Helen M Dixon | East Carolina University (original) (raw)
Papers by Helen M Dixon
Berytus Archaeological Studies, 2022
Surprisingly little has been written about caves and other natural rock formations in the sacred ... more Surprisingly little has been written about caves and other natural rock formations in the sacred landscapes of the Phoenician Levantine coast in the first millennium BCE. Caves (natural and modified) were used as burial places and sites of worship, as evinced by inscriptions and offerings for unseen beings. This short study presents eight possible examples of rock openings used as tombs or sanctuaries associated with Phoenician material culture from within the borders of the modern state of Lebanon and offers some tentative suggestions about their significance, with the hope of stimulating new scholarship on the topic. In the first millennium BCE, caves could be sites of worship or healing for the living and sites of protection for the dead, since humans may have felt they were closer to the divine when underground.
[This article will be available open access in 2025, as the journal converts to a fully Open Access interface. Check https://www.aub.edu.lb/berytus/Pages/default.aspx for updates.]
Full citation: Dixon, Helen. 2021-22. “Worship and Burial in Bedrock: Phoenician Sacred Caves (and Other Rock Chambers) in First Millennium BCE Lebanon.” Berytus 61-62: 135-157 [published 2024; will appear open access in 2025 at https://www.aub.edu.lb/berytus/Pages/default.aspx].
Journal of Ancient History 12(2): 343-352, 2024
This article is part of a special issue of the Journal of Ancient History, “Social Biographies of... more This article is part of a special issue of the Journal of Ancient History,
“Social Biographies of the Ancient World.” It serves as response paper whose purpose is to identify a core question underlying the three case studies in this special issue: does Bourdieu’s field theory help us to understand how people made decisions in the ancient world, given that its predictive capabilities will necessarily be limited by the information we have? To explore this question, the idea of “using theory” as a method is engaged, comparing premodern applications of Bourdieu’s core concepts to the limits of the scientific “theory of evolution.” A brief assessment of the strengths of the case studies in this special issue is followed by an articulation of several resulting take-aways: (i) the value of the concepts of field, capital, and habitus in focusing on our data and its limits, rather than academic ideologies; (ii) the importance of articulating each scholarly assumption explicitly as we apply these concepts; (iii) the recognition that we can use Bourdieu to reveal new interpretive possibilities but not to fill in missing data; and (iv) the productive assumption that each text from the ancient world was the result of an actor(s) leveraging their capital in order to negotiate their perceived optimal position within a field. Together these points illustrate the utility of this issue’s systematic approach to the application of Bourdieu’s field theory in the study of the ancient world.
Rivista di Studi Fenici, Jun 12, 2023
This study examines and synthesizes a diverse corpus of evidence relevant to the possible practic... more This study examines and synthesizes a diverse corpus of evidence relevant to the possible practice of mummification or embalming among some Levantine Phoenicians in the Achaemenid Persian period (ca. 500 – 300 BCE). Nineteenth- and twentieth-century descriptions of partially preserved corpses are discussed alongside mortuary inscriptions, anthropoid sarcophagi, and grave goods. The variety of preservative evidence described by excavators, the empha- sis on the arrangement and permanence of the burial in inscriptions, the depiction of oil bottles on three sarcophagi, and the frequent inclusion of oil bottles in burials as grave goods combine to suggest a wider range of preservative actions than has previously been suggested. This evidence indicates that some elite Persian period Phoenicians may have been utilizing oils and resins in various ways to enact a kind of symbolic mummification-ritual acts that reflected the importance of the integrity of the burial but did not necessarily result in a well-preserved corpse. The possibility that oils and resins were similarly used in the interment rituals for adult cremations is also examined. This study supports recent scholarship on Phoenician mortuary practice that contends that both cremations and inhumations (partially embalmed or otherwise) are compatible expressions of a shared continuum of ideas held by Levantine Phoenicians.
