Pasts Imperfect: Special Issue
A Special Issue on New Developments and Research focused on Dura-Europos, Syria
This special issue is focused on Dura-Europos in eastern Syria, near to the Euphrates. First, we look at the preprint of a forthcoming article in the Journal of Roman Archaeology focused on the site’s Christian Building. In the study, Camille Leon Angelo and Joshua Silver redefine the famed “house church” of Dura-Europos. They question whether the building was still perceived as a domestic space when used for Christian worship while interrogating many of the myths surrounding the physical spaces of early Christian churches prior to Constantine. Then, Adnan Almohamad, Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London, discusses the impact of the Syrian Civil War on the Syrian people and their cultural heritage. In a special section, Dura specialists Jennifer Baird, Lisa Brody, and Anne Hunnell Chen summarize the new scholarship and digital projects focused on the site. Finally, Classics librarian Colin McCaffrey brings you all the new ancient world journals.
Redefining the “House Church” at Dura-Europos
Archaeologist and PhD candidate Camille Leon Angelo and architectural researcher Joshua Silver have a forthcoming article in the new issue of JRA looking at the constructed architectural category of the domus ecclesiae (Gr. οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας). In remarks to Pasts Imperfect, JRA’s Editor, Greg Woolf, remarked on their innovative use of new methodologies such as 3D visualization and daylight simulations to interrogate the enduring idea among many scholars of early Christianity that the Dura-Europos Christian building was “emblematic of the presumed house-based nature of early Christian gatherings.” The article argues that, rather than being the “missing link,” Dura seems more an ordinary house that underwent radical changes.
Over at Hyperallergic, Sarah E. Bond has also covered this new research in a more public-facing article that you can read here.
Open Access Article: Angelo, Camille Leon, and Joshua Silver. “Debating the Domus Ecclesiae at Dura-Europos: The Christian Building in Context.” Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2024, 1–40. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1047759424000126.
Syria and Dura-Europos Today by Adnan Almohamad
In early 2011 extensive peaceful demonstrations took place in Syria against the Assad regime. By 2012, the conflict turned into a full-blown war that caused widespread destruction, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded. The civil war has disrupted the economy, destroyed cities and infrastructure, prevented children from going to school, closed factories, and deterred investment and trade. As a result of the war and violence that has existed since 2011, Syria remains the world's largest displacement crisis. Around 7.2 million people in Syria were living in internal displacement in April 2024.
The war also led to the division of Syria into four areas of influence, the Syrian regime and its allies’ The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by the US, the Syrian opposition (the opposition supported by Türkiye, and the areas controlled by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham. There are also military bases for American, Russian, Iranian, and Turkish foreign forces. Each party in the Syrian conflict has its own ideology and project, and each party has a flag, an army, a government, an educational curriculum, and an external force that it relies on to maintain its areas of influence. In addition to the humanitarian and economic tragedies, the war has negatively affected Syrian cultural heritage, which links Syrians to each other regardless of their backgrounds, ethnicity, or ideologies.
This material connection between Syrians and their cultural heritage comes not only because it represents their ancient history and identity, but also part of their present. It is an important element for reconciliation and peace; it is a foundation to be built upon for a better, shared future for Syrians. Like every home and family in Syria, Syrian cultural heritage has suffered from loss and destruction as well as pillage, but this suffering shows how united Syrians are in their legacy and shared destiny.
Dura Europos (Al-Salihiyya according to the local name) is an example of what most archaeological sites in Syria were exposed to during the current conflict, albeit to varying levels. Dura Europos has been coveted by major powers over the ages, because of its location overlooking trade caravan routes, in addition to its strong and fortified defenses. It attracted the Greeks, Romans, and Persians to control it. During the war, it also experienced multiple conflicts to control it and was subject to more than one occupation during the war. In 2012, when the Free Syrian Army factions took over Dura Europos, they failed to provide any protection for the site, which led to the involvement of several local groups in digging and looting the site, including the contents of the French expedition house in Dura Europos.
In the end of 2013, ISIS took control of the area and allowed dozens of workshops to work on the site simultaneously and using heavy machinery. Consequently, 76% of the walled-city had been damaged by April 2014. Beyond the city wall there are now approximately 3,750 individual looting pits. Damage was done to Dura Europos's numerous religious monuments, which symbolized the city's strong religious tolerance throughout its long history. contrasting sharply with the time under ISIS rule, which was marked by massive devastation and the cleansing of ethnic and religious groups. In 2018, ISIS was defeated from the region, and the site became and remains under the control of the Republican Guard forces of the Assad regime, and the site is still closed to visits.
