell us so much about the past.
I spent several summers as an archaeobotanist at Caesarea collecting plant remains. It was there that I discovered the importance of the neglected, but informative, 鈥榳eed鈥�. Many economic crops were recovered that illuminated aspects of the agricultural economy in the ancient city, but it was what the weeds could tell us about the environment, seasonality, and agricultural techniques that I found intriguing. I have since been fortunate to work on projects at sites like Petra, Jordan, where the data from the Petra Garden and Pool Complex addressed the questions of how plants functioned in the economy, and how the role of the garden changed through time.
Additionally, plant remains I analyzed from Nabatean-period tomb deposits in Petra highlighted the role plants played in funerary contexts and contributed to a broader understanding of how they functioned in these ritual events in the ancient world. I have also recovered archaeobotanical data that allowed for a better understanding of the scale and timing of local agricultural production at the ancient site of Bir Madhkur, which lies in the hyper-arid hinterland of Petra. At other sites, for example the Islamic period site of Kinet H枚y眉k in Turkey, the plant remains I analyzed indicated cereal agriculture, but also documented the emergence of a cotton boom, which is attested to in ethnohistorical sources but had rarely been confirmed through archaeobotanical evidence. From examining Neolithic plant remains from the Black Desert in Jordan that indicate a much more verdant environment in the past, to discovering what plants can tell us about provisioning the Roman Army in the East, and even to understanding the role pigeons played in ancient agriculture, plant remains offer vital evidence to our understanding of the past.
Dr. Jennifer Ramsay (Ph.D. in 2008) is Professor and Chair of the Anthropology Department at SUNY Brockport (State University of New York). She is active on the Board of Trustees for the American Center of Research (ACOR) in Amman and chairs their Fellowship Committee.听 Jennifer received the Archaeological Institute of America鈥檚 Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2019 and two State University of New York (SUNY) Chancellor鈥檚 Awards for Excellence in Teaching (2014) and Excellence in Faculty Service (2020). Her area of expertise centers on the use of archaeobotany for subsistence reconstruction, understanding trade patterns, recognizing environmental change, and interpreting land-use patterns to gain insight into lifeways of past societies. Although she specializes in the Roman and Late Antique world, Jennifer has also analyzed and published archaeobotanical data from the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages, and Islamic periods. Over her career, she has participated in many archaeological projects in a variety of roles from project archaeobotanist and field school director, to assistant or associate director in Jordan, Israel and Italy at such sites such as Petra, Pompeii and Caesarea Marittima.
Friends of 17吃瓜present the next webinar in the 2023-2024 season on January 11th at 6:00pm EST听presented by Dr. Yorke Rowan, moderated by Dr. Chad Hill.听During the 9th to 8th millennia BCE, climatic conditions created environments that fostered increasing cereal and pulse farming, animal husbandry, and population growth. The 鈥淣eolithic Revolution鈥� that occurred across southwest Asia during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic was followed by a much less well-understood period, the Late (or Pottery) Neolithic. Even more obscure, the deserts and steppes beyond the Fertile Crescent were considered underpopulated and of little significance to the larger neolithization process. Through the pioneering field work of people like Alison Betts, Svend Helms and Andrew Garrard, a few structures were known in the steppes and desert of eastern Jordan, an inhospitable region of basalt cobbles and insufficient rainfall for permanent farming. However, recent field research demonstrates that areas such as the Black Desert of eastern Jordan witnessed a sharp uptick in population and building, particularly during the Late Neolithic.
New data indicates this region was much more hospitable than at present, evident in the clusters of hundreds of permanent structures and extensive chains of hunting traps known as 鈥榙esert kites鈥�. Other enigmatic desert features such as petroglyphs, 鈥渨heels鈥� and paths are of unknown date and function, but attest to the recurring use of the region. Join Yorke Rowan as he presents the latest discoveries from the Black Desert of eastern Jordan.
Yorke Rowan is Research Professor in the Archaeology of the Southern Levant at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (formerly the OI) at the University of Chicago. He co-directs the NSF funded Kites in Context and the Eastern Badia Archaeological Project, both archaeological field programs in the Black Desert of eastern Jordan. In addition, he directs the Galilee Prehistory Project in northern Israel. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in Jordan and NEH Fellow at American Center for Overseas Research in Amman and the W. F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. His most recent volumes include 鈥淭he Social Archaeology of the Levant: from Prehistory to the Present鈥� (with A. Yasur-Landau and E. Cline) and recently submitted the proofs for 鈥淪hiqmim II: The Phase II Excavations at a Chalcolithic settlement center in the Northern Negev Desert, Israel (1987-1993)鈥� with T. E. Levy and M. M. Burton.
