New Course "Handling the Past: Analysis of Archaeological Finds"

I am excited to announce that we have enough students for the course which Sally Stewart and I have developed for the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies (UofT SCS) "Handling the Past: Analysis of Archaeological Finds".

We are team teaching an artifact analysis course on the St George Campus in the Anthropology Lab of the University of Toronto.  During the course we will introduce students to the methodology of archaeology as practiced in Ontario and the assemblages one encounters.  Sally as the prehistorian of the two of us, will be the point person for the prehistory of Ontario and Toronto, and I (Meg) will handle the historic or post contact periods and materials.

The primary source for the prehistoric period materials to be handled during the course will be the Surma site, a rescue excavation carried out by Prof J.N. Emerson with field director Wm. C. Noble in 1965 for  the Anthropology Department of the University of Toronto in the soon-to-be-parking-lot of the Queen's Hotel owned by Mr and Mrs Robert Surma in Fort Erie, Ontario.  The prehistoric remains date to two main phases: the Archaic Period 2,000-1,000 BCE, and the Woodland Period 700-1350 BCE.  There is also an historic component of the site dating to 1812 CE.  For more information on the site, see the article in Ontario Archaeology Vol 9(1966) by Emerson and Noble:  http://www.ontarioarchaeology.on.ca/publications/pdf/oa9-5-emerson.pdf

Most of the historic materials which we will be handling during the course will derive from the two sites which have been excavated by the Anthropology summer field schools: the 315 Bloor Street West site excavated in 2010 and the Lime Ridge Memorial Site in 2011-2013.  The first took advantage of the renovations being carried out in preparation for making 315 Bloor Street West the Munk School of Global Affairs. Excavations were carried out around the front and sides of the existing building.  The second site lies on the East bank of Taddle Creek south of Hart House Circle around the Lime Ridge Monument, erected to honour UofT students who fell during that battle in 1866, sometimes known as the Battle of Ridgeway, the largest of the Fenian Raids.

We originally developed the course to dovetail with another course, an archaeology field school to be held at the Koffler Scientific Reserve at Joker's Hill, a property north of Toronto which was given to the University of Toronto by the Koffler family.  Unfortunately we did not get enough students for that course which was to be held in July 2013.  We were going to use it as a companion course to analyse the artifacts and materials found on at Joker's Hill, but through our sponsorship by the University of Toronto Archaeology Centre and the On-campus field school of the Anthropology Department, we have a wealth of material to draw upon and keep our students happy and busy.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Prof Michael Chazan, director of the University of Toronto Archaeology Centre for his support both logistical and intellectual, and the directors of the Anthropology Field School, Prof Ted Banning and Dr Sarah T Stewart for access to the materials from the 315 Bloor Street West Site and the Lime Ridge Monument Site.

Alison Terpenning of the UofT SCS has written a blog about the course which you can read at:
http://learn.utoronto.ca/life-at-scs/archaeology-course-offers-insight-into-ontario-history

The course starts on Tuesday September 17th, 2013 and classes will be held in the Anthropology Building  at 19 Russell Street on the St George Campus of the University of Toronto.  If you are interested there are still spots available so check the course out at:
 http://2learn.utoronto.ca/uoft/search/publicCourseSearchDetails.do?method=load&cms=true&courseId=24223528

The New Show "Mesopotamia Inventing Our World" at the Royal Ontario Museum

            I just had a wonderful experience going to the special exhibit Mesopotamian: Inventing our World Exraordinary Treasures of Sumer, Assyria & Babylon at the Royal Ontario Museum (June 22 2013 to January 5, 2014).  It is truly a remarkable experience to have the opportunity to see some of these wonderful works in Toronto.  The show spans the history of Mesopotamia from the 4^th millennium down to the capture of Babylon by the Persians, and explores the major trends during this long span including the rise of writing, development of complex societies, the nature and iconography of Meopotamian Kingship and Empire, and Mesopotamian Gods and Religion.

            The first section deals with writing and displays some very small objects.  These clay tablets and stone cylinder seals richly reward examination as they have been carefully chosen to show the development of writing from pictographs to cuneiform, and then provide examples of every type of document there is from the sublime (Epic of Gilgamesh) to the mundane (talleys of beer!).  Related to the documents are a wonderful collection of cylinder seals which have been chosen well to complement the themes of the show, allowing the visitor to understand that all the visual arts were closely related.

