Table of Contents for Near Eastern Archaeology 87.2 (2024) - American Society of Overseas Research (�鶹ֱ��)

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Table of Contents for <em>Near Eastern Archaeology</em> 87.2 (2024)

Table of Contents for Near Eastern Archaeology 87.2 (June 2024)

Pp. 64–72: “Evidence for Pastoral Nomads and Travelers in the Eastern Desert: Site 51 and Beyond at Wadi el-Hudi, Egypt,” by Kate Liszka

In the Egyptian Eastern Desert, southeast of Aswan, the Wadi el-Hudi Archaeological Expedition discovered extensive evidence of pastoral nomads living, working, and grazing animals at several archaeological sites. Site 51, newly discovered in January 2023, is a short-term domestic shelter with natural alcoves used by pastoral nomads for millennia. It includes over fifty newly discovered rock inscriptions of cows, ibexes, tally marks, and graffiti. Several grinding stones and nearly a hundred cupules demonstrate the nomads’ collection and processing of local plants while they tended their animals. Additionally, other travelers also sheltered at Site 51 throughout the millennia. This discovery adds to the increasing evidence that, in addition to being an ancient Egyptian site for the mining of amethyst and gold, Wadi el-Hudi was an important zone for pastoral nomads.

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Pp. 74-99: “The Cemetery of Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus: Further Evidence of Interculturality and Burial Customs in the Late Bronze Age,” by Peter M. Fischer

This study deals with the results from the 2018–2023 fieldwork at the cemetery of Hala Sultan Tekke. The aim of the project is the safeguarding, excavation, recording, and study of tombs exposed to farming, erosion, and looting. The stratigraphy of the tombs that were used over generations represents an excellent complement to the sequence of occupation in the city. The mortuary gifts and personal belongings date mainly to the fifteenth to thirteenth centuries BCE and confirm far-reaching trade, further underlining the role of the city as a trading center in the Mediterranean economic system. The material evidence corroborates connections with societies of the Mycenaean, Minoan, Hittite, Levantine, and Egyptian spheres of culture as well as networks with regions as far away as Sardinia, the Baltic Sea, Mesopotamia, Afghanistan, and India. In addition, several find contexts provide valuable information about the complex mortuary customs of the Late Cypriot period.

Pp. 100-109: “As Time Goes by: Identifying the Spatiotemporal Dynamics of the Hala Sultan Tekke Coastal Area (Cyprus) by Means of Surface Surveying,” by Polte De Weirdt, Ralf Vandam, Jan Coenaerts, and Karin Nys

Contrary to the idiosyncratic “tell-type” urban settlements that epitomize Late Bronze Age societies in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East, a handful of major urban settlements on Cyprus, such as Hala Sultan Tekke and Maroni, embodied a completely different notion of urban engineering. Instead of dense urban city centers where numerous residents resided close to each other, these “atypical” settlements were apparently organized with broad areas of open space between smaller occupational “clusters.” By means of archaeological survey combined with a landscape archaeological approach, the Hala Sultan Tekke Hinterland Survey Project (HST-HASP) aims to (re)evaluate this unique type of spatial organization at the Late Bronze Age settlement at Dromolaxia-Vyzakia, as well as to reconstruct the long-term, multiperiod lifecycle of the settlement and its surrounding landscape. The project by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel aims to investigate the site’s hinterland and its relation and position within the broader Tremithos Valley region.

Pp. 110-120: “The Trail of Sennacherib’s Siege Camps,” by Stephen C. Compton

Images of military conquest on Sennacherib’s palace walls often featured his siege camps. By comparing the visual and textual references to these camps with the surroundings of the cities he besieged (on site and via aerial and satellite imagery, archaeological and historical data, and early maps and surveys), likely locations are proposed for Sennacherib’s royal camps. These sites are found to have all had the same name on early maps, Mudawwara, which, in Arabic in the Middle Ages, denoted the enormous tent that housed the sultan on military expeditions. (At times, this name was prefaced with Khirbet al, indicating the ancient stone ruins thereof.) Examining all occurrences of this toponym within Judah and Philistia reveals a distribution consistent with what is known of Sennacherib’s invasion route and of the cities besieged. It also resolves some long-standing questions and contributes to identifying the locations of the cities of Libnah and Nob.

Pp. 122-131: “Dawn and Descent: Social Network Analysis and the �鶹ֱ�� Family Trees,” by Diane Harris Cline, Eric H. Cline, and Rachel Hallote

The development of ancient Near Eastern archaeology, especially that of the southern Levant, is usually presented through several standard narratives. For American scholars it frequently begins with William F. Albright, who is often referred to as “the father of biblical archaeology.” We undertook to test this narrative by surveying current scholars and using three separate metrics of social network analysis (SNA) on the resulting academic genealogies. Our preliminary results indicate that while a portion of active American archaeologists and biblicists do indeed trace their academic lineage back to Albright, an even larger portion, including Israeli archaeologists and various American Egyptologists and Assyriologists, are scholarly descendants of Albright’s academic cousins, all of whom can trace themselves back to the German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch, who seems to have been the real father of the discipline, genealogically speaking. We also determined that academic lineage does not inhibit intellectual diversification.

Pp. 132-136: “Expanding the World of Biblical Studies to Scholars Who Are Blind: Creation and Implementation of a Coptic Braille System,” by Daniel Charles Smith and Sarah Blake LaRose

Until 2016, braille readers had little or no access to ancient languages beyond Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Thus access to the study of ancient languages was difficult for blind students who needed braille texts. This article describes the history that led to the development of a braille system to represent the Coptic language. It also discusses the process of implementing the Coptic braille system in the translation of a textbook from print to braille and what was learned from the use of this braille system in the translation process. The information can provide guidance to other universities wishing to ensure access to ancient language texts for students who are blind and possible new directions for the study of this corpus.

Table of Contents for Near Eastern Archaeology 87.2 (June 2024)

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