The W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research recently announced that the 2006 Sean W. Dever Memorial Prize was awarded to Adam Kolman Marshak of Yale University.
The award is offered to a Ph.D. candidate in Syro-Palestinian and Biblical Archaeology for the best published article or paper presented at a conference. Marshak’s winning paper is titled “The Dated Coins of Herod the Great: Towards a New Chronology.” In it he argues that Herod’s largest and most artistic issue of coins, known as the “dated series,” should be redated to 27 B.C.E., when Marshak believes they were struck to commemorate the rebuilding and renaming of Samaria/Sebaste in Augustus’s honor.
According to Marshak, his research focuses primarily on the political history of Hasmonean and Herodian Judea and the Near East. He is expected to receive his Ph.D. in history from Yale in December 2007.
The Sean W. Dever Memorial Prize was established in 2001 by Professor William G. Dever and Mrs. Norma Dever in memory of their son Sean.
The Hershel Shanks prize of $1,000 for the best paper in Archaeology Related to the Hebrew Bible delivered at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research has been awarded to Assistant Professor Michael G. VanZant of Mount Vernon Nazarene University, Mount Vernon, Ohio.
Prize money of $4,000 in four other categories—Archaeology Related to the New Testament, Archaeology Related to Patristic Literature and Early Christianity, Archaeology Related to the Talmud and Late Antique Judaism, and Archaeology in Israel—went unclaimed.
VanZant’s paper analyzed the sociocultural aspects of Moabite society as gleaned from curses on Moab in the Bible, as compared with that revealed by the archaeologist’s spade. His winning paper is entitled, “Of Tents and States: A Socioarchaeological Analysis of the Oracles Against Moab in Isaiah 15–16 and Jeremiah 48.”
Shanks said that whether or not the prizes will be offered again is questionable, in light of the apparent lack of interest.
The W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research recently announced that the 2006 Sean W. Dever Memorial Prize was awarded to Adam Kolman Marshak of Yale University.
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