Kelsey Museum Publication – serie

This volume represents a pioneering examination of the nature and identities of Aegean prehistory as a discipline. Emerging from a workshop that generated lively debate among a wide cross-section of scholars, it offers one of the first published attempts to situate Aegean prehistory within a modern self-critical and reflexive context. The chapters and commentaries together yield a multidisciplinary discourse, covering such topics as the current health and academic status of the field, the political and social parameters of the discipline, the relationship between Aegean prehistory and Hellenism, and the discovery of the "Aegean" by Greek modernists.

This volume accompanies an exhibition of the same name at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, February 4-September 30, 2005. Far more than merely a catalogue of the exhibition, it offers for a wide readership an introduction to the art of late prehistory (around 4000 BC) in Iran and Iraq, by bringing together a range of expressive visual tools-seals, sealings, and painted pottery. The focus is on a time before written expressions of belief, mythology, identity, or administrative documentation, but also a time of ripened recourse to other visual strategies of communication that set the stage for writing as we conceive it. A series of 11 imaginative interpretative essays explores the evidence and the methods we can use to approach an understanding of the role of visual imagery (of signs and symbols) in late prehistory, and to ask questions of this material as a means of approaching possible social meanings. The book is lavishly illustrated, and includes catalogue entries for every object included in the exhibition.

The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan has a long and impressive history of archaeological fieldwork activity in the Mediterranean, the Near East, and Egypt. Over the past 80 years, the Museum has helped sponsor nearly two dozen projects in Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Libya, Tunisia, Greece, and Armenia. In the Field presents a well-illustrated and informative summary account, with accompanying bibliographies, of each of these significant projects.

The city was the fundamental social institution of Greek and Roman culture. More than the sack of Rome, the abandonment of provincial towns throughout the Mediterranean world in late antiquity (fourth-seventh centuries A.D.) marks the beginning of the Middle Ages. This volume examines archaeological evidence for this last phase of urban life in Asia Minor, one of the Roman empire's most prosperous regions. Based on the proceedings of a symposium co-sponsored by the University of Michigan and the German Archaeological Institute, it brings together studies by an international group of scholars on topics ranging from the public sculpture of Constantinople to the depopulation of the Anatolian countryside in early Byzantine times.

Hours of Infinity is the catalogue of an exhibition and performance by artist John Kannenberg at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology and the Work Gallery in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The three bodies of work comprising Hours of Infinity use an imprecise drawing method coupled with a disciplined approach to sonic observation that merge with elements of ancient Egyptian and Greek philosophies, contemporary museum theory and mathematical proofs to investigate the timelessly beautiful imperfection inherent within the human experience of the Infinite. The catalogue features full color plates of the drawings in the exhibition, photographs documenting the making of the exhibitions and performance, and images showing the relationship of both to the collections and space of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. The catalog is designed and written by artist John Kannenberg and features a foreword by sonic arts critic Marc Weidenbaum and an introduction by Egyptologist T.G. Wilfong.

Illustrated in colour throughout. The elaborately decorated coffin of Djehutymose, a priest of the ancient Egyptian god Horus from around 625-580 BC, is one of the central artifacts of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology's Egyptian collection. Using the images and texts from the coffin along with related artifacts in the Kelsey Museum, Egyptologist T. G. Wilfong explores what the coffin tells us about ancient Egyptian ideas of life, death, and the afterlife. We follow Djehutymose through his life as a priest, through his death, embalming, and afterlife, examining his gods and symbols as he undertakes a voyage into the afterlife. Finally we see how his coffin journeyed from ancient Egypt to modern Ann Arbor. This richly illustrated book serves as a general introduction to ancient Egyptian religion as well as a specialised study of a single Egyptian artifact in its wider contexts.

The 1924-1935 University of Michigan excavations at the Graeco-Roman period Egyptian village of Karanis yielded thousands of artifacts and extensive archival records of their context. The Karanis material in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology and the University of Michigan Library Papyrology Collection forms a unique body of information for understanding life in an agricultural village in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. In 2011 and 2012, the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology presented the exhibition Karanis Revealed in two parts, using artifacts from the excavations and archival material to explore aspects of the site and its excavation in the 1920s and 1930s. As preparation for the exhibition progressed, it became clear that part of the story of the Michigan Karanis expedition lay in the current and ongoing research on the material it yielded by curators, faculty, staff, and students from the University of Michigan. Such projects include new work on known artifacts and papyri, the discovery or rediscovery of important unpublished artifacts and archival sources, new field research at Karanis, and even sonic investigations of the site and its history. The present volume summarizes the recent exhibition and presents some of the new research that helped inspire it.

