Islamic Archaeology, specializing in Early and Middle periods (7-12th centuries) and Byzantine archaeology. Working primarily in Turkey and also the Levant (Syro-Palestine). Landscape and environmental studies, Frontier studies. Phone: 336-334-5203 Address: 2113 MHRA Building, Dept of History, UNCG
This is a complete history of Antioch, one of the most significant major cities of the eastern Me... more This is a complete history of Antioch, one of the most significant major cities of the eastern Mediterranean and a crossroads for the Silk Road, from its foundation by the Seleucids, through Roman rule, the rise of Christianity, Islamic and Byzantine conquests, to the Crusades and beyond.
Antioch has typically been treated as a city whose classical glory faded permanently amid a series of natural disasters and foreign invasions in the sixth and seventh centuries C.E. Such studies have obstructed the view of Antioch’s fascinating urban transformations from classical to medieval to modern city and the processes behind these. Through its comprehensive blend of textual sources and new archaeological data reanalyzed from Princeton’s 1930s excavations and recent discoveries, this book offers unprecedented insights into the complete history of Antioch, recreating the lives of the people who lived in it and focusing on the factors that affected them during the evolution of its remarkable cityscape. While Antioch’s built environment is central, the book also utilizes landscape archaeological work to consider the city in relation to its hinterland, and numismatic evidence to explore its economics. The outmoded portrait of Antioch as a sadly perished classical city par excellence gives way to one in which it shines as brightly in its medieval Islamic, Byzantine, and Crusader incarnations.
Antioch: A History offers a new portal to researching this long-lasting city and is also suitable for a wide variety of teaching needs, both undergraduate and graduate, in the fields of Classics, History, Urban Studies, Archaeology, Silk Road Studies, and Near Eastern/Middle Eastern Studies. Just as important, its clarity makes it attractive for, and accessible to, a general readership outside the framework of formal instruction.
The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers demonstrates that different areas of the Islamic po... more The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers demonstrates that different areas of the Islamic polity previously understood as “minor frontiers” were, in fact, of substantial importance to state formation. Contributors explore different conceptualizations of “border,” the importance of which previously went unrecognized, examining frontiers in regions including the Magreb, the Mediterranean, Egypt, Nubia, and the Caucasus through a combination of archaeological and documentary evidence.
Chapters highlight the significance of these respective regions to the emergence of new sociopolitical, cultural, and economic practices within the Islamic world. These studies successfully overcome the dichotomy of civilization’s center and peripheries in academic discourse by presenting the actual dynamics of identity formation and the definition, both spatial and cultural, of boundaries. The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers is a rare combination of a new reading of written evidence with results from archaeological studies that will modify established opinions on the character of the Islamic frontiers and stimulate similar studies for other regions. The book will be relevant to medieval Islamic studies as well as to research in the medieval world in general.
Contributors: Karim Alizadeh, Jana Eger, Kathryn J. Franklin, Renata Holod, Tarek Kahlaoui, Anthony J. Lauricella, Ian Randall, Giovanni R. Ruffini, Tasha Vorderstrasse
The retreat of the Byzantine Army from Syria in around 650 CE, in advance of the approaching Arab... more The retreat of the Byzantine Army from Syria in around 650 CE, in advance of the approaching Arab armies, is one that has resounded emphatically in the works of both Islamic and Christian writers, and created an enduring motif: that of the Islamic-Byzantine frontier. For centuries, Byzantine and Islamic scholars have evocatively sketched a contested border: the annual raids between the two, the line of fortified fortresses defending Islamic lands, the no-man's land in between and the birth of jihad. In their early representations of a Muslim-Christian encounter, accounts of the Islamic-Byzantine frontier are charged with significance for a future 'clash of civilizations' that often envisions a polarised world. A. Asa Eger examines the two aspects of this frontier: its ideological and physical ones. By uniting an exploration of both the real and material frontier and its more ideological military and religious implications, he offers a more complex vision of this dividing line than has been traditionally disseminated. With analysis grounded in archaeological evidence as well the relevant historical and religious texts, Eger brings together a nuanced exploration of this vital element of medieval history.
