The Medieval Academy Blog

International Field School on Site Formation, Stratigraphy, and Geoarchaeology in the Athenian Agora

Deadline: Feburary 15, 2020

The Malcolm H. Wiener Laboratory for Archaeological Science (ASCSA) in collaboration with the ASCSA Excavations at the Athenian Agora offers a full week-long Field School on Site Formation, Stratigraphy, and Geoarchaeology in the Athenian Agora. Dr. Panagiotis (Takis) Karkanas, Director of the Wiener Laboratory, and Dr. Paul Goldberg, Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Wollongong, will supervise the intensive field school. Registered students will be involved in interdisciplinary field research in the Athenian Agora primarily focused on archaeological context, geoarchaeology, and material sciences. Through field observations, laboratory analysis, and lectures, students will receive instruction in the study and analysis of archaeological sediments and deposits, as well as gain experience in the recording of stratigraphy, and the understanding of site formation processes. A maximum of 12 students will be accepted for the course. Preference is given to advanced students and post-docs with a background in archaeology, and preferably some exposure to the natural sciences as well.

The cost for Room and Board is 350 euros for the entire week. Travel costs to Greece and to the site are not included.

The course will take place from May 30 to June 6, 2020. Applications should be submitted no later than February 15, 2020 via the online application form: https://ascsa.submittable.com/submit/127620/international-field-school-on-site-formation-stratigraphy-and-geoarchaeology-in

Application materials include one paragraph explaining why the candidate is interested in participating in the course, a CV, a list of grades (unofficial transcript), and names and email addresses of two referees.

A syllabus will be emailed 3 weeks before the start of the field school.

For further information or questions, please contact Dr. Panagiotis (Takis) Karkanas at tkarkanas@ascsa.edu.gr

Link to online posting: https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/programs/international-field-school-on-archaeological-science

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce its 2020–2021 grant competition, including a new grant for archaeological projects. Our grants reflect the Mary Jaharis Center’s commitment to fostering the field of Byzantine studies through the support of graduate students and early career researchers and faculty.

Mary Jaharis Center Dissertation Grants are awarded to advanced graduate students working on Ph.D. dissertations in the field of Byzantine studies broadly conceived. These grants are meant to help defray the costs of research-related expenses, e.g., travel, photography/digital images, microfilm.

Mary Jaharis Center Publication Grants support book-length publications or major articles in the field of Byzantine studies broadly conceived. Grants are aimed at early career academics. Preference will be given to postdocs and assistant professors, though applications from non-tenure track faculty and associate and full professors will be considered. We encourage the submission of first-book projects.

Mary Jaharis Center Project Grants support discrete and highly focused professional projects aimed at the conservation, preservation, and documentation of Byzantine archaeological sites and monuments dated from 300 CE to 1500 CE primarily in Greece and Turkey. Projects may be small stand-alone projects or discrete components of larger projects. Eligible projects might include archeological investigation, excavation, or survey; documentation, recovery, and analysis of at risk materials (e.g., architecture, mosaics, paintings in situ); and preservation (i.e., preventive measures, e.g., shelters, fences, walkways, water management) or conservation (i.e., physical hands-on treatments) of sites, buildings, or objects.

The application deadline for all grants is February 1, 2020. For further information, please see https://maryjahariscenter.org/grants.

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center, with any questions.

Thanks to the generous support of Wallace Johnson and the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University, I am delighted to announce a new program designed to provide support and mentorship to early career scholars working towards the publication of their first book on the law and legal culture of the early middle ages. In conversation with peers and with the advice of senior scholars, participants will develop and revise book proposals and sample chapters, and they will meet with guest editors to learn about approaching and working with publishers.

The program has been developed specifically to aid untenured scholars or those in non-tenurable positions (including adjuncts and full-time term faculty) and is not limited to a specific discipline or methodology. For the purposes of this program, “law” is broadly defined and need not be limited to legislation, legal documentation, or specific forms of legal process. Although applicants’ research must concern law, they need not self-identify as legal scholars.

As the Johnson Program is intended to cast a wide net, please do forward this announcement to other ListServs and pass it along to anyone who might be interested. More information, especially concerning application procedures and the 2019 selection committee, can be found at https://wmich.edu/medieval/johnson-program. If you have any questions, please do feel free to contact Andrew Rabin (andrew.rabin@louisville.edu) or Jana Schulman (jana.schulman@wmich.edu).

At a time when the field of medieval studies is seeking new ways to support younger scholars, the program offers a wonderful opportunity to aid those at the beginning of their careers, advance research on early medieval law and legal culture, and to develop connections across disciplines.

From ias.edu:

The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) and its international partners have received a €10 million Synergy Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to fund a multidisciplinary study of more than 100 medieval cemeteries located across central and eastern Europe. The project, HistoGenes, will seek to understand the impact of migrations and mobility on the population of the Carpathian Basin from 400–900 CE, based on a comprehensive analysis of samples from 6,000 ancient burial sites. HistoGenes will, for the first time, unite historians, archaeologists, geneticists, anthropologists, and specialists in bioinformatics, isotope analysis, and other scientific methods in understanding this key period of European history.

The team’s four principal investigators, representing these various disciplines, are Patrick Geary (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA), Johannes Krause (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany), Walter Pohl (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria), and Tivadar Vida (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary). In the U.S., the research team includes Professor Krishna Veeramah, a population geneticist from Stony Brook University. Geary and Veeramah had previously led a pilot study, published in Nature Communications in 2018, which sequenced the genomes of entire ancient cemeteries to examine the relationship between the genetic background of these communities and the archaeological material left behind.

For additional information, please contact Patrick Geary at geary@ias.edu