Journal of Ancient History, 2022
This study reexamines a lynchpin of Neo-Babylonian Levantine Phoenician historiography: Nebuchadn... more This study reexamines a lynchpin of Neo-Babylonian Levantine Phoenician historiography: Nebuchadnezzar II’s purported thirteen-year siege of Tyre in the early sixth century bce. This detail about the length of the siege can be found only in Josephus’ (first century ce) writings, but this study’s new assessment of the (sixth-fifteenth century ce) manuscript evidence shows that the more commonly transmitted length of the siege was “three years and ten months.” Other manuscript variations further illustrate that there was little continuous cultural memory of the length of the event. When coupled with (a) other chronological problems in Josephus’ works, (b) a review of the complex Biblical, Mesopotamian, and Classical relevant literary sources, and (c) the lack of current evidence for any destruction levels or siegeworks at the site of Tyre, the case for insisting other sources be synchronized with this thirteen-year framework weakens. Shorter sieges or raids, blockades of the island or inland ports, and periodic Babylonian military presence to extract personnel and resources are all likely scenarios for Tyre and other Levantine sites during Nebuchadnezzar’s 43-year reign. Discarding a single “thirteen-year siege” as a reliable historical detail allows scholars of the Neo-Babylonian period in the central coastal Levant to shift their attention to more interesting questions, including exploring the causes and impacts of the evident changes in Tyre’s seaward and inland trading patterns in the sixth-fifth centuries.
The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East (ed. K. Neumann & A. Thomason), 2021
This chapter surveys and analyzes the aromatic substances associated with burial and the preserva... more This chapter surveys and analyzes the aromatic substances associated with burial and the preservation of the dead in the Iron Age Phoenician Levant (ca. 1100 - 300 BCE), as part of an exploration of the lost smell-scapes of the ancient world. First, Phoenician vocabulary related to smelling and pungent substances is outlined and investigated. Then, a review of coastal Levantine archaeological and textual evidence, along with comparanda from the wider Mediterranean world, is used to establish the range of smells and substances that would have been associated with mortuary practice at this time. While oleo-resins in use in the burial record overlap to some degree with those used in everyday life — in perfumes, religious practice, and other uses of scented oils and incense — the unique constellations of aromatics used to inter the dead highlight the importance of these deeply mnemonic sensory elements in our understanding of the Iron Age past.
Ancient Jew Review, 2021
Most of us became academics because we had life-changing teachers and developed a love of learnin... more Most of us became academics because we had life-changing teachers and developed a love of learning in the classroom that we want to pass on to our students. But few of us get or keep faculty positions as a result of our pedagogical innovations or even the general quality of our teaching. While there are exceptions to this rule, many of us have been warned against spending too much time on teaching, especially early in our careers. Even in venues specifically crafted to celebrate exciting pedagogical approaches to the Ancient Near East, a frequent refrain is that “this won’t get you tenure!” This study explores strategies of reframing, presenting, and translating your classroom innovations in ways that more academic institutions recognize or “count.” Conference presentations, workshops or special sessions, and publications will be addressed in turn, offering some guidance for engaging relevant pedagogical theory and finding appropriate venues for published work within our subfields. Finally, some observations about different institutional requirements, values, and priorities will offer realistic parameters within which to contextualize the merits and limitations of this kind of work. Available at https://www.ancientjewreview.com/articles/2021/3/18/making-it-count-translating-your-teaching-innovations-into-research-output
An Educators' Handbook for Teaching about the Ancient World (ed. Pinar Durgun), 2020
Simple dog burials, dating primarily to the second half of the 1st millennium b.c.e. (Persian–Hel... more Simple dog burials, dating primarily to the second half of the 1st millennium b.c.e. (Persian–Hellenistic periods [ca. 6th–1st centuries b.c.e.]), have been excavated at more than a dozen Levantine sites, ranging from a handful of burials to more than 1,000 at Ashkelon. This study systematizes previously discussed canine interments, distinguishing intentional whole burials from other phenomena (e.g., dogs found in refuse pits), and suggests a new interpretation in light of human mortuary practice in the Iron Age II–III-period (ca. 10th–4th centuries b.c.e.) Levant. The buried dogs seem to be individuals from unmanaged populations living within human settlements and not pets or working dogs. Frequent references to dogs in literary and epigraphic Northwest Semitic evidence (including Hebrew, Phoenician, and Punic personal names) indicate a complex, familiar relationship between dogs and humans in the Iron Age Levant, which included positive associations such as loyalty and obedience. At some point in the mid-1st millennium b.c.e., mortuary rites began to be performed by humans for their feral canine “neighbors” in a manner resembling contemporaneous low-energy–expenditure human burials. This behavioral change may represent a shift in the conception of social boundaries in the Achaemenid–Hellenistic-period Levant.
