Friday, May 13, 2011

National Archaeology Week at UNE

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Regular readers will know that I am a member of the Heritage Futures Research Centre at the University of New England.

The Centre was founded in 2001 to consolidate the University's range of expertise and research relating to the natural and cultural history and heritage of regional Australia, and to facilitate the sharing of values, information and expertise among scholars, professionals and the broader community.

I fit in with the Centre because its multidisciplinary interests mesh with my own.

I am pleased to report that the Centre has joined with others including the Australian Archaeological Association, the School of Humanities, the Aspects of Antiquity lecture series and the Antiquities Museum at UNE to promote National Archaeology Week, 16-20 May.

The Armidale program looks very interesting. For that reason, I am including it in full.   

The UNE Museum of Antiquities (Building E11) will be open for visitors from 9- 4.30 PM throughout the week. Come and see what ancient and ethnographic treasures reside in the collection. The museum is also offering insight into UNE archaeology studies available in Semester 2, 2011, information on several scholarships available to UNE students, and a digital images of “UNE People and Archaeology” - Snapshots of UNE students and faculty (recent and imagelong past) and their experiences in Australian archaeology.

I would love to see the last, given that I was a member of Isabel McBryde's pioneering Australian prehistory group. We were, I think, the first such honours group in Australia.

On Monday evening 16th May at 5.30 – 7 in Earl Page College Junior Common Room, Professor Tim Harrison, will present a lecture on ‘Temples, Tablets and Assyrian Imperialism at Tayinat on the Orontes’. Via its account of the Tayinat excavations in SE Turkey where the remains have been uncovered of a Late Assyrian settlement—including a governor’s residence, two temples and a cache of cuneiform tablets—the lecture throws light on an important shift which occurred in Assyrian imperial policy during the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (745-727 BC).

Now I bet you have never heard of Tiglath-pileser!

Professor Harrison is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Toronto, and President of
American School of Oriental Research. Since 1997 he has taught Near Eastern Archaeology in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto, where he was promoted to full Professor in 2007.

Professor Harrison has participated in numerous other excavations and field expeditions in Israel, Jordan and Turkey. In 2007, he was elected President of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR). He is visiting UNE courtesy of a grant from the Ingram-Moore bequest administered by the Australian Institute of Archaeology.

Professor Harrison's paper is part of the regular ‘Aspects of Antiquity’ public lecture series presented by The School of Humanities in association with Earle Page College and The Armidale Chapter of the UNE Alumni
Association.

On Tuesday morning 17 May (9.30 – 10.30 AM), Professor Harrison will deliver a second paper in the Letters Room, Ground Floor of the Dixson Library as part of the School of Humanities Research seminar series. This is the seminar series in which I have delivered my own papers. 

This paper will be on ‘The Battle for Armageddon: David, Solomon and the Early Israelite Monarchy as viewed from Megiddo’.

Strategically situated at the entrance to a key pass, ancient Megiddo, the Armageddon of biblical Revelation, has long figured prominently in debates about the onset of the Iron Age (c. 1150-950 BC) that brought dramatic changes to the cultural and social landscape of the Biblical world, out of which emerged the Israelite Monarchy of David and Solomon. Yet until relatively recently very little was actually known about Megiddo in this period, whose archaeological remains give us a rare glimpse of this formative phase in the history of ancient Israel.

Look, I accept that I am a bit of a history tragic, but I really love this stuff!

On Thursday lunchtime 19 May at noon -1pm in Armidale Bowling Club upstairs function room Associate Professor Wendy Beck and Dr. Bob Haworth (Centre for Heritage Futures UNE) will give a public lecture on ‘Current Research in New England Archaeology’. This session is sponsored by the Heritage Futures
Research Centre. I really wish that I could go, for this is central to my present writing.

Then on Thursday afternoon from 4.30pm – 6.30pm in the Arts Building (E11), theatre A2, there will be a 20 min video entitled “Archaeology – Evidence of the Past” and a Careers Forum panel will share their career experiences with the audience. Refreshments will be served. Again sponsored by the Heritage Futures Research Centre, this session targets secondary and tertiary students interested in Archaeology and Heritage careers.

I will put up a fuller post on this one a little later on my New England Australia blog. 

If anybody would like to find out more information they should email Wendy Beck, wbeck@une.edu.au.

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