Podcasts about oriental research

On April 22, 2025, Dr. Lauren McCormick (Postdoctoral Researcher at Princeton's Center for Culture, Society, and Religion) met with a panel of CIAMS-affiliated students (Haley Stuckey, Alice Wolff (Ph.D.), and Ruth Portes) and Lauren Monroe (Associate Professor, Department of Near Eastern Studies) to discuss her work on Judean Pillar Figurines (JPFs). The articles discussed in this episode are: Ben-Shlomo, David, and Lauren K. McCormick. "Judean Pillar Figurines and “Bed Models” from Tell en-Naṣbeh: Typology and Petrographic Analysis." Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 386, no. 1 (2021): 23-46. McCormick, Lauren K. "Paint: A Fourth Dimension of Sculpture." Expedition Magazine, vol. 64 no. 3 (2023): 92-93. Let there be Light web exhibit: https://laurmcco.github.io/judeanpillarfigurineexhibit/ Dr. Lauren McCormick's podcast: https://laurmcco.github.io/judeanpillarfigurineexhibit/podcast.html

Despite its seemingly objective stance towards history, rooted in the analysis of material remains of past societies, archaeological interpretation is often contested and invoked to make arguments about the present. Archaeology acts, in some ways, as a metaphorical fault line in contemporary societies, upon which power and identity is negotiated through reference to past peoples and things. Because of this, how people treat cultural heritage can be used as a barometer for different kinds of political sentiments, from the rights of women and minorities to public mistrust of vaccines. In this talk, the speaker will explore how archaeology and the treatment of cultural heritage has related to the political and social movements from the 18th century to the present. He will discuss how Napoleon's invasion of Egypt prefigured the extractive colonial regimes of the Victorian era. The treatment of First Nations bodies by museums in the same period reflected genocidal policies of settler colonialism. More recently, the rise of Islamist ideologies were first evident through iconoclasm towards ancient architecture. Likewise, spurious treatments of antiquity in the mainstream media, such as crediting aliens with the construction of ancient monuments, foreshadowed the emergence of alternative media outlets and the breakdown of widespread agreement on objective facts. In the current political sphere, the rise of right-wing populism throughout North America and Europe has also seen extremist groups adopting ancient symbols and justifying their stances through reference to spurious visions of history. Speaker: Kevin McGeough Kevin M. McGeough is Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Geography & Environment at the University of Lethbridge and holds a Board of Governor's Research Chair in Archaeological Theory and Reception. An alumnus of the University of Lethbridge, McGeough has excavated in Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, and Canada and is currently a co-director of the University of Lethbridge archaeological excavations at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, UNESCO World Heritage Site. He has been the editor of the Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, ASOR's Archaeological Report Series, and is currently co-editor of the Alberta Archaeological Review. McGeough is the author of a three-volume series on the reception of archaeology, called The Ancient Near East in the Nineteenth Century. McGeough has also written extensively on economic issues at the Late Bronze Age site of Ugarit, including two books, Exchange Relationships at Ugarit and Ugaritic Economic Tablets: Text, Translations, and Notes. He is the author of Representations of Antiquity in Film: From Griffith to Grindhouse a study of the ancient world in cinema. McGeough's next book, Readers of the Lost Ark: Imagining the Ark of the Covenant from Ancient Times to the Present, is due from Oxford University Press in the fall of 2024.

Bible scholar Jacob Wright uncovers the roots of the Bible—not the who, but the why. Dr. Jacob L. Wright serves as associate professor of Hebrew Bible at Candler and as an associate faculty member at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory. Prior to coming to Candler in 2007, Wright taught for several years at the University of Heidelberg, one of Europe's oldest universities, renowned for biblical scholarship. He is the author of many essays, articles, and books. His first book, Rebuilding Identity: The Nehemiah Memoir and Its Earliest Readers (de Gruyter, 2004), won a 2008 Templeton prize, the largest prize for first books in religion. Wright published his enhanced e-book, King David and His Reign Revisited with Apple iTunes (2013), billed as the first publication of its kind in the humanities. His book, David, King of Israel, and Caleb in Biblical Memory (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014), received an honorable mention at the 2015 PROSE Awards, administered by the Association of American Publishers, as well as the coveted The Nancy Lapp Popular Book Award from American Schools of Oriental Research.

DEVOCIÓN MATUTINA PARA ADULTOS 2023“YO ESTOY CONTIGO”Narrado por: Roberto NavarroDesde: Montreal, CanadáUna cortesía de DR'Ministries y Canaan Seventh-Day Adventist Church 27 DE NOVIEMBRE                                                           "Y YO LOS BENDECIRÉ" "Jehová te bendiga y te guarde. Jehová haga resplandecer su rostro sobre ti y tenga de ti misericordia; Jehová alce sobre ti su rostro y ponga en ti paz". Así invocarán mi nombre sobre los hijos de Israel, y yo los bendeciré (Números 6:24-27).¿Sabes cuál es el registro más antiguo que tenemos de alguna porción bíblica? Durante años yo creí que eran los rollos del Mar Muerto, pero en una visita al Museo de Israel me di cuenta de que mi creencia distaba mucho de la realidad. Los rollos siguen siendo los manuscritos más antiguos, sí, pero en ese museo hay una pequeña placa de plata en forma de rollo que ha sido fechada en el siglo VII aC; es decir, es unos quinientos años más antigua que cualquiera de los escritos hallados en Qumrán. La pequeña pieza fue encontrada en Ketef Hinom, un lugar muy cercano a la ciudad de Jerusalén, mientras se excavaba la tumba de una familia acomodada. Gabriel Barkay, el arqueólogo encargado del proyecto bajo los auspicios de la Universidad de Tel-Aviv, encontró más de cien joyas, unas doscientas vasijas y varias piezas de marfil. Pero el descubrimiento más importante fue la plaquita de plata con un texto bíblico, que se ha convertido en uno de los más significativos hallazgos arqueológicos.*¿Qué pasaje bíblico contiene? Números 6:22-27, la famosa bendición sacerdotal: "Jehová habló a Moisés y le dijo: 'Habla a Aarón ya sus hijos, diles: Así bendeciréis a los hijos de Israel: Jehová te bendiga y te guarde. Jehová haga resplandecer su rostro sobre ti, y tenga de ti misericordia; Jehová alce sobre ti su rostro, y ponga en ti paz'. Así invocarán mi nombre sobre los hijos de Israel, y yo los bendeciré".Sí, el registro bíblico más antiguo nos habla de bendición, de misericordia, de paz. Nuestro Padre quiere que sepamos que él cumplirá su promesa y nos bendecirá. No porque lo merezcamos, sino porque nos ama, porque disfruta viendo a sus hijos siendo hombres y mujeres benditos. Aunque los arqueólogos consideran que la placa era una especie de amuleto, se trata de una invocación, una plegaria en la que el creyente expresa su confianza en que Dios estará a su lado.Esa plaquita de la cueva funeraria ya no puede decirle nada a su difunto dueño, pero sigue hablándonos a nosotros y confirmándonos una preciosa promesa: Dios nos bendecirá hoy y siempre.* Gabriel Barkay, et al., "The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom: A New Edition and Assessment", Bulletin of American Schools of Oriental Research, 334 (mayo de 2004), págs. 41-71.

The Legacy and the Loss. As Total War: Pharaoh begins, Egypt lives under the rule of MERNEPTAH. A mighty pharaoh, Merneptah has accomplished much in peace and war. But the King is aging, his journey will soon end, and his legacy will be complicated… Preview and purchase Total War: Pharaoh at https://pharaoh.totalwar.com/. Music in all episodes by Richard Beddow © Creative Assembly 2023. See the History of Egypt Podcast on all podcasting apps and at www.egyptianhistorypodcast.com. Select references: K. A. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions Translated and Annotated: Translations Volume IV: Merenptah & The Late Nineteenth Dynasty (2003). C. Manassa, The Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah: Grand Strategy in the 13th Century BC (2003). D. B. Redford, ‘The Ashkelon Relief at Karnak and the Israel Stela', Israel Exploration Journal 36 (1986), 188—200. F. Servajean, Mérenptah et la fin de la XIXe dynastie (2014). I. Singer, ‘Merneptah's Campaign to Canaan and the Egyptian Occupation of the Southern Coastal Plain of Palestine in the Ramesside Period', Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (1988), 1—10. F. J. Yurco, ‘Merenptah's Canaanite Campaign', Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 23 (1986), 189—215. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meghan is joined today by Kerry Muhlestein to discuss his observations captured in the book "God Will Prevail." Topics Include: - Covenants and the House of Israel as a Book of Mormon Theme- The Everlasting Covenant- Knowing the Covenant Path? - God's Covenant with Ancient IsraelThe ancient origins of the covenants we enter into today.- The Lord's Definition of "Prosperity" Kerry Muhlestein received his B.S. from BYU in Psychology with a Hebrew minor. As an undergraduate he spent time at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies in the intensive Hebrew program. He received an M.A. in Ancient Near Eastern Studies from BYU and his Ph.D. from UCLA in Egyptology, where in his final year he was named the UCLA Affiliates Graduate Student of the Year. He taught courses in Hebrew and Religion part time at BYU and the UVSC extension center, as well as in history at Cal Poly Pomona and UCLA. He also taught early morning seminary and at the Westwood (UCLA) Institute of Religion. His first full time appointment was a joint position in Religion and History at BYU-Hawaii. Kerry is the director of the BYU Egypt Excavation Project. He was selected by the Princeton Review in 2012 as one of the best 300 professors in the nation (the top .02% of those considered). He was also a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford for the 2016-17 academic year. He has published 9 books, over 60 peer reviewed articles, and has done over 75 academic presentations. Kerry and his wife, Julianne, are the parents of six children and one grandchild, and together they have lived in Jerusalem while Kerry has taught there on multiple occasions. He has served as the chairman of a national committee for the American Research Center in Egypt and serves on their Research Supporting Member Council and on the Board of Governors. He has also served on a committee for the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, and currently serves on their Board of Trustees and as a Vice President of the organization, and has served as president. He has been the co-chair for the Egyptian Archaeology Session of the American Schools of Oriental Research. He is also a Senior Fellow of the William F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research. He serves on the BYU Studies Quarterly Editorial Board. He is involved with the International Association of Egyptologists, and has worked with Educational Testing Services on their AP World History exam.