Issues in Middle East Studies, 2018
This project approaches 3D scanning and printing technology as one way to incorporate more hands-... more This project approaches 3D scanning and printing technology as one way to incorporate more hands-on activities in ancient Near Eastern classes. More specifically, the activity outlined here was designed for a small Liberal Arts
College course called “Gods of the Biblical World: Polytheism, Magic and Israelite Religion,” and imagined around the use of two objects donated by an alumnus to the Wofford College Fine Art collection: two unprovenanced clay molds for making small figurines or amulets of divine images (one in the shape of the Egyptian god Bes, 2.63 x 1.63 x 1 inches; the other in the form of the divine enthroned Isis, nursing her child Horus on her lap, 3 x 1.25 x 1.25 inches: http://tinyurl.com/WoffordMolds), probably dating to the New Kingdom period (16th-11th centuries BCE). Rather than simply showing the ancient molds in class and asking students to imagine how they were used, this project allowed students to act as Bronze or Iron Age Levantine craftspeople and religious practitioners, creating their own clay figurines from 3D-printed copies of the molds themselves. This allowed students to explore the lived experience of worship and ritual in the ancient Near East through both the hands-on figurine-making workshop and the subsequent designing of a plausible first-millennium BCE ritual around the figurine they’d made.
In this article we shed light on the position of Finland in conversations on the movement of unpr... more In this article we shed light on the position of Finland in conversations on the movement of unprovenanced cultural objects, within the national, the Nordic and the global contexts.…
![Research paper thumbnail of Thomas, Suzie;, Bonnie, Rick; Dixon, Helen; and Immonen, Visa. 2018. "Researching Cultural Objects and Manuscripts in a Small Country: The Finnish Experience of Raising Awareness of Art Crime," Arts 7 (special issue on Advances in Art Crime Research). [Click link to download PDF]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/56684828/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](In this article we shed light on the position of Finland in conversations on the movement of unpr... more In this article we shed light on the position of Finland in conversations on the movement of unprovenanced cultural objects, within the national, the Nordic and the global contexts. Finland’s geopolitical position, as a “hard border” of the European Union neighbouring the Russian Federation, and its current legislative provisions, which do not include import regulations, mean that it has the potential to be significant in understanding the movement of cultural property at transnational levels. In particular, we outline a recent initiative started at the University of Helsinki to kick-start a national debate on ethical working with cultural objects and manuscripts. We analyse exploratory research on current awareness and opinion within Finland, and summarize our current work to produce robust research ethics to guide scholars working in Finland. Although Finland has a small population and is usually absent from international discussions on the illicit movement of cultural property (save a few exceptions), we argue that it is still possible—and important—for scholars and others in Finland to affect policy and attitudes concerning art crime, provenance, and the role of stakeholders such as decision-makers, traders and the academy.
The Five-Minute Archaeologist, 2016
Each artefact you see in a museum has had a complicated journey from creation to deposition and f... more Each artefact you see in a museum has had a complicated journey from creation to deposition and from rediscovery to the museum case (or storage room). Together, all the chapters of this story might be called the object’s biography. The most recent chapter of a museum object’s biography—how that object ended up in a museum—can range from straightforward to extremely convoluted and ethically complex. This essay will briefly discuss the four categories of acquisition that will in general encompass the particularities of any individual object’s story: (a) purchase, (b) gift, (c) sponsoring an archaeological excavation, or (d) loan.
![Research paper thumbnail of Dixon, Helen. 2016. "What is Funerary Archaeology?" Pp. 174-77 in The Five-Minute Archaeologist, ed. C. Shafer-Elliott, Equinox Press [ABSTRACT and ToC].](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/47944077/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Funerary (or mortuary) archaeology can be summarized as the study of the world of the long dead. ... more Funerary (or mortuary) archaeology can be summarized as the study of the world of the long dead. This includes the study of dead bodies, certainly, but also investigation into funerary rituals, mortuary landscapes, the stuff placed with the deceased in a grave, and a society’s beliefs about death and the afterlife. Funerary archaeology is therefore a complicated undertaking, and involves looking at the biographical, demographic, religious, social, and political dimensions of human burial—categories that are interrelated and sometimes conflicting, but which can help inform the questions we ask during each mortuary excavation.