This catalogue of a Kelsey Museum of Archaeology exhibition showcases a selection of Islamic art works held in the University of Michigan's collections. Rather than arranged chronologically, geographically, or by media, the objects are organized thematically and conceptually. Themes include the intersections between function and decoration, the aesthetic power of everyday objects, visual play, wit, and magic, connections and interrelationships across art forms, and light symbolism and illumination. The volume not only highlights the strengths of the university's collections of Islamic art but also explores various issues integral to the conception and production of art in the Islamic world from the medieval period until the present day. With 115 colour illustrations.

This catalogue documents an exhibition at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology on the mysterious ancient Egyptian jackal-headed gods associated with death and the afterlife. These gods are immediately identifiable symbols of ancient Egypt, but their specific identities and roles are often less well known. Death Dogs is the first exhibition to examine their mysteries. The exhibition and catalogue focus on the three most important jackal gods: Anubis (embalmer and guide to the dead), Wepwawet (opener of the ways to the afterlife) and Duamutef (son of Horus, protector of the canopic jar). Jackal gods are represented by a variety of artifacts in the Kelsey Museum collectionstatues, paintings, amulets and other objects. These artifacts are used to examine the jackal gods and their functions in the wider context of ancient Egyptian religion and follow their changing roles into the Graeco-Roman period and beyond. The catalogue features 44 artifacts from the exhibition, some never before exhibited or published, many from University of Michigan excavations in Egypt, along with supplementary artifacts, archival photographs, vintage book illustrations and explanatory graphics. Modern pop cultural manifestations of the Egyptian jackal gods are included to document their persistence into the present. Includes 181 colour illustrations.

This catalogue documents an exhibition at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology of watercolor paintings by American artist Wendy Artin and selected objects from the Museum's permanent collections. Wendy Artin has been working for over a decade on a series of watercolors of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures and related subjects. She is thus a fresh presence in a long line of artists who draw inspiration from antiquity. Indeed, this tradition has very ancient precedents. The exhibition and catalogue place a selection of 47 of Artin's paintings--including landscapes and figure paintings as well as images of ancient sculptures--in dialogue with 14 objects drawn from the Kelsey's collections, among them works of Greek art inspired by Egyptian precedents, examples of Roman imperial portraits that were copied in numerous media for circulation around the empire, and reproductions of the same figure types featured in some of Artin's paintings (such as Aphrodite Rising from the Sea). Wendy Artin's masterful watercolors offer new and arresting ways of looking at ancient sculptures and buildings--and of remembering the classical past. Includes 81 colour illustrations.

Passionate Curiosities explores the collections held in the University of Michigan's Kelsey Museum of Archaeology through the lens of the people whose intellectual interests, financial backing, and social networks brought artefacts to Ann Arbor from the 1880s to the 1990s. The purchases and expeditions shaped the Museum's internationally recognized antiquities from the ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome, North Africa, Egypt, and the Near East, extensive photographic documentation of these regions from the early 1900s, and significant assemblages of early Christian and Islamic visual culture. All of these are reflected in this lavishly illustrated volume. An intriguing array of personalities - from archaeologists, missionaries, and diplomats to industrialists, bankrollers, and inventors - weave through the book. They include Ernst Herzfeld, the eminent Orientalist who helped forge antiquities legislation in Iran; Luigi Cesnola, the rapacious harvester of Cypriot sites; Esther Van Deman, the pioneering feminist and scholar of Roman construction techniques; and Samuel Goudsmit, the renowned nuclear physicist and avid Egyptologist. World-famous dealers who established standards in antiquities connoisseurship also appear.  Readers will encounter Edgar J. Banks, a swashbuckling purveyor of Mesopotamian antiquities and entrepreneur of biblical documentary films; Maurice Nahman, the "lion of Cairo"; and the colourful members of the Tano dealer dynasty in Egypt.

Aphrodisias is one of the most important archaeological sites of the Greek and Roman periods in Turkey. Excavations at Aphrodisias have been carried out by New York University since 1961 and have revealed an unusually well-preserved and picturesque ancient town. A survey of the surrounding territory undertaken between 2005 and 2009 resulted in the discovery of hundreds of new sites spanning three millennia of human occupation in the region. This book presents the rich archaeological remains of the countryside of Aphrodisias, ranging from isolated farmsteads to fortified citadels, from burial mounds to marble quarries, and from Roman aqueducts to Ottoman cisterns.