Through Islamic and Christian histories, an ideology has been maintained, persuasively and persis... more Through Islamic and Christian histories, an ideology has been maintained, persuasively and persistently, that their borders and bordering states were militarized and impenetrable. A paradigmatic example is the seventh to ninth century Islamic-Byzantine borderland (al-thughūr), a space frequently addressed in scholarship on Muslim and Christian holy wars, armies and raids, castles, and often treated as an abandoned land. From the seventh to tenth centuries, central, cosmopolitan Islamic writers and scholars on the frontiers describe this space both as a wilderness ready to be settled and a border delineated by a chain of fortresses garrisoned with army soldiers who raided the Byzantine lands yearly. The raids have the semblance of ritual as the Islamic armies neither occupied new lands nor built new settlements. Although Islamic and Byzantine sources describe the Byzantine border in less detail, they suggest, quite differently, a region scattered with an informal group of intermittent small fortresses held by an ad hoc local militia. Byzantines reciprocated raids into Islamic territory, and so the literature of these frontier castles contains numerous accounts of destruction, rebuilding, and further devastation.
HEROM: Journal on Hellenistic and Roman Material Culture, 2020
As Islamic archaeology has matured, it has outgrown several large debates. Scholars now largely a... more As Islamic archaeology has matured, it has outgrown several large debates. Scholars now largely agree that no huge decline occurred either after the Islamic conquests in the 7th century or when the ‘Abbāsids came to power in 750, nor was there an observable decline in the early 7th century during the Persian conquests. It is also thought the Umayyad dynasty did little to replace the existing societal, religious, and economic life in the Near East and beyond. Yet the ceramic evidence of the Umayyad period might tell a different story, for the ceramics of the Levant from the mid-7th to mid-8th centuries are elusive and difficult to discern or accurately date. The 11th century is also lightly represented ceramically, as is the 15th. Both of these latter periods can be tied to political upheavals: the weakening of ‘Abbāsid power and rise of many provincial autonomies, and the arrival of the Saljūqs in the 11th century, and the weakening of Mamlūk power and rise of the beyliks, together with the arrival of the Ottomans in the 15th. Here we bring together all three of these perceived gaps as part of a seemingly uniform pattern that reflects similar politically transitional and decentralized periods. Yet in viewing them side by side, we will see that these three periods are not the same, and that more nuance can complicate this historical pattern. Although historical events can be reflected in the archaeological record, it can be difficult, as the study of al-Mina has indicated, to link changes in pottery type to such events until some centuries after they occurred.
Ambassadors, Artists, and Theologians: Byzantine Relations with the Near East from the Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries, 2018
The Islamic-Byzantine frontier has become the centre of scholarly attention and, as a result, red... more The Islamic-Byzantine frontier has become the centre of scholarly attention and, as a result, redefined. Recent archaeological and textual work on the ṯuġūr or Islamic-Byzantine frontier, supports the presence of settlements, communities, and people traversing back and forth and refute the notion of a »no-man’s land«. However, textual evidence, mainly from Abbasid period sources, largely dates these activities from the mid-eighth to tenth centuries 1. Evidence from archaeological surveys and excavations also supports more intensive settlement in the eighth to tenth centuries. Nevertheless, the idea of an unsettled frontier, as a default, should not necessarily include the period from the mid-seventh to mid-eighth centuries, implying an initial century of frontier fighting over a depopulated no-man’s land. Focusing on the initial settlement of the frontier bears important implications for understanding the relationships between locals and between locals and the Umayyad ruling elite. This paper will utilize results from surveys and excavation combined with textual evidence from Greek, Arabic, and Syriac sources to closely examine the nature of settlement and social organization in the newly-acquired Islamic lands of the ṯuġūr in the seventh and eighth centuries. During this century, the Umayyad state and local, predominately Miaphysite Syriac-speaking Christian communities, both autonomously and in cooperation, developed key agricultural settlements alongside irrigation systems on the frontier.
In 2011, excavations at Tüpraş Field, the Early Islamic and Middle Byzantine settlement north of ... more In 2011, excavations at Tüpraş Field, the Early Islamic and Middle Byzantine settlement north of Kinet Höyük, revealed a set of long thin bronze tools with a decorated center, each one slightly different than the other. Parallels for these have been found around the Early Islamic world; however scholars have diverged on how to interpret their function. They have been published either as applicators for kohl or instruments for surgery. This short contribution will discuss the tools in their site context and examine similar published and unpublished ones elsewhere to first determine their date and geographical distribution. From the archaeological evidence, parallels, and Islamic medical texts, this paper will argue that their function was primarily surgical. The presence of these tools and other related objects in a small frontier settlement provide evidence for a wider trade in pharmacological and medical supplies that took place across the Islamic-Byzantine frontier.