This episode is the third (final) installment of a three-part series produced by Eleanor Neil, contributing editor at American Anthropologist and Anthropological Airwaves. From the African American Burial Ground in New York City to the memorialization of violence in Northern Ireland to professional archaeology in the eastern Mediterranean, Eleanor asks archaeologists with different regional and methodological specialties to choose a single object or site, and, in their own words describe how this this site or artefact speaks to the interaction between archaeology and political or social identity across time and place. Here, Eleanor, an archaeologist herself, takes up the very prompt she posed to Dr. Cheryl Janifer LaRoche and Dr. Laura McAtackney in first two episodes of the series: to consider the role archaeology plays in the creation of contemporary political social discourses in the context of her own research on community archaeology on the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Eleanor Neil is a PhD candidate in the Classics department at Trinity College Dublin. She is also a recipient of an AG Leventis educational scholarship and a Long Room Hub Early Career Researcher. *Special thanks to to Professor Michael Toumazou (Davidson College) and Professor Derek Counts (UW Miluakee) for their generosity of time and conversation. Further Reading: Counts, Derek B., and Elisabetta Cova, P. Nick Kardulias, Michael K. Toumazou. “Fitting In: Archaeology and Community in Athienou, Cyprus.” Near Eastern Archaeology 76, no. 3 (2013): 166-177. Counts, D.B. “A History of Archaeological Activity in the Athienou Region.” In Crossroads and Boundaries: The Archaeology of Past and Present in the Malloura Valley, Cyprus, Annual of ASOR 65, edited by M. K. Toumazou, P. N. Kardulias, and D. B. Counts, 45–54. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2012.  The Kallinikeo Museum website: https://www.athienou.org.cy/en/episkeftheite/kallinikeio-dimotiko-mouseio/ Transcript: https://www.americananthropologist.org/podcast/season-04-episode-05-archaeological-identities-part-three Close-Captioning: https://youtu.be/5wkOD6hfhtM Credits: Writing, Production & Editing: Eleanor Neil Editorial and Production Support: Anar Parikh Thumbnail Image: Eleanor Neil Featured Music: “Westlin' Winds” by Eoin O'Donnell Executive Producer - Anar Parikh Intro/Outro: "Waiting" by Crowander

Barbara A. Porter talked about archaeological research and heritage preservation in Jordan.Barbara A. Porter was the Director of the American Center of Oriental Research in Jordan from April 2006 to March 2020. ACOR was established in 1968 and its permanent headquarters in Amman opened in 1986 across from the University of Jordan. From the outset, ACOR (now the American Center of Research, www.acorjordan.org) has been intrinsically involved in the archaeology and heritage of Jordan and has worked closely with the Department of Antiquities. In her 14 years as director, she came to know the country well and she plans to share some insights into certain sites and periods. She also has a deep appreciation of the history of ACOR and its role in helping preserve Jordan's past and will convey some of those efforts.Created and hosted by Mikey Muhanna, afikra Edited by: Ramzi RammanTheme music by: Tarek Yamani https://www.instagram.com/tarek_yamani/About the afikra Conversations:Our long-form interview series features academics, arts, ‎and media experts who are helping document and/or shape the history and culture of the Arab world through their ‎work. Our hope is that by having the guest share their expertise and story, the community still walks away with newfound curiosity - and maybe some good recommendations about new nerdy rabbit holes to dive into headfirst. ‎Following the interview, there is a moderated town-hall-style Q&A with questions coming from the live virtual audience ‎on Zoom.‎ Join the live audience: https://www.afikra.com/rsvp   FollowYoutube - Instagram (@afikra_) - Facebook - Twitter Support www.afikra.com/supportAbout afikra:‎afikra is a movement to convert passive interest in the Arab world to active intellectual curiosity. We aim to collectively reframe the dominant narrative of the region by exploring the histories and cultures of the region- past, present, and future - through conversations driven by curiosity. Read more about us on  afikra.com

Or, the Life Aquatic with Gold Scarabs... Around 1325 BCE (estimates vary) a vessel sank near the cape of Uluburun, Turkey. The cargo was immense: twenty tonnes of goods, including copper, ivory, ornamental objects, spices, and more. Amid the finds, a curious item came to light: a gold scarab, bearing the name Neferneferuaten Nefertiti... What was a Nefertiti scarab doing on a trade ship, far from Egypt? And what do the finds tell us about the ship, its crew, and ancient trade?The Uluburun Shipwreck:Date: c.1325 BCE (estimated).Cultures: Multiple, including Egyptian, Canaanite, Syrian, and Mycenaean.Ship destination: Possibly the Aegean, western Anatolia, or even the Balkans.Logo image: Divers working on the Uluburun wreck, via The Institute of Nautical Archaeology website.Catalogue of objects in Beyond Babylon, 2008. Free pdf from MMA.Image gallery at The Institute of Nautical Archaeology website.Artefacts in the Bodrum museum, on Flickr.com.Miscellaneous items, at Wikimedia.A replica of the ship, Uluburun II, at Underwater360.A lecture by Cemal Pulak, one of the lead excavators. YouTube.References:G. Bass et al., ‘The Bronze Age Shipwreck at Ulu Burun: 1986 Campaign', American Journal of Archaeology 93 (1989), 1–29.C. M. Monroe, ‘Sunk Costs at Late Bronze Age Uluburun', Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 357 (2010), 19–33.C. Pulak, ‘Analysis of the Weight Assemblages from the Late Bronze Age Shipwrecks at Uluburun and Cape Gelidonya, Turkey, Volume I', Unpublished PhD. Thesis, Texas A&M University (1996).C. Pulak, ‘The Uluburun Shipwreck: An Overview', The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 27 (1998), 188–224.C. Pulak, ‘The Uluburun Shipwreck and Late Bronze Age Trade', in Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. (2008), 289–310. Book available free, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.C. Pulak, ‘Uluburun Shipwreck', in The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean (2012), 863—876.C. Pulak, lecture on YouTube.J. Weinstein, ‘The Bronze Age Shipwreck at Ulu Burun: 1986 Campaign, Part 3: The Gold Scarab of Nefertiti from Ulu Burun: Its Implications for Egyptian History and Egyptian-Aegean Relations', American Journal of Archaeology 93 (1989), 17–29. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Previously unreleased. Following the death of Netjerykhet Djoser (episode 4), Egyptians had achieved something magnificent. The Step Pyramid at Saqqara loomed over the horizon, in a palatial complex that rivaled earthly cities. Naturally, the next rulers would try to match, even surpass, the great monument. They failed in this quest, but their attempts are fascinating. In this episode, we fill in a lesser-known gap, in the history of ancient Egypt's pyramids. At the same time, we tell the tale of a renowned archaeologist, Mohamed Zakariah Goneim, whose work and influence deserve greater recognition...Episode details:Date: c. 2670 — 2630 BCEKings: Netjerykhet (Djoser); Sekhem-khet; Kha-ba.Logo: The entrance to Sekhemkhet's pyramid at Saqqara. See more at wikimedia.Music: Keith Zizza www.keithzizza.net.Support the show at www.patreon.com/egyptpodcast.References and images at www.egyptianhistorypodcast.com.Episode written 2019/2020. Released to Patreon subscribers 2021. Released to public 2022.Video: See modern stoneworkers reproducing ancient vessels, at Scientists Against Myths https://youtu.be/dC3Z_DBnCp8Select references:Andrzej Ćwiek, “Date and Function of the So-Called Minor Step Pyramids,” Göttingen Miszellen 162 (1998): 39–52.Raphael Giveon, "A Second Relief of Sekhemkhet in Sinai," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 216 (1974): 17-20.M. Zakaria Goneim, The Buried Pyramid, 1956.Jean-Philippe Lauer, "Le Complexe Funéraire De L'horus Sekhem-Khet Et La Seconde Pyramide A Degrés De Saqqarah," Revue Archéologique 2 (1959): 89-95.Ronald J. Leprohon, The Great Name: Ancient Egyptian Royal Titulary, 2013.Stephan J. Seidlmayer, "The Relative Chronology of Dynasty 3," in E. Hornung, R. Krauss, and D. Warburton (eds), Ancient Egyptian Chronology, 2006: 116-23. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode: In this episode Mark and Chris talk with Dr. K. Lawson Younger (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) about the Contextual Approach and its benefits for interpreting Scripture with caution required to avoid the paradoxical dangers of "parallelomania" and "parallelophobia." Dr. Younger is an Assyriologist who also specializes on the Arameans, so naturally they had to pick his brain for info on the impact of the Assyrians and Arameans on ancient Israel, particularly during the Divided Monarchy. They also discuss the genre of ancient conquest accounts and how the book of Joshua fits that specific genre, an important interpretive aid to understanding Joshua.  Guest: (From the TIU website) Dr. K. Lawson Younger, Jr. (PhD. Sheffield University) is Professor of Old Testament, Semitic Languages, and Ancient Near Eastern History at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School of Trinity International University, Deerfield, Illinois. A specialist in Assyriology, Aramaic, and Hebrew Bible, Younger has published numerous works involving ancient Near Eastern texts and their relationship to the Hebrew Bible. He is the author of A Political History of the Arameans: From their Origins to the End of Their Polities (2016), the Winner of the Biblical Archaeology Society 2017 Publication Award for Best Scholarly Book on Archaeology. He is also the author of Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing (1990), and The NIV Application Commentary for Judges, Ruth (2002). He is the associate editor of the three-volume The Context of Scripture: Canonical Compositions, Monumental Inscriptions and Archival Documents from the Biblical World (Brill), the editor of volume 4 of The Context of Scripture: Supplements (2016), editor of Ugarit at Seventy-Five (2007), and the co-editor of The Canon in Comparative Perspective (1991), Mesopotamia and the Bible: Comparative Explorations (2002) and “An Excellent Fortress for his Armies, a Refuge for the People”: Egyptological, Archaeological and Biblical Studies in Honor of James K. Hoffmeier (2020). He has also contributed to numerous collections of essays, dictionaries and journals. He is a past trustee of the American Schools of Oriental Research, as well as an active member of the American Oriental Society, the International Association of Assyriology, and the Society of Biblical Literature.  Among his many scholarly papers, he has given lectures at the British Academy, the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, the Vorderasiatisches Museum (Pergamonmuseum, Berlin), and the Israel Museum (Jerusalem). He was the Seymour Gitin Distinguished Professor at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, Israel (2012–13). He is presently writing a book on Aramean Religion. Give: Visit our Donate Page if you want to join the big leagues and become a regular donor.  

