Search results for ""Author Geoff Emberling""

Pioneers to the Past: American Archaeologists in the Middle East, 1919-1920, the catalogue of the Oriental Institute special exhibit of the same name, highlights the interconnected stories of an important figure in intellectual history - James Henry Breasted - and the beginnings of American scientific archaeology in the Near East at a crucial turning point in world history. At the end of World War I, Breasted and a small team of scholars set sail for the Near East on what would be an eleven-month odyssey across the region. The fascinating mix of politics, scholarship, and history (both ancient and modern) as seen through a focus on the larger-than-life persona of James Henry Breasted lies at the heart of Pioneers to the Past. Breasted's letters and photographs from his trip provide a window into the engagement of modern scholarship with the ancient world, in a highly charged setting of power politics in the early twentieth century. The essays in this catalogue explain the historical, legal, and political context in a way that greatly enriches our understanding of Breasted's journey and its aftermath.

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The cultures of Nubia built the earliest cities, states, and empires of inner Africa, but they remain relatively poorly known outside their modern descendants and the community of archaeologists, historians, and art historians researching them. The earliest archaeological work in Nubia was motivated by the region's role as neighbor, trade partner, and enemy of ancient Egypt. Increasingly, however, ancient Nile-based Nubian cultures are recognized in their own right as the earliest complex societies in inner Africa. As agro-pastoral cultures, Nubian settlement, economy, political organization, and religious ideologies were often organized differently from those of the urban, bureaucratic, and predominantly agricultural states of Egypt and the ancient Near East. Nubian societies are thus of great interest in comparative study, and are also recognized for their broader impact on the histories of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia brings together chapters by an international group of scholars on a wide variety of topics that relate to the history and archaeology of the region. After important introductory chapters on the history of research in Nubia and on its climate and physical environment, the largest part of the volume focuses on the sequence of cultures that lead almost to the present day. Several cross-cutting themes are woven through these chapters, including essays on desert cultures and on Nubians in Egypt. Eleven final chapters synthesize subjects across all historical phases, including gender and the body, economy and trade, landscape archaeology, iron working, and stone quarrying.

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With an introduction by Professor McGuire Gibson, this up-to-date account describes the state of the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad and chronicles the damage done to archaeological sites by illicit digging. Contributors include Donny George, John M. Russell, Katharyn Hanson, Clemens Reichel, Elizabeth C. Stone, and Patty Gerstenblith. Published in conjunction with the exhibit of the same name opening at the Oriental Institute April 10, 2008, this book commemorates the fifth anniversary of the looting of the Iraq National Museum.

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Graffiti—unsanctioned marks in public built spaces—are increasingly recognized as worthy of study in contexts both ancient and modern. For ancient societies, graffiti are personal expressions that are otherwise rare in the archaeological and historical record. This volume is focused around a group of ancient and medieval figural graffiti found in 2015 by an archaeological project of the Kelsey Museum, University of Michigan, at the site of El-Kurru. Located in northern Sudan, El-Kurru was a royal pyramid burial ground of kings and queens of Kush from about 850 to 650 BCE. Written in conjunction with the exhibition "Graffiti as Devotion along the Nile" at the Kelsey Museum (on view 23 August 2019-29 March 2020), essays by an international group of seven scholars present the site of El-Kurru and its graffiti in historical context. Chapters discuss the history of Kush, ancient graffiti in a funerary temple and medieval graffiti on a pyramid at El-Kurru, and graffiti at other sites in Kush and Egypt (Musawwarat es-Sufra, Philae, and Banganarti) and beyond (Pompeii). Other chapters discuss the rock art of Sudan and methods used for the conservation and documentation of graffiti at El-Kurru. The volume concludes with an annotated catalog of graffiti from El-Kurru and a photo essay of the contemporary Nile Valley practice of "hajj images" that commemorate Muslim pilgrimage. Written to engage non-specialist readers, the book will be of interest to archaeologists, ancient and medieval historians, and art historians working in the Nile Valley and beyond, and to a broader community interested in these subjects. Illustrated in colour and b&w throughout.

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