The trace element boron is present in most ancient glasses as an impurity, and high boron (≥ 300 ... more The trace element boron is present in most ancient glasses as an impurity, and high boron (≥ 300 ppm) marks raw material sources that are geologically specific and relatively uncommon. Recent analyses of Byzantine glass with high boron contents suggest that glassmaking was not limited to the traditional regions of the Levant and Egypt, and a production origin in or near western Anatolia is proposed. Glass bracelets from Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt in southern Turkey give fresh evidence for the production and circulation of high-boron glasses that closely correlates with object typology. The patterning of findspots suggests that high-boron glass was closely connected to the Byzantine world.
The Tüpraş Field project is located near the high mound of Kinet Höyük in the Hatay Province of T... more The Tüpraş Field project is located near the high mound of Kinet Höyük in the Hatay Province of Turkey. The site was founded in the 8th century and continually occupied until the 12th century CE. Contemporary Arabic writers described the region as rich in agriculture and known for its cultivation of date palms and for its valuable timber resources. This paper presents the analysis of archaeobotanical macro remains, which are rare from this period, to allow for a greater understanding of the floral diversity, in terms of cereals, weeds, trees and wild species that would have been present in the region during the Islamic through medieval periods. The data supports cereal agriculture but also documents the emergence of a cotton boom, which is attested to in ethnohistorical sources but has rarely been confirmed through archaeobotanical remains. Substantial quantities of C. album in single contexts, likely representing storage, were recovered and raise questions about its role as either an agricultural weed species or a more significant contributor to the diet and health of the ancient population. The agricultural economy is clearly more complex than previously believed and this study adds to discussions on the intersections of environmental and Islamic studies with crucial archaeological evidence, which can, for example, counter-balance and nuance certain well-worn debated ideas, such as the nature of the Islamic Green ‘Revolution’.
In the last fifty years of Mamluk rule, sultans actively engaged in commerce, warfare, and dip... more In the last fifty years of Mamluk rule, sultans actively engaged in commerce, warfare, and diplomacy in their northern regions of Syria and Anatolia with the Ottomans, Aqquyunlu, and Dulgadir and Qaraman beyliks. However, scholarship in general neglects the thirtyyear period between Barsbāy and Qā’itbāy (1438-1468) or charts it as a period of decline. Further, aside from textual accounts, there is little material evidence pointing to the nature of interaction: commercial, military, or otherwise. This paper will present two unpublished inscriptions and argue that there is some evidence for Mamluk development and patronage on the frontier. The inscriptions, found in a village or small town in the Amuq Plain near Antakya in the Hatay Province of Turkey, bear the name of two fifteenth century Mamluk sultans. The inscriptions’ words, location, and context introduce wider evidence of Mamluk sultans as patrons in developing commercial routes and khāns and encouraging movement in general across northern Syria. This patronage occurred at a time when the dynamics of political power were fluctuating in surrounding southern Anatolia as they were in Egypt.
Cilicia on the Islamic-Byzantine frontier or al-thughūr in southeastern Anatolia and northern Syr... more Cilicia on the Islamic-Byzantine frontier or al-thughūr in southeastern Anatolia and northern Syria has been traditionally viewed as an isolated embattled buffer zone. Yet, it was also the main transportation corridor between Islamic and Byzantine lands, situated between the Cilician Gates, connecting to the Anatolian plateau, and the Syrian Gates, connecting to the lands of bilād al-shām. Recent survey and excavation of a fortified site occupied from the Early Islamic to Middle Byzantine period (8-12th centuries C.E.) in the eastern Cilician Plain offers a different perspective on the frontier. The site can be identified with Hisn al-Tīnāt, mentioned in sources as a frontier fort and timber depot and port. Its environmental context, architecture, and material establish links to local thughūr and wider Near Eastern networks of exchange. Further, the frontier site alludes to the complex symbiotic relationship of a militarized and economic resource-based frontier landscape.
