MEET OUR RESEARCHERS: NEAR EAST SECTION


Michael D. Danti
Research Specialist, Near East Section

From 2004:
Michael is working on the final publication of the excavations at Hasanlu Tepe in Azarbaijan, Iran. The Museum's excavations at Hasanlu, directed by Curator Emeritus, Robert H. Dyson, took place from 1956-1977. Danti recently completed work on Hasanlu I, the fortified settlement of the Il-Khanid period. He submitted the draft manuscript entitled The Il-Khanid Heartland: Hasanlu Tepe (Iran) Period I to Museum Publications in June, 2003. He is now turning his attention to the publication of Hasanlu Period IV, specifically to Burned Building I, a monumental structure of the Iron Age that was sacked and burned around 800 BC.

In addition to his work on Hasanlu, Danti has continued to devote his time to the Tell es-Sweyhat Project, serving as Field Director in 2000-2001. He is currently excavating a large monumental mud-brick platform situated at the center of the early-third millennium settlement detailed in Expedition 44/1 (2002). He is also working on the publication of his dissertation Early Bronze Age Settlement and Land Use in the Tell es-Sweyhat Region, Syria, which focused in part on his excavations at the late fourth to early third millennium BC site of Tell Hajji Ibrahim and delineated the role of pastoralism in the emergence of early state societies in northern Syria.

Danti is on leave for the 2003/2004 academic year in order to serve as a lecturer at Bryn Mawr College in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology.

Fredrik T. Hiebert
Research Associate, Near East Section, Penn Museum; National Geographic Archaeology Fellow

Specialties/Interests:
Ancient trade;
The development of cultural complexity north of the Greater Near East

Current/Past Research:

Turkmenistan
More than ten years of archaeological excavations at the site of Anau, Turkmenistan (the most recent excavations during the summer of 2005) has revealed a sequence of occupation from 4500 BC through 1500 AD. Investigations of the earliest levels were published in a Museum monograph: A Central Asian Village at the Dawn of Civilization (University of Pennsylvania Museum, 2003). Today, Dr. Hiebert notes, much of the real discovery in archaeology happens in the lab – and that is no different for the ongoing analysis of the Anau collections currently at MASCA (Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology). Preliminary lab results include new finds of early domestic bread wheat, and abundant remains of sheep, cattle, and a wild horse-relative already at the earliest periods of farming in Turkmenistan.

Afghanistan
2003 brought the opportunity for researchers to return to Afghanistan. Since then, on a request of the government of Afghanistan, Dr. Hiebert has been re-inventorying the collections of the Kabul Museum – one of the greatest museums of Silk Road archaeology and history. After nearly 8 months of cataloging, Dr. Hiebert has learned that much of Afghanistan’s most famous archaeological treasures are safe and in good condition. For more information, see links, below.

Links:
Black Sea Expedition
Discovery at Anau, Turkmenistan
NPR Coverage of Afghan Treasures

Renata Holod
Curator of Islamic Art and Professor, History of Art department, University of Pennsylvania

From 2003:
Renata continues publication preparations for the Archaeological Survey of Jerba (field seasons 1996-2000). The survey will be published as a supplement to the Journal of Roman Archaeology with the title Jerba Studies. The survey found major shifts in settlement patterns, ranging from a landscape of several urban centers within a countryside of villas and farms during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, to a densely packed medieval environment of small farms and mosques, but no urban entities, to an early modern pattern of new estates and new towns.

Dr. Holod, with colleagues Ann Brownlee, Nancy Boukidis, Kezia and Niko Knauer, Ann Kuttner, Alexander Leskov, Victor Mair, Holly Pittman, and Charles Williams, and students Wu Xin, Lilliana Milkova, Thomas Morton, and Michael Frachetti, visited southern Ukraine and Crimea where they toured archaeological sites and museum collections with members of the Institute of Archaeology of Ukraine. Scythian kurgans, Greek settlements, churches and cave monasteries, Genoese fortresses, Goth, Karaite and Tatar towns and cemeteries are but a small sample of rich yet unfamiliar archaeological record that deserves further exploration in the near future.

She spent fall 2002 as Clark Professor at Williams College and Clark Art Institute. In connection with this appointment, she curated an exhibition at the Williams College Museum of Art entitled "From the Two Pens: Line and Color in Islamic Art" consisting of selected materials from the Near East Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum.

She visited her old haunts in Yazd, Iran in October, 2002 giving the keynote speech, "Our Works Point to Us: On Cultural Heritage" at a seminar entitled "Architecture for Changing Societies" organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

Dr. Holly Pittman
Deputy Director for Academic Programs; Curator, Near East Section; Class of 1963 Endowed Term Professor in the Humanities; Professor, History of Art; Director, Center for Ancient Studies

Specialties/Interests:
Ancient Mesopotamia
Iranian Plateau in the Bronze Age
Rise of complex societies
Administrative and early writing Systems
Art and visual culture of the ancient Near East

Current/Past Research:
Dr. Pittman has been at the University of Pennsylvania since 1989, leaving a curatorial position at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She teaches classes on the art and culture of the ancient Near East, and currently is focusing on the art and culture of Bronze Age Iran. She has excavated in Cyprus, Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran and has had primary publication responsibilities of the art and especially the glyptic art from the sites of Malyan in the Fars province of Iran; Uruk period Tell Brak; Uruk period Hacienbi Tepe. In addition she has worked with Marcella Frangipane in the analysis of the seals from Arslantepe in eastern Turkey. She has published on the art of the Bronze Age and Iron Ages of Iran and Mesopotamia, including an in-depth study of the Glazed Steatite (Piedmont) style seals distributed across the Near East from the eastern Iranian plateau to western Syria and the Levant around 2900 BC.

