AJA

Başur Höyük in southeast Turkey lies at a critical crossroads linking Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Caucasia. The site was excavated as part of the Ilısu Dam and Hydroelectric Power Plant (HEPP) project rescue excavations. During the Early Bronze Age I (3100–2900 BCE), a cemetery was created in an area previously occupied by an Uruk settlement. A stone cist grave and accompanying outer area contained several burials.

While pottery is the most abundant form of material culture found at Mesopotamian archaeological sites, references to pottery vessels in cuneiform texts are comparatively infrequent. Beyond one-to-one identification of common vessel names with archaeological pot types, rarely have these two sources of evidence been integrated to expand our understanding of Mesopotamian peoples’ perceptions of, and engagements with, their material world.

In 1959, the oldest book that had then been found in Europe, a scroll of papyrus datable to ca. 350–325 BCE and here named P. Callatis 1, was discovered in an imposing tomb of Macedonian type at Callatis (Mangalia, Romania) on the west coast of the Black Sea. In 2011, it was recovered in Moscow and returned to Mangalia.

The water displays in Roman Greece in the villa of Herodes Atticus at Eva-Loukou and in the forecourt of the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis demonstrate diverse uses and contexts of flowing water. By focusing on the sensorial experience an ancient individual had with these structures, especially through the framework of a sensorial assemblage, we can highlight how sensory elements had the power to create immersive encounters.

The use of the same obverse die by multiple cities in the Roman provinces has been much discussed from a numismatic standpoint, with particular focus on its implications for the system of coin production and for control of minting in the Roman provinces. Instead of considering die sharing as evidence to aid our understanding of the coinage, this article switches the focus onto the practice itself and examines it as a historical process in its own right.

Following its nominal independence from Britain in 1922, Egypt increasingly protested continued European control of the Service des antiquités de l’Égypte, the office that administered archaeology and the antiquities trade. Public conflicts were frequent, pitting Western researchers against Egyptian nationalists who advocated for the decolonization of the Service.

Museums are primary sites of exchange between diverse publics and disciplinary experts. As museums’ missions have shifted toward public service over the last 40 years, public access has been partially digital. In this essay, we survey ways museums have recently brought their ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern resources to online audiences, in both long-term projects and COVID-19 pandemic efforts.