This is a complete history of Antioch, one of the most significant major cities of the eastern Me... more This is a complete history of Antioch, one of the most significant major cities of the eastern Mediterranean and a crossroads for the Silk Road, from its foundation by the Seleucids, through Roman rule, the rise of Christianity, Islamic and Byzantine conquests, to the Crusades and beyond.
Antioch has typically been treated as a city whose classical glory faded permanently amid a series of natural disasters and foreign invasions in the sixth and seventh centuries C.E. Such studies have obstructed the view of Antioch’s fascinating urban transformations from classical to medieval to modern city and the processes behind these. Through its comprehensive blend of textual sources and new archaeological data reanalyzed from Princeton’s 1930s excavations and recent discoveries, this book offers unprecedented insights into the complete history of Antioch, recreating the lives of the people who lived in it and focusing on the factors that affected them during the evolution of its remarkable cityscape. While Antioch’s built environment is central, the book also utilizes landscape archaeological work to consider the city in relation to its hinterland, and numismatic evidence to explore its economics. The outmoded portrait of Antioch as a sadly perished classical city par excellence gives way to one in which it shines as brightly in its medieval Islamic, Byzantine, and Crusader incarnations.
Antioch: A History offers a new portal to researching this long-lasting city and is also suitable for a wide variety of teaching needs, both undergraduate and graduate, in the fields of Classics, History, Urban Studies, Archaeology, Silk Road Studies, and Near Eastern/Middle Eastern Studies. Just as important, its clarity makes it attractive for, and accessible to, a general readership outside the framework of formal instruction.
The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers demonstrates that different areas of the Islamic po... more The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers demonstrates that different areas of the Islamic polity previously understood as “minor frontiers” were, in fact, of substantial importance to state formation. Contributors explore different conceptualizations of “border,” the importance of which previously went unrecognized, examining frontiers in regions including the Magreb, the Mediterranean, Egypt, Nubia, and the Caucasus through a combination of archaeological and documentary evidence.
Chapters highlight the significance of these respective regions to the emergence of new sociopolitical, cultural, and economic practices within the Islamic world. These studies successfully overcome the dichotomy of civilization’s center and peripheries in academic discourse by presenting the actual dynamics of identity formation and the definition, both spatial and cultural, of boundaries. The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers is a rare combination of a new reading of written evidence with results from archaeological studies that will modify established opinions on the character of the Islamic frontiers and stimulate similar studies for other regions. The book will be relevant to medieval Islamic studies as well as to research in the medieval world in general.
Contributors: Karim Alizadeh, Jana Eger, Kathryn J. Franklin, Renata Holod, Tarek Kahlaoui, Anthony J. Lauricella, Ian Randall, Giovanni R. Ruffini, Tasha Vorderstrasse
The retreat of the Byzantine Army from Syria in around 650 CE, in advance of the approaching Arab... more The retreat of the Byzantine Army from Syria in around 650 CE, in advance of the approaching Arab armies, is one that has resounded emphatically in the works of both Islamic and Christian writers, and created an enduring motif: that of the Islamic-Byzantine frontier. For centuries, Byzantine and Islamic scholars have evocatively sketched a contested border: the annual raids between the two, the line of fortified fortresses defending Islamic lands, the no-man's land in between and the birth of jihad. In their early representations of a Muslim-Christian encounter, accounts of the Islamic-Byzantine frontier are charged with significance for a future 'clash of civilizations' that often envisions a polarised world. A. Asa Eger examines the two aspects of this frontier: its ideological and physical ones. By uniting an exploration of both the real and material frontier and its more ideological military and religious implications, he offers a more complex vision of this dividing line than has been traditionally disseminated. With analysis grounded in archaeological evidence as well the relevant historical and religious texts, Eger brings together a nuanced exploration of this vital element of medieval history.
