Friday, December 31, 2010

New Year Honours for Archaeologists and Anthropologist

The UK New Year's Honours List has been released. Two archaeologists and one anthropologist feature:

  • DBE: HUMPHREY, Professor Caroline, Professor of Collaborative Anthropology, University of Cambridge. For services to Scholarship.
  • CBE: FULFORD, Professor Michael Gordon, Professor of Archaeology, University of Reading. For services to Scholarship.
  • OBE: ROLT, Sonia, Mrs., F.R.S. For services to Industrial Archaeology and to Heritage.

Congratulations to them.

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Thursday, December 23, 2010

Growth of AWOL

Growth in traffic on AWOL since the beginning of 2009

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

The Road to Nasiriyah in Post Production

The Road to Nasiriyah, Micah Garen and Marie-Helene Carleton's documentary film from Iraq is now at a one hour and forty eight minute rough cut.
About The Road to Nasiriyah
In the wake of the 2003 Iraq war, hundreds of archaeological sites in southern Iraq were destroyed by looting.  The Road to Nasiriyah is the passionate journey of two American filmmakers, Micah Garen and Marie-Helene Carleton, an Iraqi archaeologist, Abdul-Amir Hamdani, and an interpreter, Amir Doshi, who document the story.  They risk everything in an effort to stop the looting, but their journey takes an unexpected turn when Micah and Amir are kidnapped. 
Go here to read about (and support) the film.  To read even more, and view the trailer, go to:
User: Nasiriyah
Password: Journey
(case sensitive)
They have started a non-profit organization to help protect cultural history in conflict zones around the world, the Umma Foundation.  When the film is released, they will be using it as a fundraising tool for the Umma Foundation, an initial goal of which is to help Iraqi scholars study abroad.

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Tuesday, December 21, 2010

A New Blog: Access to Mideast and Islamic Resources (AMIR)

Access to Mideast and Islamic Resources (AMIR)
Publicly launched this week, AMIR is a project of Chuck Jones, Librarian at ISAW, and Peter Magierski, Middle East Studies Librarian NYU,  to assemble and distribute information on open access material relating to the Middle East and Islamic Studies.


As the number of open access resources grows we hope this project will provide a more complete and up-to-date list of open access journals and digitization projects.


AMIR uses Ancient World Online as a model and is available via email subscription (see the form on the right side of the AMIR homepage) or the RSS tool of your chouce. 

We welcome and encourage active participation and will add interested parties to the authors' list upon request.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Embedded Metadata Extraction Tool (EMET) for Images Available for Download from ARTstor

Posted on various lists:
ARTstor is pleased to announce EMET, a stand-alone tool on the Adobe Air 2.0 platform designed to extract metadata embedded in JPEG and TIFF files. EMET is compatible with Mac OS 10.4+, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.
EMET is intended to facilitate the management and preservation of digital images and their incorporation into external databases and applications.  The tool was created by ARTstor through funding from the Library of Congress’ National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) and is available free of charge.


For more information on how to use EMET, see the help documentation.
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Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Introducing the new UCL MA/MSc in Digital Humanities

From the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities Team
The Masters degree in Digital Humanities at UCL draws together teaching from a wide range of disciplines, to investigate the application of computational technologies to the arts, humanities, and cultural heritage sectors. Attached are a poster and a brochure highlighting the features of the degree and the range of disciplines included in the programme; we would appreciate if you could please post and circulate these as appropriate.


The strength of our programme is that it will allow students who have a background in the humanities to acquire necessary skills in digital technologies, and will also make it possible for those with a technical background to become informed about scholarly methods in the humanities. In addition to their studies, the students will undertake a work placement, which will provide them with knowledge and hands-on experience in the field of Digital Humanities, and a skill set relevant to the cultural and heritage industry, publishing, and beyond.


This programme is by definition and purpose multi-disciplinary and aims to build and enhance on existing UCL resources. The students will have the opportunity to access not only UCL departments, library services, museums and collections, but also the numerous museums, galleries,libraries and archives based in close proximity to UCL in London.


Having drawn your attention to the programme, we would kindly ask you to share this news with anyone you think may be interested, such as potential students, librarians, and those interested in digital
technologies. Applications are now open for our new MA/MSc in Digital
Humanities for September 2011 entry.

Further information about the programme can be found at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dh/courses/mamsc

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Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Appointment of APA Information Architect

From the APA blog this afternoon:
New APA Information Architect

Read about the appointment of Samuel Huskey of the University of Oklahoma as the APA's new Information Architect. In January he will succeed Robin Mitchell-Boyask of Temple University who provided extraordinary service to the APA as Editor of the web site since 1998.
On behalf of the Board of Directors of the American Phililogical Association (APA), I am pleased to announce the appointment of Samuel J. Huskey of the University of Oklahoma to be its first Information Architect.  Prof. Huskey will begin his four-year term at the end of the APA's Annual Meeting this January in San Antonio.  He will succeed Prof. Robin Mitchell-Boyask of Temple University who has provided extraordinary service to the Association since 1998 as the first and only Editor of its web site.

Prof. Huskey's appointment and the expansion of the duties of his office are among the products of a recent review of the Association's publications program.  One result of this process, funded by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, was a decision to use the APA web site and other vehicles for electronic communication more aggressively to increase awareness of and access to the new scholarship generated in its various programs.  The Search Committee I led felt that Prof. Huskey had the scholarly, pedagogical, and technological expertise that would enable him to carry out this expansion of the Association's electronic presence.  Further, as the Association's Gatekeeper to Gateway Capital Campaign enters its final stages, the Search Committee felt that Prof. Huskey would be the appropriate person to coordinate efforts to fulfill the Campaign's commitment to provide the highest quality scholarship about classical antiquity to the widest possible audience in the format appropriate to each segment of that audience.

