The Mountain Fortresses of Rabana-Merquly in Iraqi-Kurdistan

The twin fortresses of Rabana-Merquly are situated on the western side of Mt. Piramagrun, one of the most prominent massifs in the Zagros Mountains. A defining feature of these adjoining settlements are their matching, approximately life-size rock-reliefs depicting a ruler in Parthian dress, which flank the entrance to both sites. Behind the perimeter walls several structures have been recorded including a citadel and a sanctuary complex. The combined intramural area is in excess of 40 hectares. Based on the style of relief sculptures, and the material culture of their associated intramural settlements, occupation is dated to the early first millennium A.D. Investigations at Rabana-Merquly are a collaboration between Heidelberg University and the Sulaymaniyah Directorate of Antiquities. This talk gives an overview of the main fieldwork results to date, emphasizing the relationship between the fortified settlements and the wider landscape of the central Zagros highlands

Mysterious Uškiani - Armenian Gold: The Driving Force for Development in the Bronze Age Caucasus Region?

The Gegharkunik region on the south eastern edge of Lake Sevan (Armenia) is a part of southern Caucasia uniquely suited to demonstrate the intensive interchange between pre-Christian settlement and gold mining. The enclosed landscape can be seen in this regard as a prehistoric terra incognita due to the wholesale lack of archaeological and archaeometallurgical investigations to date. It has been proven that there was major exploitation of gold from the defined geographical area in antiquity. One of the largest gold mines in Near East is still located there today. The mines position on the Sotk pass, which is the direct connection between southern and eastern Caucasia and thus has a strategic importance for the entire region, is also of significance. Initial approaches revealed outlines of the prehistoric settlement patterns which could be placed in relation to contemporary gold mining in a clearly delineated natural corridor along this superregional communication and trade route. The intention is to implement an intensive holistic-archaeological and archaeometallurgical investigation of the settlement network in the surroundings of the gold mine and an interdisciplinary attempt to imbed these structures in the larger ecological and anthropogenic environment. The existence of placer gold in several local rivers as well as ancient mining traces has already been demonstrated. The findings of placer gold, along with the geochemical fingerprinting of primary and secondary gold sources from this region will make it possible to analyze the origins of golden artefacts found in the wider vicinity of the area. The opportunity to study gold items from numerous Age finds from Armenia allow for an extensive reconstruction of the early use of gold and its importance in ancient Near Eastern cultures

Corpus Asher-Greve. Dealing with "Data form the Past"

SNF-Project (1.722-0.83): Naturwissenschaftliche und typologische Untersuchungen an Rollsiegeln. When?         1983-1986 Who?           Dr. Julia Asher-Greve and Prof. Dr. Willem Stern, University of Basel Material?     1017 cylinder seals from Mesopotamia and neighbouring regions covering all periods from Uruk to Achaemenid period. What? XRD (X-ray diffraction) -> mineralogical composition EDXRF (energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence) -> chemical composition Iconographical typology Project couldn’t be brought to an end, data not interpreted   PhD-Project based on the corpus and analyses of the project Asher-Greve When?         2017-2020 (?) Who?           Nicole Gäumann Material?     Same What? Interpretation of XRD- and EDXRF from previous project Further analyses on existing powder samples (?) Typology Bringing together the results of the material analyses and the archaeological data, the material ought to be interpreted in terms of connections between material, colour, dating, provenance, theme, owner… &nbsp

Papyri to the rescue: reconstructing Hellenistic male-female couple relationships through papyrological documentation

The relationships of ordinary male-female couples in Antiquity remain a field of research still little explored, especially regarding the study of feelings, emotions, real-life experiences, and couple dynamics through everyday life. Thus, it is essential to look into this theme, both in the Greek and Roman worlds, in a diachronic and synchronic perspective; this is the purpose of a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) project at the University of Lausanne, entitled “Couple relationships in Antiquity”. My PhD thesis, as part of this project, intends to explore couple relationships during the Hellenistic period, in Greece, Asia Minor, and Ptolemaic Egypt, through literary, epigraphic, and papyrological documentation. In this context, Greek papyri provide notable elements, that can complement and counteract the data issued from literary sources and inscriptions whose one of the biases is to present an idealized or incomplete vision of couples’ relationships; nevertheless, we must keep in mind that papyri suffer from their own specific biases.My aim in this paper is to show how possible it is to integrate different types of papyri – letters, marriage contracts, wills, complaints, etc – as part of a study on couples’ real-life experience, while identifying some of the key methodological aspects necessary for this type of analysis, by presenting excerpts from several documents. Furthermore, the addition of an adequate methodological canvas allows going beyond the cultural and/or typological filters and biases inherent to this type of documentation, and its inclusion in the global corpus of my thesis, in which most documents are from the ‘classical’ Greek world

The Materiality of Cylinder Seals

In the 1980ies Dr. Julia Asher-Greve conducted chemical and mineralogical material analysis on cylinder seals as a part of her SNF-funded project „Naturwissenschaftliche und typologische Untersuchungen an Rollsiegeln“. 1017 seals have been analysed using the non-destructive methods of EDS-XFA (energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis) for chemical classification and XRF (X-ray diffraction) for mineralogical classification. This was one of the first large scale projects on Mesopotamian glyptic with its main focus on materiality rather than style, iconography or inscription as was usually the case when working on cylinder seals. Since then much work on the materiality of seals has been done, mostly by institutions such as the British Museum. This is because those institutions have access to large seal corpora and they either have the funds to pay for the costly analysis or possess the means to analyse the seals themselves. As I ‘inherited’ the unfinished project of Dr. Asher-Greve including the analysis (which still need to be interpreted), I am painfully aware of the difficulties and problems to be encountered with such old analysis. In my 10-minute talk I will give an insight to the chances and limitations of scientific material analysis on archaeological artefacts. For especially small and precious objects like cylinder seals need to be treated with the uttermost care and under no circumstances should they take damage in the process of being analysed