Through Islamic and Christian histories, an ideology has been maintained, persuasively and persis... more Through Islamic and Christian histories, an ideology has been maintained, persuasively and persistently, that their borders and bordering states were militarized and impenetrable. A paradigmatic example is the seventh to ninth century Islamic-Byzantine borderland (al-thughūr), a space frequently addressed in scholarship on Muslim and Christian holy wars, armies and raids, castles, and often treated as an abandoned land. From the seventh to tenth centuries, central, cosmopolitan Islamic writers and scholars on the frontiers describe this space both as a wilderness ready to be settled and a border delineated by a chain of fortresses garrisoned with army soldiers who raided the Byzantine lands yearly. The raids have the semblance of ritual as the Islamic armies neither occupied new lands nor built new settlements. Although Islamic and Byzantine sources describe the Byzantine border in less detail, they suggest, quite differently, a region scattered with an informal group of intermittent small fortresses held by an ad hoc local militia. Byzantines reciprocated raids into Islamic territory, and so the literature of these frontier castles contains numerous accounts of destruction, rebuilding, and further devastation.
HEROM: Journal on Hellenistic and Roman Material Culture, 2020
As Islamic archaeology has matured, it has outgrown several large debates. Scholars now largely a... more As Islamic archaeology has matured, it has outgrown several large debates. Scholars now largely agree that no huge decline occurred either after the Islamic conquests in the 7th century or when the ‘Abbāsids came to power in 750, nor was there an observable decline in the early 7th century during the Persian conquests. It is also thought the Umayyad dynasty did little to replace the existing societal, religious, and economic life in the Near East and beyond. Yet the ceramic evidence of the Umayyad period might tell a different story, for the ceramics of the Levant from the mid-7th to mid-8th centuries are elusive and difficult to discern or accurately date. The 11th century is also lightly represented ceramically, as is the 15th. Both of these latter periods can be tied to political upheavals: the weakening of ‘Abbāsid power and rise of many provincial autonomies, and the arrival of the Saljūqs in the 11th century, and the weakening of Mamlūk power and rise of the beyliks, together with the arrival of the Ottomans in the 15th. Here we bring together all three of these perceived gaps as part of a seemingly uniform pattern that reflects similar politically transitional and decentralized periods. Yet in viewing them side by side, we will see that these three periods are not the same, and that more nuance can complicate this historical pattern. Although historical events can be reflected in the archaeological record, it can be difficult, as the study of al-Mina has indicated, to link changes in pottery type to such events until some centuries after they occurred.
Ambassadors, Artists, and Theologians: Byzantine Relations with the Near East from the Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries, 2018
The Islamic-Byzantine frontier has become the centre of scholarly attention and, as a result, red... more The Islamic-Byzantine frontier has become the centre of scholarly attention and, as a result, redefined. Recent archaeological and textual work on the ṯuġūr or Islamic-Byzantine frontier, supports the presence of settlements, communities, and people traversing back and forth and refute the notion of a »no-man’s land«. However, textual evidence, mainly from Abbasid period sources, largely dates these activities from the mid-eighth to tenth centuries 1. Evidence from archaeological surveys and excavations also supports more intensive settlement in the eighth to tenth centuries. Nevertheless, the idea of an unsettled frontier, as a default, should not necessarily include the period from the mid-seventh to mid-eighth centuries, implying an initial century of frontier fighting over a depopulated no-man’s land. Focusing on the initial settlement of the frontier bears important implications for understanding the relationships between locals and between locals and the Umayyad ruling elite. This paper will utilize results from surveys and excavation combined with textual evidence from Greek, Arabic, and Syriac sources to closely examine the nature of settlement and social organization in the newly-acquired Islamic lands of the ṯuġūr in the seventh and eighth centuries. During this century, the Umayyad state and local, predominately Miaphysite Syriac-speaking Christian communities, both autonomously and in cooperation, developed key agricultural settlements alongside irrigation systems on the frontier.
In 2011, excavations at Tüpraş Field, the Early Islamic and Middle Byzantine settlement north of ... more In 2011, excavations at Tüpraş Field, the Early Islamic and Middle Byzantine settlement north of Kinet Höyük, revealed a set of long thin bronze tools with a decorated center, each one slightly different than the other. Parallels for these have been found around the Early Islamic world; however scholars have diverged on how to interpret their function. They have been published either as applicators for kohl or instruments for surgery. This short contribution will discuss the tools in their site context and examine similar published and unpublished ones elsewhere to first determine their date and geographical distribution. From the archaeological evidence, parallels, and Islamic medical texts, this paper will argue that their function was primarily surgical. The presence of these tools and other related objects in a small frontier settlement provide evidence for a wider trade in pharmacological and medical supplies that took place across the Islamic-Byzantine frontier.
