Anglican Options in the UK

The continuing echo of late antiquity in the modern world is of interest to me. This comes to mind in light of the announcement from the Vatican that it will allow Anglicans to convert while "preserving aspects of their Anglican spiritual and liturgical heritage". I note that there is an alternative that looks back further than the reformation.

The document British Orthodox Heritage Resurgance starts with the paragraph:

For a thousand years, from AD37-45 to AD1054-66, the people living in the British Isles believed and worshipped God as an integral part of the undivided Orthodox Church. That Church was governed world wide by five Patriarchs, those of Constantinople (the Ecumenical Patriarch), Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria. The Church in the British Isles was a local expression of the common Christian Faith held throughout the world. The great saints of the British Isles such as Saint Aidan, Saint David, Saint Patrick, Saint Alban, Saint Chad, Saint Cuthbert, Saint Boniface, Saint Dunstan etc., were all members of that Orthodox Catholic Church in the British Isles which continued for a thousand years.

AD 1054 is, of course, the year of the so-called Great Schism, one of a series of events that lead to the remarkable variety of christian liturgy and doctrine that exists today. While I don't mean to comment on the historicity of the document, I do like the living offering of the pentarchy as a model for modern church government and self-description. Can't we just go back to the Middle Ages?

Brief Thoughts on EPUB Books at Google

I've been playing with downloading epub books from Google. EPUB is a format for digital publication targeted to portable readers. That's not what I care about right now. It is cool that it uses plain old xhtml and standard image formats to represent the contents of a book. That means if you can unpack an EPUB file, which is very easy, you have access to text and images in readily consumable form.

I'm not the first to point this out. See Greg Crane What do you do with a Million Books for early thinking on the large scale implications of Google's work.

In terms of playing, here's what's fun. If you go to the G Books page for H. Chase's Catalogue of Arretine pottery from the MFA, you'll see a link to download the "EPUB" version.

Once you've downloaded that file, it's easy to unpack. I'm a Mac/Linux user. If you are too, and you like the command line, 'unzip Catalogue_of_Arretine_pottery.epub' will do the trick. Otherwise, change the extension to ".zip" and double-click on the file. I'm sure something similar will work in Windows.

Once unpacked, you have two directories, 'OEBPS' and 'META-INF'. The first is the one with all the goodies in it. Open 'OEBPS/images' and you'll see the plates from the book. Those files aren't hi-res, but better than nothing.

The text is the in 'Content-###.xml' files. These can be opened in a browser directly.

As people like Greg have noted, cool things will happen when communities, such as scholars/enthusiasts of the ancient Mediterranean world, take these files and add value to them. In the meantime, I like being able to get at the images, and to have the text on my hard-drive so its available for searching. On the Mac, Spotlight does a good job of indexing the Content files. It also indexes the compressed archives when their extensions are ".zip". It seems to ignore the ".epub" files but I bet that will change soon enough.

Another Video of Upenn Roman Pottery

I'm still enjoying using my phone to shoot video in museums. And I've upgraded my copy of iLife so I can put the clips together with iMovie. That's seems to be good enough for my skill level. The latest product is overviews of a display at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.



As I note in the opening frame, these are totally unofficial and personal works. Yes, I'm a Consulting Scholar in the Mediterranean Section and that's why I find myself in the galleries. But I'm just messing around here so don't think worse of the institution because of my low production values.

I'm also still playing around with how to do captions, etc. This time I tried adding "freeze frames". When I get comfortable with what I can do, I'll start adding more informative copy.

I have clips of Upenn Dressel 1's and a Dressel 20 handle/body sherd. And I went to the Brooklyn Museum last weekend. In the past they've had a little bit of Roman pottery on display. But the Egyptian displays keep growing at the expense of later material. I shot some of that and some Bronze Age Cypriot and Minoan vessels. I'll compile and upload those eventually.

The Chronology of Phocaean Red Slip (LRC) Hayes 1 and 2

The chronology of Phocaean Red-Slip (LRC) Hayes forms 1 and 2 is turning out to be very important for the work Billur Tekkök and I are doing at Troy/Ilion, in particular when it comes to dating late 4th century building activity at the site. No real surprise there. In the grand scheme of things, Phocaea is near Troy so we should expect to have a fairly complete range of vessels, especially through the early to mid 6th century when the city is still in pretty good shape. An earthquake hits in c. 525 +/- and things seem to get rapidly worse after that. A few PRS Hayes form 10's and a little bit of African Red-Slip, including a Hayes 91d, show that there was ongoing activity at the site but it seems clear that things slow down over the course of the 6th century AD.

In terms of forms, we have lots of Hayes 1s, plenty of Hayes 2's, and many Hayes 3's. We also have a few 5's, vessels near form 6, 8's, a single 9, and a few 10's.

This post isn't about quantities so I'm intentionally using very vague terms. It is about chronology, or rather about the current thinking on the early chronology of the ware. It's just an opening shot so I hereby invoke all the informality that comes with a blog post.

Hayes defined the most widely used typology in 1972 in his Late Roman Pottery (worldcat). He described 10 forms with various subtypes and made frequent reference to his work at the Athenian Agora. Picking from his combination of explicit dating and narrative discussion gives the following date ranges for early PRS (p. 325-329):

Hayes 1a	"late fourth-early fifth century."
Hayes 1b	"early-third quarter fifth century."
Hayes 1c	"uncertain, perhaps first half of fifth century"
Hayes 1d	"early-third quarter fifth century"
Hayes 2a	late fourth (370) to 450
Hayes 2b	No explicit dates are given for the start of this variant, end falls under the general rubric that form 2 ends by 450.
Hayes 2c	Early variant, "with mid-late fourth century material".

And while we're at it, here are some profile drawings:
Hayes 1a/b from Troy (I17.0647:5)


Hayes 2a from Troy (I17.0647:1)


For more examples go to http://classics.uc.edu/troy/grbpottery/.

Since 1972, the start of form 2 has at times been moved later. This has been done partly on the basis of excavations at San Giacomo degli Schiavoni in Molise (Italy), which documented PRS from a rich early fifth-century cistern fill. The full reference is U.Albarella , V.Ceglia & P.Roberts, S.Giacomo degli Schiavoni ( Molise ): an early fifth century AD deposit of pottery and animal bones from central Adriatic Italy. Papers of the British School at Rome, LXI, 157-230. I'm writing this from home but I do have a photocopy of that article. (Note: why isn't PBSR online? Really, it should be. Or is it and I just don't know about it.)

Jumping ahead a little bit, J. Hayes in his 2009 Agora volume on the imported fine-wares (about which more below), writes of this deposit that it is "coin-dated" (p. 85). Roberts in the article itself writes, "No coins were found, but abundant dating evidence was provided by imported finewares..." (p. 163). Earlier, Albarella writes, "Continuity of occupation through the Imperial period is well documented by and coins...". Question: is there a subsequent publication of a coin from (or clearly dating) the cistern fill? Hayes only references the PBSR article so may overstate the case by calling it "coin dated". Regardless, it's a large deposit (435 vessels identified), with various imports including 33 African Red-Slip (7.5%) and 13 PRS (3%). It certainly shows ARS and PRS circulating together in the early fifth century but I'm not sure it needs to be read as indicating a later start for Hayes 2.

I could offer more references, both to Albarella et al. and to other deposits but I'll instead return to Hayes 2009 (worldcat). Pages 83-88 discuss PRS and offer a substantial update on the chronology presented in LRP. To go along with the narrative, catalog entries 1229 to 1419 are all PRS and there are many profile drawings and a selection of photographs. It's a "don't miss" selection of information about the ware.