Another development that also makes possible the expansion of Prof. Huskey's position is the acquisition a few months ago of a new content management system for the Association's web site.  As a result of this new system, APA Office staff is now able to post information about regular society activities themselves.  This was an advantage that Prof. Mitchell-Boyask was able to enjoy only in the last few months of his tenure, and we are especially grateful to him for performing all the work of keeping the site up to date for so many years.  We also appreciate his taking the first steps to expand our electronic presence by creating an APA news blog (http://apaclassics.blogspot.com/) earlier this year.  Our next such expansion will be the creation of a Facebook page for the Association to be overseen by Prof. Judith P. Hallett, Vice President for Outreach.

I look forward to working with Prof. Huskey on increasing our ability to communicate electronically with both our members and all others interested in classical antiquity.

James J. O'Donnell
Vice President for Publications


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Thursday, October 28, 2010

ITHAKA Sustainable Scholarship 2010 | Presentations, Video, and Audio Now Available

Presentations, video, and audio files have been posted from both days of the ITHAKA Sustainable Scholarship 2010 and are available for download.

September 27th presentations about ITHAKA services can be found here.


September 28th materials on Discovering Scholarly Content can be found here.

n.b.  the video and audio files are quite large. Depending on your bandwidth and preferred web browser, it might be best to download and save the files first.
 



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Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Bonhams trouble?

This interesting story broke overnight:

Bonhams: Lots of trouble on New Bond Street
Allegations of dirty tricks are haunting the leading auction house. Mark Hughes investigates the strange saga of the Medici Dossier
The Indepenent
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
The photographs in question are in the print edition but not in the online edition.   But they are accessible online in The Art Newspaper's  story:

Medici “loot” for sale?
Two works coming to auction with Bonhams appear similar to those pictured in Polaroids found in the convicted dealer’s Geneva store
By Fabio Isman and Melanie Gerlis | From issue 217, October 2010
Published online 5 Oct 10 (market)

 David Gill comments this morning at on Looting Matters:

Bonhams: Resurfacing Antiquities


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Friday, October 22, 2010

Alexandria Archive Institute Open Zooarchaeology Prize

2010 Open Zooarchaeology Prize Winners
from Heritage Bytes

In celebration of Open Access Week, the Alexandria Archive Institute has announced the winners of the 2010 Junior Researcher Open Zooarchaeology Prize competition.

The Junior Researcher Open Zooarchaeology Prize competition awards the best open access, reusable content presented at an International Council for Archaeozoology (ICAZ) conference by a junior researcher (current student or degree in the past 10 years). The 2010 competition is the second time this particular contest has been held, the first being at the 2006 ICAZ meeting in Mexico City (view 2006 results).
The winners of this year’s prize are:
1st Place: David Orton (University of Cambridge) wins $500 for the project The skeleton as map: using GIS technology to facilitate the display and dissemination of anatomical data. View entry in BoneCommons
2nd Place: Jillian Garvey (La Trobe University) wins $200 in books from the David Brown Book Company for her project Bennett’s wallaby marrow quality vs quantity: Evaluating human decision-making and seasonal occupation in late Pleistocene Tasmania. View entry in BoneCommons
For more information about the winners, visit the prize announcement in BoneCommons .
About the competition:
The Junior Researcher Open Zooarchaeology Prize is one of a series of open archaeology prize competitions organized by the Alexandria Archive Institute with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and sponsorship from the David Brown Book Company.

For more information about the Open Zooarchaeology Prize, visit this link.
Read about other open archaeology prizes here.

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Friday, October 15, 2010

Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH)

 An interesting journal I had not seen before. (Not open access)

Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH)
ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH) publishes papers of significant and lasting value in all areas relating to the innovative use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in support of Cultural Heritage. We encourage the submission of manuscripts that demonstrate innovative use of technology for the discovery, analysis, interpretation and presentation of findings as well as manuscripts that illustrate applications in the Cultural Heritage sector that challenge the computational technologies and suggest new research opportunities in computer science.
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Thursday, October 14, 2010

Books, Boredom, Contests...

Several bibliobloggers are having a contest to see who can come up with the most boring book title in Biblical / Ancient Near Eastern Studies.  Eisenbrauns is even offering a a $50.00 gift certificate for the winner, presumably to be redeemed for other books with boring titles.  While I'm generally happy to defer to the true experts in boredom, I think I have identified the most boring table of content ever:







 Even if you know the title of the book, this is just stunningly unhelpful and pointless!  But if anyone has a better/worse one, I will gladly defer to them.


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Open Access Week 2010

Open Access Week 2010 begins October 18th.

I expect to relaunch the List  of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies.

What are others doing?

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Thursday, September 30, 2010

Why Should Academics Blog?

HNN wants to know:

Why Should Academics Blog?

HNN welcomes your comments.
You do not have to register to participate in this poll for the first two weeks; after that, registration is required. We do ask all readers to abide by our civility guidelines whether they register or not.

To participate in our poll simply drop down to the bottom of this page and click on the word "Comments."



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Monday, September 27, 2010

iPad and Archaeology

The Apple site has an interesting overview of how the iPad cane be used for fieldwork at Pompeii. Are there other examples?

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Friday, September 24, 2010

Ancient Rome and Google Street View

The BBC has a short video on Google Street View and ancient Rome (click here).
Google's Street View programme, which takes photographs of public roads and puts them online as a navigation tool, has an ambitious new project, to capture the archaeological sites of Rome.
A team has already photographed the Colosseum with their hi-tech camera system and are now working on the Roman Forum.