The trace element boron is present in most ancient glasses as an impurity, and high boron (≥ 300 ... more The trace element boron is present in most ancient glasses as an impurity, and high boron (≥ 300 ppm) marks raw material sources that are geologically specific and relatively uncommon. Recent analyses of Byzantine glass with high boron contents suggest that glassmaking was not limited to the traditional regions of the Levant and Egypt, and a production origin in or near western Anatolia is proposed. Glass bracelets from Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt in southern Turkey give fresh evidence for the production and circulation of high-boron glasses that closely correlates with object typology. The patterning of findspots suggests that high-boron glass was closely connected to the Byzantine world.
The Tüpraş Field project is located near the high mound of Kinet Höyük in the Hatay Province of T... more The Tüpraş Field project is located near the high mound of Kinet Höyük in the Hatay Province of Turkey. The site was founded in the 8th century and continually occupied until the 12th century CE. Contemporary Arabic writers described the region as rich in agriculture and known for its cultivation of date palms and for its valuable timber resources. This paper presents the analysis of archaeobotanical macro remains, which are rare from this period, to allow for a greater understanding of the floral diversity, in terms of cereals, weeds, trees and wild species that would have been present in the region during the Islamic through medieval periods. The data supports cereal agriculture but also documents the emergence of a cotton boom, which is attested to in ethnohistorical sources but has rarely been confirmed through archaeobotanical remains. Substantial quantities of C. album in single contexts, likely representing storage, were recovered and raise questions about its role as either an agricultural weed species or a more significant contributor to the diet and health of the ancient population. The agricultural economy is clearly more complex than previously believed and this study adds to discussions on the intersections of environmental and Islamic studies with crucial archaeological evidence, which can, for example, counter-balance and nuance certain well-worn debated ideas, such as the nature of the Islamic Green ‘Revolution’.
In the last fifty years of Mamluk rule, sultans actively engaged in commerce, warfare, and dip... more In the last fifty years of Mamluk rule, sultans actively engaged in commerce, warfare, and diplomacy in their northern regions of Syria and Anatolia with the Ottomans, Aqquyunlu, and Dulgadir and Qaraman beyliks. However, scholarship in general neglects the thirtyyear period between Barsbāy and Qā’itbāy (1438-1468) or charts it as a period of decline. Further, aside from textual accounts, there is little material evidence pointing to the nature of interaction: commercial, military, or otherwise. This paper will present two unpublished inscriptions and argue that there is some evidence for Mamluk development and patronage on the frontier. The inscriptions, found in a village or small town in the Amuq Plain near Antakya in the Hatay Province of Turkey, bear the name of two fifteenth century Mamluk sultans. The inscriptions’ words, location, and context introduce wider evidence of Mamluk sultans as patrons in developing commercial routes and khāns and encouraging movement in general across northern Syria. This patronage occurred at a time when the dynamics of political power were fluctuating in surrounding southern Anatolia as they were in Egypt.
Cilicia on the Islamic-Byzantine frontier or al-thughūr in southeastern Anatolia and northern Syr... more Cilicia on the Islamic-Byzantine frontier or al-thughūr in southeastern Anatolia and northern Syria has been traditionally viewed as an isolated embattled buffer zone. Yet, it was also the main transportation corridor between Islamic and Byzantine lands, situated between the Cilician Gates, connecting to the Anatolian plateau, and the Syrian Gates, connecting to the lands of bilād al-shām. Recent survey and excavation of a fortified site occupied from the Early Islamic to Middle Byzantine period (8-12th centuries C.E.) in the eastern Cilician Plain offers a different perspective on the frontier. The site can be identified with Hisn al-Tīnāt, mentioned in sources as a frontier fort and timber depot and port. Its environmental context, architecture, and material establish links to local thughūr and wider Near Eastern networks of exchange. Further, the frontier site alludes to the complex symbiotic relationship of a militarized and economic resource-based frontier landscape.