            The Ur room, displaying finds from the Royal Cemetery of Ur excavated by Sir C. Leonard Woolley and his wife Katherine from 1922 to 1934 for the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania Museum (now the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology), dazzles with beautiful jewellery weapons and other objects which were interred with the dead for the afterlife.  My personal favourite object is the oval golden drinking cup from the Queen’s grave PG800.  The  long narrow spout must have been used as a straw to drink beer.  The exhibit showcases numerous scenes on cylinder seals showing divinities drinking from long straws.  The chased decoration on the delicate vessel is comprised of chevrons and double zigzags.

            One of my favourite antiquities has made the journey to Toronto from Detroit to be part of the show.  The exquisite statue of Gudea King of Lagash was acquired by the Detroit Institute of Art the year I first went to the University of Michigan in nearby Ann Arbor as a graduate student.  This amazing statue made of paragonite captured the media’s heart and I made several trip to the DIA to see it with students, friends and family.  The quiet calm of the piece also has a wonderful sense of power despite its small size.  The artist used the natural veining in the stone to suggest the woolly hat and fold of the mantle.  It has its own space and the curators appropriately chose it as the area to discuss the nature of leadership.

            Close by, the statue of Ashurnasirpal II 883-859 BCE stands proudly at the entrance way to the later materials belonging to the Assyrian Empire.  The statue is identified by an inscription on his chest naming him and giving all his titles and honours. The figure has a calm and powerful dignity even after so much time.

            The show stoppers are the large scale fragments of the palace reliefs from the palaces of the neo Assyrian kings.  There are many interactive components and animations which explain and literally bring the reliefs to life.

            The show ends with a discussion of Babylon through time.  There is a lovely model of the entranceway to the Ishtar Gate and the ROM’s lion panel of glazed bricks from the Southern Citadel dominates the room.  The discussions of the hanging gardens and the tower of Babel are interesting reading.

            A show of this chronological and geographical scope could easily have been confusing and jumpy and I have often found that Mesopotamian materials are difficult to grasp in museum galleries which do not have enough materials to convey the full sweep of history.  But here the curators of the show have avoided the usual pitfalls and centred the material on broad themes central to the understanding of Mesopotamian material culture and history.  While loosely chronological, they have not been slaves to that organizing principal and allow you to build your knowledge gradually.  Having now seen the show twice, I can say that it is a show that is comprehensible  in a single visit (albeit a long visit as there is tons of material to read, videos to walk and interactive graphics to explore), but it really rewards a second visit when you can look at the materials with all the themes in mind.

            Throughout the show there are small and extended references to the history of the archaeology of the area and the present state of the area’s sites and museums.  These tie the complementary exhibition Catastrophe! Ten years Later: The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past developed, written and produced by the Oriental Istitute of the University of Chicago, into the dialogue and when those images are contrasted with the brilliance of the objects on display in the Mesopotamian show, the losses are  more keenly felt.

            All in all, I think it is a marvellous show and intend to take advantage of it being here in Toronto by visiting it many more times!

           

Back from the Dead!

It has been ages since I have logged into my blog and reported anything but that is going to change. It is not that I have not been involved in archaeological pursuits.  I have been on the executive of the Archaeological Institute of America Toronto Society for many years and seem to get more and more involved!  Last year I helped get National Archaeology Day going in partnership with the Royal Ontario Museum. I was back in Israel last summer for a short season (final?) of excavation of the PHAB at Tel Kedesh (Persian and Hellenistic Administrative Building).  And I am working with Sally Stewart to get a field archaeology course going for the Archaeology Centre and the School of Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto located at the University of Toronto's property the Koffler Centre Scientific Reserve at Joker's Hill.  I will be writing more on all these topics in the following weeks.

The Pleasure of Ruins

When I was eight years old, my mother bought me a copy of the Thames and Hudson 1964 version of Rose Macaulay’s The Pleasure of Ruins with wonderful photographs by Roloff Beny. I poured over the images, especially the black and white ones. It was not until much later that I noticed the text being special as well.

Dame Rose Macaulay was famous as a novelist and academic but also for a series of books which celebrated the pleasures of the everyday: Personal Pleasures (1935) followed by The Minor Pleasures of Everyday Life (1936). It was natural for this avid travellor to follow these two with Pleasure of Ruins in 1953. This was by far her longest book and she took 4 years to write it, travelling to her favourite sites in the Mediterranean, Near
and Middle East. Even before her death in 1958 she had discussed creating a pictorial version of Pleasure of Ruins, with an edited version of her text combined with photographs by Roloff Beny whose book The Thrones of Earth and Heaven (1958) she had greatly admired. In collaboration with Macaulay’s executor Constance Babbington Smith, Beny produced this new version. He expanded the focus to a worldwide gazeteer of sites and spent a year circling the globe creating the images.

