Near Eastern Archaeology in Leiden

04/08/2023

RIP Prof. Em. Klaas Veenhof

In Memoriam Klaas Veenhof | Tot onze spijt is professor Veenhof, oud-hoogleraar Assyriologie en voormalig bestuurslid van EOL, op 28 juli overleden. Hij is 87 jaar geworden.

Professor Veenhof was als hoogleraar Assyriologie, eerst in Amsterdam en later in Leiden, nauw betrokken bij zowel het NINO als EOL. Hij is ruim 40 jaar bestuurslid geweest van onze vereniging. We denken met dankbaarheid aan hem terug.

(Foto door Bert van der Spek)

17/07/2023

New book in the making!

Olivier Nieuwenhuyse was a remarkable archaeologist whose work has transformed the study of later Neolithic societies in West Asia and he has inspired many colleagues and former student in their own pursuit of archaeology. Through the analysis of material culture his aim was to reconstruct social me...

17/07/2023

Just out: the final report on the Uruk site of Jebel Aruba in Syria!

Govert van Driel & Carol van Driel-Murray (2023), JEBEL ARUDA: AN URUK PERIOD TEMPLE AND SETTLEMENT IN SYRIA, Leiden: Sidestone Press (2 volumes).

Jebel Aruda, a prominent mountain ridge overlooking the Taqba Dam lake in northern Syria, was the location of a remarkable settlement that flourished between c. 3300 and 3100 BC during the so-called Uruk period. For the inhabitants the sacredness of this high place, evidenced by the discovery of a large temple complex, seems to have taken precedent over its impractical location far above the valley of the Euphrates River.

For details (and free online reading!), see:

Jebel Aruda, a prominent mountain ridge overlooking the Taqba Dam lake in northern Syria, was the location of a remarkable settlement that flourished between c. 3300 and 3100 BC during the so-called Uruk period. For the inhabitants the sacredness of this high place, evidenced by the discovery of a l...

11/04/2023

New book underway about the Middle Assyrian burials of Tell Sabi Abyad in Syria!

During the roughly hundred years (ca. 1225 – 1125 BCE) that the Middle Assyrian dunnu at Tell Sabi Abyad was in operation, some forty-nine individuals were interred in graves of a striking diversity. In this book their burial type, location, orientation, position, grave goods and osteological data...

30/03/2023

Jebel Aruda, a prominent mountain ridge overlooking the Taqba Dam lake in northern Syria, was the location of a remarkable settlement that flourished between c. 3300 and 3100 BC during the so-called Uruk period. For the inhabitants the sacredness of this high place, evidenced by the discovery of a l...

12/01/2023

“Het werken met oeroude bronnen is magisch,” vertelt Assyrioloog Rients de Boer in deze podcast over de talen en culturen van Mesopotamië. Beluister de podcast hier: https://www.exorientelux.nl/2023/01/podcast-interview-met-assyrioloog-rients-de-boer/

10/12/2022

Case study of intentional damage on the Tell Sabi Abyad and Catalhöyük figurines, by Monique Arntz. In: Breaking Images: Damage and Mutilation of Ancient Figurines (coming soon!)

Investigates deliberate fragmentation and damaging of figurines across a range of societies and periods.

07/12/2022

Congratulations to Monique Arntz, with the completion of her excellent PhD thesis on the Neolithic figurines from Tell Sabi Abyad and Catalhöyük! Available in open access on the Cambridge repository: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/343282

05/06/2022

Fieldwork in the making!

Jebel Qurma calling! We will travel to the basalt desert next week, to begin another exciting two-months field season. We’ll keep you updated about our adventures and discoveries in this barren but amazing landscape!

03/06/2022

Archieven uit de oudheid zijn vaak de enige bron die historici tot hun beschikking hebben bij het doen van onderzoek. Vaak worden deze archieven gezien als een ‘venster op het verleden’ waarmee we de geschiedenis objectief kunnen reconstrueren. Maar is dit wel zo?

30/05/2022

A 100 archaeological sites in Syria: free download of this great book in Arabic!

كتاب تاريخ سورية في مئة موقع أثري | يوسف كنجو و أكيراتسونيكي (2016) -
رابط الكتاب
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360702518_tarykh_swryt_fy_myt_mwq_the_history_of_syria_in_100_sites
رابط المكتبة
https://virtual-museum-syria.org/aleppo/library/

28/04/2022

Many congratulations to Dr. Chiara Della Puppa for successfully defending her PhD thesis on Safaitic scripts in eastern Jordan and beyond! (Chiara was a member of the ’Landscapes of Survival’ project at the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University, supervised by Prof. Peter M.M.G. Akkermans and Prof. Maarten Kossmann)

The basalt desert of North-East Jordan is full of roughly 2000-years-old inscriptions, written in so-called ‘Safaitic’ script on stone. We have systematically documented some 6000 Safaitic inscriptions in the Jebel Qurma area until now. These texts have been studied in detail by Chiara Della Puppa, as part of her PhD research at Leiden University (The Netherlands). Recently, Chiara has defended her PhD thesis in public with great success (promotores: Prof. Dr. Peter M.M.G. Akkermans and Prof. Dr. Maarten Kossmann). We congratulate Chiara with this major achievement!