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Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Yale seeking a Classics Librarian

Classics Librarian
Classics Library
Yale University
Phelps Hall, 344 College St
New Haven, CT
Rank:  Librarian I-III

Schedule:  Full-time (37.5 hours); Standard Work Week (M-F, 8:30-5:00)


The University and The Library
The Yale University Library, as one of the world's leading research libraries, collects, organizes, preserves, and provides access to and services for a rich and unique record of human thought and creativity. It fosters intellectual growth and is a highly valued partner in the teaching and research missions of Yale University and scholarly communities worldwide. A distinctive strength is its rich spectrum of resources, including more than 12.5 million volumes and information in all media, ranging from ancient papyri to early printed books to electronic databases. The Library is engaged in numerous digital initiatives designed to provide access to a full array of scholarly information. Housed in the Sterling Memorial Library and twenty school and departmental libraries, it employs a dynamic, diverse, and innovative staff of over 500 who have the opportunity to work with the highest caliber of faculty and students, participate on committees, and are involved in other areas of staff development.  For additional information on the Yale University Library, please visit the Library's web site at http://www.library.yale.edu/.

The Classics Library

The Classics Library, located adjacent to the Department of Classics, serves the research and instructional needs of the Department’s faculty and students, as well as the entire Yale community. For more information, please visit online at http://www.library.yale.edu/arts/classics.html.

Position Desc-ription
Reporting to the Director of the Arts Library, and in concert with Sterling Memorial Library’s Classics subject specialists, the Classics Librarian provides leadership for building print-based and online collections, provision of on-site library services, and library research education in support of the Classics Department’s academic program. Instills the highest service standards and administers the department's resources to provide excellent services. Fosters a creative, collaborative, and team-oriented work-environment; and facilitates communication and coordination among other units of the Library. The Classics Librarian plays a lead role in maintaining the Classics Library's web pages, facilitating design, and content planning. Working collaboratively with Library and systems staff, the Classics Librarian initiates new projects and explores innovative technologies to improve services as appropriate. Contributes expertise to improve coordination of service procedures, and understanding of reader expectations.

Responsibilities
Plans, monitors and evaluates services of the Classics Library including: information services, document & Library Shelving Facility materials delivery, interlibrary loan, electronic and print course reserves, stacks maintenance, security and facilities maintenance, annual inventory, and the Classics Library web site.  Supervises and coaches 5-8 student assistants; establishes, monitors and incorporates performance indicators to assess and improve the quality of services provided to the department; and participates in general planning for future programs and services of the Classics Library.  Provides general oversight of the Classics Library web site including: facilitating design and content planning in coordination with other librarians and Yale Classics Library constituencies; routine maintenance; and coordinating with the Library Access Integration Services (LAIS) Dept. for web technology support and implementation of centrally developed standards.  Works with vendors or other on-campus units that support Library operations, such as photocopying, print management, facilities maintenance, and security.  Participates in the delivery of Classics reference and research education services.

Contributes to the development of system-wide policies and procedures, and continues to be professionally active both at Yale and in the field.  May participate in and contribute to library long-term planning and is professionally active in library, scholarly, and/or academic organizations. Represents the Library and the University in the academic and professional community by serving on various committees and task forces.  May be required to assist with disaster recovery efforts.  May be assigned to work at West Campus location in West Haven, CT.

Qualifications
Master’s degree from an ALA-accredited program for library and information science and advanced degree in classics or related disciplines; or an equivalent combination of relevant experience and education. Appointment to the rank of Librarian II requires a minimum of two years of professional experience and demonstrated professional accomplishments appropriate to the rank, as well as ongoing engagement in professional development, research, or services. Appointment to the Librarian III rank requires at least five years of professional experience and demonstrated professional accomplishments appropriate to the rank. 

Experience and success in supervising and leading in a unionized and diverse staff team environment.  Excellent analytical, organizational, management, customer service, oral and written communications, and interpersonal skills.  Experience with web design and development and electronic information resources.  Ability to effectively build partnerships and promote the benefits of change in an academic culture that often values ambiguity, diversity of opinion, and historic precedent.  Ability to work both independently and collegially in a demanding and rapidly changing environment and to effectively build partnerships and promote benefits of changes. 

Preferred: Demonstrated ability with HTML and XML; reading knowledge of two or more Western European languages.

Salary and Benefits
We invite you to discover the excitement, diversity, rewards and excellence of a career at Yale University. One of the country's great workplaces, Yale University offers exciting opportunities for meaningful accomplishment and true growth. Our benefits package is among the best anywhere, with a wide variety of insurance choices, liberal paid time off, fantastic family and educational benefits, a variety of retirement benefits, extensive recreational facilities, and much more.  Applications consisting of a cover letter, resume, and the names of three professional references should be sent by creating an account and applying online at www.yale.edu/jobs for immediate consideration - the STARS req ID for this position is 11002BR.  Please be sure to reference #11002BR in your cover letterReview of applications will begin immediately and continue until position is filled.

Background Check Requirements
All external candidates for employment will be subject to pre-employment background screening for this position, which may include motor vehicle and credit checks based on the position desc-ription and job requirements. All offers are contingent on successful completion of a background check. Please visit www.yale.edu/hronline/careers/screening/faqs.html for additional information on the background check requirements and process.


Yale University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer.  Yale values diversity in its faculty, staff, and students and strongly encourages applications from women and members of underrepresented minority groups.



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Thursday, September 2, 2010

Consideration of a Memorandum of Understanding with Greece (the Hellenic Republic)

Help Preserve Archaeology in Greece: Join the AIA in writing to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC)
August 30, 2010

On October 12, 2010, the State Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) will consider establishing a Memorandum of Understanding with Greece (the Hellenic Republic) by which the United States would help preserve the country's rich archaeological heritage. CPAC has called for written comments and it is extremely important that archaeologists, students and the general public send in letters showing their support. The deadline for submitting a letter is September 22, 2010 so please act quickly! This page gives you information about CPAC, lets you download templates for letters, and gives a few suggestions for further reading.

