In 1960 Michael Jameson of the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania published the editio princeps of an inscription from Troezen in the Argolid purporting to represent a decree of the Athenian strategos Themistokles. Because the text appears to conflict with the Herodotean account of the Persian Wars, for fifty years scholars have struggled with the authenticity of this document. Is it an inept Hellenistic copy of the original from ca. 481 BCE? is it an amalgam of decrees from the 5th-3rd centuries? or, is it a forgery, a 3rd century attempt to reimagine the past for contemporary purposes? This paper will review the scholarly assessment of Jameson’s discovery and attempt to reconcile the decree with both classical and Hellenistic Greek history.

Reception to follow in the Mosaic Hall

The OLD was begun in 1932 and published between 1968 and 1982. The paper tells why it was commissioned and how it was assembled, and then brought to completion despite internal disagreements and at one point, madness. A major focus is on the tension between scholarly plans and the economics of publishing, but lexicographical technique and the academic reception of the Dictionary are also discussed.

During this afternoon lecture, Robert Wittman will discuss his experiences rising from humble roots as the son of an antiques dealer to build a twenty-year law-enforcement career that was nothing short of extraordinary. Armed with a scholar’s passion, a con man’s smile, and a daredevil’s nerves, he worked undercover to catch art thieves, scammers, and black-market traders in Paris and Philadelphia, Rio and Santa Fe, Miami and Madrid. During his twenty years as an FBI special agent, his accomplishments included the creation of the bureau’s Art Crime Team. He has recovered more than $300 million of stolen art and cultural property.

Brown bag lecture - please bring a lunch!

It is rarely possible to speak monolithically of ancient Mesopotamia, which saw, over the millennia succeeding the appearance of the first cities in its southern plains, the rise and fall of great empires, ephemeral against long periods of more localized rule; interaction with great polities both on its borders and beyond; and the continual influx of new peoples, which formed ruling dynasties such as those of the Amorites and Kassites or blended quietly into the existing population. Against this backdrop of near constant change, however, the inhabitants of the land between the rivers yet maintained something of a common worldview, a shared perception of the overarching principles that shaped and defined their cosmos – and their own place within this, rooted and developing out of the events of the late fourth through the third millennium BCE as the landscape became an increasingly urban one: south Mesopotamia, following on the heels of the late Uruk expansion and contraction, came to be dominated by a network of city-states, each comprising one or more walled urban settlements, within which resided the city’s patron god and ruler, and the surrounding agricultural hinterland. The developing individual and collective identity in Mesopotamia, and the definition of what exactly it meant to be human, is here explored through the various threats posed to it in a discussion that draws upon both the visual and the textual sources.

Part of Orthodoxy Week 2012 Contact tkout@sas.upenn.edu for more information

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, men and women in the Shanxi region of north China rebuilt local society under the leadership of Buddhist and Daoist clergy. Those men and women left thousands of inscriptional records on stone steles, some only recently discovered. This body of fresh sources demonstrates that after the Mongol conquest destroyed numerous families and lineages in the early thirteenth century, Daoist and Buddhist clergy formed extensive new networks. In these networks, ordinary women gained support from prefectural/provincial governors to build shelters for orphaned children; destitute scholars found alternate careers in editing, printing, and teaching the new Daoist canon. In addition, both Daoist and Buddhist clergy actively cooperated with villagers to rebuild local irrigated ditches and to organize irrigation associations.

While Neo-Confucian institutions—such as private schools, community compacts, and lineage organizations—were prominent in the south, religious organizations and village associations prevailed in the north, where Neo-Confucian teachings had little impact. This contrast is crucial. First, it shows that the Confucian-educated literati were by no means the social elite throughout traditional China at all times. Second, it runs counter to the conventional argument that religious institutions declined in China as crucial social institutions after the Song dynasty and Confucian schools and corporate lineage estates took their place. Last, it rebuts the assumptions that the southern model of social change was replicated in other regions of China.

Next Meeting of the Pre-Columbian Society

Gillett G. Griffin, curator emeritus of Pre-Columbian and Native American Art at the Princeton University Art Museum, will share his exciting stories of adventures in Mexico and Central America in pictures and words. In 1966, he went to Mexico for the first time to paint, explore and write. An intrepid explorer, he was co-discoverer of rare Olmec cave paintings deep in Juxtlahuaca Cave in central Guerrero. During his tenure as Curator of Pre-Columbian Art, he served as an advisor for a PBS documentary Mystery of the Maya, which featured the chance re-discovery of Temple B at Rio Bec He also mapped the highland Olmec site of Chalcatzingo, Morelos. Accompanying Mr. Griffin will be musician John Burkhalter performing on original Pre-Columbian wind instruments including the only known jade Maya flute.

