Editors’ Page: The State of the Profession

004

Having attended the annual meetings of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) and the Society of Biblical Literature in November,^a I was in an excellent position, I thought, to compare this year’s annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), which was held in Philadelphia in January. The best I can say for the AIA meeting, however, is that it was largely unexciting.

Perhaps I just attended the wrong sessions. But there were a few tip-offs: Sessions started at 9:00 and ended at 4:00, with no evening plenary sessions. Most of the speakers were limited to 15 minutes, sometimes 10. There’s not much you can say in that time, but it may be enough for a narrow topic like “Archaic and Classical Predecessors to Hellenistic Monumental Steps” or “When Is a Stone or a Stone Cairn a Herm? Methods of Defining Territorial Boundaries in the Peloponnese.” These are important, if narrow, subjects; but the meeting should feature broader, overall treatments.

I had the feeling that most of the papers were the work of graduate students or freshly minted Ph.Ds. I chatted with a number of eminent senior scholars, several of whom were old friends: Glen Bowersock of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton and co-editor of the recently published Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World; Jim Muhly, director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens; Greg Nagy, director of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., Robert Merrillees, director of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute; Jodi Magness of Tufts University; and David Stronach of the University of California, Berkeley. But none of them gave papers.

Some sessions were of course exceptions. One of these was a session jointly organized by ASOR and the AIA on “The Galilee: Archaeology and Early Christianity.” Presenters were given 25 minutes (plus some runover). Eric Meyers, former ASOR president and former editor of the Biblical Archaeologist (now Near Eastern Archaeology), presented a major synthesis on “The Jewish Setting of Early Christianity.” In the same session Doug Edwards of the University of Puget Sound gave a fascinating excavation report on Cana and its transformation from a Jewish village in Galilee at the turn of the era to an important Christian pilgrimage site in Byzantine times.

Another exception was an absolutely superb presentation by Brown University professor Martha Sharp Joukowsky, a former AIA president, who described a fascinating Nabatean temple complex in Petra, modern Jordan. The temple building itself, with seating for 600, is the largest building in Petra. Joukowsky’s before-and-after dig pictures were almost like a movie bringing the building out of the ground. She also analyzed the strange elephant capitals on the columns: much like Greek Doric columns, but instead of the scroll curling down either side of the capital, there were elephant heads whose curling tusks substituted for the scrolls. Joukowsky traveled as far as India looking for elephant parallels; she was even willing to speculate as to the symbolic meaning of the strange elephant capitals.

Another stirring presentation was given by Andrea Berlin of the 060University of Minnesota on the excavation she and co-director Sharon Herbert of the University of Michigan are conducting at Tel Kedesh in northern Israel. Once thought to be an unimportant Jewish village in the centuries before the turn of the era, Kedesh, as a result of their excavations, is now seen as an important Phoenician administrative center. With their hi-tech equipment—underground eyes, you might call it—Herbert and Berlin were able precisely to locate a large, obviously important building even before putting a spade into the ground. When they actually excavated the building, they found a hoard of over 2,500 bullae (that’s not a typo). Bullae are small lumps of clay impressed with seals that once secured the string binding ancient documents. Some of these seals depict lithe young women, others show the heads of elite Phoencian leaders, and still others are incised with the icon of the Phoenician goddess Tanit. A few bullae also bear Phoenician inscriptions. Today, Kedesh is on the Israeli side of the Israel-Lebanese border, but in antiquity it was perhaps ceded to Phoenicia by a grateful Persian monarch for the naval help he sought and received from the Phoenicians in his military conflict with the Greeks.

Most of the real action (meaning the real excitement) at the AIA meeting, however, was not in the new finds or the latest results of excavations or in major new archaeological insights, but in the profession itself and its place in contemporary society. At a three-hour session entitled “Combating Pseudoarchaeology,” panelist after panelist lambasted popular archaeological frauds that, for example, date the pyramids thousands of years before they were in fact built, associate a Black Sea flood from about 7500 B.C. with Noah’s Flood, and other such fantasies. The theme: Why do these people get all the publicity and what can we real scientists do to debunk these foolish theories? I must admit, I wished someone like Robert Ballard, the leading underwater scientist exploring the Black Sea, had been there to give his perspective. I would even have wanted to hear from a producer of one of those hokey television shows that explore the mysteries of the archaeological universe.

Another three-hour session entitled “How to Attract Media Attention” was led by Peter Young, the distinguished editor of Archaeology, the world’s largest-circulation popular archaeology magazine. The audience at this unusually well-attended session received tips from speakers like New York Times reporter John Noble Wilford on how to get their work recognized in the popular press.

Another repeated concern of the AIA meeting was the protection of cultural property—archaeological sites and artifacts, both those in the ground and those in museums. I attended a roundtable discussion, led by Ellen Herscher, chairman of AIA’s Cultural Property and Policy Committee, on “Protection of Archaeological Sites in Armed Conflict.” We learned how the well-meaning Hague Convention of 1954 has backfired: It provides for the marking of archaeological sites with a double blue shield, so that combatants will avoid military action that would destroy them. Instead of protecting these sites, however, the so-called blue shield often becomes a target, as in the recent fighting in the former Yugoslavia. In the Gulf War, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein placed military installations next to cultural property in the hope that this would protect the military equipment. “Hague isn’t working,” declared Herscher. The United States is not a party to the Hague Convention, which was adopted in the aftermath of World War II. Many in the AIA have been attempting to have the convention ratified by the United States Congress, but Herscher wondered aloud whether this was a good idea. The question was purely theoretical, however, since several knowledgeable participants in the discussion reported that the chances of congressional ratification were nil. The problem, however, remains: How do you protect cultural property during armed conflicts?

Looting of sites and museums is another aspect of the problem—061during armed conflicts and at other times. In Afghanistan, the Taliban deliberately blasted the famous Bamiyan Buddhas.^b Looted artifacts from museums and sites are pouring out of places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the legal problems in pursuing looted materials were discussed in still another session on protecting cultural property. In one recent case a looter and his cohorts smuggled a hoard of illegally excavated artifacts out of Egypt by covering them with plastic so that they resembled cheap replicas. A leading New York antiquities dealer who acquired the loot has recently been found guilty in a New York federal court of receiving stolen property. The case raises the question as to whether looted artifacts taken from the ground are stolen property for purposes of a criminal indictment. Under the laws of many archaeologically rich countries, artifacts in the ground are declared to be property of the state. Should these laws be enforced by the United States? Patty Gerstenblith of the DePaul University College of Law argued that they should be. She made a strong case, and the New York district court apparently agreed with her. But I would have felt more comfortable if I had also heard from the lawyer on the other side. This issue is almost certainly to figure in the inevitable appeal.

In many of the sessions relating to the profession and to cultural property, one gets the feeling that the AIA has a position that it is urging to the exclusion of other views. The speakers make a strong case, but the case would be even stronger if we were exposed to a variety of other voices as well.

Having attended the annual meetings of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) and the Society of Biblical Literature in November,a I was in an excellent position, I thought, to compare this year’s annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), which was held in Philadelphia in January. The best I can say for the AIA meeting, however, is that it was largely unexciting. Perhaps I just attended the wrong sessions. But there were a few tip-offs: Sessions started at 9:00 and ended at 4:00, with no evening plenary sessions. Most of the speakers were limited to 15 […]