Index

Note: We are now fully booked for this event and are only accepting names for the wait-list. I have had the good fortune to direct or co-direct excavations at two legendary sites in Turkey -- Troy and Gordion, and the fieldwork that I have conducted there over the course of the last 25 years has continually required me to assess the most effective strategies for presenting them to the public and the scholarly community. In this talk I attempt to place my own work at these sites in historiographic perspective -- highlighting the positive and negative aspects of the projects, with a focus on the extent to which regional, national, and global developments have shaped our research agendas. I also reflect on the discipline of archaeology in Turkey and the Near East at the end of the talk. 

Note: We are now fully booked for this event and are only accepting names for the wait-list. Medieval Muslim historians wishing to write about ancient Iran drew on texts that were composed in the period 750–850 bearing the title "The History of the Kings of the Persians." These works served a growing audience of well­-to­do Muslim bureaucrats and scholars of Persian ancestry who were interested in their heritage and wished to make it part of the historical outlook of the new civilization that was emerging in the Middle East, namely Islamic civilization. This talk (and the book that it is based on) explores the question of how knowledge about ancient Iran was transmitted to Muslim historians, in what forms it circulated and how it was shaped and refashioned for the new Perso­-Muslim elite that served the early Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad, a city that was built only a short distance away from the old Persian and Hellenistic capital of Seleucia­-Ctesiphon.

Since Egyptian hieroglyphs could first be read again in the modern era, it has been recognized that texts recorded on tomb walls include conversations, speeches, songs, and exclamations. The discovery of the tomb of Paheri at El Kab by the French expedition in 1799 was followed by the recognition by Champollion as early as 1828 that a "Song of the Threshers" might be recognized amidst the other texts accompanying the agricultural scenes, an identification that was met at first with skepticism. A series of other songs, speeches and conversations are featured in the scenes illustrating the seasons of Planting and Harvest on the west wall of Paheri's burial chamber, and form a revival in the earliest New Kingdom of an important aspect of Old and Middle Kingdom tomb decoration.

Join us in the galleries for a 20 minute in-depth discussion of a single object from Devotion and Decadence: The Berthouville Treasure and Roman Luxury. Every Wednesday from October 17 - December 19 we will focus on one object and explore its specific history, iconography, and manufacture in this brief lunchtime talk. Each discussion will feature a different object and visitors are welcome to return for a fresh conversation each week. Clare Fitzgerald is Associate Director for Exhibitions and Gallery Curator, and Rachel Herschman is Curatorial Assistant, both at ISAW.

ISAW's open house for prospective doctoral students will include coffee with ISAW students, faculty, and scholars; an information session about our academic program; a tour of ISAW and the ISAW Library; a Q&A session with current students; an opportunity to attend an ISAW graduate seminar; and an opportunity to visit the ISAW exhibition, "Devotion and Decadence."

Join us in the galleries for a 20 minute in-depth discussion of a single object from Devotion and Decadence: The Berthouville Treasure and Roman Luxury. Every Wednesday from October 17 - December 19 we will focus on one object and explore its specific history, iconography, and manufacture in this brief lunchtime talk. Each discussion will feature a different object and visitors are welcome to return for a fresh conversation each week. Clare Fitzgerald is Associate Director for Exhibitions and Gallery Curator, and Rachel Herschman is Curatorial Assistant, both at ISAW.

This talk explores the role of art in Gallic religion before, during, and after Caesar’s conquest. The Gauls themselves left few written documents about their religious beliefs, possibly because the druids insisted on the oral transmission of knowledge. The material record reveals that they had not necessarily imagined their gods in human form before conquest, though they were accustomed to appeasing supernatural forces with gifts of exquisitely crafted metalwork. After annexation, the inscribed and sculpted stone monuments that they began to dedicate bear witness to a fascinating era of experimentation, when their newly imagined gods were represented alongside Greek and Roman ones for the first time. In reassessing the role of art in Gallic religion, this talk sheds new light on the rich cultural heritage of the Roman Empire’s provinces.

Digital resources have become an essential part of studying the languages, history, and material culture of the Ancient Mediterranean. This one-day conference looks at how this disciplinary turn is being integrated into both undergraduate and graduate courses. There will be sustained attention during the day on current practice in recent courses, and the speakers all have considerable teaching experience. Speakers will also address the goals of using digital methods, tools and resources in a wide range of pedagogic and institutional settings. Digital approaches to teaching do not merely replicate earlier methods so that new possibilities for expanding the scope of curricula will be an important topic. The day will end with a panel discussion and we will welcome input from all who are in attendance.

Like literature, religion is a topic about which most people believe to speak informed and competently, because we all have been exposed to it in one way or another. In fact, things are not that simple, if we think of religion encompassing more than just faith and include aspects of divinity, institutions, community, practice, and theology. This talk will trace Assyriological approaches to ancient religions in Mesopotamia and address the question of intellectual and religious history by tackling it through the lens of our own scholarly history since the decipherment of the cuneiform script in the second half of the 19th century. For the most part, in Assyriology, there are no real schools of approaches towards the history of religion, as one could define them, for instance, for topics such as sedentarization and urbanism, law, or economics. Rather, we can observe moments, when individual scholars touching upon topics of ancient Near Eastern religion would also engage with an interdisciplinary discourse occurring outside Assyriology in the fields of history of religion, anthropology, literary theory, intertextuality and narratology as well as art history and visual theory.

The lecture, presented at La Maison Française, is held in conjunction with the exhibition Devotion and Decadence: The Berthouville Treasure and Roman Luxury from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, on view at NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, 15 East 84th St., from October 17 to January 6. Co-sponsored by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and La Maison Française. NO RSVP REQUIRED

Join us in the galleries for a 20 minute in-depth discussion of a single object from Devotion and Decadence: The Berthouville Treasure and Roman Luxury. Every Wednesday from October 17 - December 19 we will focus on one object and explore its specific history, iconography, and manufacture in this brief lunchtime talk. Each discussion will feature a different object and visitors are welcome to return for a fresh conversation each week. Clare Fitzgerald is Associate Director for Exhibitions and Gallery Curator, and Rachel Herschman is Curatorial Assistant, both at ISAW.

It is common knowledge that much more circulated than silk on the so-called “Silk Road” that connected China to the powerful and wealthy states that ruled over Inner Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East from the 6th to the 10th century CE. Textual sources, as well as archaeological and iconographical ones, show clear evidence for instance that from the 6th to the 10th century CE, Central Asians that resided in China continuously maintained a local form of Zoroastrianism, that Chinese literati designated by the character “xian 祆”. These sources, however, also shed a light on many contradictions. Tombs of the elite demonstrate adaptations of funerary practices; cross-examination of visual and textual material indicates inconsistencies regarding the identity of the gods that dominated the pantheon; and textual descriptions of xian rituals betray many idiosyncrasies. By questioning these discrepancies and trying to understand whether they resulted from mutations of Zoroastrianism as a consequence of its evolution in a multi-cultural context, or if they were mere misunderstandings by unfamiliar Chinese observers, this talk will aim at offering a better understanding of the multi-faceted narrative of the diffusion of Central Asian religions in China.