The terrible damage to Syrian cultural heritage inflicted over the war has demonstrated the failure of international organizations and cultural agreements to protect antiquities in Syria, It also highlights the divergent attitudes of Syrians towards their cultural heritage. It became clear that the previous policies of the regime before the war had failed to connect the local communities with their heritage, as the state imposed itself as the sole guardian to protect the heritage without enabling local communities to participate. The security and economic collapse, as well as the control by extremist groups over large areas of Syria during the conflict, also affected the reactions and attitudes of Syrians towards their local heritage. This is reflected in the extent of the great destruction that affected the Dura Europos and other archaeological sites in Syria.
The extent of the destruction to which cultural heritage has been subjected requires us to rebuild the bridge between local communities and their heritage by following a balanced approach that achieves the interests of people and their material culture in a way that benefits both parties. A starting point can be made by supporting local Syrian organizations that cooperate directly with local people. These groups encourage them to engage in awareness and protection projects for archaeological sites and organize workshops with local clergy, women’s groups, schools, and universities to participate in awareness and protection activities.
In terms of digital projects, WikiData and other open access and participatory platforms play a crucial role in bridging the significant gap between Syrians and their rich history when it comes to the preservation of cultural assets. WikiData is a shining example of inclusivity thanks to its user-friendly interface and Arabic availability. It enables a varied population to participate in and add to their cultural heritage by supporting the production and distribution of Arabic educational materials. In addition to mitigating the shortcomings caused by ineffectual government initiatives, this democratization of data curation promotes a shared sense of pride and ownership in cultural identity. It also allows for community agency and investment in significant ways previously stymied by the Syrian conflict.
New Developments at Dura-Europos, a brief overview assembled with aid from Jennifer Baird, Lisa Brody, and Anne Hunnell Chen
Where do things at the site stand now? The first is to say that things remain awful in Syria for too many. Last week, the UN sounded alarm bells about the humanitarian crisis caused by the civil war there, which has caused the death of 507,000 people since 2011. The human toll of the war is primary before any of the secondary focus on the cultural heritage at Dura-Europos.
In regard to the state of scholarship on the site, Jas Elsner’s 2021 JRA piece on “100 Years of Dura Europos,” is a good summary of work up to that point. Adnan Almohamad and Jennifer Baird have been working on an oral history project, talking to people who live near the site, or worked there with the archaeological teams, about their relationship to the place. The first publication of this will be in the volume from the Yale centenary conference, “Dura-Europos: Past, Present, Future: Celebrating the Centennial of Excavations at Dura-Europos,” organized by Lisa R. Brody and Anne Hunnell Chen. It is titled: “The Ruins that Remain: Remembering Dura-Europos in Salhiyeh.” The Council for at-Risk Academics enabled the research along with the Open Societies University Network Threatened Scholars Initiative. Also forthcoming in that aforementioned centenary volume is a piece by PhD student Juliet Samson-Conlon on childhood at Dura, looking at the bone dolls from the site. The volume, edited by Brody and Chen, will be published with Brepols in 2025 in the Studies in Classical Archaeology series.
In terms of new approaches to the site, Karen B. Stern has been doing amazing work on sensory approaches in the synagogue. Historian of late antique and Roman art Felicity Harley-McGowan also has a forthcoming chapter, “Shepherd as allegory in ancient Christian art: The case of Dura-Europos,” in Imperial Allegory, its Cultural Contexts and Intermedial Entanglements: Reading Across Divides (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press). In addition, you can also read Jennifer Baird and Zena Kamash’s article on “Remembering Roman Syria” for free.
In digital humanities news, Anne Hunnell Chen’s NEH-funded project, The International (Digital) Dura-Europos Archive (IDEA), focuses on equity and cultural heritage at the site and beyond. As they note in the Project Outline:
IDEA is developing digital archival methods and content to improve the intelligibility and accessibility of archaeological knowledge related to a specific site for global scholars and publics alike. But the team’s work goes beyond this specific Syrian archaeological site. To improve global knowledge equity related to cultural heritage, IDEA is documenting and sharing our methods to provide a jump-start to interventions related to analogous legacy archaeological collections. This work advances a practical conversation about how to make the most ethical use of technology to enhance multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural data-sharing and reuse for the (global) public good.
The project’s ‘cascading mentorship’ model is an innovative, explorative use of the Wikidata platform aimed at pedagogy and community-outreach. Artifacts excavated from Dura today reside in at least 10 worldwide collections, including the 14,451 Dura artifacts held by Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) (available online through YUAG’s website with open access, high-res photography when available), and thousands of objects in the National Museum in Damascus (for which IDEA collaborators are in the process of establishing the first digital records, anchored in archival documentation but open for multilingual collaborative curation). Archival material related to Dura that fills out and contextualizes the picture of long-established specialist interpretation, including letters, documentation, and photographs, are distributed into an even wider network of collections (see, for instance, the corpus of archival photographs managed by YUAG available via JSTOR; the Breasted archives at the University of Chicago; the Maurice Pillet archives via L’Université PSL; and Oxford’s Manar Al-Athar repository, among numerous others).
