American Journal of Archaeology

What began as a plan to replace the original 1931 walnut display cases quickly morphed into a five-year Gallery Enhancements Project at the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago (OIM). Timed to coincide with the centennial celebration in the fall of 2019, the museum redesign includes greater label transparency, a standardized set of gallery materials, and some stunning sightlines, color schemes, interpretations, and object placements. While a product of its time, the Oriental Institute is not frozen in time, and the project is a testament to OIM commitment to visitor and scholarly engagement. In this moment of museum self-reflection, reckoning, and public scrutiny it has become difficult to have the name Oriental Institute, so in addition to the bricks and mortar restructure, the institute is also changing their name to mitigate the persistent harm perpetrated by use of that expression. We cannot change the colonial origins of archaeological practice, partage, and museum display, but we can challenge, contemplate, and question the collection, its ancient and modern histories, and orientalist legacies on display. The new and improved OIM offers us the unique opportunity to experience an ancient collection, acquired in a colonial moment, through a contemporary lens, which could make all the difference in our understanding of the past and the present.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London owns two watercolors that depict the Temple of Artemis at Sardis with its two fully standing columns as they appeared in the early 19th century. The museum catalogue stated that the finer of the two, showing a dramatic stormy view by Clarkson Stanfield (1834–35), a prominent artist who had never been to Sardis, was based on the second, a crude sketch allegedly made on the spot by one “Mr. Maude,” otherwise unknown. Stanfield’s picture shows construction and ornamental details unique to the Sardis columns and capitals, while the “Maude” shows none of these nor does it present a correct view of the landscape. Since it became clear that the Maude watercolor could not have served as a model for Stanfield, our findings were presented to the museum, whose Prints and Drawings Department specialists, after some scholarly communication, graciously acknowledged the mistake and proceeded to amend the catalogue. This is gratifying. Nevertheless, this incident offers an opportunity to underscore the benefits of multidisciplinary cooperation. In the larger picture, we specialists of kindred disciplines—archaeologists, art and architectural historians, and museum curators—share the same goals and possess knowledge and values worth sharing.

During four field seasons spanning 2014 through 2017, Project ArAGATS (Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies) expanded our long-term research on the origins and development of complex political systems in the South Caucasus with a comprehensive study of the upper Kasakh River valley in north-central Armenia. The Kasakh Valley Archaeological Survey employed both systematic transect survey of 43 km² and extensive satellite- and drone-based reconnaissance to accommodate the complex topography of the Lesser Caucasus and the impacts of Soviet-era land amelioration. Though our survey was animated by questions related to the chronology and distribution of Bronze and Iron Age fortifications and cemeteries, we also recorded Paleolithic sites stretching back to the earliest human settlement of the Caucasus, Early Bronze Age surface finds, and historic landscape modifications. Concurrent to the survey, members of the ArAGATS team carried out test excavations at select settlement sites and associated burials, and a series of wetland core extractions, with the goals of affirming site occupation sequences and setting them within their environmental context. This report provides an overview of the results of these multidisciplinary activities.