The Huqoq Excavation Project : 2014-2017 interim report

Excavations at Huqoq in Israel’s eastern Lower Galilee are bringing to light a Late Roman synagogue, a medieval public building, and the remains of ancient and modern (pre-1948) villages. In this interim report, we describe the major discoveries of the 2014–2017 seasons, including the extraordinary figural mosaics decorating the synagogue floor. Our discoveries provide evidence of a Galilean Jewish community that flourished through the 5th and 6th centuries c.e.—a picture contrasting with recent claims of a decline in Jewish settlement under Byzantine Christian rule. The possibility that the medieval public building might also be a synagogue has important implications for understanding Galilean Jewish settlement in the Middle Ages, about which almost nothing is known. The excavations also shed light on the last phase of the settlement’s long history: the development of the modern village of Yakuk in the 19th through 20th centuries.peer-reviewe

SURFACE, SUGGESTION, AND SEEING THROUGH: VISUAL PERCEPTION AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF OBJECTS DEPICTED IN ROMAN WALL PAINTING

In this dissertation, I investigate the depiction of luxury objects in Roman wall paintings as emblematic and visually evocative of public spectacle and displays of art. In spite of their ubiquity in the paintings of a period that saw historic changes in the social and material culture of the Roman world, such objects have largely been studied only as a select corpus of illusionistically framed “still lifes” or subsumed into more general discussions. Through a diachronic analysis of exemplary objects—textiles, opaque and transparent vessels—I investigate how these depictions evoked their real counterparts through visualizations of material properties. In my first three chapters respectively, I closely analyze these paintings of objects and the optical effects that made them appeal—by means of vision—to a viewer’s sense of touch. Through a close reading of Latin and Greek sources on ekphrases in rhetorical training and its deployment in texts, I contextualize the phenomenon in ancient theories of argument, communication, and, above all, visualization. I argue that, in ancient painting, the detailed materiality of objects was the primary vehicle of enargeia, or vividness. Just as ancient authors describe the sparkle of metals or the lifelikeness of figures embroidered into textiles, painters produced these effects and ornaments in the paintings of all Four Styles, and both strove to make something material—an object, event, experience—present to their audience. The results of my study provide new insights into core problems in the study of Roman fresco and ancient art more broadly. Through my investigation I demonstrate how depictions of objects played an integral role in the creation of intersubjective meaning and shaped the visual experience of viewers. I argue that techniques of trompe l’oeil—founded not only on conceits of deception but also displays techne—provided a theoretical and aesthetic basis for the paintings’ address to viewers. This argument furthermore supports the identification of objects and materiality, as opposed to space, as the foundation of ancient systems of perspective. I argue that given these emphases and goals, ancient paintings often incorporated a balance of haptic and optic visual properties. Through my examination of a selection of depicted objects and ancient texts that provide insight into the generative process of representations and their reception, I develop a method of visual analysis that provides a better understanding of how Roman frescoes succeeded as seductive illusions. Both imitative and vivid, the paintings demonstrate their anonymous makers’ attention to perception and imagination in their success as convincing representations that connected elite Romans with the spectacles of public events, spaces, and displays of art

Molecular Epidemiology of Early and Acute HIV Type 1 Infections in the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2005–2010

The U.S. military represents a unique population within the human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1) pandemic. The last comprehensive study of HIV-1 in members of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps (Sea Services) was completed in 2000, before large-scale combat operations were taking place. Here, we present molecular characterization of HIV-1 from 40 Sea Services personnel who were identified during their seroconversion window and initially classified as HIV-1 negative during screening. Protease/reverse transcriptase (pro/rt) and envelope (env) sequences were obtained from each member of the cohort. Phylogenetic analyses were carried out on these regions to determine relatedness within the cohort and calculate the most recent common ancestor for the related sequences. We identified 39 individuals infected with subtype B and one infected with CRF01_AE. Comparison of the pairwise genetic distance of Sea Service sequences and reference sequences in the env and pro/rt regions showed that five samples were part of molecular clusters, a group of two and a group of three, confirmed by single genome amplification. Real-time molecular monitoring of new HIV-1 acquisitions in the Sea Services may have a role in facilitating public health interventions at sites where related HIV-1 infections are identified

Sieve analysis of breakthrough HIV-1 sequences in HVTN 505 identifies vaccine pressure targeting the CD4 binding site of Env-gp120.

Although the HVTN 505 DNA/recombinant adenovirus type 5 vector HIV-1 vaccine trial showed no overall efficacy, analysis of breakthrough HIV-1 sequences in participants can help determine whether vaccine-induced immune responses impacted viruses that caused infection. We analyzed 480 HIV-1 genomes sampled from 27 vaccine and 20 placebo recipients and found that intra-host HIV-1 diversity was significantly lower in vaccine recipients (P ≤ 0.04, Q-values ≤ 0.09) in Gag, Pol, Vif and envelope glycoprotein gp120 (Env-gp120). Furthermore, Env-gp120 sequences from vaccine recipients were significantly more distant from the subtype B vaccine insert than sequences from placebo recipients (P = 0.01, Q-value = 0.12). These vaccine effects were associated with signatures mapping to CD4 binding site and CD4-induced monoclonal antibody footprints. These results suggest either (i) no vaccine efficacy to block acquisition of any viral genotype but vaccine-accelerated Env evolution post-acquisition; or (ii) vaccine efficacy against HIV-1s with Env sequences closest to the vaccine insert combined with increased acquisition due to other factors, potentially including the vaccine vector