Students and professionals across the world, at various stages of career, from novice to expert, are working in multiple languages through IDEA to build on the important first generation of institutional and medium-specific digitization efforts to integrate existing collection datasets and crowd-source high-quality enrichments that diversify the baseline metadata supplied by institutional and project partners for the ultimate benefit of a multilingual, global audience. With assistance from Yale University Press and Yale’s Department of Classics, the IDEA team is also working to provide full-text access to the preliminary and final reports of the Yale-French excavations (1928-1937). In connection with the IDEA work, Chen and Baird are currently piloting a series of workshops that use Dura’s digital archive to provide hands-on training in Linked Open Data (LOD) methods for Syrian colleagues, while simultaneously building a community of practice aimed at thinking collaboratively about ways to use emerging tools to bring more Syrian voices into collection archives.
In terms of other new publications, there is a series of articles and chapters mostly on the archives themselves as spearheaded by Baird, particularly: “Reading Field Diaries against the Grain: The Notable and the Absent in Syrian Archaeology.” In addition, Giulio Iovine’s CUP edition of the Latin military papyri came out last year. There has also been new work on “The significance of household cisterns at Roman Dura-Europos” and “Experiencing the Renewed Cosmos: The Significance of the Celestial Ceiling in the Baptistery at Dura-Europos,” as well as Brody’s work on “A Palmyrene Relief of Nemesis from Dura-Europos.” Connections between Dura-Europos and Palmyra are a frequent topic in the new The Oxford Handbook of Palmyra, edited by Rubina Raja. Brody and Carol Snow have also initiated a research study doing stable isotope analysis of limestone sculptures from Palmyra and Dura-Europos, with the goal of identifying quarry sources.
As far as museum exhibitions go, there is a permanent gallery for the Dura collection— the Mary and James Ottaway Gallery of Ancient Dura-Europos— at Yale University Art Gallery. It was opened in 2012 and recently reinstalled to highlight the site's works of art, major monuments, and cultural and artistic connections with Palmyra. Note that the Dura scutum and the famed horse armor are in London for the Legion exhibit at the British Museum at the moment. The catalog of the 2011 exhibition at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, and ISAW: Dura-Europos: Crossroads of antiquity, edited by Lisa Brody and Gail L. Hoffman, is online at the Internet Archive.
New Antiquity Journal Issues (by @YaleClassicsLib / yaleclassicslib.bsky.social)
Journal of Early Christian Studies Vol. 32, No. 2 (2024)
Religion in the Roman Empire Vol. 10, No.1 (2024) Religion at Work
Dialogues d'histoire ancienne Supplément 28 (2024) Blessures aristocratiques dans l’Antiquité romaine: du corps à l’honneur
Arheologia = Археологія No. 2 (2024) #openaccess
Collectanea Christiana Orientalia Vol. 21 (2024) #openaccess NB Chance Bonar “Edenic Children and Unripened Fruit”
Philonsorbonne Vol. 18 (2024) Année 2023-2024 #openaccess Diairesis : Sur la méthode de division chez Platon et Aristote
Journal for the Study of Judaism Vol. 55, No. 2 (2024)
Journal of South Asian Intellectual History Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
History of Humanities Vol. 9, No. 1 (2024) Shared Pasts for a Shared Future: Prototyping a Comparative Global Humanities
Antiquity Vol. 98, No. 399 (2024)
Journal of Ancient History Vol. 12, No. 1 (2024)
Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology Vol. 11, No. 1 (2024) #openaccess NB Dmytro Yanov, “Digitization of Roman Coin Finds from Southwestern Ukraine: AFE-UKR Database”
Anais de Filosofia Clássica Vol. 16 No. 32 (2022) #openaccess Almas Ancestrais 2
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol.18 No.1 (2024) #openaccess
Klio Vol. 106, No. 1 (2024)
Argos Vol. 48 (2022) #openaccess
Frankfurter elektronische Rundschau zur Altertumskunde No. 52 (2024) #openaccess
Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft Vol. 26 (2023) #openaccess Antike Bibliotheken
Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum Vol. 28, No. 1 (2024) Justin of Rome: Apology, Empire and Identity
New England Classical Journal Vol 51, No. 1 (2024 ) NB Patrick J. Burns, “(Re)Active Latin: Computational Chat as Future Colloquia”
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