Episode: We discuss the alleged Isaiah Bulla (clay seal impression) with one of the finest epigraphers in the field. The seal was found by the Temple Mount in 2009 by Eilat Mazar, and first announced in Biblical Archaeology Review last month (February, 2018). Matt L. and Dru J. discuss the find with Prof. Christopher Rollston, who urges caution when making bold claims about the seal's link to the biblical prophet Isaiah. We also discuss our desire to make connections between archaeology and the bible, and for a material connection with the past. Guest: Professor Rollston is Associate Professor of Northwest Semitic languages and literatures at George Washington University. Rollston works in more than a dozen ancient and modern languages, including various ancient Semitic languages (e.g., Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic, Palmyrene, Nabataean, Ammonite, Moabite, Edomite, Ugaritic, Akkadian), several ancient and modern Indo-European languages (e.g., Hellenistic Greek, Classical Latin; Modern German, French, Spanish, and Italian), as well as Sahidic Coptic. He is the author of Enemies and Friends of the State: Ancient Prophecy in Context (Eisenbrauns), Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010), which was selected by the American Schools of Oriental Research (in November 2011) as the recipient of the prestigious “Frank Moore Cross Prize for Northwest Semitic Epigraphy,” a prize named for the late Harvard University Professor Frank Cross. He has also edited several volumes. Needless to say, he's very accomplished in his field! (adapted from the GWU website). Give: Visit our Donate Page if you want to join the big leagues and become a regular donor. Photo: Photo of seal impression, Ouria Tadmor. Copyright Eilat Mazar.

It's time for Miriam's role and reputation to be re-evaluated, says Professor Carol Meyers, as she explores the Song of the Sea in Parashat Beshalach. In conversation with Simon Eder. --Professor Carol Meyers, the Mary Grace Wilson Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at Duke University, specialises in biblical studies, archaeology, and gender in the biblical world. A prolific scholar, she has written more than 450 articles, reports, reference-book entries, and reviews; and she has authored, co-authored, or edited twenty-two books. Her reference work, Women in Scripture, is a comprehensive look at all biblical women; and her book Rediscovering Eve is a detailed study of women in ancient Israel. Professor Meyers has co-directed several of Duke's archaeological projects in Galilee. She recently served as President of the Society of Biblical Literature and is currently a trustee of the American Schools of Oriental Research and of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation. 

Episode: This begins the first of a series on five views on the exodus based on a book by that named that Biblical World host Mark Janzen just edited. Our first guest in this series is Ron Hendel, who presents the cultural memory view.  Hosts: Mark Janzen (Louisiana College) and Chris McKinny (Gesher Media) Guest: Ron Hendel is Norma and Sam Dabby Professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies at the University of Berkeley. Professor Hendel has been a member of the Berkeley faculty since 1999 and has served as chair of Jewish Studies, the Department of Near Eastern Studies, and the Graduate Program in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology. Hendel approaches the Hebrew Bible from a variety of angles – history of religions, textual criticism, linguistics, comparative mythology, literature, and cultural memory. He is the editor-in-chief of The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition, a new critical edition of the Hebrew text, whose first volume (Proverbs, by Michael V. Fox) was published in 2015. He is also writing a new commentary on Genesis for the Yale Anchor Bible. In 1999, he received the Frank Moore Cross Publications Award from the American Schools of Oriental Research. His books include The Text of Genesis 1-11: Textual Studies and Critical Edition (Oxford, 1998), Remembering Abraham: Culture, History, and Memory in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford, 2005), Reading Genesis: Ten Methods (editor and contributor; Cambridge, 2010), The Book of Genesis: A Biography (Princeton, 2013), Steps to a New Edition of the Hebrew Bible (SBL Press, 2016), and How Old is the Hebrew Bible? A Linguistic, Textual, and Historical Study (Yale, 2018). (from the University of Berkeley website) Summary: In this episode, Mark and Chris interview Ron Hendel about the following: The Egyptian evidence for the Israelite Exodus “Egyptianisms” in the Pentateuch The historicity of the Exodus events and its importance to the Old Testament as a whole The importance of the Exodus to Jewish and Christian believers and its connection to Passover and Easter Additional Resources: 2021 Janzen, Mark (ed.). Five Views of the Exodus. Zondervan; Ron Hendel's Academia page. Give: Help support OnScript's Biblical World as we grow and develop. Click HERE.

In this episode, we'll explore what wine production looked like in Ancient Mesopotamia and discover why this “Cradle of Civilization” has gained a reputation as a beer-drinking culture. ###Sources:Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. London, England: Penguin Books, 1996, 2003.History Channel Editors. “Mesopotamia.” History Channel, September 30, 2019. https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-middle-east/mesopotamiaMark, Joshua J. “Godin Tepe.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, March 5, 2011. https://www.ancient.eu/Godin_Tepe/Mark, Joshua J. “Beer in the Ancient World.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, March 2, 2011. https://www.ancient.eu/article/223/beer-in-the-ancient-world/Mark, Joshua J. “The Hymn to Ninkasi, Goddess of Beer.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, March 1, 2011. https://www.ancient.eu/article/222/the-hymn-to-ninkasi-goddess-of-beer/McGovern, Patrick E. Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2019.Paulette, Tate and Michael Fisher. “Potent Potables of the Past: Beer and Brewing in Ancient Mesopotamia.” American Schools of Oriental Research 5, no.4 (April 2017). http://www.asor.org/anetoday/2017/04/brewing-mesopotamiaPhillips, Roderick. 9000 Years of Wine: A World History. Vancouver, Canada: Whitecap, 2017.“Song of the Vine: A History of Wine.” Cornell University, 2008. https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/ewga/exhibition/introduction/#:~:text=It%20is%20a%20receipt%20for,stone%2C%20metal%2C%20or%20wax.Wilford, John Noble. “The Earliest Wine: Vintage 3,500BC and Robust.” The New York Times, April 30, 1991. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/30/science/the-earliest-wine-vintage-3500-bc-and-robust.htmlWilson, J.V Kinnier. The Nimrud Wine Lists: A Study of Men and Administration at the Assyrian Capital in the Eighth Century, B.C. London, England: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 1972. http://www.bisi.ac.uk/sites/bisi.localhost/files/CTN1_wine_lists.pdf

Books for more info and the ones referenced:Jamin Bradley, Alien Theology.Walton, John H., and J. Harvey Walton. Demons and Spirits in Biblical Theology: Reading the Biblical Text in Its Cultural and Literary Context. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019. Print.Walton, John H.. The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate (p. 195). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.Gay Robins, “Cult Statues in Ancient Egypt,” in Cult Image and Divine Representation in the Ancient Near East, ed. Neal H. Walls (Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2005), 1–2.For more on Eden as a temple, see John H. Walton’s book, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate. Heiser, Michael S. “Image of God.” Ed. John D. Barry et al. The Lexham Bible Dictionary 2016 : n. pag. Print. Wink, Walter. Engaging the Powers. Kindle Location, 1980-1982.See my excursus on “Women in Ministry” in my book The Rush and the Rest, for further discussion on these more complicated passages.Keener, Craig S. Paul, Women, and Wives: Marriage and Women's Ministry in the Letters of Paul. Grand Rapids, Baker Academic, 2004, Kindle Locations 2142-2143.Heiser, Michael S. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. First Edition. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015. Print.