J.P. Dessel is the Steinfeld Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology in the Department of History, and an affiliated member of the Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is also the president of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. He earned his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Arizona in 1991. He has over 40 seasons in the field working in Israel, Egypt, Turkey, and North America, and co-directed the excavations at Tell el-Wawiyat and Tell 鈥楨in Zippori in the Lower Galilee. His research interests include Egypto-Canaanite relations in the fourth millennium, rural complexity in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, and ceramic technology. Currently he is a senior staff member on the Tayinat Excavation Project in Turkey, and the Tell Abel Beit Ma鈥檃cah Excavations. When Dr. Dessel isn鈥檛 in the field, he can be found in his kitchen trying to perfect the recipe for red lentil soup, he is very close.
Friends of 17吃瓜present the next webinar in the 2023-2024 season on听October 5 2023, at 3:00 pm EDT, presented by Professor Aaron Brody moderated by Dr. Caroline Sauvage.听Ancient seafarers faced dangers and fears posed by the sea and hazards of sailing. Accordingly, specialized sacred beliefs and ritual practices developed among Levantine mariners, who are the focus of this study, which were a subset of terrestrial religion. Sailors honored deities whose maritime, celestial, or meteorological attributes could either benefit or devastate a voyage. While on land, these divine patrons were worshipped in harbor temples and promontory shrines, sometimes with maritime votives. While at sea, divine protection came from the ships themselves, which were considered to be imbued with the spirit of a deity; the vessels also contained sacred spaces that allowed for continued contact with their divine patrons.
Mariners performed religious ceremonies to enlist and ensure sacred safeguarding and success for their voyages. Maritime features were also part of the funerary practices and mortuary rituals of seafarers. These specialized sacred beliefs and ritual practices were generated by the liminality of the deep and the unique uncertainties and perils at sea, and aided in Levantine maritime exploration, commercial exchanges, and Phoenician settlement that eventually spread throughout the Mediterranean basin and beyond to the Atlantic coasts of Iberia and Morocco.
Aaron Brody is the Robert and Kathryn Riddell Professor of Bible and Archaeology and Director of the Bad猫 Museum at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. 听He has excavated primarily at harbor sites in Israel, including Tel Nami, Ashkelon, Dor, and Tel Akko; and participated in projects in the Negev and Akko Plain and with the Ohlone-Muwekma at sites in northern California. 听He has held fellowships at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem and the American Center of Research in Amman. Recent publications have focused on the topics of household religion, metallurgy, and interregional trade and economy at Tell en-Nasbeh, from holdings in the Bad猫 and Rockefeller Museums. Professor Brody has longstanding research interests on Levantine seafarers, women鈥檚 religion and the sea, and underwater, deep-water, and harbor archaeology.听 He is a co-editor of a new volume,听No Place Like Home: Ancient Near Eastern Houses and Households, recently published by Archaeopress.听 The research he is presenting today is from a chapter he authored in the听Handbook of Material Religion in the Ancient Near East,听edited by Nicola Laneri and Sharon Steadman, published earlier this year by Bloomsbury Academic press.听 That chapter and today鈥檚 talk are entitled 鈥淢aritime Viewscapes and the Material Religion of Levantine Seafarers鈥�.
In the 2000 season another 800 came to light. Impressed pellets such as these were used to witness and seal papyrus documents throughout the Near East in the Hellenistic and Roman eras. Subsequent study proved the sealings found at Kedesh to date to the first 陆 of the 2nd c BCE, years in which the Seleucid dynasty controlled the region.Excavation over succeeding years clarified the find spot of the sealings. They and the records they sealed were stored in an archive complex deep within a large administrative building of Achaemenid and Hellenistic date. The archive burned in the mid 2nd c BCE at the end of the Seleucid control of the region or shortly thereafter. The presence of such a relatively large archive at Kedesh indicates significant and unexpected administrative activity at the site in the waning years of the Seleucid Empire. The images chosen for the seal rings impressed on the sealings from Kedesh reflect choices made by individuals living in a mixed Greek and Phoenician environment in times of shifting identities and political affiliations.
But there is another鈥攂asically unexplored鈥攁venue that can reveal surprisingly precise information about what the early alphabet鈥檚 creators drew on and how they were trained. Because in fact there is ample evidence about what knowledge the earliest alphabetic writers did and did not draw on. First, if the alphabet鈥檚 inventors drew on what Egyptian signs looked like, did they know, or care, what they sounded like? That is, is there any evidence that they knew how the Egyptian writing system actually worked? Second is whether anyone was professionally trained in the early alphabet: was it systematized and taught carefully, the way a scribe would, or casually and unevenly transmitted, like a game or informal craft tradition?