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Tuesday, August 31, 2010

A New Open Access Journal

New Knowledge Environments 
New Knowledge Environments is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal and open community archive for those engaged in exploring and understanding the nature of text-oriented communication in the past, present, and future.
The journal's inaugural issue is Research Foundations for Understanding Books and Reading in the Digital Age, drawn from among the papers presented at INKE's October 2009 gathering of the same name.


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Friday, August 13, 2010

Digitising Cultural Heritage

An Event at the British Museum (Reposted from EEF-list)

From: "Jan Picton" 



FREE EVENT

Digitising Cultural Heritage

British Museum: Stevenson Lecture Theatre.
Saturday 4th September 2010, 09:55 - 16:30

Digital technology has revolutionised modern work- and social life. It
is also transforming cultural heritage management. The power to store,
organise and distribute vast quantities of complex data makes possible
today things that only 20 years ago were dreams. This study day brings
together a selection of projects that embrace the potential of the
digital world to broaden and enrich access to mankind's shared cultural
heritage.

The British Museum's founding philosophy - free access for 'all studious
and curious Persons' - today means not just free entry to the museum in
Bloomsbury, but also free access to the collection online. An increasing
community of institutions and projects share this philosophy, and the
past is no longer such a foreign country.

Programme:

9:55    welcome: Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum

10:00-10:30     British Museum Collections Online
                        Julia Stribblehill, British Museum

10:30-11:00     The International Dunhuang Project
                        Sam van Schaik, British Library

11:00-11:30     TEA BREAK

11:30-12:00     Vindolanda Tablets Online
                        Alan Bowman, University of Oxford

12:00-12:30     Integrating Digital Papyrology
                        Gabriel Bodard, Kings College London

12:30-1:30      LUNCH BREAK

1:30-2:00       The Ashurbanipal Library Project
                      Jon Taylor, British Museum

2:00-2:30       The Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus
                      Steve Tinney, University of Pennsylvania

2:30-3:00       Persistent Digital Archives in Cuneiform Research and
                      Cultural Heritage Management
                      Robert K. Englund, UCLA

3:00-3:30       TEA BREAK

3:30-4:00       The Syrian Digital Library of Cuneiform
                      Bertrand Lafont, CNRS, Paris

4:00-4:30       Cooperation among Research Institutes and Museums -
                      The Digital Edge
                      Jürgen Renn, Max Planck Institute for the History of
                      Science, Berlin

The projects highlighted in the afternoon session all belong to an
international collaboration that currently benefits from funding from
the Andrew Mellon Foundation. Those in the morning session have also
benefited from funding from the same source. In addition to the projects
listed in the programme, related projects will be represented in poster
displays in the foyer.

Further details will appear soon at
http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on.aspx
Please contact Jon Taylor
(jjtaylor@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk)
with any enquiries.
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Wednesday, July 21, 2010

NEH and the DFG award $1.67 million to international digital humanities projects

National Endowment for the Humanities and the German Research Foundation award $1.67 million to international digital humanities projects

The project of especial interest to me are:
  • Maharishi University of Management Research Institute – Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa
    Sanskrit Lexical Sources: Digital Synthesis and Revision
    Peter Scharf, Project Director
    Outright: $177,872
    To support: An international partnership between the Sanskrit Library (Maharishi University of Management) and the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon (CDSL) project (Institute of Indology and Tamil Studies, Cologne University) to establish a digital Sanskrit lexical reference work.
  • Tufts University – Medford, Massachusetts
    The Hellespont Project: Integrating Arachne and Perseus
    Gregory Crane, Project Director
    Outright: $174,828
    To support: An international collaboration between Tufts University and the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) to join together the digital holdings of Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library and the DAI’s Arachne into the largest collection of Greco-Roman materials online.
  • Princeton University – Princeton, New Jersey
    The Yemen Manuscript Digitization Initiative
    David Magier, Project Director
    Outright: $209,056
    To support: An international collaboration between Princeton University and the Freie University, Berlin, to preserve three private libraries and create an online resource for their dissemination; the project team will digitize 236 Arabic manuscripts in the fields of Islamic theology and law.

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Monday, July 12, 2010

Digital Institute for Archaeology Visiting Fellowships

The Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST) and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arkansas are pleased to announce the Digital Institute for Archaeology. The program, supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, is designed to provide junior scholars in archaeology with the training needed to integrate advanced geospatial technologies into their research and teaching endeavors. Participants will receive semester-long residential fellowships at the University of Arkansas during which time they will enroll in three specialized courses in geospatial technologies and pursue independent research projects with the assistance of CAST faculty, staff and facilities. Fellows will also benefit from colloquia focused on archaeological applications of geospatial technologies, regular meetings to discuss independent projects, and short practicum courses offered by CAST staff and visiting speakers. Following their residence at the University of Arkansas, fellows will be offered a position on one of CAST’s numerous archaeological field projects around the world.

The fellowship includes tuition, housing, and a $3000 stipend for the semester of residence. Scholars will also receive funding to support participation in CAST field projects.

Qualified applicants should be either advanced PhD students or have received a PhD in archaeology or a closely related field within the past five years. Please consult the program website for application information and program details.

Application deadlines: July 31 for Fall 2010, November 12 for Spring 2011.