Book Summary and Review: Ancient Egyptian Medicine by John F. Nunn. Research on the web: American Research Center in Egypt ARCE’s E-Newsletter, ASOR The American Schools of Oriental Research, A 20-sided die of Ptolemaic origin, the Theban Mapping Project TMP. Electronic Documents: The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus—II…

In this episode, Dru interviews scholars and publishers at the book tables and receptions at the annual meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature (which also includes the American Academy of Religion, Institute for Biblical Research, American Schools of Oriental Research, and more!). Order of appearance: Robin "the rain in Spain" Parry (Wipf & Stock) Marc Cortez (Wheaton) Rodrigo de Sousa (Faculté Jean Calvin) Nijay Gupta (George Fox University) John Anthony Dunne (Bethel Seminary) Jesse Myers/Miles Custis (Lexham Press) Ela Lazarewicz-Wyrzykowska (Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology) Heath Thomas (Oklahoma Baptist University) Mary Katharine Hom (Independent Scholar/OnScript regular) Anne-Marie Ellithorpe (Vancouver School of Theology) The post SBL Special Report! An Inbetwepisode first appeared on OnScript.

In this episode, Dru interviews scholars and publishers at the book tables and receptions at the annual meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature (which also includes the American Academy of Religion, Institute for Biblical Research, American Schools of Oriental Research, and more!). Order of appearance: Robin "the rain in Spain" Parry (Wipf & Stock) Marc Cortez (Wheaton) Rodrigo de Sousa (Faculté Jean Calvin) Nijay Gupta (George Fox University) John Anthony Dunne (Bethel Seminary) Jesse Myers/Miles Custis (Lexham Press) Ela Lazarewicz-Wyrzykowska (Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology) Heath Thomas (Oklahoma Baptist University) Mary Katharine Hom (Independent Scholar/OnScript regular) Anne-Marie Ellithorpe (Vancouver School of Theology)