Chiara’s PhD thesis, entitled: The Safaitic Scripts: Palaeography of an Ancient Nomadic Writing Culture, is available in open access. For a free download, go to: https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/3283744?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=9ab1c04cf6321e131ac4&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=0&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=0

24/04/2022

RIP Eva Strommenger

⭕️ Eva Strommenger 1927 – 2022 إيڤا شترومنغر ١٩٢٧ - ٢٠٢٢

It is with great sorrow we announce the passing of our friend and colleague, Eva Strommengerr, who passed away on April 17th 2022 in Berlin.

ببالغ الحزن والأسى ننعي إليكم وفاة صديقتنا وزميلتنا إيڤا شترومنغر التي وافتها المنية يوم ١٧ نيسان ٢٠٢٢ في برلين

The Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin has the sad duty to share the news that Eva Strommenger, renowned Near Eastern archaeologist and excavator at Habuba Kabira and Tall Bi'a, passed away in Berlin on Easter Sunday.

Born in Dortmund in 1927, Eva Strommenger studied Near Eastern archaeology with Anton Moortgat in Berlin after World War II and received her doctorate in 1954 with a thesis on burial forms and burial customs in Mesopotamia. As a student of the first generation in this subject in Germany, she was able to travel to her field of work for the first time in 1956, and participated in the excavations of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) in Uruk - Warka from 1959 to
1962.

Professional stations led her to Baghdad in 1960-61 as a consultant of the DAI. From 1971 until her retirement in 1992, she was a research assistant at the Museum for Pre- and Protohistory in Berlin - Charlottenburg. There, she saw herself as a custodian of all matters concerning Near Eastern archaeology and also maintained relations with the Vorderasiatisches Museum in what was then East Berlin. In 1974, she acquired the teaching qualification "venia legendi" at the FU Berlin in the subject of Near Eastern Archaeology. As a dedicated teacher, she endeavored to represent Near Eastern archaeology at all levels, from academic writings to popular children's books, and through exhibitions.

Eva Strommenger was the first woman from Germany to be a dedicated field archaeologist with a focus on northern Mesopotamia. She directed the important excavations at Habuba Kabira (1969-1975) and Tell Bi'a (1980-1995), both located in Syria on the Euphrates River. Both large-scale projects have meanwhile been published in an exemplary manner in monographic series. Find division agreements with the Syrian authorities allowed her to bring select finds from both excavations to Berlin where they are today kept at the Vorderasiatisches Museum. She maintained her relations with the museum until very recently, supporting younger colleagues and generous in sharing her immense knowledge.

We will miss her and honor her memory.

[A German-language Wikipedia entry can be found at
]
[A catalogue of several of her publications begins at
]

More details in the link(s)
ℹ️ www.archaeologyin.org

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– Archaeology Information Network
شــبــكــة الــمــعــلــومــات الأثــريــة
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‏التراث الثقافي‬ والآثار

13/04/2022

Liverpool Households and Communities research group seminar will host a seminar by Professor Meredith S. Chesson from the University of Notre Dame.

Title:
The Materiality of Early Bronze Age Homemaking at Numayra, Jordan, 2850-2550 BCE

Abstract:
Numayra’s excellent preservation offers a unique opportunity to explore how people crafted homes from their houses in some of the region’s earliest fortified towns. Houses provide more than shelter from the elements; people transform them into socially conditioned places, into Homes, that transcend space, time, and status. Homes are a dynamic type of material culture that people create for themselves in a series of decisions involving the availability and desirability of construction and decorative materials (Glassie 1975, 2001). Throughout time and across space, people have decided how, where, and what to use to build and equip their homes, and these intricate decisions were (and continue to be) influenced by economic, political, religious and social networks, beliefs, worldviews, and differential access to local and non-local resources. Approaching EB III Numayra (c. 2800-2500 BC cal) through the lens of homemaking and materiality integrates the more comfortable archaeological analyses of the built environment, craft production, consumption, storage, activity areas, and landscapes, with an appreciation for the materiality of daily practices in early fortified communities of the third millennium BCE.

Time: Apr 28, 2022, 5 PM London

Zoom invite:
Join Zoom Meeting: https://liverpool-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/97357714737?pwd=MjV3cFZVV1pTVlZJYlRWUzBaYlg0QT09
Meeting ID: 973 5771 4737
Passcode: 1wTZt+D!