Que(e)rying Archaeology. Proceedings of the 15th Anniversary Gender Conference, Nov 11-14, 2004, 2009
The public bathhouse, which is widely attested in the archaeological record, functioned as a spac... more The public bathhouse, which is widely attested in the archaeological record, functioned as a space of great social significance within Roman cities throughout the Mediterranean and greater empire. However, archaeological inquiries focus on the technical or architectural elements while the social function of the bathhouse is described merely as a salubrious and communal use of space. In contrast, Roman sources like Martial and Petronius, paint a vibrant picture rife with sexuality and homoeroticism. The expression of erotic desires made by individuals or groups can create added levels of social sexual spaces. Using the modern gay bathhouse as ethnographic evidence to parallel the Roman bath, the paper explores the role of queered, gendered, and sensory space by juxtaposing their internal architecture and revealing architectures of desire. In partaking of a sensory analysis and interpretation of the past through not just the eyes of the bather (and archaeologist) but through all the senses, the paper constructs a theoretical framework for a queer archaeology, one that departs from traditional archaeological ways of privileging seeing.
Nearly 40 papers on Islamic Archaeology at this year's virtual hybrid ASOR Meetings in Chicago. P... more Nearly 40 papers on Islamic Archaeology at this year's virtual hybrid ASOR Meetings in Chicago. Please register now!
ASOR is becoming the new and exciting North American venue for papers in the archaeology of the B... more ASOR is becoming the new and exciting North American venue for papers in the archaeology of the Byzantine, Medieval, and Islamic Near East. This year there are many panels accepting papers. Please consider submitting an abstract.
The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) Annual Meeting in Denver this November 2018 will... more The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) Annual Meeting in Denver this November 2018 will feature 4 sessions dedicated to Islamic Archaeology and related scholarship and 30 papers overall in Islamic Archaeology in the Near East. Please come and attend!
Islamic Seas and Shores: Connecting the Medieval Maritime World
The deadline to submit paper ab... more Islamic Seas and Shores: Connecting the Medieval Maritime World
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Books by Asa Eger
Antioch has typically been treated as a city whose classical glory faded permanently amid a series of natural disasters and foreign invasions in the sixth and seventh centuries C.E. Such studies have obstructed the view of Antioch’s fascinating urban transformations from classical to medieval to modern city and the processes behind these. Through its comprehensive blend of textual sources and new archaeological data reanalyzed from Princeton’s 1930s excavations and recent discoveries, this book offers unprecedented insights into the complete history of Antioch, recreating the lives of the people who lived in it and focusing on the factors that affected them during the evolution of its remarkable cityscape. While Antioch’s built environment is central, the book also utilizes landscape archaeological work to consider the city in relation to its hinterland, and numismatic evidence to explore its economics. The outmoded portrait of Antioch as a sadly perished classical city par excellence gives way to one in which it shines as brightly in its medieval Islamic, Byzantine, and Crusader incarnations.
Antioch: A History offers a new portal to researching this long-lasting city and is also suitable for a wide variety of teaching needs, both undergraduate and graduate, in the fields of Classics, History, Urban Studies, Archaeology, Silk Road Studies, and Near Eastern/Middle Eastern Studies. Just as important, its clarity makes it attractive for, and accessible to, a general readership outside the framework of formal instruction.
Chapters highlight the significance of these respective regions to the emergence of new sociopolitical, cultural, and economic practices within the Islamic world. These studies successfully overcome the dichotomy of civilization’s center and peripheries in academic discourse by presenting the actual dynamics of identity formation and the definition, both spatial and cultural, of boundaries. The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers is a rare combination of a new reading of written evidence with results from archaeological studies that will modify established opinions on the character of the Islamic frontiers and stimulate similar studies for other regions. The book will be relevant to medieval Islamic studies as well as to research in the medieval world in general.
Contributors: Karim Alizadeh, Jana Eger, Kathryn J. Franklin, Renata Holod, Tarek Kahlaoui, Anthony J. Lauricella, Ian Randall, Giovanni R. Ruffini, Tasha Vorderstrasse
Papers by Asa Eger
with the arrival of the Ottomans in the 15th. Here we bring together all three of these perceived gaps as part of a seemingly uniform pattern that reflects similar politically transitional and decentralized periods. Yet in viewing them side by side, we will see that these three periods are not the same, and that more nuance can complicate this historical pattern. Although historical events can be reflected in the archaeological record, it can be difficult, as the study of al-Mina has indicated, to link changes in pottery type to such events until some centuries after they occurred.