Looking to turn Hayes' prose into some relevant dates - some represented as numbers -, I come up with the following:

First appearance of PRS in Agora	"...later fourth century, but regular importation seems to coincide with the marked slump seen here in African imports around 390-400... (p. 85)
Form 2 and 3	Citing Italian and other sites, "it seems reasonable to conclude that the stamped forms 2 and 3 both originated close to the turn of the century as replacements for two popular African products..." (p. 85)
Form 3f and 3g	In Beirut earthquake horizon of 551.(p. 86)
beginning of Form 10	"...the evidence from Lejjun (Jordan) hints at ca. 550..." (p. 86)
	"...the continued presence of PRS ware until the mid-7th century seems assured..." (p. 86)

Those are just a few quotes from Hayes' prose introduction to the ware. Turning to the catalog, here are synopses of/snippets from some of the entries that stand out as useful for our work at Troy:

1230	A "forerunner" to Hayes 1 dated to the late 3rd/early 4th. This piece is useful for documenting transition from Çandarli/ESC to PRS.
1326 + 1327	Form 1 variant. From "Grynnion" workshop? No join between sherds so perhaps not same vessel. "4th Century or later".
1231	Form 1 from "Context of second half of 4th century.
1229	Hayes 1. "Early(?) variant, in probable Çandarli fabric./Late 4th century. Context of Same date."
1232-1236	Main series of Hayes 1's, from first half of fifth or residual in later context.
1237	Hayes 2a from "Context of ca. A.D. 400.
1238	Hayes 2a dated "Ca. A.D. 400-425."
1239	Hayes 2a/b from "Context of ca. A.D. 400+."
1240	Hayes 2b "Date later than 1239? Context of ca. A.D. 460-475"
1242	Hayes 2c dated "Ca. A.D. 400 to mid-5th century."
1243	Hayes 2c from "Context of mid- to late 4th century."
1244+1245	Small Hayes 2's both from "Context of late 4th century."
1246+1247	Small Hayes 2's both dated to "Ca. A.D. 400 or later."

I've assembled the above tables because when I read the prose introduction, I became concerned that the phrase "the stamped forms 2 and 3 both originated close to the turn of the century" could be become hardened into something like "forms 2 and 3 appear after 400." While this is true for Hayes form 3, I think the appearance of Hayes 2 needs to be kept a little earlier.

As noted, saying so goes against one stream of discussion of form 2. For example, when reviewing C. Abadie-Reynal's volume on the Roman pottery from Argos (worldcat) for BMCR, K. Slane wrote, "Recent work in Corinth confirms that LRC forms 1 and 2 are prevalent in the first half, perhaps even second quarter of the fifth century, rather than in the fourth." I quote the review first because it's readily available online. More in depth discussion can be found in two Hesperia articles: K. Slane and G. Sanders, Corinth: Late Roman Horizons Hesperia 74 (2005), 243-297 (online). To quote:

Assemblage 1 marks the earliest appearance of LRC at Corinth: Hayes forms 1 and 1A, 2B and C, 3.32, and 4 (or 3/4) appear in small quantities with coins of the second quarter and middle of the fifth century and with fifth-century AfRS. Although the amount of AfRS is sharply reduced from what it had been in the fourth century, it is still two or three times as common as LRC. (p. 283)

At the end of the same paragraph, assemblage 1 is dated to 450 or 460. By extension, LRC 1, 1a, 2b, 2c first appear at Corinth in 450 to 460.

In the catalog of this article no. 1.10 on page 251 and fig. 3 is a Hayes 2c similar in profile to Agora XXXII no. 1243, which is said to be from a "Context of mid- to late 4th century." So it looks like the first appearance of 2c at Corinth may post-date its appearance at Athens by 50 years. That's a big gap.

Slane has also published The End of the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore on Acrocorinth Hesperia 77 (2008), 465-496 (online). The most relevant paragraph is the following:

No additional Late Roman C was identified in the reexamination of the context pottery. The single piece found in the sanctuary remains an intact saucer of form 1D (120, Fig. 2) from the debris overlying the floor of the Roman Propylon (lot 2240).Although progress has been made in establishing that LRC was manufactured at several sites south of Pergamon, including Phocaea,the published dates of LRC still depend heavily on the Athenian deposits.In the West, LRC is rare until ca. 470 and most common in the first half of the 6th century. Earlier forms appear ca. 430 in southern Italy (San Giovanni di Ruoti, San Giacomo degli Schiavoni), and the same forms appear at Benghazi. At Corinth, in the area north
of Buildings 1–7 east of the Theater, LRC forms 1 and 2 occur in approximately equal numbers with form 3B–C, suggesting that importation occurred through most of the 5th century; assemblage 1 from the same area contained form 2 and an early example of form 3.40 The most likely date for 120 therefore remains 425–460. Unfortunately, it is not from what we term “destruction debris.” Because it is intact, I had suggested that it was from one of the late graves, but none were identified so far west on the Middle Terrace. Perhaps it can be associated with the dismantling of the Roman Propylon, which would thus be dated ca. 430–460.

That's a long quote, I admit. But it makes for a good read and it is worth following the footnotes if you have access to the article online or in print. For my immediate purpose, it makes no definitive statements about the start of production of PRS Hayes 2, only about its appearance at Corinth.

As noted above, Slane's BMCR review is of the Roman pottery volume from Argos. What's is going on there. In her introduction to PRS, Abadie-Reynal writes:

La chronologie établie par J. W. Hayes parait généralement confirmée par les trouvailles ultérieure. La date d'apparition de cette production a été fixée dans la seconde moitié du IVe siècle, autour des années 370. Cette production continue jusqu'au VIIe siècle. (p. 176)

Catalog nos. 288, 289, and 290 (17.1.2-4) reference sherds of Hayes 2a, b and c from early fifth century deposits. Cat. no. 292 (17.2.2) is identified as the foot of a Hayes 2. Here's the discussion:

Un exemplaire provient d'un context daté de la fin du IVe siècle. Il est importante car c'est le seul fragment de la forme Hayes 2 qui ait été trouvé à Argos dans un contexte de cette époque. Il confirme donc bien que cette forme a commencé à être utilisée à la fin du IVe siècle, même si la majorité des fragments proviennent d'ensembles du Ve.

This offers a correction to Slane's statement in the BMCR review that "Abadie-Reynal is explicit that all examples of LRC form 2 are found in contexts of the fifth century or later, but a few examples of form 1 seem to be transitional from Çandarli." A foot is not as good evidence as a rim, however.

[Quickly checking the catalog of A. Ivantchik Un puits d'époque paléochrétienne sur l'agora d'Argos BCH 126 (2002), 331-404 (online), gives 2 Hayes 3's and a 4 of the mid-fifth.]

OK. What does all this have to do with Troy/Ilion? We have a Hayes 2 sealed in the construction of a columned portico that was added to an earlier building in the late fourth or early fifth century AD. It's the example illustrated above. The same deposit produced 2 Hayes 1a/b rims, a Hayes 1a base, an ARS H50, and an ARS H53b. I'm repeating two drawings from above, but here they all are together.

Hayes 1a from Troy (I17.0647:4)


Hayes 1a/b from Troy (I17.0647:5)


Hayes 1a base (I17.0648:6)


Hayes 2a from Troy (I17.0647:1)


Hayes African Red-Slip 50a (I17.0647:2)


Hayes African Red-Slip 53b (I17.0647:3)


It's a nice group and its date matters. Building the portico is part of a larger resurgence of activity after a lull in the fourth century. If things don't get going again until after 400, that affects our understanding of how quickly Ilion responded to large-scale phenomena such as the increasing population of Constantinople. Consider this and other issues local, regional and Mediterranean-wide and the date of PRS Hayes 2 matters. Especially if it's after 400 and is the latest dateable sherd in that deposit.

Right now, partly on the basis of I17.0647 and on the basis of the Argos catalog, I think Hayes 2 begins before 400. On a related matter, I think the transition from Çandarli to ESC is a smooth one and that Ilion, even if the fourth century isn't a high-point, continues to receive finewares from the south throughout this transition. But I'm adopting a somewhat informal tone in offering this initial conclusion because I've gathered the evidence as notes on secondary literature and as consideration of the material at Troy. I haven't pursued the dialectic between those sources to a firm end. I'm comfortable I've read pretty much everything but I need to do more photocopying/photographing so that I can get everything in front of me at the same time. More importantly, I think the work will be strengthened if I ask for comments now, so that's mostly what I'm doing.