![Research paper thumbnail of Dixon, Helen. 2015. “Human Sacrifice,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions, ed. Eric Orlin, Routledge [PREPRINT].](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/45250616/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](![Research paper thumbnail of Root, Margaret Cool and Dixon, Helen. Forthcoming. “‘Blue from Babylon’: Notes from the Curatorial Trenches,” [publication of a seal with Aramaic inscription] in The Adventure of the Illustrious Scholar: Papers Presented to Oscar White Muscarella, eds. E. Simpson and S. German, Brill: 780-808.](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/62488317/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](The Adventure of the Illustrious Scholar: Papers Presented to Oscar White Muscarella, 2018
Talks & Public Lectures by Helen M Dixon
"Unsilencing the Archives" Lecture Series, 2022
Ancient and Medieval Middle East (AMME) seminar, University of Helsinki Helsinki , 2020
The November session of the Ancient and Medieval Middle East (AMME) seminar held in Helsinki focu... more The November session of the Ancient and Medieval Middle East (AMME) seminar held in Helsinki focuses on the topic of “Cultural Encounters” with speakers:
Prof. dr. Helen Dixon (East Carolina University): "Phoenicians Abroad:
Diaspora communities and trade-based encounters in the first
millennium BCE"
Dr. Céline Debourse (University of Vienna): “Between Real and Ideal:
The Babylonian New Year Festival in Text and History”
Websites by Helen M Dixon
The Arameans, Phoenicians, Philistines, Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites of the Iron Age (ca. 12... more The Arameans, Phoenicians, Philistines, Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites of the Iron Age (ca. 1200-300 BCE) are introduced through freely available web resources relating to their religious traditions and key archaeological excavations.
Berytus Archaeological Studies, 2022
Surprisingly little has been written about caves and other natural rock formations in the sacred ... more Surprisingly little has been written about caves and other natural rock formations in the sacred landscapes of the Phoenician Levantine coast in the first millennium BCE. Caves (natural and modified) were used as burial places and sites of worship, as evinced by inscriptions and offerings for unseen beings. This short study presents eight possible examples of rock openings used as tombs or sanctuaries associated with Phoenician material culture from within the borders of the modern state of Lebanon and offers some tentative suggestions about their significance, with the hope of stimulating new scholarship on the topic. In the first millennium BCE, caves could be sites of worship or healing for the living and sites of protection for the dead, since humans may have felt they were closer to the divine when underground.
[This article will be available open access in 2025, as the journal converts to a fully Open Access interface. Check https://www.aub.edu.lb/berytus/Pages/default.aspx for updates.]
Full citation: Dixon, Helen. 2021-22. “Worship and Burial in Bedrock: Phoenician Sacred Caves (and Other Rock Chambers) in First Millennium BCE Lebanon.” Berytus 61-62: 135-157 [published 2024; will appear open access in 2025 at https://www.aub.edu.lb/berytus/Pages/default.aspx].
Journal of Ancient History 12(2): 343-352, 2024
This article is part of a special issue of the Journal of Ancient History, “Social Biographies of... more This article is part of a special issue of the Journal of Ancient History,
“Social Biographies of the Ancient World.” It serves as response paper whose purpose is to identify a core question underlying the three case studies in this special issue: does Bourdieu’s field theory help us to understand how people made decisions in the ancient world, given that its predictive capabilities will necessarily be limited by the information we have? To explore this question, the idea of “using theory” as a method is engaged, comparing premodern applications of Bourdieu’s core concepts to the limits of the scientific “theory of evolution.” A brief assessment of the strengths of the case studies in this special issue is followed by an articulation of several resulting take-aways: (i) the value of the concepts of field, capital, and habitus in focusing on our data and its limits, rather than academic ideologies; (ii) the importance of articulating each scholarly assumption explicitly as we apply these concepts; (iii) the recognition that we can use Bourdieu to reveal new interpretive possibilities but not to fill in missing data; and (iv) the productive assumption that each text from the ancient world was the result of an actor(s) leveraging their capital in order to negotiate their perceived optimal position within a field. Together these points illustrate the utility of this issue’s systematic approach to the application of Bourdieu’s field theory in the study of the ancient world.