Mesopotamian medical information in the divination series Šumma ālu

The proposed communication aims at presenting the preliminary results of my pilot research project “Mesopotamian medical notions in the divination series Šumma ālu”. Thanks to the endowment of a Henri Frankfort Short-Term Fellowship, I have conducted this study at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London (January-April 2019). The aim of this research was to conduct a first survey of all medical-related information comprised in the terrestrial omens of the series Šumma ālu. Medical sources provide useful information to the reconstruction of Babylonian scientific and intellectual history; however, if considered alone, they do not allow us to understand various aspects of medical rationale. For this reason, scholars have been interested also in sources outside the medical corpus. I decided to follow their footsteps by focusing on Šumma ālu, which has been labelled as an encyclopaedia for every aspect of ancient Mesopotamian everyday life. This line of enquiry has never been attempted before, as the medical corpus has been compared usually with magic, not divination. Moreover, the difficulties embodied by the processes of the textual edition of the divination series have slowed its accessibility. However, the edition of the first half of Šumma ālu has been completed recently, and two ongoing projects (Geneva, Vienna) are aimed at completing this task. The communication will present the general context of this pilot project, its preliminary results and its possible future developments

Evolution of a social dynamic in a changing landscape: the case of Argos (Argolis, Greece) in the Mycenaean period

Argos in the Mycenaean period consists of a real enigma. Compared to its neighbours, amongst others Mycenae, Tiryns and Midea, Argos, after being a flourishing center in the Middle Helladic period, lost of it’s importance until the End of the Mycenaean palatial period, while maintaining a continuous occupation. During the transitional phase (MH III/LH I), and despite the fact that some parts of the argiv settlement continues to grow, as shown in particular by the work undertaken on the fortified acropolis of the Aspis, Argos, will experience a gradual decline as shown in particular through the abandonment of certain residential areas and the relocation of some population groups within and probably beyond its borders. According to one possible scenario, a group of people moved, at the very beginning of MH III, from Argos to Mycenae participating in the spectacular rise of Mycenae from the late MH period and onwards.Through this communication, we will first try to demonstrate, based on the archaeological reality, the status of Argos from the transitional phase (MH III/LH I) and during the LH period within the organization of the Argolis. In a second step, we will try to define the causes that influenced the evolution of this status. We will demonstrate how a series of natural disasters and in particular the eruption of Thera may have influenced the political, economic and social geography of the Argolis to the detriment of Argos. Based on the archaeological discoveries and the Adaptive Cycle (AC) model, we will show how some sites or parts of the Argolis functioned according to a positive/negative system throughout the protohistoric periods

nam-nar/nārūtu in the Seleucid Period: revisiting an excerpt of CT 17, pl. 18 [BM 34223+]

We find the following textual excerpt in the cuneiform tablet BM 34223+, a manuscript of the exorcistic bilingual (Sumerian-Akkadian) series from the Seleucid Period currently known as “Compendium”: iv 18. en2 saŋ-gig an-eden-na i3-du7-du7 im-gen7 mu-un-ri-riiv 19. im-dub 24 EZEN(šer3/kešda) nam-nar eš2-gar3 udug-ḫul-meš nu al-til iv 18. Incantation: “The (demon of the) headache whirls in the steppe, and it drifts there like the wind”iv 19. 24th Tablet. Song/riksu of the nam-nar. Series “Evil demons”. Not complete. There have been several interpretations in the past for the “EZEN nam-nar” of this textual excerpt; however, all of them have been based on different readings and meanings of EZEN without a serious analysis of the textual mentions of the Sumerian nam-nar (and its Akkadian equivalent nārūtu) during the Seleucid Period

Economic models in Ancient Near East economies

Input definitions: Economy – the core is the allocation of goods and resources Model – theoretical and simplified concept of reality the aim of which is to illustrate mechanisms governing the reality Two assumptions: we do not treat Near East economy as a whole problem with precise statistical data referring to the ancient times Models: circulations: production, storage, distribution and consumption  G=f(P, R, T, I), where G is global income (produced goods),P – people, R – resources, T – technology and I – institutions cooperation between state (including religious institutions) and private sector question of existence of market economy - demand and supply with price or its equivalent as a tool of relation Terms and persons to clarify: nmḥ (Egyptian) - people, who had own land and paid taxes to the royal treasure = ἐλεύθερος (Greek) tamkaru (Akkadian) - royal clerks who performed long-distance trade for fixed prices embeddedness - economic behaviour in certain historical and social conditions as well as cultural and even religious ones John Maynard Keynes – British economist (1883-1946) - Keynesianism idea assumes a great role of the state as the creator of demand Key problem: correspondence of contemporary economic models with the reality of the ancient Near East Question of the talk: translation of economic rules current in our times into different realities in the earlier times – continuity vs. chang