For some two hundred years now, Pentateuchal scholarship has been dominated by the Documentary Hypothesis, a paradigm made popular by Julius Wellhausen. Recent decades, however, have seen mounting critiques of the old paradigm, from a variety of specializations, not only in Biblical Studies, but also in the fields of Assyriology, Legal History, and Linguistics. In a recent international meeting, scholars across these fields came together and presented papers, each one calling for a paradigm change in Pentateuchal research. Join us as we speak with one of those scholars, Richard Averbeck, about his contribution to Paradigm Change in Pentateuchal Research, edited by M. Armgardt, B. Kilchör, M. Zehnder (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019)—his chapter is titled ‘Reading the Torah in a Better Way.' Richard Averbeck teaches at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. His areas of expertise include Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, ancient Near Eastern history and languages, Old Testament criticism, Hebrew, and biblical counseling. He is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Institute for Biblical Research, the American Oriental Society, the American Schools of Oriental Research, and the Society of Biblical Literature. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus(Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For some two hundred years now, Pentateuchal scholarship has been dominated by the Documentary Hypothesis, a paradigm made popular by Julius Wellhausen. Recent decades, however, have seen mounting critiques of the old paradigm, from a variety of specializations, not only in Biblical Studies, but also in the fields of Assyriology, Legal History, and Linguistics. In a recent international meeting, scholars across these fields came together and presented papers, each one calling for a paradigm change in Pentateuchal research. Join us as we speak with one of those scholars, Richard Averbeck, about his contribution to Paradigm Change in Pentateuchal Research, edited by M. Armgardt, B. Kilchör, M. Zehnder (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019)—his chapter is titled ‘Reading the Torah in a Better Way.’ Richard Averbeck teaches at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. His areas of expertise include Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, ancient Near Eastern history and languages, Old Testament criticism, Hebrew, and biblical counseling. He is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Institute for Biblical Research, the American Oriental Society, the American Schools of Oriental Research, and the Society of Biblical Literature. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus(Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For some two hundred years now, Pentateuchal scholarship has been dominated by the Documentary Hypothesis, a paradigm made popular by Julius Wellhausen. Recent decades, however, have seen mounting critiques of the old paradigm, from a variety of specializations, not only in Biblical Studies, but also in the fields of Assyriology, Legal History, and Linguistics. In a recent international meeting, scholars across these fields came together and presented papers, each one calling for a paradigm change in Pentateuchal research. Join us as we speak with one of those scholars, Richard Averbeck, about his contribution to Paradigm Change in Pentateuchal Research, edited by M. Armgardt, B. Kilchör, M. Zehnder (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019)—his chapter is titled ‘Reading the Torah in a Better Way.’ Richard Averbeck teaches at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. His areas of expertise include Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, ancient Near Eastern history and languages, Old Testament criticism, Hebrew, and biblical counseling. He is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Institute for Biblical Research, the American Oriental Society, the American Schools of Oriental Research, and the Society of Biblical Literature. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus(Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For some two hundred years now, Pentateuchal scholarship has been dominated by the Documentary Hypothesis, a paradigm made popular by Julius Wellhausen. Recent decades, however, have seen mounting critiques of the old paradigm, from a variety of specializations, not only in Biblical Studies, but also in the fields of Assyriology, Legal History, and Linguistics. In a recent international meeting, scholars across these fields came together and presented papers, each one calling for a paradigm change in Pentateuchal research. Join us as we speak with one of those scholars, Richard Averbeck, about his contribution to Paradigm Change in Pentateuchal Research, edited by M. Armgardt, B. Kilchör, M. Zehnder (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019)—his chapter is titled ‘Reading the Torah in a Better Way.’ Richard Averbeck teaches at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. His areas of expertise include Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, ancient Near Eastern history and languages, Old Testament criticism, Hebrew, and biblical counseling. He is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Institute for Biblical Research, the American Oriental Society, the American Schools of Oriental Research, and the Society of Biblical Literature. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus(Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For some two hundred years now, Pentateuchal scholarship has been dominated by the Documentary Hypothesis, a paradigm made popular by Julius Wellhausen. Recent decades, however, have seen mounting critiques of the old paradigm, from a variety of specializations, not only in Biblical Studies, but also in the fields of Assyriology, Legal History, and Linguistics. In a recent international meeting, scholars across these fields came together and presented papers, each one calling for a paradigm change in Pentateuchal research. Join us as we speak with one of those scholars, Richard Averbeck, about his contribution to Paradigm Change in Pentateuchal Research, edited by M. Armgardt, B. Kilchör, M. Zehnder (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019)—his chapter is titled ‘Reading the Torah in a Better Way.’ Richard Averbeck teaches at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. His areas of expertise include Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, ancient Near Eastern history and languages, Old Testament criticism, Hebrew, and biblical counseling. He is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Institute for Biblical Research, the American Oriental Society, the American Schools of Oriental Research, and the Society of Biblical Literature. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus(Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For some two hundred years now, Pentateuchal scholarship has been dominated by the Documentary Hypothesis, a paradigm made popular by Julius Wellhausen. Recent decades, however, have seen mounting critiques of the old paradigm, from a variety of specializations, not only in Biblical Studies, but also in the fields of Assyriology, Legal History, and Linguistics. In a recent international meeting, scholars across these fields came together and presented papers, each one calling for a paradigm change in Pentateuchal research. Join us as we speak with one of those scholars, Richard Averbeck, about his contribution to Paradigm Change in Pentateuchal Research, edited by M. Armgardt, B. Kilchör, M. Zehnder (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019)—his chapter is titled ‘Reading the Torah in a Better Way.’ Richard Averbeck teaches at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. His areas of expertise include Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, ancient Near Eastern history and languages, Old Testament criticism, Hebrew, and biblical counseling. He is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Institute for Biblical Research, the American Oriental Society, the American Schools of Oriental Research, and the Society of Biblical Literature. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus(Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For some two hundred years now, Pentateuchal scholarship has been dominated by the Documentary Hypothesis, a paradigm made popular by Julius Wellhausen. Recent decades, however, have seen mounting critiques of the old paradigm, from a variety of specializations, not only in Biblical Studies, but also in the fields of Assyriology, Legal History, and Linguistics. In a recent international meeting, scholars across these fields came together and presented papers, each one calling for a paradigm change in Pentateuchal research. Join us as we speak with one of those scholars, Richard Averbeck, about his contribution to Paradigm Change in Pentateuchal Research, edited by M. Armgardt, B. Kilchör, M. Zehnder (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019)—his chapter is titled ‘Reading the Torah in a Better Way.’ Richard Averbeck teaches at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. His areas of expertise include Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, ancient Near Eastern history and languages, Old Testament criticism, Hebrew, and biblical counseling. He is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Institute for Biblical Research, the American Oriental Society, the American Schools of Oriental Research, and the Society of Biblical Literature. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus(Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For some two hundred years now, Pentateuchal scholarship has been dominated by the Documentary Hypothesis, a paradigm made popular by Julius Wellhausen. Recent decades, however, have seen mounting critiques of the old paradigm, from a variety of specializations, not only in Biblical Studies, but also in the fields of Assyriology, Legal History, and Linguistics. In a recent international meeting, scholars across these fields came together and presented papers, each one calling for a paradigm change in Pentateuchal research. Join us as we speak with one of those scholars, Richard Averbeck, about his contribution to Paradigm Change in Pentateuchal Research, edited by M. Armgardt, B. Kilchör, M. Zehnder (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019)—his chapter is titled ‘Reading the Torah in a Better Way.’ Richard Averbeck teaches at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. His areas of expertise include Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, ancient Near Eastern history and languages, Old Testament criticism, Hebrew, and biblical counseling. He is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Institute for Biblical Research, the American Oriental Society, the American Schools of Oriental Research, and the Society of Biblical Literature. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus(Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Archaeologist Dr Diana Pickworth. She is presently a Visiting Scholar in the UC Berkeley Near Eastern Studies Department. Formerly Assoc Prof of Mesopotamian Art and Archaeology and Museum Studies at the University of ‘Aden in the Republic of Yemen.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. [inaudible]. Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k [00:00:30] a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Hey, good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show this week on spectrum. Our guest is archaeologist Dr Diana. Pick worth. She is presently a visiting scholar in the UC Berkeley Near Eastern studies department. Dr Pick worth is completing the work related to the publication of two volumes [00:01:00] on excavations carried out by a university of California team at the site of Nineveh in northern Iraq. Formerly she was an associate professor of Mesopotamian art and archeology and museum studies at the University of a sudden in the Republic of Yemen. Diana pick worth is an elected fellow of the explorers club and a member of the American School of Oriental Research. Here is that interview. Hi, this is Brad Swift. In today's spectrum interview, Rick Karnofsky [00:01:30] joins me, Rick [inaudible] and today's guest is Diana. Pick worth Diana, welcome to spectrum. Speaker 1: I'm honored and delighted to be here. Speaker 3: Diana would you begin by talking about archeology and how it got started and how it's blossomed into its multifaceted current state. Speaker 1: There's no doubt that the enlightenment in the 19th century sparked a huge interest [00:02:00] in the eastern part of the Ottoman Empire. And so during this period, the European countries, England, France, Germany, Austria, and Italy, we're sending consoles and ambassadors to visit the Parshah and Istanbul. What happened was these countries became competitive in their desire, both the land and knowledge. And this was fueled somewhat by [00:02:30] Darwin's research and in 1830 his work on the Beagle and subsequently his publication of origin of species spoked enormous questions about the Bible. And it was this desire to understand the truth about the Bible. It had been viewed up until that point is a given that it was correct [00:03:00] and it challenged the world view at the time. And avast and I think changing Manoj and so layered from England, Botha from foams moved east of Istanbul into northern Iraq. And what we see is these two men really pitching at each other to stake a claim for that country to excavate in there tells that they [00:03:30] both discovered in the