Recent Events

This workshop will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. Belief systems around the body have a great influence on how societies conceptualize themselves, others, and their divinities. For the ancient world, the idealized bodies of gods and heroes, immortalized in flawless marble, have long defined our vision of Greece and Rome, but beyond these perfect forms lies a more complex story. This workshop delves into the lived reality of the body in antiquity, exploring how beliefs surrounding beauty, fitness, medicine, and disability shaped societies.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. This talk will explore some of the questions and controversies surrounding the deployment of these Turkish troops and its consequences, drawing upon a contemporary literary work recently translated by the speaker, "The Turks and the Caliphal Army," by the celebrated Arabic writer al-Jahiz (d. 868).

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Prof. von Reden will offer alternative ways of thinking about why we find Chinese silk in Palmyra, Egyptian glass vessels in Afghanistan, and Roman coins in Thailand and Vietnam.

ISAW's open house for prospective doctoral students will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. The event will include an opportunity to meet the ISAW faculty; an information session about our academic program; a Q&A session with current students; and sessions on archaeology, digital humanities, exhibitions, and the library at ISAW.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. This lecture investigates the functions of craftsmen's marks found on various surfaces of glazed bricks from the 1st millennium BCE. It will be shown at which stages of the production and construction process these marks were applied.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. The first regions in East Asia to develop sophisticated metalworking traditions from the second millennium BCE onward were the various cultural and political centers of Inner China, including the historical Shang and Zhou dynasties based in the Yellow River valley.

This workshop will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. As the Roman Empire expanded into the Eastern Mediterranean, the city of Rome became a crossroads of new products, peoples, and religions. Much to the dismay of some Roman authors, the capital transformed into a multi-religious city, home to cults and communities from Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, Judaea-Palestina, and beyond. Within this diverse landscape, religious groups both preserved their traditions and adapted to life in Rome.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. For nearly 100 years, the South African site of Mapungubwe has been central to our understanding of the Iron Age in southern Africa. Its burials, first excavated in the 1930’s, were laden with gold, thousands of glass beads, and clear expressions of social hierarchy.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. This talk will analyze how the Chu, Qin and Han empires conquered and colonized this region, gradually transforming it from a culturally alien frontier into a regular, if remote, part of the Han empire. The paucity of texts on this region’s early history reflects the disdain early China’s literate elites held towards it and makes archaeological evidence particularly important.

Prof. Candida Moss draws from her research in her recent book, God’s Ghostwriters, to reveal how enslaved scribes, copyists, and curators were essential to the production, preservation, and dissemination of the texts we now regard as sacred or canonical.

This workshop will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. Mysterious rituals, legends of mighty gods, massive temples, tombs filled with offerings for the afterlife, visions of mythical creatures, magic amulets, and echoes in literature that remain sacred today.

Dr. Leah Mascia presents on the ways in which funerary customs of Roman Egypt adapted to a changing multicultural landscape while remaining firmly embedded in the Pharaonic tradition.