A freak blizzard granted us a day off from school the first week of the semester. This is both good (in that I got stuff done) and bad (in that I’m behind in my classes already). Oh well, it’s better to be behind the first week of the semester than the last.
And this coming week will be exciting with the 5th annual (or is it 6th?) Cyprus Research Fund Lecture. For those who missed it, this year’s talk is by Dr. Sarah Lepinski and titled Archaeologies of Décor: Interiors in the Roman East. For those in the Northern Plains, the talk is at 4 pm on Thursday January 23rd in the East Asia Room of the mighty Chester Fritz Library. More information is here or here. We’ll stream the talk and post a URL for that when it’s available.
While you get excited about Sarah’s talk and celebrate not living in Grand Forks, you can peruse this list of quick hits and varia:
- Both Chasing Aphrodite and Looting Matters and following what is being called “Fordham’s Folly.” This is Fordham University accepting a gift of some 6th century mosaics “from the neighborhood of Apamea” in Syria. Considering the large-scale destruction and looting of Syria’s antiquities during the present civil war, this seems in bad taste at best and unethical at worst. (Check out Michael Peppard’s concerns in the comments of my blog. It’s interesting that he refers to the authors of the two blogs as “bloggers” when he knows that Chasing Aphrodite is authored by two investigative journalists of high standing and Looting Matters is authored by David Gill, a scholar of significant reputation. Moreover, I suggested that Fordham’s behavior might just be in poor taste or unethical (by the standards of the field of archaeology) which I’m not sure are properly slanderous. That kind of thing makes Peppard’s comments seem unimpressive.)
- The Joukowsky Institute at Brown is running a contest for Accessible Archaeological Writing. The top prize is $5000 and the best papers will appear in an edited volume.
- While it is not unusual for American Evangelical churches to have espresso or coffee bars, it might be a bit more unusual to discover that coffee maker Lavazza’s headquarters has its own Early Christian Basilica.
- R.I.P. Halet Çambel.
- The photographs of Ara Güler show the hidden and historic corners of Turkey and are on display at the Sackler Gallery in D.C.
- Apparently press agencies plagiarize one another even when it involves giraffe eating at Pompeii. Who would have guessed it?
- Andrew Reinhard beta tests Elder Scrolls online with his archaeological sensibilities intact.
- Sutton Hoo Conference to mark the 75th anniversary of excavations at the site.
- Portable souvlaki grills from the Mycenaean Bronze Age on Greece.
- What to be the next managing editor of the Loeb Classical Library?
- Natalie Zemon Davis shows us how to read a primary source.
- The BBC looks at the abandoned resort of Varosha on Cyprus that is in the U.N. Buffer zone.
- The Victoria and Albert Museum will publish online the catalogue of 16,558 pieces of Nazi Entartete Kunst (degenerate art) decommissioned from German museums in late 1930s.
- Melting glaciers reveal WWI corpses. Grizzly.
- Help mark up WWI British war diaries.
- It’s interesting to contrast Lee Lozano’s final resting place with the place of her art.
- Azimov on 2014.
- More on the North Dakota oil boom in the New York Times.
- What I’m reading: J. Haldon and L. Brubaker, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c. 680-850. Cambridge 2011.
- What I’m listening to: Velvet Underground, White Light/White Heat.
Re: your links today, the accusations made by two bloggers about Fordham’s being associated with present-day looting in Syria are demonstrably untrue and, of course, deeply offensive. Both bloggers received more than enough information to know this. For starters, the mosaics were photographed prior to 1967 in Beirut, photos which are archived and France and have been studied and indeed been referenced in the journals Travaux et Memoires (1979), Antiquite Tardive (1994), and Syria (1996). I would appreciate your not further spreading the slanderous rumors started by these two bloggers. Thanks for your consideration.
Ridiculous. Nobody is making any such slanderous accusations and the scholarly community is perfectly legitimate in asking to see the documentation authenticating the legality of the sale. Your (I suspect false) offense is mere smokescreen. Nice try. In any case, the legality of the sale has no bearing on the ethical issue of their purchase, which I notice that you ignore altogether. The fact that thoughtful, professional archaeologists are taking issue with the purchase ought to suggest to you that they might have some legitimate gripes, in which case the best course of action is to say, as your institution did, that you agree with “the importance of establishing provenance as rigorously as possible in acquiring artworks from antiquity” instead of doubling down.
M. Peppard, is is possible that the Syrian legal threshold for legally acquiring Syrian artifacts must have been made prior to 1963?
http://tebtunis.berkeley.edu/laws/Syria/sy_antiquitieslaw1963_engtof.pdf
Also, Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino – are hardly just “bloggers” as you so pejoratively suggest. They may use ‘blogging’ software to share their investigative reporting. However, to be clear, they are award winning investigative reporters and their Chasing Aphrodite investigative reporting was up for a Pulitzer Prize.
Their research, analysis is a asset to the public trust. Instead of being defensive or slighting them, use their knowledge to understand where the antiquity acquisitions process works well and where it doesn’t. If you are receiving flak, something didn’t work well. Find out where, be transparent about it and correct what you can.
Fordham doesn’t produce bureaucrats, Fordham produces thinkers who (should) know what the right thing to do is without being told what is the right thing to do.
P.S. I am the daughter of a Fordham Prep, Fordham Univeristy & Graduate School alumni.
I did not intend “blogger” as a pejorative word. I blog too. It’s simply descriptive of the mode in which the accusations were made. But when I blog, I know I’m not writing in the mode of a scholar because scholarship is at least reviewed by editors and ideally is blind peer-reviewed. And when I have made factual errors in my blogging — and I have made embarrassing ones — I have deleted what was incorrect and explained so in an update. That was what I expected of others.
I of course stand by the months of work done on ancient and modern provenance by scholars and lawyers here and elsewhere. My own work on these mosaics has already been thoroughly peer-reviewed by prominent scholars, one of whom worked with the archived photos decades ago in France. I already mentioned above several places one can read about them in journals. Thus, far from avoiding any questions, I asked them in advance and voluntarily submitted my work to the top people in the field before publication.
Thus the accusation of being associated with present-day looting is libelous. It is demonstrably untrue beyond any doubt, and damaging to my reputation for no reason. I have not been pretending to be offended, as suggested above. I was made truly ill by the accusations. That is why I have asked for it to be removed from the blogs on which it has appeared. I would think that other scholars would ask the same, if such accusations were made about them.
Michael,
Thank you for your follow up and very interesting response! I’m curious to see if any of the scholars or bloggers respond to your urging.
I’m particularly interested in understanding a bit more about the libelous or slanderous character of these bloggers remarks, but I assume that’s in the works.
As for my spreading of it, I was just pointing my readers in the direction of an interesting conversation and teasing you a bit for your choice of words.
Thanks again and good luck on your effort to correct mistakes on the internet!
Bill