appetite risk space on and is that how the Fertile Crescent got started? Speaker 1: That whole idea of Fertile Crescent, that was a little later, but the Fertile Crescent represents an area where settlement could first begin and so the ice Asya hat is really a points on a map. It's a way of looking at how [00:04:00] geography, rainfall, and natural geographic circumstances create a circumstance where humankind can prosper and it can farm in what is called dry farming. And so what we find, it's an all running up from about the middle of their Dead Sea on the Palestinian literal all the way up in a circle across the top of what [00:04:30] is today, northern Syria and northern Iraq. Those sites date from as early as 9,000 BC and there's no doubt that's where we are. We all finding humankind's first farming and settlement currently. Then what's notable about the transition from the 19th or the 20th century in terms of archeology? I think on the one hand a tremendous continuity so [00:05:00] that those sites that would claimed in the 19th century tend to still be excavated by the same country. Speaker 1: There's an unspoken but still I think quite rigorous concept that a site is handed on. The perspective has become much more global so that we have people excavating in the Middle East, from South Africa, [00:05:30] from South America, from the United States, and these teams in most we would call the new world are essentially funded or sponsored by their universities. That still remains in the European countries. A tradition of sponsorship by the government and this makes a huge difference. They are able to continue with a very shore knowledge of funding [00:06:00] year after year. You talked a little bit about the Fertile Crescent. What are other examples of old settlements? What's the oldest settlement? I think in photo Cresson, certainly one of the most remarkable sites is Choteau here. And this was excavated by the University of California by Ruth Traynham and has some of the earliest illustrative material and [00:06:30] war paintings in that area. And representative, uh, no doubt of the earliest farming settlements. And it's a dense occupation. Surprisingly, there are dense a little later we see sites that we defined by this ceramic heritage, so at this point we have new written documentation but how suna and hello laugh of these very early pottery sites that are named [00:07:00] essentially from the first site, but we find a spread of occupation across the area. Further east, I'm a hindered Daro 2,900 BC is in what is modern day Pakistan and without doubt one of the earliest settlements Speaker 4: [inaudible]Speaker 5: you were listening to spectrum on k a l experts like archaeologist, [00:07:30] Diana [inaudible] is our guest. Speaker 1: How closely does archaeological training in universities track with the real world application of archeology? I think in many cases very well. One of the requirements of an archeologist above all others I think is flexibility and sturdy resilience, but there are three aspects we're trained theoretically [00:08:00] and this I think is where to refer back to your earlier question. There is a change from 19th century archeology today. We're trained to pose a theoretical question to come up with a hypothesis that we will try to test on the ground. I think an area background knowledge is essential training varies in this regard. For example, [00:08:30] in Germany, archeologists are expected to work all over the world whereas we tend to direct our training two area studies say that my area Mesopotamia and Arabian studies really requires a basis of language study under knowledge of the history of the area and so one becomes a specialist in a particular area. Speaker 1: The practical training [00:09:00] is fairly consistent. I think we begin in in the states, the students are sent in the summers to excavations and throughout their graduate career it's hope they'll have an opportunity to really work in different types of sites and all of us begin or hope to with a semester in a field archeology school so that ones practicing perhaps in a situation where one can't cause too much [00:09:30] damage within the United States field of study, how much might one drift from their graduate area into another area of the world as they start their career? That's an interesting question. In my experience, people do really tend to stay within their area of specialization. We're talking about as much as maybe six to eight years of a language study. The geography and the history of an area [00:10:00] becomes embedded in one's training and in one's doctoral dissertation, so I personally don't think there is such a broad shift. Speaker 1: I think theoretically once capable, there's absolutely no doubt and we find also that students who find themselves not to have strong language studies tend to move into pre history. If you're working in pre history, then really one can go anywhere. It doesn't matter. [00:10:30] There are loopholes in the system, some of the technical methods that are being applied to dating things. Does that mess up the history of it all, the timing, the dating, a lot of the earlier work, does it get overturned in terms of how old is this settlement? I think DNA has made an enormous, perhaps the most significant difference and whole groups of people have been shown to not be native to where [00:11:00] they have claimed in their own written literature that they've always left that spin. I think a delightful surprise, very interesting surprise. Certainly high and duel found that everyone going to the Polynesian islands was going in 150 degrees opposite direction from what he had anticipated. Speaker 1: So we do find that as time passes, the studies can be refined, but I would say it's rather a question [00:11:30] of refinement than are there just totally wrong assumptions. Can I call it it all about what proportion of work is done on newly found settlements, settlements that might've been found in the past couple years versus settlements that we've known about for some time? I think the introduction of Google and satellite imagery has made a vast difference to what we can do most recently in [00:12:00] a northeast Iraq in what is now the Kurdish settlement. Recent work by Harvard has discovered an enormous number of settlements and all of the previous research before they went into the field was done using satellite imagery and so that was unavailable until quite recently. It saves money. There's no doubt with satellite imagery. We can sit in an office in Berkeley and look at the satellite [00:12:30] sites surrounding a large site. We can see a pattern perhaps of movement along a track through mountain ranges from settlement, so that's enormously expanded. What we can do in the office before we go into the field. [inaudible] Speaker 6: spectrum is a public affairs show on KALX Berkeley. Our guest is archeologist in Diana. [00:13:00] She is a visiting scholar of the Near Eastern studies department. Speaker 1: Can you start to talk about some of your own work in Iraq? I first went to Iraq as a graduate student at UC Berkeley. I was invited by Professor David Stronach who is the director of the excavation for our first season. There were six graduate students and it was a relatively short season [00:13:30] to explore the site and decide how an excavation would be approached and what would it be involved. I was very determined to go. I had spent most my undergraduate time studying art history and museum studies, but as time went on I became more and more interested in archeology and really love living in the Middle East. I had lived in the Middle East a long time before. I have [00:14:00] a degree in education. And so I had worked as a governess in the Middle East in Yemen, and I was very keen to go back and the first day I climbed up onto Keon check, which is the tail of Nineveh. Speaker 1: I just knew that I'd found what I wanted to do and it was so wonderful and I liked it very much indeed. And I've been there ever since. Okay. And is there any prospect of going back to Nineveh [00:14:30] presently knew? No. Saul is extremely dangerous at the moment, and so unfortunately that's not a possibility. Certainly we've been invited back and I know that I could go back if it ever becomes a safe to do. So what's happened to the tail is hard to know. The other sad aspect is that there has been an enormous growth in the size of Mosul, the city adjacent on the other side of the [00:15:00] Tigris river. Your time in Nineveh. What was the big accomplishment that you thought you folks had achieved? I think in the three years that we were there assessing everything. Today as we write up the reports, it's incredibly encouraging. Speaker 1: We chose about six different areas of exploration that would represent aspects of the long duration at the site. It's an extremely [00:15:30] old city. And so one exploration on the side of the tail was a step trench down and this has been aided by erosion from water so that we were able to get down to 2,500 BC, um, without digging down through it. We could go in from the side. So there was a component that was of a very early period. The Small [00:16:00] Eminence just south of the sail or the citadel of the city where the royal family lived was also explored. And we expose there a really beautiful elite house, you could say, an administrative house and the surrounding area of that. We also worked up on the northern Northwestern corner by the sin gate. And inside of that we found a very fine [00:16:30] industrial area so that we were able to demonstrate that there was pottery making on the site as well as some metalla Jay, I think. Speaker 1: And then on the wall on the southeast corner, David [inaudible] excavated the [inaudible] gate to Housey. Uh, no gate had really been fully excavated by a Western team, although some of the other gates had been partially [00:17:00] excavated by the Iraqis. And that was where we found the evidence of the destruction of the city, which was extremely exciting. After Iraq, you moved back to Yemen? Yes, I had always studied Yemen. I have roped both my masters degree and my phd on the material culture of Saudi Arabia. And so I had written on the stone [00:17:30] statuary of the mortuary temples and it's very fascinating. A great deal of the material had been moved to Europe, so that had one tried to estimate how much there was there. It would have been easy to say very little, very little at all, but long detailed research program made it very clear that it wasn't, that there was very little, it was that it had been so widely dispersed. Speaker 1: [00:18:00] And so I eventually visited maybe as many as 25 museums and brought it all together again, which proved to be very interesting. And I was able to do a lot of dating from that. And then my doctoral dissertation, which I wrote here at Berkeley, was on the gemstones and stamps, seals of South Arabia and that I used to demonstrate the connection between these South Arabians, small kingdoms [00:18:30] and the greater empire, tight polity of a neo, Syria or other later Syrian period. And so what one found was that this trading network connected all the way across the Arabian peninsula up to Gaza and then on into the Assyrian Kingdom. And so there are in the British Museum at Gates that were sent by the king of Saba from Maarib to Gaza [00:19:00] and then on to Nimruz. And these were buried underneath the temple and they're signed with the king's name. So we knew that they had to been used in that way. So I had an enormous interest in Yemen and stayed there and taught in the university, essentially in Aiden, continue to work there until rather recently. Speaker 6: This is spectrum [00:19:30] k, Aleks, Berkeley archaeologist and visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. Diana, pick work. Sorry. Speaker 1: What advice would you give to people who are considering getting into archeology? I think an undergraduate degree in a hard science is really important in the long term and I think that was advice that perhaps [00:20:00] was less prophet earlier. I think there was more stress on art history and I think students today a well-served with incredibly sturdy technological skills, computer skills and science backgrounds and I think to avoid that is to invite a short career. I really do. I think the training of a hard science is also useful. I [00:20:30] think it makes for a strict discipline, critical thinking, theoretical background in thinking on analytical studies is really useful, very, very useful. And then field training this, no doubt. I think that field training prior to going into the field for the first time at least exposes warm to some of the surprises that will arrive. Speaker 1: I think for most archeologists [00:21:00] you have to think on your feet and so unless one is well-prepared and has made detailed studies of what one's going to do, then it's vital to err on the side of caution when you put the first spade in because otherwise it's destroyed and gone. And so those types of preparations, which are easily available. Field schools are available everywhere. So that prepares, I think an archaeologist for the field work aspect. [00:21:30] But Sonia, small part, the fieldwork is such a small part of the overall, it's like a blip in the middle in a way. There's a long lead in of preparation and research and location choice. Then that's the excavation and then an incredibly lengthy period of um, producing the data and getting it out. And the computers help that most excavations today. It's all of the data is going straight [00:22:00] into the computer and can be sent back to the university, which was an advantage, an enormous advantage. Speaker 1: How do you see archeology