Attitudes toward Pottery

Partially as a note to myself, here are a few passages from early Christian literature that reveal attitudes towards ceramic vessels:

[Romans 9:21] hath not the potter authority over the clay, out of the same lump to make the one vessel to honour, and the one to dishonour?

[Timothy 2:20] And in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some to honour, and some to dishonour

I'm using Young's Literal Translation because it's out of copyright and because its approach is useful.

More complete in terms of its range of material culture is the following from the so-called Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus:

See not only with thine eyes, but with thine
intellect also, of what substance or of what form they
chance to be whom ye call and regard as gods.
 2:2  Is not one of them stone, like that which we
tread under foot, and another bronze, no better than
the vessels which are forged for our use, and another
wood, which has already become rotten, and another
silver, which needs a man to guard it lest it be
stolen, and another iron, which is corroded with rust,
and another earthenware, not a whit more comely than
that which is supplied for the most dishonourable
service?
 2:3  Are not all these of perishable matter? Are they
not forged by iron and fire? Did not the sculptor make
one, and the brass-founder another, and the
silversmith another, and the potter another? Before
they were moulded into this shape by the crafts of
these several artificers, was it not possible for each
one of them to have been changed in form and made to
resemble these several utensils? Might not the vessels
which are now made out of the same material, if they
met with the same artificers, be made like unto such
as these?

That's the somewhat archaic sounding translation of J. B. Lightfoot as found on the excellent Early Christian Writings website. The Greek text is available from The Christian Classics Ethereal Library, which is also a terrific resource.

Many more such passages could be cited so take the above as just a small taste from an abundant feast.

"Mediterranean Ceramics" YouTube Playlist

I've created a "Mediterranean Ceramics" YouTube playlist. Follow that link or use this embedded player:




As always, this is in a spirit of experimentation.

One comment: you'll note that there are no voice overs. The one time guards looked at me funny when I was shooting one of these is when I was making comments about the objects in a case. So I don't do that anymore. Perhaps I'll get round to doing audio tracks in the future.

And let me know if there are any videos that should be added to this list.

FYI: Workshop at Center for Hellenic Studies

This should be interesting:

WORKSHOP: Host your texts on Google in one day

The Center For Hellenic Studies will conduct a one-day workshop at the Center's Washington, D.C., campus, on Monday, Jan. 11, 2010, with the subject: "Host your texts on Google in one day". Bring one or more XML texts to the workshop in the morning, and leave in the afternoon with a running Google installation of Canonical Text Services serving your texts to the internet.

For more information, including how to apply, please see http://chs75.harvard.edu/CTSWorkshop.html.

Feel free to forward this announcement to anyone who might be interested.

Roman Pottery Study Case at the Metropolitan Museum

I'm all for criticizing museums when they buy unprovenanced antiquities, pointing out when they seem to be unduly effected by poorly conceived laws, and praising them when they do a good job of presenting material to the public.

The last applies to the Metropolitan Museum's Greek and Roman study collection. It's true there aren't labels, but there is access for those who can travel to New York. In lieu of that, here's a YouTube video of one case of Roman pottery.



I shot it with my iPhone a little over a week ago. Very unprofessional but perhaps better than nothing.

There are three levels in the case and I move from top to bottom. I've added two annotations. Move to 1:50 to see a box indicating that a bowl is African Red-Slip. I would do more if it were possible to link to non-YouTube web pages. I suppose that's too dangerous in terms phishing, etc. But it would be nice.

Google finds Roman Amphorae

Way back in April 2008 I noted that the excellent resource Roman Amphorae: a digital resource seemed to be hiding itself from Google. See the third paragraph of that post.

Since then, I've written and submitted the chapter "Diversity and Reuse of Digital Resources for Ancient Mediterranean Material Culture" that is forthcoming (2010) in G. Bodard and S. Mahony, eds., Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity from Ashgate. In that I make the same observation about Roman Amphorae. The text was submitted earlier this year, and I noted towards its end that many of the observations I make about digital resources may change since the Internet is a moving target.

Accordingly, I'm very happy to report that Google searches now include Roman Amphorae pages. Try http://www.google.com/search?q=keay+62. For me, the seventh link goes to the drawings page for that Late Roman form from N. Africa.

An administrator from the Archaeological Data Service was an anonymous reviewer of my paper. Perhaps it made a difference. Or maybe not. That doesn't matter. I'm just happy that the problem has been corrected.

Video of UPenn Amphora

A while back I wrote about a North African Amphora at UPenn. I took the photos in that post with an iPhone. Here's video from a 3GS via youtube.

Panathenaic Amphoras

I'm in Troy. One agenda item is adding content to GRBPIlion. Last week Kathleen Lynch of the University of Cincinnati was here. She kindly sent me her catalog entries for a few of the Panathenaic amphoras that she is in the process of publishing.

The main goal is continuing work on the Roman pottery from the Lower City here. A side effect is improvements to the GRBPIlion catalogs, such as the one for Phocaean Red Slip.

Mapping coin hoards at Nomisma.org

As a small supplement to yesterday's post, here's an additional brief notice of some collaborative work at nomisma.org.

http://nomisma.org/id/igch0546 is a stable URI for hoard 546 as found in An Inventory of Greek Coin Hoards. If you scroll down you'll see there is a map. The text was contributed by the ANS. The lat-long info by colleagues in France.

http://numismatics.org/cgi-bin/nm-search?kw=gml%3Apos will get you a list of all the hoards for which we have geographic coordinates. That URL will change but works for now.

This is all still highly preliminary, but the data is available and already somewhat useful.

In other ANS matters, our main website is coming along, and there is a new website for the ANS Magazine.

A few items

Non-blog activities continue to keep me busy. Including:

• Little by little, the digital publication Coins from Ilion (Troia) is coming along. This is very much a joint effort by all the people listed there. My goal is to be well-prepared for the upcoming study season, when I can look at the coins directly.
• I'm in the proofs stage with "Forum Note: Legal threats to Cultural Exchange of Archaeological materials", co-authored with Glenn Schwartz, that will appear in the July American Journal of Archaeology. Should be done with it tomorrow.
• Things seem to be moving along well with 'Diversity and Reuse of Digital Resources for Ancient Mediterranean Material Culture', which is coming out in G. Bodard and S. Mahony, eds., Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity from Ashgate. There will be more editorial stages, I'm sure, but the writing is done.
• Also working on "Ceramic Data from In-Field Use to Digital Publication" with Billur Tekkök and John Wallrodt. Needs to be done next week.
• And don't forget the CAA2009 paper... Perhaps more on that later.

OK, not all of this will be immediately available for free and in digital form, but that doesn't mean it's totally without merit.

The Surface of African Red Slip

Today I added explicit references to page nos. in Hayes' Late Roman Pottery [worldcat] to the GRBPIlion page for African Red Slip.

That's hardly worth a post. But I did re-look at the photographs so here are a few excerpts that show variability of surface treatment.

The exterior of an H32/58 of the late 3rd/early 4th AD. Shows thick unbrushed slip on surface. The photo is a little washed out, overall color of the vessel is "normal" ARS orange.


The interior of a similarly dated H53a. Thick, somewhat smoothed surface with feather rouletting.


It would be really nice if I had a good photo of a very smooth H50. I'll look for one.

Interior of an early 6th century H87b. Less detail than the previous two. Thick smoothed slip.


Exterior of the same piece. Obviously thinner slip is "streakily" applied.

MFA Boston and Perseus

The URL http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/artifact?name=Boston%201982.283&object=Coin brings up information about a mirror formed from two coins of a type issued for Antinous.

The object is in the MFA's collection and you can see further information at http://mfa.org/collections/search_art.asp?recview=true&id=155289. That URL isn't published by the MFA and some time ago I pointed out that this situation is unfortunate. It's now becoming unfortunate that the MFA website hasn't been updated to display nice, simple URLs for the records in its curatorial database. Something along the lines of JSTOR's stable urls (e.g., http://www.jstor.org/stable/876505).

