Ancient Near East .net

From Bernard Knapp comes very sad news of Andrew Sherratt’s unexpected passing:

British prehistorian, Andrew Sherratt, died Friday afternoon (24 Feb). Andrew had a massive heart attack, and was alone, having just parked his car, when he died. He was apparently unaware of his illness. Plans for a memorial are pending.

Andrew was a student of David Clarke’s at Peterhouse College, Cambridge and the long time Assistant Keeper of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. He recently had moved to the Department of Archaeology and Prehistory at the University of Sheffield where he held the post of Professor.

Andrew’s research was remarkable for its scope. He was interested in the big questions of European prehistory and he addressed them on a continental scale. He is perhaps best known for the concept of a ‘Secondary Products Revolution’, which stressed the critical social and economic transformations that accompanied the exploitation of domestic animals not for meat but for the other products that derived from livestock, such as milk, wool, and traction. Andrew directed the first international collaborative field research project in eastern Hungary and his limitless enthusiasm inspired generations of students to work in East Europe. The current blossoming of archaeological research in Hungary and Eastern Europe can trace its origins to Andrew’s pioneering efforts.

Further to the announcement last Friday week of the exciting discovery of a new (probably non-royal) tomb in the Valley of the Kings (to be designated KV 63), the excavation team from the University of Memphis, Tennessee, has started construction of a new website, KV-63.com, to document the discovery as details emerge.

The front page currently features photographs from the previous week’s media event and includes details for monetary donations towards the team’s efforts (a very worthy cause indeed!)

From Professor Ami Mazar comes news that four (4) new publications regarding the Tel Rehov excavations, radiocarbon dating and Iron Age chronology in the southern Levant are now to be found online (PDF format), having recently been published in the proceedings of the September 2004 Oxford conference on radiocarbon, Levantine archaeology and chronology:

Levy, T.E. & Higham, T., The Bible and Radiocarbon Dating - Archaeology, Text and Science, Equinox, 2005.

*Amihai Mazar, “The Debate over the Chronology of the Iron Age in the Southern Levant - Its History, the Current Situation and a Suggested Resolution”

*Mazar, A., Bruins, H.J., Panitz-Cohen, N. and van der Plicht, J., “Ladder of Time at Tel Rehov: Stratigraphy, Archaeological Context, Pottery and Radiocarbon Dating”

*Van der Plicht, J. and Bruins, H.J., “Quality Control of Groningen 14C Results from Tel Rehov: Repeatability and Intercomparison of Proportional Gas Counting and AMS”

*Bruins, H.J., van der Plicht, J., Mazar, A. Bronk Ramsey, C. and Manning, S. W., “The Groningen Radiocarbon Series from Tel Rehov: OxCal Bayesian computations for the Iron IB-IIA Boundary and the Iron IIA Destruction Events”

Although the last two items are admittedly quite technical, each article makes highly interesting reading. Professor Mazar, the authors and the editors are to be thanked for making these papers, from what was a very stimulating conference indeed, widely available.

Following hard on the heels of yesterday’s announcement that the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute is to shut down the ANE List, I am very pleased to announce that a new ANE email list has been born: ANE 2 (a Yahoo! Groups list). Kudos to Jeffrey Gibson for taking the initiative, and best of luck to the new, joint moderators, who include Niels Peter Lemche and Chuck Jones (former editor of the old ANE). I exhort everyone interested in the Ancient Near East and Egypt to join immediately and support this new venture with thoughtful and useful questions and contributions.

After considerable uncertainty over a number of weeks and months, it now seems that the ANE List is finally to wound up this Thursday 16th February. This, courtesy of the voting members of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, who have decided no longer to host it.

As a frequent contributor to the list since 1994, I can only view the passing of ANE with great sadness. It remains to be seen what (if anything) will replace it… There are, of course, other lists “out there” - though none that replicate exactly the scope of ANE. So much depends, naturally, on the quality of the moderation - without a good moderator or team of moderators, any list will quickly degenerate into triviality and abuse. Such it seems, ultimately, was the case with ANE… With Chuck Jones’ withdrawal from the project the list lost any effective direction, the new editors seemingly lacking the interest or ability to maintain the list effectively. A great pity.

The clutch of new discoveries at Karnak and on the West Bank of Luxor were somewhat overshadowed late this week with the official announcement, yesterday, of the discovery of a new tomb (KV 63) in the Valley of the Kings. Although several funerary caches and workers’ buildings have been revealed over recent decades, the somewhat unexpected find marks the first actual burial uncovered in the Valley since Howard Carter’s uncovering of the Tomb of Tutankhamun (KV 62) in 1922.

Interior view of tomb KV 63 (Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images - non-exclusive access to tomb supplied by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. Claim: Fair Use)

The last fortnight has witnessed a number of exciting archaeological discoveries in Luxor, the ancient Egyptian politico-religious capital of Upper Egypt.

At the end of January came news of twin discoveries from the remains of the Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III at Kom el-Hetan, adjacent to the so-called Colossi of Memnon: a statue of the lion goddess Sakhmet and a rare statue of a king with Nubian features.

Shortly thereafter, on February 1, the John Hopkins University team excavating the compound of the Temple of Mut at Karnak announced the end of another highly successful excavation season for 2006. Easily the most spectacular single find was a sublime statue of a royal female, revealed to the excavators on January 19, though not publicised until January 22.

The focus of new discoveries swung back across the Nile on February 7 with the announcement of the discovery of a colossal head of the 18th Dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III within his mortuary temple compound at Kom el-Hetan.

All change! As of today, loyal visitors to this domain will notice several significant changes… After a considerable hiatus, during which time the editor’s efforts have been directed towards a number of other projects (details to follow, but including my doctoral dissertation), Ancient Near East.net is returning in a new format.

Changes include: The adoption of a web log (powered by Wordpress) as the primary interface, and content provision to be directed towards a closed wiki. Listings are currently being updated and will be kept in static pages attached to the larger blog.

Stay tuned for more updates over the next few hours / days…