going forward? What is its future? What I find is that as one area closes, another will open rather recently, the northern Iraq area of what is now Kurdistan has opened up. It became rather safe up there for awhile. [00:22:30] So that an ability to move say from Syria into that area was seized by many archeologists. So that many teams have been in the field, I would say for the last five years in northeast Iraq. And Kurdistan, I googled to check for you where everyone is digging at the moment. And so there's sort of a narrow tight band of Middle Eastern scholars in Israel and down into [00:23:00] Jordan and that's a huge concentration. And then upon the northeastern potting Kurdistan and we've seen an opening up in Saudi Arabia, so wonderful materialists coming out of the tame excavation, which is led by the Germans, uh, by iHuman. That's been very, very exciting. And they are expanding. There's also been a lot of expansion by more than just [00:23:30] the British into the Emirates and say we have a lot of excavations at the moment and Kuwait behind [inaudible] Ku, Wayne and down into Dubai. So when one door closes, another opens and there are people in Oman as well. No one stays home. It's not appealing. We like to be in the field. Speaker 1: Is there anything we haven't asked you about that you want to mention? [00:24:00] Maybe China. There's an enormous ongoing excavations in China at the moment. It's definitely overturning and changing their own knowledge of their own history. And I find that fascinating. And as a northern southern divide about where the origins of China's more recent civilizations came from and so it's been fascinating for me to watch that. As I said [00:24:30] earlier, I think that we're very flexible people and I suppose that would be where I would move if I could never go back to the Middle East. Diana, pick worth. Thanks very much for being on spectrum. Thank you. I've enjoyed myself. Thank you. Speaker 6: Spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We have created a simple link for you. The link is tiny [00:25:00] URL [inaudible] dot com slash KALX at spectrum. Speaker 3: Now a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky joins me when the calendar on May 7th from seven to 9:00 PM UC Berkeley, professor of psychology and neuroscience, Matt Walker. We'll be it. Ask a scientist at the summer street food park, four to eight 11th street in San Francisco. [00:25:30] They'll discuss research showing that sleep is a highly active process that is essential for many cognitive functions including learning, memory, creativity and brain plasticity. The event is free, although you can purchase stuff to eat from the food trucks there. Visit, ask a scientist S f.com for more info. Why are many body problems in physics so difficult? A quantum information [00:26:00] perspective determining the physical behavior of systems composed of several particles is in general very hard. The reason is that the number of possible combinations of states increases exponentially with the number of particles for quantum systems. The situation is even worse in his talk. Ignacio Ciroc will explain this phenomenon in detail and we'll review several approaches to assessing this difficulty and to overcoming it under certain conditions. [00:26:30] NASCIO Ciroc has been director of the theory division at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum optics since December, 2001 this lecture is Monday May 12th at 4:00 PM in [inaudible] Hall, [inaudible] Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus. This event is free. Speaker 7: Counter culture labs is hosting a few free talks at the pseudo room. Hackerspace two one 41 Broadway in Oakland over the next few weeks. [00:27:00] On May 9th at 7:00 PM we'll hear from Ben Novak, who is it? Paleo geneticist working on using clone cells from cryo-preserved museum specimens and genome editing in an attempt to revive the passenger pigeon from extinction. Then on May 15th at 7:00 PM they will host Anthony Evans who was on the glowing plant project. This project raised a half million dollars on Kickstarter to add firefly DNA to [00:27:30] plants to make them glow. He'll discuss the process, how they've handled the public perception of GMOs and why open source science matters. For more information on these in future events, visit counterculture labs.org Speaker 3: now, Rick Karnofsky with an interesting news story, Speaker 7: nature news reports on an article by Gary Frost and Jimmy Bell from the Imperial College, London and [00:28:00] others that dietary fiber may act on the brain to curb appetite in a paper published in nature communications. On April 29th the team discussed how fiber that is fermented in the colon creates colonic acetate and using radioactively tagged Acetate and pet scans. They showed that colonic acetate crosses the blood brain barrier and it's taken up by the brain of rats. They also showed that acetate [00:28:30] administration is associated with activation of Acetol Coa, a carboxylase, and changes in the expression profiles of regulatory neuropeptides that favor appetite suppression. These observations suggest that Acetate as a direct role in the central appetite regulation. Speaker 4: Mm, thanks to Rick Karnofsky [00:29:00] for help with the interview calendar and with the news music heard during the show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email, Speaker 8: email addresses spectrum, dedicate a lx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at the same [00:29:30] time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Archaeologist Dr Diana Pickworth. She is presently a Visiting Scholar in the UC Berkeley Near Eastern Studies Department. Formerly Assoc Prof of Mesopotamian Art and Archaeology and Museum Studies at the University of ‘Aden in the Republic of Yemen.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. [inaudible]. Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k [00:00:30] a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Hey, good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show this week on spectrum. Our guest is archaeologist Dr Diana. Pick worth. She is presently a visiting scholar in the UC Berkeley Near Eastern studies department. Dr Pick worth is completing the work related to the publication of two volumes [00:01:00] on excavations carried out by a university of California team at the site of Nineveh in northern Iraq. Formerly she was an associate professor of Mesopotamian art and archeology and museum studies at the University of a sudden in the Republic of Yemen. Diana pick worth is an elected fellow of the explorers club and a member of the American School of Oriental Research. Here is that interview. Hi, this is Brad Swift. In today's spectrum interview, Rick Karnofsky [00:01:30] joins me, Rick [inaudible] and today's guest is Diana. Pick worth Diana, welcome to spectrum. Speaker 1: I'm honored and delighted to be here. Speaker 3: Diana would you begin by talking about archeology and how it got started and how it's blossomed into its multifaceted current state. Speaker 1: There's no doubt that the enlightenment in the 19th century sparked a huge interest [00:02:00] in the eastern part of the Ottoman Empire. And so during this period, the European countries, England, France, Germany, Austria, and Italy, we're sending consoles and ambassadors to visit the Parshah and Istanbul. What happened was these countries became competitive in their desire, both the land and knowledge. And this was fueled somewhat by [00:02:30] Darwin's research and in 1830 his work on the Beagle and subsequently his publication of origin of species spoked enormous questions about the Bible. And it was this desire to understand the truth about the Bible. It had been viewed up until that point is a given that it was correct [00:03:00] and it challenged the world view at the time. And avast and I think changing Manoj and so layered from England, Botha from foams moved east of Istanbul into northern Iraq. And what we see is these two men really pitching at each other to stake a claim for that country to excavate in there tells that they [00:03:30] both discovered in the appetite risk space on and is that how the Fertile Crescent got started? Speaker 1: That whole idea of Fertile Crescent, that was a little later, but the Fertile Crescent represents an area where settlement could first begin and so the ice Asya hat is really a points on a map. It's a way of looking at how [00:04:00] geography, rainfall, and natural geographic circumstances create a circumstance where humankind can prosper and it can farm in what is called dry farming. And so what we find, it's an all running up from about the middle of their Dead Sea on the Palestinian literal all the way up in a circle across the top of what [00:04:30] is today, northern Syria and northern Iraq. Those sites date from as early as 9,000 BC and there's no doubt that's where we are. We all finding humankind's first farming and settlement currently. Then what's notable about the transition from the 19th or the 20th century in terms of archeology? I think on the one hand a tremendous continuity so [00:05:00] that those sites that would claimed in the 19th century tend to still be excavated by the same country. Speaker 1: There's an unspoken but still I think quite rigorous concept that a site is handed on. The perspective has become much more global so that we have people excavating in the Middle East, from South Africa, [00:05:30] from South America, from the United States, and these teams in most we would call the new world are essentially funded or sponsored by their universities. That still remains in the European countries. A tradition of sponsorship by the government and this makes a huge difference. They are able to continue with a very shore knowledge of funding [00:06:00] year after year. You talked a little bit about the Fertile Crescent. What are other examples of old settlements? What's the oldest settlement? I think in photo Cresson, certainly one of the most remarkable sites is Choteau here. And this was excavated by the University of California by Ruth Traynham and has some of the earliest illustrative material and [00:06:30] war paintings in that area. And representative, uh, no doubt of the earliest farming settlements. And it's a dense occupation. Surprisingly, there are dense a little later we see sites that we defined by this ceramic heritage, so at this point we have new written documentation but how suna and hello laugh of these very early pottery sites that are named [00:07:00] essentially from the first site, but we find a spread of occupation across the area. Further east, I'm a hindered Daro 2,900 BC is in what is modern day Pakistan and without doubt one of the earliest settlements Speaker 4: [inaudible]Speaker 5: you were listening to spectrum on k a l experts like archaeologist, [00:07:30] Diana [inaudible] is our guest. Speaker 1: How closely does archaeological training in universities track with the real world application of archeology? I think in many cases very well. One of the requirements of an archeologist above all others I think is flexibility and sturdy resilience, but there are three aspects we're trained theoretically [00:08:00] and this I think is where to refer back to your earlier question. There is a change from 19th century archeology today. We're trained to pose a theoretical question to come up with a hypothesis that we will try to test on the ground. I think an area background knowledge is essential training varies in this regard. For example, [00:08:30] in Germany, archeologists are expected to work all over the world whereas we tend to direct our training two area studies say that my area Mesopotamia and Arabian studies really requires a basis of language study under knowledge of the history of the area and so one becomes a specialist in a particular area. Speaker 1: The practical training [00:09:00] is fairly consistent. I think we begin in in the states, the students are sent in the summers to excavations and throughout their graduate career it's hope they'll have an opportunity to really work in different types of sites and all of us begin or hope to with a semester in a field archeology school so that ones practicing perhaps in a situation where one can't cause too much [00:09:30] damage within the United States field of study, how much might one drift from their graduate area into another area of the world as they start their career? That's an interesting question. In my experience, people do really tend to stay within their area of specialization. We're talking about as much as maybe six to eight years of a language study. The geography and the history of an area [00:10:00] becomes embedded in one's training and in one's doctoral dissertation, so I personally don't think there is such a broad shift. Speaker 1: I think theoretically once capable, there's absolutely no doubt and we find also that students who find themselves not to have strong language studies tend to move into pre history. If you're working in pre history, then really one can go anywhere. It doesn't matter. [00:10:30] There are loopholes in the system, some of the technical methods that are being applied to dating things. Does that mess up the history of it all, the timing, the dating, a lot of the earlier work, does it get overturned in terms of how old is this settlement? I think DNA has made an enormous, perhaps the most significant difference and whole groups of people have been shown to not be native to where [00:11:00] they have claimed in their own written literature that they've always left that spin. I think a delightful surprise, very interesting surprise. Certainly high and duel found that everyone going to the Polynesian