When it does, Perseus will be able to include markup along the lines of <link rel="alternate owl:sameAs" href="http://mfa.org/collections/search_art.asp?recview=true&id=155289"> in the header of its page. That will be progress.

Time Team Publishes

Briefly noting that Wessex Archaeology and the television series Time Team now have the show's resulting archaeological reports available for browsing and download. One model for funding field work and publication.

ARS in Wikipedia

In a fit of procrastination some time back, I started a Wikipedia article for African Red Slip. I've just added a bit today. Improvements can be made on the page itself (hint, hint).

A note on capitalization: wiki-style prefers lower-case. See the editing history for the change from "African Red Slip" to "African red slip". Many archaeologists may think of ARS as something of a proper noun. Either way is OK by me.

And, boy, do I hate typing wikicode in those text-entry boxes. But it's all for a good cause.

NextEngine 3D

It's been too long since I've posted. Busy, busy, busy...

But now I have a specific question of the community: Has anybody used a NextEngine 3D to good effect? I know Scott Moore took one to Cyrpus. Scott, any further reactions?

I'm speaking with colleagues about getting funding for one but don't want to waste money/time if the machine is no good, too cumbersome, otherwise not useful.

Thanks in advance.

AIA Paper Preview: ESC to PRS

Here's a sequence of images that shows the transition from ESC/Çandarli to Phocaean Red-Slip (PRS). They will appear in my part of the upcoming paper Late Hellenistic and Roman Pottery at Ilion (Troia).


This is the interior of an ESC Hayes form 4 from a late third century AD pit.


Then a sequence of rim sherds. The top three are again ESC Hayes form 4, the lower PRS Hayes form 1. Surface treatment moves from a quite high-gloss finish to a dull matte slip. The ESC is from a 4th century deposit with considerable residual material. The PRS is from a late 4th/early 5th century group. Note the color variation that begins to appear on ESC. This has the feeling of error or at least sloppiness. On PRS, a stacking line becomes one of the signatures of the ware. While such lines do not need to be called "decoration", they shouldn't be thought of as errors.


Now the exterior of a fifth century PRS Hayes form 3 with thin slip.

That the transition from ESC H4 to PRS H1 was smooth has long been known. Nonetheless, these sherds come from distinct production centers. Or rather, the PRS likely comes from workshops in/near ancient Phocaea, whereas production of ESC may have been more regionally distributed between Pitane/Çandarli and Pergamon.

We don't have great early 4th century deposits at Ilion but our evidence indicates that Hayes was right to raise the possibility of overlapping production of these two forms. Nonetheless, ceramic catalogs often enforce a distinct separation between ESC and PRS, with the former falling into discussion of Roman period ceramics and being separated from PRS by the presentation of other wares. Ancient consumers may not have perceived much of a difference as their sources of supply slowly changed over the decades of the fourth century.

For Profit Archaeology

The Miliken Institute's Financial Innovations Labs have issued a report entitled Financial Innovations for Developing Archaeological Discovery and Conservation. It seems to be a call for archaeologists to participate in the profit-oriented market for antiquities, though the report certainly doesn't use that language. Even when mediated through the securitization of debt obligations backed by cash-flow from long-term loans, this is problematic. Archaeologists work to bring information about the past to the public, not to meet commercial demand for artifacts.

CIDOC-CRM

Sean Gillies has written an important memo Concordia, Vocabularies, and CIDOC CRM on Concordia's current approach to using the Comité International pour la Documentation des Musées - Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC-CRM). It should be widely read by people interested in the digital publication of resources for the ancient Mediterranean and beyond. In it he gives a preliminary indication that RDFa - a standard for embedding the Resource Description Framework in html pages - provides a better route forward for the time being. But don't take my word for this, read his whole text.

RDFa has appeared on this blog: PRAP, xhtml 2.0 and Archaeological Databases was early thinking, RDFa at Ilion is more recent, nomisma.org also makes use of RDFa. So Sean's memo is welcome here because his reasoning is similar to mine.

But what of CIDOC-CRM? The main CIDOC-CRM website opens with:

The CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) provides definitions and a formal structure for describing the implicit and explicit concepts and relationships used in cultural heritage documentation.

It also notes that the CRM is an ISO standard (ISO 21127:2006). That's a good thing.

In general, the main CIDOC-CRM website doesn't do a good job of introducing itself. If you want a quick feel for how the CRM organizes concepts, try the relevant section of Princeton's QED site. You'll see that the CRM provides a well-thought out vocabulary of concepts for describing cultural heritage. Apart from the odd use of gendered language, it's useful that the CRM defines the concept E24 Physical Man-Made Thing. It will be cool when I can search the Internet for E24's within the Aegean that date to the Late Roman period. I'm guessing the CRM will play a role in enabling such functionality.

In terms of resources linked from the main CIDOC-CRM website, I've paid the most attention to the "mappings" page. I take heart in the work being done in this domain because of the implication that my use of the CRM can be indirect. This is encouraging because current self-representation by CIDOC seems to obscure notions of "best practice" in an over-abundance of detail. See this paper for an example. It is to the CRM's credit that it can represent all the concepts used there, but in many cases one does not have, nor need, this level of detail. I will be happy to use VRA, Dublin core and any other vocabularies and ontologies that gain traction in the Semantic Web world and trust that these will be mapped to the CRM.

From my perspective, that there is not a large amount of CRM-encoded original archaeological data easily available on the internet is an indication that the standard has not seen a high-degree of real world uptake. I understand that there is acceptance of the CRM and many initiatives discussing how it can be used (here) but I would very much like to see actual use with large datasets. I'm also interested in seeing projects that adopt the CRM as the original format for "born digital" data. Will that really happen?

This post represents thinking that I hope will change as we see real world adoption of standards in Cultural Heritage. I'm agnostic as to what the future holds. For the present, I'm all for exploring vocabularies and ontologies that are moving towards RDFa representations.

Briefly: two books and a new resource

I am in the Thomas J. Watson Library of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's a very pleasant place to work and recommended for archaeologists visiting NYC. They have very strong holdings in Roman pottery.

I've paged and am using A. Camilli. 1999. Ampullae : balsamari ceramici di età ellenistica e romana [worldcat]. That's Italian for "Unguentaria", the common small ceramic bottles/flasks found in many contexts on Mediterranean sites. I stress this because the book is not about Early Christian/Late Roman ampullae associated with pilgrimage. If you're working with unguentaria, you want this book.

Next up is M. Berndt. 2003. Funde aus dem Survey auf der Halbinsel von Milet : (1992 - 1999) : kaiserzeitliche und frühbyzantinische Keramik [worldcat]. This is a very useful catalog for the period it covers. A noteworthy feature is that the 172 plates are on a CD in the back. Putting a CD in the back of a book is an inane long-term solution so I want to go on record here as saying "Don't do it!". And if you do, "Dont use PDF!". But it wouldn't be entirely straightforward of me not to admit that I have the plates on my hard-drive. In the short term, yes, this information is useful. But who is going to have CD readers 20 years from now? Not many of us. And the text isn't available in digital form so here I am checking a few things.

Finally, the American Numismatic Society has initiated a project to establish stable URIs for numismatic concepts and entities. It's at nomisma.org. Take a look but be gentle since it's all in early stages.

Semantic Web Vocabularies for the Ancient World

As previously indicated, I'm working on an xhtml+rdfa representation of GRBPIlion.

At some point I will give a more general statement of why this is a good idea. Right now, I'm still very much in the planning/modeling phase. In particular, I'm interested in which pre-existing vocabularies I should be using. What follows is a lightly annotated list of potential candidates, some more obvious and stable than others.

General statements of properties and relationships:
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xmlns:skos="http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#"
xmlns:ov="http://open.vocab.org/terms/"

The Dublin Core is a well understood and widely used standard. Where it matches, it's a no-brainer to use it as a default. Currently, each record in the db has "dc:title" as a human readable title. E.g., "African Red Slip Hayes form 68".

The Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) is a W3 standard that has some uptake in the real world. dbpedia.org uses the skos:subject property to indicate membership in categories such as those found on Wikipedia. My use is semantically similar.