Questions? Contact program director Dr. Jesse Casana jcasana@uark.edu



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Thursday, June 24, 2010

AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 2: The Oriental Institute Electronic Publications Initiative

The Oriental Institute Electronic Publications Initiative.  
[Originally posted April 9, 2008. Updated April 30, 2007 with the addition of more CAD and CHD volumes; updated September 16, 2008 with the addition of OIP 130; updated January 6, 2009 with the addition of OIP 135; Updated January 27, 2009 with the addition of OIMP 29. Updated March 16, 2009 with the addition of OIS 5. Updated April 28, 2009 with the addition of a suite of older OI volumes on Egyptian subjects. Updated May 1, 2009 with the addition of a suite of older OI volumes on Egyptian subjects. Updated May 12, 2009 with the addition of a suite of older OI volumes on Egyptian subjects. Updated May 14, 2009 with the addition of two recent Annual Reports. Updated through February 18, 2010. Updated March 1, 2010. Updated March 6, 2010. Updated March 9, 2010. Updated March 31, 2010. Updated April 23, 2010. Updated May 26, 2010. Updated May 30, 2020. Updated June 24, 2010. Updated June 25, 20120. Updated 20 July, 2010. Updated 29 July, 2010. Updated 12 August 2010. Updated 9/17/10. Updated 9/27/10. Updated 10/5/10]


The "canonical" version of the list of online publications of the OI remained here for two and a half years and moved to AWOL:


during Open Access Week on October 19, 2010.  It will be kept up to date in that location henceforth.

AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 1
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 2
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 3
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 4
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 5
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 6
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 7


More AWOL - The Ancient World Online


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Saturday, June 12, 2010

Congratulations to Professor Fergus Millar

Professor Fergus Millar, Emeritus Camden Professor of Ancient History, University of Oxford, has been awarded a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours list "For services to Scholarship".

For more on the Queen's Birthday Honours List for 2010 see here.
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Thursday, June 3, 2010

Hacking Archaeology, or, PDQ Redux

At the risk of sounding derivative... are folks aware of the 'Hacking the Academy' book project? Perhaps something similar to collect together the archaeo-blog-o-sphere is a good idea...?

To recap, Dan Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt launched this as part of the recent THATCamp:

Can an algorithm edit a journal? Can a library exist without books? Can students build and manage their own learning management platforms? Can a conference be held without a program? Can Twitter replace a scholarly society?

As recently as the mid-2000s, questions like these would have been unthinkable. But today serious scholars are asking whether the institutions of the academy as they have existed for decades, even centuries, aren’t becoming obsolete. Every aspect of scholarly infrastructure is being questioned, and even more importantly, being hacked. Sympathetic scholars of traditionally disparate disciplines are cancelling their association memberships and building their own networks on Facebook and Twitter. Journals are being compiled automatically from self-published blog posts. Newly-minted Ph.D.’s are foregoing the tenure track for alternative academic careers that blur the lines between research, teaching, and service. Graduate students are looking beyond the categories of the traditional C.V. and building expansive professional identities and popular followings through social media. Educational technologists are “punking” established technology vendors by rolling their own open source infrastructure.

“Hacking the Academy” will both explore and contribute to ongoing efforts to rebuild scholarly infrastructure for a new millenium.
At least one other 'hacking'-inspired project is now underway. We had a bit of momentum a while ago for something along these lines (PDQ) but maybe the problem there was that we tried to build it entirely via blogs - 'Hacking the Academy' seems to have gained its momentum by its use of Twitter for collecting/collating submissions.

So. Good idea, bad idea, unnecessary?


Monday, May 24, 2010

Digital Classicist/ICS 2010 summer seminar programme

Digital Classicist 2010 summer seminar programme
Institute of Classical Studies

Meetings are on Fridays at 16:30
in room STB9 (Stewart House)
Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

ALL WELCOME
Seminars will be followed by refreshments

* Jun 4 _Leif Isaksen (Southampton)_ Reading Between the
Lines: unearthing structure in Ptolemy's Geography

* Jun 11 _Hafed Walda (King's College London)_ and Charles Lequesne
(RPS Group) Towards a National Inventory for Libyan Archaeology

* Jun 18 _Timothy Hill (King's College London)_ After
Prosopography? Data modelling, models of history, and new directions
for a scholarly genre.

* Jun 25 _Matteo Romanello (King's College London)_ Towards a
Tool for the Automatic Extraction of Canonical References

* Jul 2 _Mona Hess (University College London)_ 3D Colour Imaging
For Cultural Heritage Artefacts

* Jul 16 _Annemarie La Pensée (National Conservation Centre) and
Françoise Rutland (World Museum Liverpool)_ Non-contact 3D
laser scanning as a tool to aid identification and interpretation of
archaeological artefacts: the case of a Middle Bronze Age Hittite Dice

* Jul 23 _Mike Priddy (King's College London)_ On-demand Virtual
Research Environments: a case study from the Humanities

* Jul 30 _Monica Berti (Torino) and Marco Büchler (Leipzig)_
Fragmentary Texts and Digital Collections of Fragmentary Authors

* Aug 6 _Kathryn Piquette (University College London)_ Material
Mediates Meaning: Exploring the artefactuality of writing utilising
qualitative data analysis software

* Aug 13 _Linda Spinazzè (Venice)_ Musisque Deoque. Developing new
features: manuscripts tracing on the net

For more information on individual seminars and updates on the
programme, see http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/
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Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Open Access, Classical Studies and Publication by Postgraduate Researchers

Stefan Krmnicek and Peter Probst have a very interesting article Open Access, Classical Studies and Publication by Postgraduate Researchers in Archaeolog, about the Frankfurter elektronische Rundschau zur Altertumskunde.
In conclusion, despite the difficulties mentioned above, the project to set up a free and accessible online journal organized by and for young scholars and encompassing all facets of classical studies has been relatively successful. Thanks to free online access the articles published in this periodical have found widespread recognition both within the field and outside of it. The reception of transmitted information, substantiated by references in print-media, can also be summed up as positive. It is, however, regrettable that – due to the circumstances mentioned above – it is precisely the younger generation of classical scholars who do not fully profit from the use of online publication, even though experience shows clearly that research published online reaches a wider public much faster than do publications in traditional print media. That the scientific community is increasingly convinced of the advantages of electronic publication can be deduced from the number of newly established online periodicals (e.g. The Journal of Archaeology in the Low Countries established in May 2009) (1). A journal specifically tailored to junior academics, published three times a year, open to articles written in multiple languages, with its own ISSN number – as is the case with the FeRA journal – is unique.