mid-eighth to tenth centuries 1. Evidence from archaeological surveys and excavations also supports more intensive settlement in the eighth to tenth centuries. Nevertheless, the idea of an unsettled frontier, as a default, should not necessarily include the period from the mid-seventh to mid-eighth centuries, implying an initial century of frontier fighting over a depopulated no-man’s land. Focusing on the initial settlement of the frontier bears important implications for understanding the relationships between locals and between locals and the Umayyad ruling elite. This paper will utilize results from surveys and excavation combined with textual evidence from Greek, Arabic, and Syriac sources to closely examine the nature of settlement and social organization in the newly-acquired Islamic lands of the ṯuġūr in the seventh and eighth
centuries. During this century, the Umayyad state and local, predominately Miaphysite Syriac-speaking Christian communities, both autonomously and in cooperation, developed key agricultural settlements alongside irrigation systems on the frontier.
Antioch has typically been treated as a city whose classical glory faded permanently amid a series of natural disasters and foreign invasions in the sixth and seventh centuries C.E. Such studies have obstructed the view of Antioch’s fascinating urban transformations from classical to medieval to modern city and the processes behind these. Through its comprehensive blend of textual sources and new archaeological data reanalyzed from Princeton’s 1930s excavations and recent discoveries, this book offers unprecedented insights into the complete history of Antioch, recreating the lives of the people who lived in it and focusing on the factors that affected them during the evolution of its remarkable cityscape. While Antioch’s built environment is central, the book also utilizes landscape archaeological work to consider the city in relation to its hinterland, and numismatic evidence to explore its economics. The outmoded portrait of Antioch as a sadly perished classical city par excellence gives way to one in which it shines as brightly in its medieval Islamic, Byzantine, and Crusader incarnations.
Antioch: A History offers a new portal to researching this long-lasting city and is also suitable for a wide variety of teaching needs, both undergraduate and graduate, in the fields of Classics, History, Urban Studies, Archaeology, Silk Road Studies, and Near Eastern/Middle Eastern Studies. Just as important, its clarity makes it attractive for, and accessible to, a general readership outside the framework of formal instruction.
Chapters highlight the significance of these respective regions to the emergence of new sociopolitical, cultural, and economic practices within the Islamic world. These studies successfully overcome the dichotomy of civilization’s center and peripheries in academic discourse by presenting the actual dynamics of identity formation and the definition, both spatial and cultural, of boundaries. The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers is a rare combination of a new reading of written evidence with results from archaeological studies that will modify established opinions on the character of the Islamic frontiers and stimulate similar studies for other regions. The book will be relevant to medieval Islamic studies as well as to research in the medieval world in general.
Contributors: Karim Alizadeh, Jana Eger, Kathryn J. Franklin, Renata Holod, Tarek Kahlaoui, Anthony J. Lauricella, Ian Randall, Giovanni R. Ruffini, Tasha Vorderstrasse
with the arrival of the Ottomans in the 15th. Here we bring together all three of these perceived gaps as part of a seemingly uniform pattern that reflects similar politically transitional and decentralized periods. Yet in viewing them side by side, we will see that these three periods are not the same, and that more nuance can complicate this historical pattern. Although historical events can be reflected in the archaeological record, it can be difficult, as the study of al-Mina has indicated, to link changes in pottery type to such events until some centuries after they occurred.
mid-eighth to tenth centuries 1. Evidence from archaeological surveys and excavations also supports more intensive settlement in the eighth to tenth centuries. Nevertheless, the idea of an unsettled frontier, as a default, should not necessarily include the period from the mid-seventh to mid-eighth centuries, implying an initial century of frontier fighting over a depopulated no-man’s land. Focusing on the initial settlement of the frontier bears important implications for understanding the relationships between locals and between locals and the Umayyad ruling elite. This paper will utilize results from surveys and excavation combined with textual evidence from Greek, Arabic, and Syriac sources to closely examine the nature of settlement and social organization in the newly-acquired Islamic lands of the ṯuġūr in the seventh and eighth
centuries. During this century, the Umayyad state and local, predominately Miaphysite Syriac-speaking Christian communities, both autonomously and in cooperation, developed key agricultural settlements alongside irrigation systems on the frontier.
The deadline to submit paper abstracts for the 2022 ASOR Annual Meeting is March 15, 2022. For more information on submission guidelines see (https://www.asor.org/am/2022/call-for-papers-2022).