The newly-started Open Vocab was brought to my attention by Sean Gillies. More precisely, he mentioned it on twitter and since I follow him, I checked it out. OV is a nice staging ground for creating URIs for terms that aren't found in other vocabularies and for terms you just want to think about before choosing an existing standard.

Visual Documentation:
xmlns:vra="http://www.vraweb.org/vracore4.htm#"

Right now I use "vra:imageIs" to indicate that an external file is an image (whether svg or bit-mapped) of an object.

Geography:
xmlns:gml="xmlns:gml=http://www.opengis.net/gml"
xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss">
xmlns:pleiades="http://pleiades.stoa.org/"
xmlns:batlas="http://atlantides.org/batlas/"

As suggested by S. Gillies, I've qualified some of the geographic markup with "ov:origin".

Authorial/Responsibility Metadata:
xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"

The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) provides a richer set of tools than DC for indicating authorship and related concepts. Its version P5 also provides a complete and elegant standard for encoding digital documents. For now, I'm representing GRBPIlion in xhtml and rdf, because the combination has explicit W3 backing and is suitably lightweight for my purposes.

Data modeling:
xmlns:owl="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#"
xmlns:rdf="xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#""
xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"

No surprises here. I do think there will always be a place for asserting relationships that are not strongly typed by reference to a particular discipline. That and using RDF and Owl for mapping relationships that will be more richly defined at a later date.

What about CIDOC-CRM? I did not find an up-to-date and official looking document that integrates RDF and CIDOC-CRM. I'm also concerned about using a standard whose official release appears only in Microsoft Word and PDF.

I should also explore ArchaeoML as implemented by Open Context but the site seems to be down right now. When I click through to individual databases, no records are being returned. I may be doing something wrong, but if not, I'm sure the site will come back soon.

Again, this is all highly preliminary. Constructive criticism would be very much appreciated.

RDFa at Ilion

The following will seem cryptic and I promise to give more detail later...

If anybody is interested in a draft RDFa representation of the GRBPIlion database, then point your parser at http://classics.uc.edu/troy/grbpottery/database.html.

It even uses ov:origin! (sort of)

It's all in pursuit of the four goals given by Tim Berners-Lee in his Linked Data paper.

1. Use URIs as names for things

2. Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those names.

3. When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information.

4. Include links to other URIs. so that they can discover
   more things.

Not there yet, but trying.

Late Hellenistic and Roman Pottery at Ilion (Troia)

Here is the abstract of my co-authored AIA paper. It's part of the Sunday morning session 7A: Pottery Production and Trade. My colleague Billur Tekkök and I are splitting the main text; she'll work on Hellenistic and I'll do Roman. Ernst Pernicka, director of the Troia Project, will contribute the results of NAA of sherds we selected.

Late Hellenistic and Roman Pottery at Ilion (Troia)

Billur Tekkök, Başkent University,
Sebastian Heath, American Numismatic Society,
and Ernst Pernicka, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen

This paper presents results from the study of stratified deposits dating from the late second century B.C. to the early sixth century A.D. Beyond establishing chronological horizons, our purpose is to explore the role of ceramic evidence in identifying economic and cultural trends at the site. Throughout this period, Ilion participated in both regional and long-distance exchange networks, and the ce-ramic assemblage includes a wide selection of Aegean utilitarian and tablewares. For the late Hellenistic period, Neutron Activation Analysis shows that regional workshops continued to produce Aegean forms, while also incorporating wider Mediterranean trends. Tablewares from first-century A.D. well-fills, pits, and foundation trenches indicate regular access to trade networks that brought ce-ramic material from outside the Aegean to the households of the region. Eastern Sigillata A, Italian Sigillata, as well as Eastern Sigillata B, are regular features of the ceramic assemblage, though none are common. Eastern Sigillata C, also called Çandarli-ware, becomes increasingly available at this time. By the late second cen-tury A.D., ESC makes up the bulk of the tableware assemblage. Pontic products remain rare in the Roman period. NAA indicates that ESC vessels, which display differences in inclusions and manufacture, were all supplied by regional work-shops. Late Roman tablewares show a transition to the use of Phocaean Red-Slip, as well as the presence of African Red-Slip and pale-slipped tablewares. Equal attention has been given to utilitarian wares and amphoras, and these vessels are presented as well. Finally, we present ongoing efforts toward digital publication of ceramic data.

To encourage me to get the text done in a timely fashion, I'll post sections here as I work on them. That will help me select the right photographs and drawings.

Last year I posted a list of papers whose titles indicated they had something to do with pottery. Look for a similar list to appear soon. And anybody who wants to post a relevant abstract here, just send it by e-mail or paste it into a comment.

Profile Drawing from the Illustrator's Perspective

Jane Heinrichs posts on the relative merits of drawing amphora vs. African Red-Slip sherds.

I spent two seasons at Leptiminus (Lamta) when I was a graduate student. Great site, nice kilns. My only comment on the post is to wonder why the project is using JPEG rather than a vectorized format.

Roman Pottery List at Worldcat

On AWBG, David Gill mentioned his History of Egyptology Worldcat list. That has inspired me to start such a list for Roman Pottery. You'll see that the focus is the Mediterranean.

It's incomplete, of course, but will grow over time. Suggestions, preferably with Worldcat links included, are welcome.

More on Sharing

Readers may recall a blog-based discussion of sharing archaeological data. See this post on AWBG for a summary with links to most of the discussion. The originator of the thread, Charles Watkinson, offered further observations in a contribution to the CSA Newsletter. I don't mean to re-open the whole issue, but I did recently come across a quote that seemed relevant.

The short volume, Francovich and Hodges. 2003. Villa to village: the transformation of the Roman countryside in Italy, c. 400-1000. London. [worldcat], is a good introductory text on an important early Medieval topic. When surveying the contributions of archaeology, the authors write:

...ceramic remains from for[sic] the post-classical period were needed to identify medieval sites. The opportunity arose in the spring of 1960 during the survey of the Ager Veientanus, some 17km north of Rome. Deep ploughing turned up what what on inspection proved to be the bases of a church colonnade, together with other major architectural elements and medieval pottery. Ward-Perkins soon identified the conspicuous surface remains as those of the monasterium sancti Cornelii in Capracorio, a monastery found between 1026 and 1035 on the site of a papal estate established by Pope Hadrian I in c. 776 (Christie 1991). Ward-Perkins realised that the site had almost certainly been occupied by a Roman villa as well, and with some zeal set out to explore the possibility of establishing direct continuity between a Roman villa and a domusculta - a ninth-century papal farm. Over five seasons, under the direction of Barri-Jones and then Charles Daniels, the British School at Rome uncovered this rare example of an early medieval rural settlement, permitting the pottery types of the age to be identified and used for locating other sites in survey. Unforunately, as Chris Wickham has recently written, "Santa Cornelia did not have the impact of the Castelprio or Torcello sites, or the German excavations of Invillino later in the decade, because it was not published for 30 years; by the time Neil Christie piloted it to publication in 1990, medieval archaeology had moved on." (Wickham 2001:38)

The key phrase here is "did not have the impact...because it was not published for 30 years". It is not important who you are - and I leave it to others to slot Ward-Perkins into a scholarly taxonomy - if you don't share ("publish"), then your data doesn't matter. I could certainly be more expansive and subtle but that would dilute the point.

Lamp fillers or baby feeders?

First, a quick word of thanks to Sebastian for allowing me the chance to post here on Mediterranean Ceramics, particularly as the post's in some respect a selfish one. Y'see, I'm the student with whom he's working on the lamps from Beit She'an: and after discussing the several examples with him from a particular tomb, as well as associated ceramic and glass vessels, I'm left with a question I hope someone on the interwebs can answer.