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Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Online Humanities Scholarship: The Shape of Things to Come

Jerome McGann organized a three-day conference at University of Virginia, Online Humanities Scholarship: The Shape of Things to Come (26-28 March 2010).

Some of the contributions are now available online

McGann, Jerome.
"Introduction." Connexions.
May 1, 2010.
http://cnx.org/content/m34305/1.1/.

McGann, J.
Integrating Digital Papyrology. [Abstract of Roger Bagnall, “Integrating Digital Papyrology”]
Connexions,
May 1, 2010.
http://cnx.org/content/m34320/1.1/.

Crane, G.
Give us editors! Re-inventing the edition and re-thinking the humanities. [a response to Roger Bagnall’s contribution on Digital Papyrology]
Connexions,
May 1, 2010.
http://cnx.org/content/m34316/1.1/.

Robinson, P.
Response to Roger Bagnall paper: Integrating Digital Papyrology.
Connexions,
May 1, 2010.
http://cnx.org/content/m34325/1.1/.


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Saturday, May 1, 2010

I wish to be clear that my concern revolves around the number of web pages on good, serious sites that are posted without attribution of any kind. Some such pages - let's say short, general descriptions of a projects - may be fine. But my concern is that those in charge have clear, explicit guidelines for what needs stated authors and what does not. Nick Eiteljorg | |
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Friday, April 30, 2010

"The Scholarly Apparatus: When Should It Be There?"

In the most recent (April 2010) issue of the CSA Newsletter (Vol. XXIII, No. 1), is Nick Eiteljorg's short piece The Scholarly Apparatus: When Should It Be There? Citations, credibility, and pride of authorship. His comment is a plea to those who publish online to make an effort to make their works citable. I'm completely sympathetic. I am also quite sure that we need citation formats flexible enough to describe the evidence however it presents itself.

Dean Snow has already added a comment concerning this issue.
join the conversation by sending comment directly to CSA, or by using the comment function here.


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Exlibris von Ägyptologen

Kirsten Konrad and Peter Pamminger were kind enough to send me a copy of their very nice monograph Exlibris von Ägyptologen (Göttinger Miszellen Beihefte Nr. 7), Göttingen, 2010.

In September 2008 they sent me twenty bookplates and allowed me to present them in Bookplates of Scholars in Ancient Studies


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Thursday, April 29, 2010

Undue Diligence

In March there was a workshop entitled Undue Diligence: Seeking Low-risk Strategies for Making Collections of Unpublished Materials More Accessible at the OCLC San Mateo office.
The seminar concluded with a discussion of what was termed "well-intentioned practice." OCLC staff, with input from speakers and advisors, had drafted a reasonable approach to balancing risk and access when making collections of unpublished materials accessible online. The participants in the seminar discussed and improved the document. Following the meeting, the revised document was shared with the speakers, advisors, participants and a few other experts. More improvements were made. The one-page document offers a practical approach to selecting collections, making decisions, seeking permissions, recording outcomes, establishing policy and working with future donors.

Currently the document is being shared with other organizations in hopes that, with additional endorsement, we'll be able to establish a community of practice based on this approach.

This document is Well-intentioned practice for putting digitized collections of unpublished materials online.


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Monday, April 19, 2010

Looting Matters: Protecting the Cultural Heritage of Italy

Looting Matters: Protecting the Cultural Heritage of Italy -- SWANSEA, Wales, April 16 /PRNewswire/ --

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Italy with Italy is under review. The Looting Matters press release includes a quote from Sebastian Heath, Vice President for Professional Responsibilities at the AIA: "The MOU between the US and Italy serves the interests of the international community by reducing looting and preserving information about the Ancient World".

The deadline for submissions is April 22, 2010.

Further details on how to submit comments from the AIA website.


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Friday, April 16, 2010

Search reopened: ASCSA Director of Publications

Director of Publications

Director of Publications

DIRECTOR OF PUBLICATIONS in Princeton, New Jersey SEARCH REOPENED

The primary responsibilities of the Director of Publications include the overall direction and management of the Publications Office; overseeing the assignments of the editorial staff and freelance editors and designers; working with excavation directors and authors to develop and produce assigned monographs; collaborating with the Editor of Hesperia; overseeing marketing and distribution; negotiating financial arrangements with printers and fulfillment agencies; investigating alternative sources of funding for publications; and exploring and developing new avenues--digital or other--for American School publications.

The Director is also expected to oversee staff in the Publications Office; write regularly scheduled performance reviews; create and administer an annual departmental budget; prepare regular reports for the American School Managing Committee, Board of Trustees, and Committee on Publications; and maintain and expand the American School Publications web page. The Director works closely with the chair of the Committee on Publications and reports to the chair of the Managing Committee.

Requirements: BA degree, with an advanced degree preferred; at least five years managerial experience in a publishing environment; background in classical archaeology, Classics, ancient art, or a related field preferred; and demonstrated knowledge of digital publishing and current trends in scholarly communication.