Rivista di Studi Fenici, Jun 12, 2023
This study examines and synthesizes a diverse corpus of evidence relevant to the possible practic... more This study examines and synthesizes a diverse corpus of evidence relevant to the possible practice of mummification or embalming among some Levantine Phoenicians in the Achaemenid Persian period (ca. 500 – 300 BCE). Nineteenth- and twentieth-century descriptions of partially preserved corpses are discussed alongside mortuary inscriptions, anthropoid sarcophagi, and grave goods. The variety of preservative evidence described by excavators, the empha- sis on the arrangement and permanence of the burial in inscriptions, the depiction of oil bottles on three sarcophagi, and the frequent inclusion of oil bottles in burials as grave goods combine to suggest a wider range of preservative actions than has previously been suggested. This evidence indicates that some elite Persian period Phoenicians may have been utilizing oils and resins in various ways to enact a kind of symbolic mummification-ritual acts that reflected the importance of the integrity of the burial but did not necessarily result in a well-preserved corpse. The possibility that oils and resins were similarly used in the interment rituals for adult cremations is also examined. This study supports recent scholarship on Phoenician mortuary practice that contends that both cremations and inhumations (partially embalmed or otherwise) are compatible expressions of a shared continuum of ideas held by Levantine Phoenicians.
Journal of Ancient History, 2022
This study reexamines a lynchpin of Neo-Babylonian Levantine Phoenician historiography: Nebuchadn... more This study reexamines a lynchpin of Neo-Babylonian Levantine Phoenician historiography: Nebuchadnezzar II’s purported thirteen-year siege of Tyre in the early sixth century bce. This detail about the length of the siege can be found only in Josephus’ (first century ce) writings, but this study’s new assessment of the (sixth-fifteenth century ce) manuscript evidence shows that the more commonly transmitted length of the siege was “three years and ten months.” Other manuscript variations further illustrate that there was little continuous cultural memory of the length of the event. When coupled with (a) other chronological problems in Josephus’ works, (b) a review of the complex Biblical, Mesopotamian, and Classical relevant literary sources, and (c) the lack of current evidence for any destruction levels or siegeworks at the site of Tyre, the case for insisting other sources be synchronized with this thirteen-year framework weakens. Shorter sieges or raids, blockades of the island or inland ports, and periodic Babylonian military presence to extract personnel and resources are all likely scenarios for Tyre and other Levantine sites during Nebuchadnezzar’s 43-year reign. Discarding a single “thirteen-year siege” as a reliable historical detail allows scholars of the Neo-Babylonian period in the central coastal Levant to shift their attention to more interesting questions, including exploring the causes and impacts of the evident changes in Tyre’s seaward and inland trading patterns in the sixth-fifth centuries.
The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East (ed. K. Neumann & A. Thomason), 2021
This chapter surveys and analyzes the aromatic substances associated with burial and the preserva... more This chapter surveys and analyzes the aromatic substances associated with burial and the preservation of the dead in the Iron Age Phoenician Levant (ca. 1100 - 300 BCE), as part of an exploration of the lost smell-scapes of the ancient world. First, Phoenician vocabulary related to smelling and pungent substances is outlined and investigated. Then, a review of coastal Levantine archaeological and textual evidence, along with comparanda from the wider Mediterranean world, is used to establish the range of smells and substances that would have been associated with mortuary practice at this time. While oleo-resins in use in the burial record overlap to some degree with those used in everyday life — in perfumes, religious practice, and other uses of scented oils and incense — the unique constellations of aromatics used to inter the dead highlight the importance of these deeply mnemonic sensory elements in our understanding of the Iron Age past.
Ancient Jew Review, 2021
Most of us became academics because we had life-changing teachers and developed a love of learnin... more Most of us became academics because we had life-changing teachers and developed a love of learning in the classroom that we want to pass on to our students. But few of us get or keep faculty positions as a result of our pedagogical innovations or even the general quality of our teaching. While there are exceptions to this rule, many of us have been warned against spending too much time on teaching, especially early in our careers. Even in venues specifically crafted to celebrate exciting pedagogical approaches to the Ancient Near East, a frequent refrain is that “this won’t get you tenure!” This study explores strategies of reframing, presenting, and translating your classroom innovations in ways that more academic institutions recognize or “count.” Conference presentations, workshops or special sessions, and publications will be addressed in turn, offering some guidance for engaging relevant pedagogical theory and finding appropriate venues for published work within our subfields. Finally, some observations about different institutional requirements, values, and priorities will offer realistic parameters within which to contextualize the merits and limitations of this kind of work. Available at https://www.ancientjewreview.com/articles/2021/3/18/making-it-count-translating-your-teaching-innovations-into-research-output
An Educators' Handbook for Teaching about the Ancient World (ed. Pinar Durgun), 2020
Simple dog burials, dating primarily to the second half of the 1st millennium b.c.e. (Persian–Hel... more Simple dog burials, dating primarily to the second half of the 1st millennium b.c.e. (Persian–Hellenistic periods [ca. 6th–1st centuries b.c.e.]), have been excavated at more than a dozen Levantine sites, ranging from a handful of burials to more than 1,000 at Ashkelon. This study systematizes previously discussed canine interments, distinguishing intentional whole burials from other phenomena (e.g., dogs found in refuse pits), and suggests a new interpretation in light of human mortuary practice in the Iron Age II–III-period (ca. 10th–4th centuries b.c.e.) Levant. The buried dogs seem to be individuals from unmanaged populations living within human settlements and not pets or working dogs. Frequent references to dogs in literary and epigraphic Northwest Semitic evidence (including Hebrew, Phoenician, and Punic personal names) indicate a complex, familiar relationship between dogs and humans in the Iron Age Levant, which included positive associations such as loyalty and obedience. At some point in the mid-1st millennium b.c.e., mortuary rites began to be performed by humans for their feral canine “neighbors” in a manner resembling contemporaneous low-energy–expenditure human burials. This behavioral change may represent a shift in the conception of social boundaries in the Achaemenid–Hellenistic-period Levant.