Among the other ceramic vessels found within the tomb in question was a small, one-handled vessel with a bulbous body and a high neck--it'd be a stretch to call it piriform, but not entirely inaccurate--with a slender spout emerging from the body above its thickest point. More to the point, it's the sort of vessel which usually gets characterized as either a lamp filler or a baby feeder. Both are sensible enough guesses, I suppose, but they strike me nevertheless as almost comically divergent (similar shapes notwithstanding). Has anyone seen a treatment of these sorts of vessels anywhere--another example from Beit Sh'ean is at right--especially as regards their use in Late Roman or Byzantine Palestine? I'd be curious to know whether I ought to assume the thing's a lamp filler, given the presence of several associated lamps, or if I'm looking at a baby bottle. Thanks for the help!

Three Books: Argos, Britain and Loot

Somewhat randomly:

• Catherine Abadie-Reynal's La céramique romaine d'Argos: Fin du IIe siècle avant J-C - fin du IVe siècle après J-C. [worldcat] is an excellent contribution to the study of Aegean ceramics in the Roman period. In conception, it is a well-executed catalog-based typological study. The introductions for each ware are up-to-date and the regionally organized bibliography is a resource all on its own.
• Lloyd Laing's Pottery in Britain: 4000 BC to AD 1900 [worldcat] is useful for its color illustrations. If you take the book on its own terms, it makes a good addition to your personal or institutional library.
• I recieved a review copy of Sharon Waxman's Loot: the battle over the stolen treasures of the ancient world [worldcat]. Preliminary reading has added it to my "get to soon" list. For reactions and links see Looting Matters.

Quick Lamp Follow-Up

Looking at lamps from Beit She'an was enjoyable. The wider topic was material from a single tomb but lamps were the most numerous category of ceramic object. This was done in the context of an independent study so all the credit for setting things up goes to the student who pulled the pieces. The main reference we used was:

Hadad, S. (2002). The oil lamps from the Hebrew University excavations at Bet Shean. Qedem reports, 4. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem. [worldcat]

Generally a very useful book, particularly when you're lucky enough to be looking at objects from the same site that happen to be in the very museum you're working in!

Quick Poll: LRC, Phocaean or Phokaian

Towards the top right of this page you'll see a poll asking for your preferred term for the late Roman red-slipped ware from Phocaea (or Phokaia?). This is the kind of thing that I don't much mind what your answer is. The modernist in me likes Phokaian, though Phocaean seems more common in English-language publications. Everybody knows what LRC means, but it is out of date and a geographic term is probably preferable.

Three Websites for Ancient Lamps

Tomorrow I am taking a look at lamps excavated by the University of Pennsylvania Museum from tombs at Beit She'an/Scythopolis [wikipedia].

There are a few good websites for ancient oil-lamps. Three that come immediately to mind are:

• Ancient Lamps. RomQ Reference Collection
• Holyland Oil Lamps from the Ancient Coin Club of Los Angeles.
• Oil Lamps from the Holy land from the Adler Collection

It will be clear that I've listed sites that are well illustrated and have reasonably good descriptions, not sites that are replete with objects from properly excavated and documented contexts. One would wish that there were more of the latter.

Feel free to add to this short list in the comments.

Online Syriac Studies

I've been poking around the online resources for Syriac studies. First issue of note is the seeming disappearance of the site Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Computing Institute. Does anybody know what's going on there? I've seen notice of a Syriac Unicode font but can't get at it.

I have enjoyed the online journal Hugoye. Unfortunately, the copyright statement includes the following:

Hugoye articles are copyrighted and must be treated like any other published articles. They cannot be copied, duplicated, or reproduced by any means without prior written authorization from the General Editor.

Such restrictions only serve to marginalize this important field. The articles are already online and freely available. How about using a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Work license?

Living Late Antiquity

I think many students of the Ancient World can see the repercussions of their own period of expertise still present in current events. This was brought home to me by the article A Short Overview of the Common History of the Syrian Church with Islam through the Centuries by HH Patriarch Mor Ignatios Zakka I Iwas.

Without meaning to preview it too much, I think anybody interested in the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages will find it offers an interesting perspective.

And while I'm sure one can find controversy in this document, that's not my interest at all.

Roman Cheese Presses

An October 18th post to the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre (LAARC) VIP blog mentions a Roman period cheese press (illustrated below) excavated in 1973 and recently repackaged. I claim no great familiarity with such objects. But if you're intrigued, you can read about another one in a BBC News report from 2006. And the Google search "roman cheese press site:jstor.org" suggests they are an occassional part of the Roman-period assemblage in Britian.



Clicking through on the image drops you into the LAARC photostream on Flickr, which is also recommended.

Sword and Kylix

Aegeanet and a few blogs are discussing the find of an imported Italian sword in a Mycenaean grave. But note the nice kylix as well. Bronze age elites liked their drink as much as their arms.

An African Amphora in Sicily

The University of British Columbia has a good writeup on Roger Wilson's excavation near Punta Secca in Sicily. The evidence for periodic feasting around burials is interesting. As is this nearly complete amphora:

The piece is clearly an African Amphora. I can't make the rim be of the common Keay 62 type. It looks like the rim is banded so perhaps it's a Keay 8? Regardless, that's a nice find.

While we're on the topic of feasting for the dead, I can also recommend: Kathleen Warner Slane with Mary E. H. Walbank. 2006. "Anointing and
Commemorating the Dead: Funerary Rituals of Roman Corinthians," in D. Malfitana, J. Poblome and J. Lund (eds.), Old Pottery in a New Century. Acts of an International Conference held in Catania, Sicily 22-24 April, 2004, pp. 377-387. [worldcat]

And while were in the Corinthia: Joe Rife, M. Morison, A. Barbet, R. K. Dunn, D. H. Ubelaker, and F. Monier. "Life and death at a port in Roman Greece: The Kenchreai Cemetery Project 2002-2006" Hesperia 76 (2007): 143-181. [handle]

Also Ridiculous

D. and N. Soren's 1999 A Roman Villa and a Late Roman Infant Cemetery: Excavation at Poggio Gramignano Lugnano in Teverina [worldcat], which is a useful publication, costs $608.00 at Amazon.com.

If you happen to have access to a library that spent the money to acquire the volume, you can find a useful discussion of the pottery in part 2, with good photographic documentation of amphoras reused as child burials on plates 236 to 250. Black-and-white, but you can still get a sense of North African and other fabrics.

Still Totally Ridiculous...

I recently received the David Brown Book Company's Byzantium and Late Antiquity list via regular mail; the one that is valid through October 31st, 2008. On the inside of the last page, J. Bardill's Brickstamps of Constantinople is offered for $199.98. That's much better than the original list price of $750.00 still given at Amazon.com, and again less than the independent reseller prices also listed there. At the time of writing, these ranged from $692.12 to $297.99.

Even with these reductions, it does nonetheless seem clear that expensive, print-only distribution was a bad way of bringing this information to the world. I say this without meaning to take anything away from the author's scholarly accomplishment.

Pottery Database from the British Institute at Ankara

Tom Elliot noticed that the British Institute at Ankara has put up a website for its collection of artifacts from various sites around Turkey. Pot sherds seem to make up the greatest part of this material.

The map at the top right is nice for exploring what's available. Here's a link to the site of Kavak on the Gallipoli peninsula. Click here for an enlarged photo of some sherds from the site. Note the nice Phocaean Red-Slip Hayes form 3, it's one-up from the lower left corner. It looks like there are some PRS bases in there as well, and the largest ridged amphora sherd should be LRA2. But it's always risky to identify small fragments from photos so take that for what it's worth.

Another nice digital resource, even if the descriptions aren't yet very complete.

Hadashot Arkheologiyot from the IAA

The Hadashot Arkheologiyot website offers useful preliminary discussions of archaeological work in Israel. There is a nice search form with a link to a clickable map.

Many of the articles discuss ceramic and numismatic finds and are accompanied by well-chosen illustrations. Here's a notice of an agricultural "watchman's hut" where African Red-Slip was found. That's certainly an interesting site classification. And see here for salvage work that recorded Cypriot Red-Slip.

There's much to be learned from browsing and searching so I recommend taking the time to try it out.

Huntington Coins, part 2

The Art Newspaper has now covered the possibility that the Hispanic Society of America will sell the coins it is withdrawing from the American Numismatic Society. Here's my previous post on the topic.

