Description:

The Global Antiquities Research Workshop presents Professor Morag Kersel (Archaeology, DePaul University):

The (W)Hole Story: People, Pots, and Planes along the Dead Sea Plain, Jordan

Demand for Early Bronze Age (3600-2000 BCE) archaeological objects has resulted in decades of illegal excavation and thousands of holes at sites along the Dead Sea Plain in Jordan. A comprehensive approach, which includes archaeological evidence (pots), archival documents (people and pots), interviews (people), and aerial surveys using unpiloted aerial vehicles (planes), provides valuable clues from the past and present regarding the holes. Ethnographic insights into the scope, scale, and movement of looted artifacts are coupled with an aerial site-monitoring project investigating change over time in order to assess the potential impact of various Jordanian Department of Antiquities’ anti-looting campaigns and local community outreach programs. This work examines the (w)hole picture and the responses of individuals and institutions to holes at sites along the Dead Sea Plain in Jordan.

A light reception will precede the talk.

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The Global Antiquities research group brings together Northwestern scholars who specialize in the study of the literatures, histories, and cultures of the ancient world, regardless of discipline or regional specialty. Our interests range from Mesopotamian art to Greek philosophy, from classical Latin poetry to Hindu Brahmin law, and from Tang dynasty China to Syriac and Coptic Christianity. The group (formed in the summer of 2017) gets together once or twice a quarter for colloquia, field trips, or invited talks. The group's goal is to enliven both the scholarship and the teaching of its members, and to offer a fresh and exciting take – interdisciplinary and global in essence – on antiquity more broadly, in order to make a significant contribution to the humanities within the university and beyond it.