Issues in Middle East Studies, 2018
This project approaches 3D scanning and printing technology as one way to incorporate more hands-... more This project approaches 3D scanning and printing technology as one way to incorporate more hands-on activities in ancient Near Eastern classes. More specifically, the activity outlined here was designed for a small Liberal Arts
College course called “Gods of the Biblical World: Polytheism, Magic and Israelite Religion,” and imagined around the use of two objects donated by an alumnus to the Wofford College Fine Art collection: two unprovenanced clay molds for making small figurines or amulets of divine images (one in the shape of the Egyptian god Bes, 2.63 x 1.63 x 1 inches; the other in the form of the divine enthroned Isis, nursing her child Horus on her lap, 3 x 1.25 x 1.25 inches: http://tinyurl.com/WoffordMolds), probably dating to the New Kingdom period (16th-11th centuries BCE). Rather than simply showing the ancient molds in class and asking students to imagine how they were used, this project allowed students to act as Bronze or Iron Age Levantine craftspeople and religious practitioners, creating their own clay figurines from 3D-printed copies of the molds themselves. This allowed students to explore the lived experience of worship and ritual in the ancient Near East through both the hands-on figurine-making workshop and the subsequent designing of a plausible first-millennium BCE ritual around the figurine they’d made.
In this article we shed light on the position of Finland in conversations on the movement of unpr... more In this article we shed light on the position of Finland in conversations on the movement of unprovenanced cultural objects, within the national, the Nordic and the global contexts.…
In this article we shed light on the position of Finland in conversations on the movement of unpr... more In this article we shed light on the position of Finland in conversations on the movement of unprovenanced cultural objects, within the national, the Nordic and the global contexts. Finland’s geopolitical position, as a “hard border” of the European Union neighbouring the Russian Federation, and its current legislative provisions, which do not include import regulations, mean that it has the potential to be significant in understanding the movement of cultural property at transnational levels. In particular, we outline a recent initiative started at the University of Helsinki to kick-start a national debate on ethical working with cultural objects and manuscripts. We analyse exploratory research on current awareness and opinion within Finland, and summarize our current work to produce robust research ethics to guide scholars working in Finland. Although Finland has a small population and is usually absent from international discussions on the illicit movement of cultural property (save a few exceptions), we argue that it is still possible—and important—for scholars and others in Finland to affect policy and attitudes concerning art crime, provenance, and the role of stakeholders such as decision-makers, traders and the academy.
The Five-Minute Archaeologist, 2016
Each artefact you see in a museum has had a complicated journey from creation to deposition and f... more Each artefact you see in a museum has had a complicated journey from creation to deposition and from rediscovery to the museum case (or storage room). Together, all the chapters of this story might be called the object’s biography. The most recent chapter of a museum object’s biography—how that object ended up in a museum—can range from straightforward to extremely convoluted and ethically complex. This essay will briefly discuss the four categories of acquisition that will in general encompass the particularities of any individual object’s story: (a) purchase, (b) gift, (c) sponsoring an archaeological excavation, or (d) loan.