Amazonian "Cities"

Nothing to do with the Mediterranean, but the BBC story on newly-reported "cities" in the Amazon is very cool. Defensive walls, roads with shared orientation, farming, pottery... All relevant to debates on the origins of agriculture and other big topics in archaeology.

You'll note that I link to the BBC version and not the Science Magazine original. You have to pay for that, an annoyance that will cost them hits and influence.

Profile Photo of ARS Hayes 87b

Gebhard Bieg took terrific photographs of the late 5th/early 6th century AD African Red Slip plate found at Troia last year. I've added his profile shot and preview it here:

An African Red Slip Hayes Form 87b

Last year the Troia Project excavated and published via GRBPIlion an African Red-Slip Hayes form 87b of the late fifth to early sixth centuries AD. The vessel was conserved this summer and I've now added photos. Here's a description with links to high-res images:

P.H. .063. Est. diam. rim .44. Th. .074.

P18.0093:1. Almost completely preserved plate, twenty-six joining sherds leave two gaps and missing sections at rim and base. There is some chipping of the interior surface, though in general the slip is very well preserved; patches of plaster adhere to the interior of one group of joining sherds, to exterior of another. Vessel has been conserved.
Broad sloping walls with thickened rim and short triangular foot. Slightly granular fabric, fired red throughout (btw. 2.5YR 6/8-5/8) with occasional lime inclusions and some reddish bits. Smooth slip on interior surface is slightly darker red (10R 5/8), drip marks over rim, exterior largely plain.
From deposits associated with the aftermath of the early sixth century AD earthquake.

I'll work on getting in situ images of the piece up on the site .

Ceramic Analysis from U. of Leicester

Here's a nice page on Roman and Medieval ceramics from a UK-oriented archaeological perspective.

2008 Preliminary Report from Tel Kabri, Israel

Excavations at Tel Kabri took place from July 6th to July 31st. The preliminary report just now published is admirable for both its timeliness and detail.

Munsell 1954 and 2000

Picking a Munsell color for the fabric and surfaces of one's sherds is a staple of ceramic studies. Here's a quick comparison shot of a 1954 edition, at left and courtesy of one of my colleagues here at Troy, next to a 2000 edition. It's of the 5YR page. The top row (hue 8/) has shifted, but many chips on the older edition have held their color well. Note also the layout changes, e.g. 5YR 4/8 is missing at the right. That's the major concern between editions: they are different in the details and that can influence perception. But if the goal is to communicate the general appearance of a sherd, either one would do just fine.

Whither Archer Huntington's Coins?

The Hispanic Society of America is withdrawing its coins from the American Numismatic Society; a decision that has drawn only limited press coverage, mostly in specialized numismatic publications. Here is an energetic telling of the story from Inner City News. The authors seem to have very up to date information.

Late Roman Amphora 1

I have added photographs of the neck, handles and upper body of a Late Roman Amphora 1 to the GRBPIlion catalog of Roman amphoras (scroll down to near the bottom or search for 'I17.0181:1'). Gebhard Bieg kindly photographed the vessel today and I uploaded his images shortly after he was done. Here are two direct links to an overview and detail of the rim:

There's a good description of the form on the Digital Amphorae website. Once you click past the annoying interstitial, you can read Paul Reynolds' up to date text. Here's a passage from it:

Sixth century examples (Egoff 164) differ by having a more cylindrical body and a rounded, plain base. The neck is also cylindrical, ending with a marked concave band. Handles are large and thick. The walls are ‘turned’ to create stepped wide flat sections separated by a narrow ridge. This ridge is in fact a spiral from the base to the neck. The same ribbing is found on later fifth century AD examples, but is not stepped. Narrow convex ribbing is characteristic of shoulder and base sections of fifth century AD and some early sixth century AD examples.

The Ilion example comes from the deposits we associate with an early sixth century earthquake but doesn't yet have the 'stepped wide sections'. A date sometime in the later fifth century or early sixth fits this vessel well.

FYI, the British Museum has an LRA1 with wide stepped flat sections. Click on 'Larger image' for useful detail.

Regarding that Digital Amphorae insterstitial, read this from Tom Elliott.

On Fire

I arrived at Troy in the evening of Tuesday the 29th after thirty-six hours of travel. Yesterday, the 30th, was to be my first full work-day but forest fires to the NE shutdown the electricity. I could only work until my battery ran out so I'm a little behind, though catching up quick.

One task is to help bring to completion the stratigraphic and chronological narrative of of the lower city at Ilion. The third and fourth centuries AD have my attenion right now. For example, here's a partial and preliminary list of pottery from a late third century + fill. You'll quickly see that there is residual material but if you scroll down, you'll find African Red-Slip, ESC/Çandarli and amphoras that bring the deposit later. There's a coin of Aurelian (270-275 AD) in here as well.

Licit Markets and Archaeologists

Peter Tompa has described the presentation made by a representative of the AAMD in relation to a request by Honduras to renew the MoU concerning import restrictions on pre-Columbian archaeological material from that country. To quote Tompa:

Josh Knerly, an attorney who represents the AAMD, made the most interesting presentation. He suggested that Honduras should create licit markets for duplicate archaeological artifacts as one part of a scheme to protect Honduras' culture.

The AAMD seems to be pushing this idea. For example, its recent report on the acquisition of archaeological material:

Affirms the value of licit markets for the controlled sale of ancient art and archeological materials as an effective means of preventing looting.

I am an archaeologist and respond to the idea of a licit market as someone with a professional interest in the matter. I do not think it appropriate for me to carefully record and publish artifacts that will then be sold into the private possession of individuals or institutions. Rather, I do my work so that the material I document is kept for future study using ever-new techniques and in the pursuit of ever-more knowledge of antiquity. I understand that the nations that currently care for that material can and may chose to sell it. This is not likely to happen to any of the objects that I have worked on, however. I am sure that many archaeologists would agree that public funds, such as those from the NEH and the NSF in the United States, should not be used to pay for archaeological work that supplies commercial goods to the antiquities market.

The idea of licit markets is currently so ill-formed that I express the above only as a concern. But if the AAMD membership is really looking to acquire "duplicate archaeological artifacts," I do have to ask whom they think is going to collect and prepare this material for them? Programs such as the UK's Portable Antiquities Scheme may seem to be one source, but the AAMD's membership usually has its eye on larger objects than are registered by the PAS.

Bottom line... it is not the job of archaeologists to provide services to the private market, we work for the accumulation of greater public knowledge.

Stratified Groups at Ilion

On an even more preliminary basis than usual, I have started adding stratified groups to GRBPIlion. Available as of writing:

• K/L16/17.0417 Clean-up after an episode of destruction in the third century AD. Could be associated with "Herulian activity", though that is a larger question.
• K/L16/17.0419 A related fill with less pottery. What's there firms up the chronological profile.
• M18.0099 Late Roman fill associated with the use of a house from the late fourth to early fifth centuries AD. There is pretty nice ARS in here.

The accompanying text for these deposits is lightly adapted from a longer narrative that will also be a focus of my upcoming time in Turkey. Working out the relationship between digital and print-based publication will be interesting. Publication of this material was planned before the current generation of digital tools and practices existed. I look forward to moving ever more of my prior work into digital format, with availability as a PDF and on Lulu.com of course happening in parallel with html-based distribution.

Adding these pages raises issues of presentation and navigation. In terms of presentation, this short list of deposits is buried far down the page under the heading "Table of Contents: Deposits". The whole ToC list is getting long, and I may have to change its layout.

The issues related to navigation are more substantial. Readers browsing the catalog should be made aware that there is a description of the other pottery found alongside any one piece. This will not be hard to do; I just need to figure out the best way. Searching may become more pressing as readers try to answer questions such as "what is the earliest deposit with Middle Roman Amphora 7?" All in good time.

Well Vessels

I've added brief descriptions of three nearly-complete third-century AD pots to the the "Roman Plain and/or Partially Slipped Vessels" page of GRBPIlion. That's a work in progress that Billur Tekkök and I will update over the next three weeks when we're both at Troy.