islands was going in 150 degrees opposite direction from what he had anticipated. Speaker 1: So we do find that as time passes, the studies can be refined, but I would say it's rather a question [00:11:30] of refinement than are there just totally wrong assumptions. Can I call it it all about what proportion of work is done on newly found settlements, settlements that might've been found in the past couple years versus settlements that we've known about for some time? I think the introduction of Google and satellite imagery has made a vast difference to what we can do most recently in [00:12:00] a northeast Iraq in what is now the Kurdish settlement. Recent work by Harvard has discovered an enormous number of settlements and all of the previous research before they went into the field was done using satellite imagery and so that was unavailable until quite recently. It saves money. There's no doubt with satellite imagery. We can sit in an office in Berkeley and look at the satellite [00:12:30] sites surrounding a large site. We can see a pattern perhaps of movement along a track through mountain ranges from settlement, so that's enormously expanded. What we can do in the office before we go into the field. [inaudible] Speaker 6: spectrum is a public affairs show on KALX Berkeley. Our guest is archeologist in Diana. [00:13:00] She is a visiting scholar of the Near Eastern studies department. Speaker 1: Can you start to talk about some of your own work in Iraq? I first went to Iraq as a graduate student at UC Berkeley. I was invited by Professor David Stronach who is the director of the excavation for our first season. There were six graduate students and it was a relatively short season [00:13:30] to explore the site and decide how an excavation would be approached and what would it be involved. I was very determined to go. I had spent most my undergraduate time studying art history and museum studies, but as time went on I became more and more interested in archeology and really love living in the Middle East. I had lived in the Middle East a long time before. I have [00:14:00] a degree in education. And so I had worked as a governess in the Middle East in Yemen, and I was very keen to go back and the first day I climbed up onto Keon check, which is the tail of Nineveh. Speaker 1: I just knew that I'd found what I wanted to do and it was so wonderful and I liked it very much indeed. And I've been there ever since. Okay. And is there any prospect of going back to Nineveh [00:14:30] presently knew? No. Saul is extremely dangerous at the moment, and so unfortunately that's not a possibility. Certainly we've been invited back and I know that I could go back if it ever becomes a safe to do. So what's happened to the tail is hard to know. The other sad aspect is that there has been an enormous growth in the size of Mosul, the city adjacent on the other side of the [00:15:00] Tigris river. Your time in Nineveh. What was the big accomplishment that you thought you folks had achieved? I think in the three years that we were there assessing everything. Today as we write up the reports, it's incredibly encouraging. Speaker 1: We chose about six different areas of exploration that would represent aspects of the long duration at the site. It's an extremely [00:15:30] old city. And so one exploration on the side of the tail was a step trench down and this has been aided by erosion from water so that we were able to get down to 2,500 BC, um, without digging down through it. We could go in from the side. So there was a component that was of a very early period. The Small [00:16:00] Eminence just south of the sail or the citadel of the city where the royal family lived was also explored. And we expose there a really beautiful elite house, you could say, an administrative house and the surrounding area of that. We also worked up on the northern Northwestern corner by the sin gate. And inside of that we found a very fine [00:16:30] industrial area so that we were able to demonstrate that there was pottery making on the site as well as some metalla Jay, I think. Speaker 1: And then on the wall on the southeast corner, David [inaudible] excavated the [inaudible] gate to Housey. Uh, no gate had really been fully excavated by a Western team, although some of the other gates had been partially [00:17:00] excavated by the Iraqis. And that was where we found the evidence of the destruction of the city, which was extremely exciting. After Iraq, you moved back to Yemen? Yes, I had always studied Yemen. I have roped both my masters degree and my phd on the material culture of Saudi Arabia. And so I had written on the stone [00:17:30] statuary of the mortuary temples and it's very fascinating. A great deal of the material had been moved to Europe, so that had one tried to estimate how much there was there. It would have been easy to say very little, very little at all, but long detailed research program made it very clear that it wasn't, that there was very little, it was that it had been so widely dispersed. Speaker 1: [00:18:00] And so I eventually visited maybe as many as 25 museums and brought it all together again, which proved to be very interesting. And I was able to do a lot of dating from that. And then my doctoral dissertation, which I wrote here at Berkeley, was on the gemstones and stamps, seals of South Arabia and that I used to demonstrate the connection between these South Arabians, small kingdoms [00:18:30] and the greater empire, tight polity of a neo, Syria or other later Syrian period. And so what one found was that this trading network connected all the way across the Arabian peninsula up to Gaza and then on into the Assyrian Kingdom. And so there are in the British Museum at Gates that were sent by the king of Saba from Maarib to Gaza [00:19:00] and then on to Nimruz. And these were buried underneath the temple and they're signed with the king's name. So we knew that they had to been used in that way. So I had an enormous interest in Yemen and stayed there and taught in the university, essentially in Aiden, continue to work there until rather recently. Speaker 6: This is spectrum [00:19:30] k, Aleks, Berkeley archaeologist and visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. Diana, pick work. Sorry. Speaker 1: What advice would you give to people who are considering getting into archeology? I think an undergraduate degree in a hard science is really important in the long term and I think that was advice that perhaps [00:20:00] was less prophet earlier. I think there was more stress on art history and I think students today a well-served with incredibly sturdy technological skills, computer skills and science backgrounds and I think to avoid that is to invite a short career. I really do. I think the training of a hard science is also useful. I [00:20:30] think it makes for a strict discipline, critical thinking, theoretical background in thinking on analytical studies is really useful, very, very useful. And then field training this, no doubt. I think that field training prior to going into the field for the first time at least exposes warm to some of the surprises that will arrive. Speaker 1: I think for most archeologists [00:21:00] you have to think on your feet and so unless one is well-prepared and has made detailed studies of what one's going to do, then it's vital to err on the side of caution when you put the first spade in because otherwise it's destroyed and gone. And so those types of preparations, which are easily available. Field schools are available everywhere. So that prepares, I think an archaeologist for the field work aspect. [00:21:30] But Sonia, small part, the fieldwork is such a small part of the overall, it's like a blip in the middle in a way. There's a long lead in of preparation and research and location choice. Then that's the excavation and then an incredibly lengthy period of um, producing the data and getting it out. And the computers help that most excavations today. It's all of the data is going straight [00:22:00] into the computer and can be sent back to the university, which was an advantage, an enormous advantage. Speaker 1: How do you see archeology going forward? What is its future? What I find is that as one area closes, another will open rather recently, the northern Iraq area of what is now Kurdistan has opened up. It became rather safe up there for awhile. [00:22:30] So that an ability to move say from Syria into that area was seized by many archeologists. So that many teams have been in the field, I would say for the last five years in northeast Iraq. And Kurdistan, I googled to check for you where everyone is digging at the moment. And so there's sort of a narrow tight band of Middle Eastern scholars in Israel and down into [00:23:00] Jordan and that's a huge concentration. And then upon the northeastern potting Kurdistan and we've seen an opening up in Saudi Arabia, so wonderful materialists coming out of the tame excavation, which is led by the Germans, uh, by iHuman. That's been very, very exciting. And they are expanding. There's also been a lot of expansion by more than just [00:23:30] the British into the Emirates and say we have a lot of excavations at the moment and Kuwait behind [inaudible] Ku, Wayne and down into Dubai. So when one door closes, another opens and there are people in Oman as well. No one stays home. It's not appealing. We like to be in the field. Speaker 1: Is there anything we haven't asked you about that you want to mention? [00:24:00] Maybe China. There's an enormous ongoing excavations in China at the moment. It's definitely overturning and changing their own knowledge of their own history. And I find that fascinating. And as a northern southern divide about where the origins of China's more recent civilizations came from and so it's been fascinating for me to watch that. As I said [00:24:30] earlier, I think that we're very flexible people and I suppose that would be where I would move if I could never go back to the Middle East. Diana, pick worth. Thanks very much for being on spectrum. Thank you. I've enjoyed myself. Thank you. Speaker 6: Spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We have created a simple link for you. The link is tiny [00:25:00] URL [inaudible] dot com slash KALX at spectrum. Speaker 3: Now a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky joins me when the calendar on May 7th from seven to 9:00 PM UC Berkeley, professor of psychology and neuroscience, Matt Walker. We'll be it. Ask a scientist at the summer street food park, four to eight 11th street in San Francisco. [00:25:30] They'll discuss research showing that sleep is a highly active process that is essential for many cognitive functions including learning, memory, creativity and brain plasticity. The event is free, although you can purchase stuff to eat from the food trucks there. Visit, ask a scientist S f.com for more info. Why are many body problems in physics so difficult? A quantum information [00:26:00] perspective determining the physical behavior of systems composed of several particles is in general very hard. The reason is that the number of possible combinations of states increases exponentially with the number of particles for quantum systems. The situation is even worse in his talk. Ignacio Ciroc will explain this phenomenon in detail and we'll review several approaches to assessing this difficulty and to overcoming it under certain conditions. [00:26:30] NASCIO Ciroc has been director of the theory division at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum optics since December, 2001 this lecture is Monday May 12th at 4:00 PM in [inaudible] Hall, [inaudible] Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus. This event is free. Speaker 7: Counter culture labs is hosting a few free talks at the pseudo room. Hackerspace two one 41 Broadway in Oakland over the next few weeks. [00:27:00] On May 9th at 7:00 PM we'll hear from Ben Novak, who is it? Paleo geneticist working on using clone cells from cryo-preserved museum specimens and genome editing in an attempt to revive the passenger pigeon from extinction. Then on May 15th at 7:00 PM they will host Anthony Evans who was on the glowing plant project. This project raised a half million dollars on Kickstarter to add firefly DNA to [00:27:30] plants to make them glow. He'll discuss the process, how they've handled the public perception of GMOs and why open source science matters. For more information on these in future events, visit counterculture labs.org Speaker 3: now, Rick Karnofsky with an interesting news story, Speaker 7: nature news reports on an article by Gary Frost and Jimmy Bell from the Imperial College, London and [00:28:00] others that dietary fiber may act on the brain to curb appetite in a paper published in nature communications. On April 29th the team discussed how fiber that is fermented in the colon creates colonic acetate and using radioactively tagged Acetate and pet scans. They showed that colonic acetate crosses the blood brain barrier and it's taken up by the brain of rats. They also showed that acetate [00:28:30] administration is associated with activation of Acetol Coa, a carboxylase, and changes in the expression profiles of regulatory neuropeptides that favor appetite suppression. These observations suggest that Acetate as a direct role in the central appetite regulation. Speaker 4: Mm, thanks to Rick Karnofsky [00:29:00] for help with the interview calendar and with the news music heard during the show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email, Speaker 8: email addresses spectrum, dedicate a lx@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at the same [00:29:30] time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.