This Week in the Ancient Near East

A new study uses DNA from Egyptian mummies to literally reconstruct their faces. Oddly enough, they look like Egyptians. Is this accurate? Is it ethical? One way or another, they’re pretty good-looking. And isn’t that the main thing? Anyway, what’s with all the mummified cats?

Yes, we’re still here at ASOR, but now we’re interrogating an entirely new crowd about the question of conferences, namely Dr. Margaret Cohen, Professor Alexandra Ratzlaff and Professor Andrea Berlin. The questions are mostly the same, but the answers from these three leading female scholars are quite different.

What happens when a bunch of archaeologists start drinking bourbon and let their graying hair down? It’s an after hours edition with the one and only Professor James Hardin, who rather charmingly, can’t stay on script. He takes us to some surprising places, including some related to archaeological storytelling.

A conference you say? That’s right, we’re here in Chicago at the ASOR meeting with a host of guests, luminary scholars with names like Professor Eric Cline, Dr. Matthew Adams (the one with a J.), Dr. Yorke Rowan, and Professor Morag Kersel. The topic - conferences and conference experiences. There are some important lessons here.

Making a floor isn’t rocket science, but style and execution count for a lot. The terrazzo floor at the 15th century Hittite sanctuary at Uşaklı Höyük might be the earliest mosaic floor, or does that honor belongs to the Minoans?  What is the relationship between power and taste? Why are the triangles blue and what does the god Teshub really think about ‘oatmeal’ as a color?

Where does religion come from? How did hunter-gatherers build early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey? What’s with the gigantic carved stone pillars and the defleshed human skulls anyway? What is religion, really? Why am I asking you? It’s an episode as profound as it is, well, mystifying.

Was a Middle Bronze Age site near the Dead Sea pulverized by a cosmic air burst at 1650 BCE? Say what? The science is compelling, from the shocked quartz to the melted iridium. But was all this remembered, maybe in a Biblical story about a site in the Jordan Valley pulverized by fire from the sky? That’s the tricky part.

A ship graveyard, a sunken ship, and a fruit basket? Our contestants take a voyage to the bottom of the sea to discuss finds from the Nile Delta and ask the important questions like, what is the connection between fruit baskets and death, and how did Iron Age maritime insurers stay in business?