At the Museum, she co-curated the traveling exhibition of the "Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur." She teaches classes in the Museum focusing on the collections of seals in the Near East Section.

Her current research interests revolve around the excavations of the sites of Konar Sandal South and North in the region of Jiroft in south-central Iran. The area was first revealed by extensive looting in 2000 and 2001, and Iranian archaeologists began excavation at the rice Bronze Age sites in the valley of the Halil Roud under the direction of Youssef Madjidzadeh in 2004. Dr. Pittman, together with students from the graduate programs of the History of Art, the Art and Archeology of the Mediterranean World and the Anthropology Department, has participated in two seasons of excavation of the two mounds and the exploration and survey of the region. The preliminary results of these first seasons of excavation have revealed a hitherto unknown civilization of the Early Bronze Age that interacted with societies in Mesopotamia, the Indus valley and Central Asia. The region has been explored previous only by Sir Aurel Stein in his early investigations of the region, Beatrice de Cardi in excavations at Bampur, and by C. Carl Lamberg-Karlovsky at Tepe Yahya. The new excavations have produced an extensive ceramic assemblage, monumental, domestic, and craft production areas. Most interesting among the finds are more than 150 seal impressions of cylinder and stamp seals used in economic administration.

Photo: Dr. Pittman in Iran.

Dr. Brian Spooner
spooner@sas.upenn.edu
Curator for Near Eastern Ethnology, Penn Museum, and Professor of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania

Specialties/Interests:
Middle East and South Asia
Islam
Literacy
Social organization
Conflict
Globalization

Current Research:
Dr. Spooner is focusing on two research projects, both rooted in the current situation in the Islamic societies of the Middle East and South Asia.

In the first he is working to understand the current trajectories of terrorist activity. He is looking at the ways in which the practices that we identify as terrorist have evolved up to the present as a basis for understanding how they are currently changing--especially since 9/11--and what shape they may take over the coming decade.

In the second project, he is studying the relationship between the protocols of chancery practice in the traditional societies of the eastern Islamic world (Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and India) and the way formal behavior has evolved from the Medieval period up into the present.

Consulting editor for the Encyclopaedia Iranica, Dr. Spooner was editor of Pakistan Studies News from 1998 through 2005.

Mary M. Voigt

Research since 1993 has focused on changes at Gordion during later periods, especially at Hellenistic and Roman Gordion (ca 330 BC-AD 500). The most startling results have been for the 3 rd century BC, when the site was controlled by the Galatians, Celtic speakers who had come into Anatolia as mercenaries in 278 BC. One of the questions being examined is the effect of the arrival of these European immigrants on Gordion and the extent to which they controlled the city politically and economically. Changes in the form of the settlement, architecture, tools and weapons and ritual practices suggest a strong Celtic presence. Evidence for headhunting and human sacrifice was found in two areas, mirroring practices well-known in Iron Age Europe.

Links:
Celtic Sacrifice at Gordion
Archaeology Magazine
Redating of Early Phrygian Gordion

Richard L. Zettler
Associate Curator-in-Charge; Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania

From 2004:
Dr. Zettler is excavating the site of Tell es-Sweyhat, located on the east bank of the Euphrates in northern Syria. The Tell es-Sweyhat region is a marginal environment for agriculture and pastoralism plays an important part in the subsistence economy today, and probably also did in the past. Tell es-Sweyhat was occupied throughout the third millennium bce (or Early Bronze Age), but by the end of that period Tell es-Sweyhat had become a large fortified urban center with a citadel surrounded by an extensive lower town. The site offers important opportunities for understanding the dynamics of subsistence in marginal environments, the role of pastoralism in the emergence of early state societies, as well as the topography of northern Mesopotamian cities. Though the Tell es-Sweyhat Project has focused to date on the beginning and end of the 3rd millennium, the most recent 2000-2001 field seasons, supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, have revealed fortifications and monumental mudbrick platforms of the early-to-mid 3rd millennium (see Expedition 44/1), suggesting that Tell es-Sweyhat was a substantial settlement at the time of Ebla's floruit, and may have been one of the centers, perhaps Burman, mentioned in well-known letter from Enna-Dagan, king of Mari, to an unnamed contemporary at Ebla. The geographical name Burman occurs frequently in Ebla's administrative texts, where its king, his wife and the queen, an Eblaite princess named Zimnikubar, his sons and Burman's elders are all listed as recipients of textiles/garments. In addition, Tisha-lim, another Eblaite princess and queen of Emar, held land in the area of Burman.

In addition to his work on Tell es-Sweyhat, Richard L. Zettler continues his long-standing interest in the meshing of textual sources and material culture to build more holistic histories of ancient Mesopotamia. He recently published a review and critique of efforts to integrate the two strands of data in the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. He has also been working on reconstructing the archaeological contexts of tablets from the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur (2100-2000) found at Nippur and Ur. The Third Dynasty of Ur is the most richly documented period in ancient Mesopotamian history, with more than 40,000 tablets published to date, but the bulk of the tablets come from illicit excavations and the findspots of the others remain poorly delineated.

Richard L. Zettler co-curated the Museum's popular traveling exhibit Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur. The exhibit has appeared at twelve venues throughtout the US, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors. Artifacts from the Royal Cemetery of Ur are currently on display in Art of the First Cities at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur will continue to travel for the next year or two, and the exhibit catalogue is still available through Museum Publications. Zettler is also involved in other major Museum projects including efforts to make more of the collections from excavations at Ur available to other institutions, an effort funded by the Museum Loan Network; the restoration of the Urnamma Stele, made possible by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation; and, the conservation and rehousing of Parthian and Sassanian clay coffins from the Nippur excavations, supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.