Recent research at the site of Tell Atchana, ancient Alalakh, in the province of Hatay (southern Turkey) has clarified the history of the city in the Late Bronze (LB) I, II and Early Iron I periods. While it was previously thought that the city was continuously inhabited from c.2000BC to about 1190BC, it can now be seen that there were several periods of abandonment and/or political realignment. The first, during the transition after the destruction of the Level VII Palace (final Middle Bronze Age), gradually ushered in a period of Mitannian overlordship in Levels IV-VI followed by a Hittite takeover in Levels III-I. Local responses to foreign imperial domination were varied and can be seen both in texts and in the hybrid local material culture that grew to incorporate features of Mitanni and Hittite origin. Textual references suggest that Alalakh could be fickle in its political alliances and remained proud of its local Amorite heritage. Excavations confirm that the site was burned at least three times in the Late Bronze I-IIa. Most if not all of the site was finally abandoned around 1300/1290BC and reoccupied briefly in Level O (c.1140BC) by a population that utilized a combination of local Bronze Age-derived wares, LH IIIC-Middle Developed ware, and Handmade Burnished Ware. This is the first time that this particular cultural facies has been discovered in the Amuq and may have some relation to the ‘Sea Peoples’ phenomenon of widespread migration in the 12th century Mediterranean. This paper details the new findings from field seasons 2006-2011 and begins to reconstruct the historical narrative of this important site in the LBI-Iron I.

The economy influences our daily lives, in everything from job creation to tax policy. The same is true in Old Kingdom Egypt (ca. 2600-2200 BC), which serves as an interesting example of how an early state met economic challenges and influenced its populace. Though the pyramids might seem to suggest that the royal house had completely dominated the country’s wealth, a closer look shows us the limitations of the royal house and the vibrancy of the private economic sphere. This talk will show what an ancient economy looked like and the diversity apparent within the Old Kingdom.

This event is sponsored by ARCE-PA. Entrance fees are $8 for the general public, $5 for University Museum members and PennCard holders, and FREE for ARCE-PA members.

Drawing upon the vast pool of zooarchaeological evidence, this lecture surveys how the study of animals in Greek and Roman antiquity reveals key information about the character and behavior of the people of these times, much of which, in turn, is not available through the investigation of any other line of archaeological, literary or artistic evidence. Topics assessed include the identity of households in ancient Pompeii, the role of animals in Greek and Roman cult and ritual, the personal attachment of individuals with pets, the manipulation of livestock to suit ever-changing cultural demands, and the use of meat as a status marker in classical antiquity. Illustrated examples from current archaeological and zooarchaeological fieldwork across the ancient Mediterranean context provide vivid and interesting case studies of these aspects in practice.

In 1911, a Yale historian and explorer named Hiram Bingham followed a series of guides, some of them indigenous, to ridgetop complex of Inca palaces, temples and terraces in the Andes Mountains of Southern Peru. This was Machu Picchu, and in the years following, Bingham made the site famous in the pages of National Geographic and incited a century-long fight between Yale and Peru over the ownership of its artifacts. In this talk, Christopher Heaney will draw from his book, Cradle of Gold, to detail the background of that controversy, locating it in Peruvian efforts at national patrimony protection, North American collection methods, and local traditions of antiquarianism and study. He will also examine the collaborations and conflicts between Yale's investigators and the farmers who lived at the site and were drafted into digging up the graves up the Incas. Incorporating his ongoing research, he will show how the fight for Machu Picchu was a watershed moment in the history of Peruvian cultural patrimony -- and how its resolution in 2010 suggests a new opportunity for U.S.-Peruvian cooperation.

Registration required, please email info@arceny.com

Paddle dolls, a genre of figurine infamous for wild hairdos and prominent pubic triangles, have been interpreted variously as concubines for the dead, as children’s toys, or as figurines linked to notions of fertility and rebirth. On the basis of eight lines of evidence, it will be argued that they were, instead, representations of a specific category of women, namely the Late Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom musical performers who danced both *as* and *for* the goddess Hathor at Deir el-Bahari. Paddle dolls are usually studied without reference to their archaeological contexts, which has limited our ability to assess their cultural meaning. Many of the arguments introduced in this talk derive from a close study of the Metropolitan Museum’s excavations at the Theban necropolis of Asasif—the locale that has yielded the vast majority of excavated paddle dolls.

An important debate has recently formed over the predominant language in the late Roman diocese of Oriens. Whereas Roman historians once looked hard for the eastern spread of Latin, the gradual recognition of the importance of Greek for imperial affairs has led to a rise in the study of official inscriptions in Greek from the region. Simultaneously, there has been a boom in the study of Syriac among scholars of Late Antiquity, many of whom now view Syriac (or Christian Aramaic) as the dominant cultural carrier of Christianity in the Levant. This lecture will attempt to bridge the gap of these positions by considering the evidence of Greek literature in the East from c.200–c.900 CE. The two languages, Greek and Syriac, almost never appear in isolation from one another, and the literary history of the early Byzantine Orient can be fruitfully read as a dynamic between them.

Douglas G. Lovell, Jr., Annual “Reports from the Field” Dr. Josef Wegner, Associate Curator, Egyptian Section, and Dr. Richard M. Leventhal, Director, Penn Cultural Heritage Center, are featured presenters. Dr. Wegner shares details from his 2011–2012 excavations at Abydos, Egypt, where research on the mortuary complex of pharaoh Senwosret III has recently continued in both the ancient town and cemetery areas. He discusses results of ongoing excavations of the tomb of Senwosret III and a program of site development in collaboration with the American Research Center in Egypt and Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities to protect the cultural heritage of Abydos. Dr. Leventhal considers Maya heritage and its relationship to Mexican politics, indigenous rebellion, and tourism, as he focuses on a new Penn project in the Yucatán where a co-operative community heritage and development program is underway. In addition, he describes the goals and field projects of the new Penn Cultural Heritage Center within the Museum.

Lecture admission: Pay-what-you-want. Reception follows: $35; $25 Penn Museum members.

Conference

Fourth annual Center for Ancient Studies graduate student conference