The vessels themselves were found at the bottom of a well-shaft. As a preview, I'm reproducing the relevant page from the PDF version of the publication.
The third image of the first entry shows the vessel as found in situ. The well-shaft was cut through bedrock into a natural, underground water-system. This allowed for excellent preservation in this remarkable context. You can click through from the plain-wares page for a full-size version of that image, and I also reproduce a thumbnail here:


There's more to come from this deposit and that's one reason to be excited about getting back on-site.

Planning for Troy

I leave for Troy this coming Monday, the 28th. One focus will be ongoing work on GRBPIlion. Part of my planning has come in the form of incomplete pages that I'll edit while in the field. For example, there is now a page on unguentaria. Just four examples right now, and only a two-item bibliography. Starting next week, I'll confirm and complete the measurements and beef up the descriptions. I'll also add an introductory text on the presence of these vessels at Troy. So for now that page is somewhat of a reminder to myself to do the work, if you see what I mean.

I'll make more of these available before I leave and blog the process. I'll also be making regular (maybe even daily) posts from Troy. I've been enjoying the PKAP blogs and Brandon Olson's many posts. See also Real Time Archaeology. It will be fun to add to this developing genre.

One question: what is it about archaeology that makes blogging field-work worthwhile? Assuming that it is, of course. I'm sure somebody has thought about this. I'm guessing there's an understanding that we have an obligation to share our work. It helps that, for some of us, field-work is a discrete phase of our professional lives. Travel-writing is well established and there is overlap with that. The pictures are nice. Etc. Whatever the reasons, I like the results and feel the imperative.

WAC Clarification

In the post "Don't Bomb Persepolis", I offered that advice as a small commentary on a resolution that I thought represented an official policy of the World Archaeological Congress. I was responding to a press release that was circulated fairly widely, for example on the Iraq Crisis list. I quickly received e-mails that not all was as it seemed. That was the case and it is worth reading "Cultural Heritage in Iran Under Threat", a media-release direct from WAC. A passage from this second release provides context:

A resolution suggesting that no archaeologists or cultural heritage specialists assist the military in planning to protect the cultural heritage was passed by the Plenary session of the WAC-6 Congress for consideration by the World Archaeological Congress Assembly, Council and Executive but was not approved as a formal statement of the position of the organisation as a whole.

I am not expert in WAC's organizational structure but am now glad to see its flexible response to these difficult questions. I am also happy to have been corrected and to offer an update that reflects better information.

Looting in Iraq

On July 1, The Art Newspaper published an article titled "Archaeological sites in south Iraq have not been looted, say experts". The full-text is freely available and the article received wide notice and comment. Larry Rothfield offered a rebuttal at SAFECorner. Now a follow-on editorial by Melik Kaylan has appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Kaylan directly and approvingly cites the Art Newspaper's reporting on the topic.

The Art Newspaper article seems obviously biased. For a far more judicious description of the assessment of damage in Southern Iraq see Andrew Lawler's July 4th article in Science titled "Preserving Iraq's Battered Heritage". If you click on that link, you'll eventually be asked for money in order to read the full-text. On July 15th, two weeks after publication of the Art Newspaper version, the text of this better reporting was posted to the Iraq Crisis e-mail list by its author. Perhaps the Science article would have had a greater impact if it had been freely available. Such are the intellectual consequences of fee-based journalism.

Don't Bomb Persepolis

Consider this post a small bit of personal protest against the resolution recently passed in plenary session by the delegates of the World Archaeological Congress. The text reads:

The 6th World Archaeological Congress expresses its strong opposition to any unilateral and unprovoked, covert or overt military action (including air strikes) against Iran by the US government, or by any other government. Such action will have catastrophic consequences for millions of people and will seriously endanger the cultural heritage of Iran and of the Middle East in general. Any differences with Iran (as with any other country) should be resolved through peaceful and diplomatic means.

The Congress also urges its members, all archaeologists and heritage professionals to resist any attempts by the military and governments to be co-opted in any planned military operation, for example by providing advice and expertise to the military on archaeological and cultural heritage matters. Such advice would provide cultural credibility and respectability to the military action. Archaeologists should continue emphasising instead the detrimental consequences of such actions for the people and the heritage of the area, for the past and the present alike. A universal refusal by archaeologists and others would send the message that such a plan is hugely unpopular amongst cultural professionals as well as the wider public.

The WAC website doesn't yet reflect passage of the resolution so I'm quoting from a widely circulated e-mail.

I sure as heck hope that the United States doesn't go to war with Iran so please interpret the subject line of this post broadly. But the resolution seems to ignore its real world implications. It is a feature of modern warfare that the international community does put informed constraints on the behavior of armed forces. Does the ICRC encourage war by promoting adherence to the Geneva Conventions? I don't think so.

Without questioning the sincerity of the WAC's delegates, it seems irresponsible for archaeologists to put completely aside the professional imperative to protect cultural resources during times of military conflict. I don't need to see museums looted and sites destroyed to know that war is bad. People dying is a sufficient proof of that.

CAARI Clarification

It has come to my attention that Danielle Parks never served as a trustee of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute. This is of no particular consequence to me so I have no interest in fact-checking the details of what others say about her. There is a general interest, however, in not only speaking well of the departed, but also in speaking accurately.

For its part, the ACCG has made much of the late Dr. Parks' perceived connections to CAARI on its website:

...ECA's consultations with the late Professor Danielle Parks (a CAARI-Trustee) about coins BEFORE Cyprus even made a formal request for their inclusion... (2nd paragraph; accessed July 9, 2008)

Way to go CAARI

The Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute's Code of Ethics indicates that it supports the following principles:

1. archaeological excavations be carried out under the highest standards possible;


2. illicit trade of antiquities be actively discouraged; and


3. the authorities of the Department of Antiquities be informed of any improper activities involving excavation or exportation of archaeological artifacts.

I am glad to see Peter Tompa documenting that affiliates of CAARI put these principles into action in working to increase the likelihood that the findspots of Cypriot coins will be properly recorded. He highlights the efforts of the late Danielle Parks. Dr. Parks was an acquaintance of mine in college and I worked with her for one season on Cyprus, where she made her greatest impact. I suspect that she knew the seriousness of her illness during the period when she consulted with the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. If so, I applaud her willingness to engage with this important professional matter towards the end of her life.

Wikiquote doesn't provide a citation for the following quote attributed to Justice Brandeis:

The most important political office is that of the private citizen.

Regardless, it is good to see an archaeologist living up to this creed.

Those who click through to Tompa's post on the ACCG site will note the conspiratorial tone of his news item. Click even further for his observations that archaeologists effectively represent archaeological interests in their interactions with the United States Government. This is good news.

If there is a conspiracy, count me in. I'm happy to state right here that I too have been consulted by the State Department on matters of cultural heritage leglislation and that I've visited Congressional offices on the same topic. I certainly defer to Dr. Parks when it comes to the efficacy of my interactions but do hope to live up to her example.

ASCSA Publications

The publications page of American School of Classical Studies at Athens web-site is nicely done. It doesn't provide full-text search (yet?) but searching for "pottery" as a keyword returns a useful list of monographs, edited volumes and Agora picture books, many of which will be well-known to readers.

A nice feature is that the individual pages for each work will give a link to an online version if one is available. I'll note that at least one such link is broken, that for Virginia Grace's Amphoras and the Ancient Wine Trade, but the idea is very useful. It is particularly to the School's credit that it has allowed the full text of many of these titles to be read on Google Books; see the link for Jeremey Rutter's The Pottery of Lerna IV.

I hope that this level of access will be quickly available following the publication of the long-delayed Roman Pottery by John Hayes. Jennifer Neils' blurb for this book reads:

The importance of this volume for the archaeology of the Mediterranean cannot be overstated. It will prove invaluable for decades to come for a wide range of scholars dealing with the Roman world. The manuscript is a tour de force: comprehensive, up-to-date, well researched, and well written.

It is a large volume whose retail price is set at $150.00. Its importance will be greatly diminished if it is not available at low-cost in digital format.