NEAA

At archaeological sites following the invention of pottery roughly 10,000 BCE, ceramics are the single most frequent and ubiquitous class of artefact that archaeologists uncover. This class, which will be conducted in the Oriental Institute Museum as a combination of lectures, discussions, and hands-on interactions with ancient and modern ceramics, surveys the methods and interpretive techniques that archaeologists use when studying this important category of material culture. Specific topics include manufacturing techniques, craft specialization, typology and chronology, production and exchange, scientific analyses, stylistic and functional analysis, and socio-political organization.

In this course, we will discuss premodern modes of economic exchange and their systemic societal effects in light of their institutional embedding, with emphasis on trade and markets in the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East.

Afghanistan is the quintessential “crossroads of cultures” where the civilizations of the Near East, Central Asia, South Asia and China interacted over the millennia in a constantly shifting mixture of trade, emulation, migration, imperial formations, and periodic conflict. This complex history of contacts gave rise to some of the most important archaeological, artistic, architectural, and textual treasures in world cultural heritage – encompassing cultures as diverse as the Bronze Age cities of Bactria, the Persian Empire, the easternmost colonies founded by Alexander the Great and his Hellenistic successors, the Kushan empire astride the Silk Road, and the monumental Buddhas of Bamiyan. Although the first excavations began in the 1920’s, there has been only limited fieldwork in Afghanistan, and even this was truncated by the Soviet invasion in 1979 and the subsequent 35 years of continuous war in that country.
This course presents an introduction to the archaeology of Afghanistan from the Neolithic through the Medieval Islamic periods, focusing on sites in Afghanistan and the region’s cultural linkages to neighboring areas such as Iran, Central Asia, and South Asia. The final portion of the course will discuss the threats to Afghan cultural heritage, and current effort to preserve this patrimony. The course is intended for Undergraduate;Graduate who have had at least one introductory course in archaeology.

This course is intended to present the dominant typologies of Islamic ceramics, most of which have been studied from an art historical approach. Specific archaeological typologies will be assembled from published reports and presented in seminar meetings. Half of the course will consist of analysis of sherd collections, observatory analysis of typological criteria, and training in drawing these artifacts.

This course is an exploration of the cultural patterns in the Levant from the late Byzantine period down to modern times, a span of some 1500 years. While the subject matter will be archaeological sites of this period in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel, the focus will be on the role of medieval archaeology in amplifying the history of economic and social systems. It is this connective quality of Islamic archaeology which contributes to an understanding of the earlier history and archaeology of this region.

This course is an exploration of the continuities of Egyptian culture from the Ptolemaic period down to modern times, a span of over 2000 years. The emphasis will be on the archaeology of Coptic and Islamic Egypt. The focus will be on the role of medieval archaeology in amplifying the history of economic and social systems. It is this connective quality of archaeology which contributes to an understanding of Pharaonic culture and fills the gap between ancient and modern Egypt

This course surveys (1) the wide range of methods used by archaeologists to recover and analyze evidence concerning the human past; and (2) the various theoretical paradigms archaeologists have employed to interpret their finds and reconstruct ancient societies and cultures.

The Uruk period (4th millennium BC) saw the emergence of the earliest known state societies, urbanism, kingship, writing, and colonial network extending from Mesopotamia across the Jazira and into neighboring resource zones in the Taurus and Zagros mountains. This seminar examines Uruk Mesopotamia and neighboring regions from several perspectives â€" an examination of key sites in Mesopotamia and contemporaneous local late chalcolithic polities in Syria, southeast Anatolia and Iran. The seminar also considers the main theoretical issues involved in understanding inter-regional interaction in the social, economic, and political organization of this period.

This course takes place outside of Chicago and can only be taken by arrangement with the instructor well in advance of the quarter in which it is offered.

This course is an in-depth survey of the various ceramic traditions that have characterized Anatolia from the invention of pottery in the Neolithic period to the Islamic period (time permitting). We will use collections in the Oriental Institute Museum to gain hands-on familiarity with these corpora, although the ceramic repertoire of Anatolia is so vast and diverse that the class will also involve lectures and student presentations on ceramics only available in scholarly literature. This class is structured less as a teacher-directed instructional, and more as a collaborative project in which we become masters of the Anatolian ceramic repertoire together.