Alongside archaeological exploration, teaching, and research, publication is one of the core missions of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Since its founding in 1881, the American School has published almost 250 books. These include major reports and studies on material culture recovered during excavations at the Athenian Agora, Ancient Corinth, and other sites that are essential reference works for all scholars of the ancient world. Since 1932, the American School has also published the award-winning quarterly journal Hesperia, one of the leading periodicals in the field. The increasingly digital nature of scholarship is transforming the nature of publication in this field, and the Director of Publications contributes to institution-wide initiatives to support new modes of scholarly communication.

The position is full-time, beginning as soon as is mutually convenient. Excellent benefits, pleasant working conditions in the Princeton, New Jersey Publications Office, occasional travel to Greece, and salary commensurate with experience. Application review will begin as of April 14, 2010 and continue until the position is filled. Interested applicants should send a cover letter, curriculum vitae, and at least two letters of recommendation to:

Professor Jane Carter
Committee on Publications
American School of Classical Studies at Athens
6-8 Charlton Street
Princeton, NJ 08540

or
e-mail to application@ascsa.org, marked “Publication Job Application” in the subject area.


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Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Paragraph level open public commenting on online publication

University of Michigan press has just released a book online with an interesting feature. Using a platform designed by digress.it, readers can leave comments at the individual paragraph level, respond to others’ comments, and generally use the book as a springboard to meaningful discussions about autism and parenting.

Have a look here. The content is not related to the ancient world.

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Ithaka S+R's Faculty Survey 2009

Ithaka S+R issued their Faculty Survey 2009 today:

Two interesting cover articles are already out:

"Eroding Library Role?" in Inside Higher Ed

and

"Scholars Increasingly Embrace Some, but Not All, Digital Media" in The Chronicle


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Friday, April 2, 2010

Do religious universities serve the public good?

An article in Macleans.ca OnCampus by Todd Pettigrew, April 2nd, 2010 Do religious universities serve the public good? has the following interesting passage:

...Let me put it another way. Imagine three scholars were proposing to start new universities in Canada this year with mission statements that included the following:

Canadian Olympian University is an innovative university dedicated to the fearsome Gods of Olympus, rooted in the classical faith tradition, moved and transformed by the life and teachings of the epic poet Homer. Through teaching, research and service COU inspires and equips women and men for lives of service, leadership and reconciliation in Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite and their followers.

As a polytheistic community, Atlantic Egyptian University upholds pagan standards of behavior to which faculty and staff are required to conform. These standards derive not only from ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics, but also from the culture of the Pharaohs, the priesthood and their slaves.

The mission of Canadian Mesopotamian University, as an arm of Taimat and Abzu, is to develop sky-respecting leaders: positive, goal-oriented university graduates with minds dedicated to Enlil, god of storms; growing disciples of Nin-Khursag, the earth goddess,who glorify Enki, water god and patron of wisdom.

These all sound silly, of course, and we would all think twice before hiring a graduate from any of these schools to teach our children or treat our diseases. But they are all real statements from Canadian religious universities (Canadian Mennonite, Atlantic Baptist/Crandall, and Trinity Western) with the Christian references removed and other real, if ancient, religions put in their place...

It's interesting and worth reading.

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AWBG by email

Are you interested in the content in this blog? You can now use the convenient Ancient World Bloggers Group by email function right there in the right hand sidebar. Enter your address for notification of something new. You will get no spam from this.

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Thursday, April 1, 2010

NEH Awards in Ancient Studies, March 29, 2010

NEH announces $16 million in awards and offers for 286 humanities projects, March 29, 2010. Following are the funded projects relating to the Ancient World:

University of California, Berkeley Outright: $6,000 [Summer Stipends]
Project Director: Robert Goldman
Project Title: The Final Chapter: Introduction, Translation, and Scholarly Annotation of the Uttarakanda of the Critical Edition of the Valm

University of California, Berkeley Outright: $49,942 [Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants] Project Director: Niek Veldhuis
Project Title: Berkeley Prosopography Services: Building Research Communities and Restoring Ancient Communities through Digital Tools
Project Description: Development of the Berkeley Prosopography Service (BPS), an open source digital toolkit that extracts prosopographic data from TEI encoded text and generates interactive visual representations of social networks.

University of California, Berkeley Outright: $234,495 Humanities Collections and Reference Resources
Project Director: James Matisoff
Project Title: Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus: Sustainability
Implementation
Project Description: The development of an online etymological dictionary and thesaurus of
Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the common ancestor of languages spoken in China, India, and Southeast
Asia. The project would also implement strategies for sustaining this resource over the long term.

University of Southern California Outright: $24,933 [Enduring Questions: Pilot Course Grants] Project Director: David Albertson
Project Title: NEH Enduring Questions Course on the Power of Visual Images Project Description: The development of an undergraduate seminar on the significance

University of California, Los Angeles Outright: $50,000
[Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants]
Project Director: Lisa Snyder
Project Title: Software Interface for Real-time Exploration of Three-Dimensional Computer
Models of Historic Urban Environments
Project Description” The prototype development for a generalized, extensible platform that will
allow for real-time exploration, annotation, and tours in 3D computer models, using the NEH-
funded Digital Karnak as the test case.

National Geographic Society Outright: $800,000 [America's Media Makers Production]
Project Director: Maryanne Culpepper Project Title: In the Footsteps of Heroes
Project Description: Production of a six-part television documentary series about the history and culture of Ancient Greek civilization from the Bronze Age through the Roman annexation of Greece in 146 BCE.

Emory University Outright: $24,965
[Enduring Questions: Pilot Course Grants]
Project Director: Andrew Mitchell
Project Title: NEH Enduring Questions Course on How Does One Live a Life that Ends?
Project Description: The development of an introductory level undergraduate course that charts a three-part historical trajectory from ancient Sumerian and Greek texts to 20th-century thought.