Graffiti—unsanctioned marks in public built spaces—are increasingly recognized as worthy of study in contexts both ancient and modern. For ancient societies, graffiti are personal expressions that are otherwise rare in the archaeological and historical record. This volume is focused around a group of ancient and medieval figural graffiti found in 2015 by an archaeological project of the Kelsey Museum, University of Michigan, at the site of El-Kurru. Located in northern Sudan, El-Kurru was a royal pyramid burial ground of kings and queens of Kush from about 850 to 650 BCE. Written in conjunction with the exhibition "Graffiti as Devotion along the Nile" at the Kelsey Museum (on view 23 August 2019-29 March 2020), essays by an international group of seven scholars present the site of El-Kurru and its graffiti in historical context. Chapters discuss the history of Kush, ancient graffiti in a funerary temple and medieval graffiti on a pyramid at El-Kurru, and graffiti at other sites in Kush and Egypt (Musawwarat es-Sufra, Philae, and Banganarti) and beyond (Pompeii). Other chapters discuss the rock art of Sudan and methods used for the conservation and documentation of graffiti at El-Kurru. The volume concludes with an annotated catalog of graffiti from El-Kurru and a photo essay of the contemporary Nile Valley practice of "hajj images" that commemorate Muslim pilgrimage. Written to engage non-specialist readers, the book will be of interest to archaeologists, ancient and medieval historians, and art historians working in the Nile Valley and beyond, and to a broader community interested in these subjects.Illustrated in colour and b&w throughout.

City in the Desert, Revisited features previously unpublished documents and reproduces over fifty photographs from the archaeological excavations at Qasr al-Hayr in Syria. The book recounts the personal experiences and professional endeavours that shaped the fields of Islamic archaeology, art and architectural history as the significance of these fields of study expanded during the 1960s and 1970s. Between 1964 and 1971, renowned Islamic art historian Oleg Grabar directed a large-scale archaeological excavation at the site of Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi. Drawn to the remote eighth-century complex in the hopes of uncovering a princely Umayyad palace, Grabar and his team instead stumbled upon a new type of urban settlement in the Syrian steppe. A rich lifeworld emerged in the midst of their discoveries, and over the course of the excavation's six seasons, close relationships formed between the American and Syrian archaeologists, historians, and workers who laboured and lived at the site.

From 1924 to 1926, archaeologists from the University of Michigan roamed the Middle East and North Africa in two vehicles donated by Dodge to assist in pioneering archaeological projects. Driven and maintained by expedition photographer George R. Swain, these vehicles—a truck and sedan—navigated uncharted deserts, perilous mountains, and road-less terrains, bringing their passengers into contact with both the ancient past and the people living around its historic remains. From the Motor City to the Mediterranean transports readers into the heart of one man's journey alongside these intrepid vehicles. Using Swain's fascinating photographs and letters—some published here for the first time—author Lauren E. Talalay skillfully reconstructs his archaeological adventures of the 1920s, taking us to places rarely seen by the outside world during a decade of major social change after the Great War.

Karanis, a town in Egypt's Fayum region founded around 250 BC, housed a farming community with a diverse population and a complex material culture that lasted for hundreds of years. Ultimately abandoned and partly covered by the encroaching desert, Karanis eventually proved to be an extraordinarily rich archaeological site, yielding tens of thousands of artifacts and texts on papyrus that provide a wealth of information about daily life in the Roman-period Egyptian town. This volume tells of the history and culture of Karanis, and also provides a useful introduction to the University of Michigan's excavations between 1924 and 1935 and to the artifacts, archival records and photographs of the excavation that now form one of the major components of the collection of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology.

The essays in this volume bring to bear the latest scholarly and technological trends in archaeological research to shed new light on the site of Pisidian Antioch in west-central Turkey. Drawing on 3-D virtual reality technology as well as archival material from a 1924 University of Michigan expedition to the site, the authors propose new reconstructions of the city's major excavated monuments. They also evaluate these monuments in relation to the social and political imperatives of Pisidian Antioch's hybrid culture - one that overlaid a Roman imperial colony on a Hellenistic Greek city in an Anatolian region long inhabited by Phrygians and Pisidians. The study of Pisidian Antioch is thus seen in the context of recent scholarship on Rome's colonial project in the eastern empire. An accompanying DVD presents a fly-over of the virtual city created to aid in the authors' research. Includes 168 b&w illustrations and a DVD.