Roloff Beny was born in Medicine Hat and went to the University of Toronto and spent the last 30 years in a flat overlooking the Tiber in Rome. He was a gifted artist in other media and it is this artistic sensibility which infuses his photographs with poignancy and emotion. He knows how to perfectly capture the beauty of the ruined fragments of the past.

Both Macaulay and Beny were interested in the intersection of history and ruination which ancient sites displayed. Both evoke the sensation of visiting these sites today and seeing nature reclaiming the land. When reading and viewing their books, one feels that they are taking you by the hand and guiding you through places which
have not been seen by man for millennia.

Happiness is a Pile of Rocks

Recently a friend* asked me “What makes you happy?” At first I was stymied and my mind drew a blank. Then a myriad of images flooded my mind. Once I had sorted through the images of friends, family, beloved pets, sunlight on water and dewdrops on roses, by far the largest category left were memories of happiness found on archaeological sites

What is it about ancient sites and even not so ancient ones that elicit so much pleasure? They are often intrinsically beautiful, often dramatically situated. Sometimes it is the very age that beguiles. One wanders through their spaces and feels surrounded by the people who have been there before, the original builders and inhabitants as well as the archaeologists who reclaimed them.

One of my favourite happy-inducing sites is the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi in Greece pictured above. I have had the pleasure of travelling there first as a teenager with my mother. I have been there alone and with groups. I have been there in blistering sun and blustering rain. I have been there when the fog rolled in and one had no trouble imagining the god speaking to his priestess. One glorious afternoon I sat on the steps of the god's temple and watched nesting falcons feeding their young on the cliffs towering above. At all such times the academic facts and figures slip away leaving one in a place where past and present meld.

Notes

*My friend is Victoria Ollers, the Associate Publisher of the new magazine in development What Makes You Happy. The first issue will be released before Valentine’s Day 2012. Check out .the information at http://happyhappyhappy.ca

UofT Fieldschool Revisited - YouTube Links

Check out the two videos which have been created by the Archaeology Centre of the University of Toronto, highlighting the LimeRidge Memorial site on the University of Toronto campus. Ted Banning is interviewed and speaks about the nature of the site in one, and the workings of the fieldschool in the other. They were filmed by Matthew Walls and Joanna Pokorny.
They can be found on the Canadian Archaeological Association's YouTube group canadianarchaeology. Look for:

Ted Banning Interview June 2011 UofT,
ANT 306 Field School UofT.mp4

Thanks to Mima Kapches of the Ontario Archaeological Society for directing me to these videos.

University of Toronto Fieldschool

Two weeks ago I visited my friends Sally Stewart and Ted Banning who were co-directing a fieldschool on the University of Toronto St George Campus. It was an Archaeological Methods and Theory course offered by the Anthropology Department and the Archaeology Centre. This year they were digging behind the Gerstein Library, on the western edge of Queen's Park just above the Taddle Creek.

This grassy knoll is the site of the Limestone Ridge Memorial Monument, commemorating the seven UofT students who died on June 2nd, 1866 in the Battle of Limestone Ridge, also known as the Battle of Ridgeway.

The Battle of Ridgeway was a victory for the invading Fenians, largely veterans of the US Civil War, against a Canadian force of largely inexperienced militia from Toronto and Hamilton. The monument was dedicated on July 1st 1870, a fitting Canada Day celebration as it was the first time that a fully Canadian force defended Canada from a foreign invader.

The 17 UofT students were trained in procedures in keeping with Ontario's Heritage laws and so did survey, mapping, shovel-shining, drilling and controlled stratigraphic excavation in one-meter squares. Amongst the finds were coins including a 1880's dime, pottery, and animal bones including a quantity of lamb bones in one square. A pipe stem fragment is decorated with a Mason's symbol. This is early in both the exploration of the site and in the analysis of the finds but the finds may represent a farmstead on the banks of the Taddle Creek, commemorative feasting in the vicinity of the monument or merely composting of gardens associated with the monument.

This is the second time that Ted and Sally have been able to dig on campus, allowing students to incorporate getting field experience with their regular lives. Hopefully they will be able to dig here again next year and further our knowledge of this intriguing part of the UofT St George Campus.