University of Chicago Outright: $300,000
[America's Historical & Cultural Organizations Implementation]
Project Director: Anthony Hirschel
Project Title: Echoes of the Past: The Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiangtangshan
Project Description: Implementation of a traveling exhibition, a website, an international
symposium, a catalog, and programs on the sculptures of Xiangtangshan caves in China.

Northern Illinois University Outright: $6,000 [Summer Stipends]
Project Director: John Bentley Project
Title: Dictionary of Ancient Japanese Orthography

Walters Art Museum Outright: $315,000
[Humanities Collections and Reference Resources]
Project Director: William Noel
Project Title: Parchment to Pixel: Creating a Digital Resource of Medieval Manuscripts
Project Description: Cataloging and digitizing 105 medieval illuminated manuscripts dating
mostly from the 9th to the 16th centuries that derive from diverse Christian cultures. Images and
catalog data would be freely accessible via the museum's Web site and a portal maintained by
Johns Hopkins University.

Harvard University Outright: $215,099 [Humanities Collections and Reference Resources] Project Director: William Fash
Project Title: Digitizing, Re-housing, Cataloging, and Creating Online Access to the Peabody Museum's Photograph Collection*
Project Description: The second phase of a project to catalog, digitize, and mount on the Internet 25,000 photographic images from the Peabody Museum Photographic Archives that document archaeological and ethnographic objects and major expeditions, dating from 1866 to the 1930s.

Mount Holyoke College Outright: $18,535
[Enduring Questions: Pilot Course Grants]
Project Director: Elizabeth Markovits
Project Title: NEH Enduring Questions Course on What Is Family?
Project Description: The development of a first-year seminar on the changing meanings of family from classical to modern times.

Documentary Educational Resources, Inc. Outright: $50,000
[America's Media Makers Development]
Project Director: David Lebrun
Project Title: The Royal Cup
Project Description: Development of an hour-long documentary film on ancient Maya pottery and the ethics of studying and collecting objects that may have been looted.

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Outright: $6,000 [Summer Stipends]
Project Director: Alex Jassen
Project Title: Violence, Religion, and the Dead Sea Scrolls

Carleton College [Teaching Development Fellowships]
Project Director: William North
Project Title: Cultures of Empire: Byzantium, 711-1453
Outright: $21,000

University of Mississippi, Main Campus Outright: $6,000 {Summer Stipends]
Project Director: Steven Skultety Project
Title: Conflict in Aristotle's Political Philosophy

College of New Jersey Outright: $21,000 [Teaching Development Fellowships]
Project Director: Deborah Huton
Project Title: Arts of South Asia: Exploring Monuments in Depth

University of New Mexico Outright: $49,832 [Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants]
Project Director: Jennifer von Schwerin
Project Title: Digital Documentation and Reconstruction of an Ancient Maya Temple and Prototype of Internet GIS Database of Maya Architecture
Project Description: This project brings together an international team of archeologists, technologists, and cultural heritage site managers to develop a test implementation of a new online platform for virtual environments of significant cultural sites, using the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Copan, Honduras as a testbed

New York Botanical Garden Outright: $40,000 [America's Historical and Cultural Organizations Planning]
Project Director: Susan Fraser
Project Title: Medicinal Plants: Ancient Culture to Modern Medicine at The New York Botanical Garden
Project Description: Planning for a multiformat traveling exhibition and public programs that explore how plants have shaped the trajectory of medicine throughout the world.

Aquila Theatre Company, Inc. Outright: $800,000
[America's Historical & Cultural Organizations Implementation]
Project Director: Peter Meineck
Project Title: Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives: Poetry-Drama-Dialogue
Project Description: Implementation of a national program series exploring classical literature, to be presented at 100 libraries and performing arts centers in 20 states.

New York University Outright: $298,457 [Humanities Collections and Reference Resources] Project Director: Thomas Elliott
Project Title: Pleiades: Content and Community for Ancienty Geography Project Description: The continued development of an open-access digital gazetteer for Greek and Roman history with reusable open-source software that could be employed in other digital humanities publications.

Hartwick College Outright: $6,000 [Summer Stipends] Project
Director: Martha Zebrowski
Project Title: William Smith's 1753 Translation of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War

Cleveland Museum of Art Outright: $40,000 [America's Historical and Cultural Organizations Planning]
Project Director: Sue Bergh
Project Title: The Realm of the Condor: Wari, the Art of a Pre-Inca Empire Project Description: Planning for a traveling exhibition and a publication on the art of the Wari Empire which flourished in highland Peru from about AD 750 to AD 1000.

University of Pennsylvania Outright: $240,655 [Humanities Collections and Reference Resources]
Project Director: Grant Frame Project Title: Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period Project Description: Online publication of the official inscriptions of the rulers of ancient Assyria, which are preserved on clay tablets and other artifacts. The project would also provide transliterations, translations, and bibliographic information.

University of Virginia Outright: $50,000 [Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants]
Project Director: Bernard Frischer
Project Title: New Digital Tools for Restoring Polychromy to 3D Digital Models of Sculpture Project Description: The development of a set of tools that would allow for the accurate inclusion and display of color for Classical sculpture, using the Augustus of Prima Porta in the Vatican Museums as a case study.

University of Virginia Outright: $48,549 [Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants]
Project Director: David Koller
Project Title: Supercomputing for Digitized 3D Models of Cultural Heritage
Project Description: The development of new algorithms and software to process large-scale,
data-intensive 3D models of cultural heritage materials on supercomputers.

W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research Outright: $320,400 [Fellowship Programs at Independent Research Institutions]
Project Director: Seymour Gitin
Project Title: Post-Doctoral Fellowships in Middle Eastern Archaeology Project Description: The equivalent of two twelve-month fellowships a year for three years.

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