Funerary (or mortuary) archaeology can be summarized as the study of the world of the long dead. ... more Funerary (or mortuary) archaeology can be summarized as the study of the world of the long dead. This includes the study of dead bodies, certainly, but also investigation into funerary rituals, mortuary landscapes, the stuff placed with the deceased in a grave, and a society’s beliefs about death and the afterlife. Funerary archaeology is therefore a complicated undertaking, and involves looking at the biographical, demographic, religious, social, and political dimensions of human burial—categories that are interrelated and sometimes conflicting, but which can help inform the questions we ask during each mortuary excavation.
The Adventure of the Illustrious Scholar: Papers Presented to Oscar White Muscarella, 2018
"Unsilencing the Archives" Lecture Series, 2022
Ancient and Medieval Middle East (AMME) seminar, University of Helsinki Helsinki , 2020
The November session of the Ancient and Medieval Middle East (AMME) seminar held in Helsinki focu... more The November session of the Ancient and Medieval Middle East (AMME) seminar held in Helsinki focuses on the topic of “Cultural Encounters” with speakers:
Prof. dr. Helen Dixon (East Carolina University): "Phoenicians Abroad:
Diaspora communities and trade-based encounters in the first
millennium BCE"
Dr. Céline Debourse (University of Vienna): “Between Real and Ideal:
The Babylonian New Year Festival in Text and History”
The Arameans, Phoenicians, Philistines, Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites of the Iron Age (ca. 12... more The Arameans, Phoenicians, Philistines, Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites of the Iron Age (ca. 1200-300 BCE) are introduced through freely available web resources relating to their religious traditions and key archaeological excavations.
![Research paper thumbnail of Dixon, Helen. 2013. "Phoenician Mortuary Practice in the Iron Age I-III (ca. 1200 – ca. 300 BCE) Central Coastal Levant," University of Michigan, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis [FRONT MATTER & ToC].](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/32399238/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](This dissertation examines the mortuary practices of the Iron I-III Levantine Phoenicians to docu... more This dissertation examines the mortuary practices of the Iron I-III Levantine Phoenicians to document and analyze material expressions of social identity. Previous scholarship on Iron I-II Phoenicians has emphasized their city-based political allegiances on the one hand, and relatively uniform material culture on the other. But political or cultural affiliation with a particular city does not seem to be consistently signaled in the mortuary record of the northern coastal Levant in these early periods.
The history of the Phoenicians, or inhabitants of the Iron Age northern coastal Levant, has long been told from the perspective of their neighbors – via the texts of the Hebrew Bible, Greek and Roman authors, and inscriptions from Western Phoenician and Punic “colonies.” This has been the case in part because the most significant Phoenician cities (e.g. Byblos, Beirut, Sidon, Tyre) have been continually inhabited since the Iron Age (or earlier), and extensive excavation in these urban centers is not fully possible. However, a significant number of Iron Age burials found outside settlement boundaries – in the form of isolated tombs, clusters of graves, and extensive cemeteries – have been explored or excavated since the 1850s throughout coastal southern Syria, Lebanon, and northern Israel. This project catalogs the more than 1400 burials known from the Phoenician “homeland” to date, offering a substantive contribution to a social history of the Levantine Phoenicians in the earliest periods of their cultural distinctiveness.
The study begins with a reassessment of all inscriptions relating to Phoenician mortuary practice thought to date to the Iron I-II (chapter two) and Iron III – Greco-Roman (chapter three) periods. The literary sources for Phoenician mortuary practice are then analyzed, first addressing the biblical texts (chapter four), and then classical sources (chapter five). This newly evaluated textual corpus is finally supplemented with a discussion of the burial database and mortuary landscapes of the Iron I-III period northern coastal Levant (chapter sixr). All of this material is incorporated into a discussion of the treatment of the dead as a stage for Phoenician meaning-making in the Iron I-III periods, and a reassessment of Phoenician social identity in this period (chapter seven).
An examination of the Phoenician mortuary record indicates no sharp regional distinctions in material culture reflective of an expected city-based model of Phoenician identity. Instead, a significant degree of variation is evident in individual cemeteries, indicating that Iron I-II period Phoenicians wished to “signal” not political allegiance or ethnic identity, but other aspects of their social identities in death. Contrasting the burial data from these early centuries with the innovative mortuary practices which arose in the better-documented Iron III (Persian) period illustrates how Achaemenid influence in the region seems to have significantly altered these early Phoenician concepts of social status and affiliation.
Review of Biblical Literature (September 2020), 2020
konsequente Beschränkung auf die imago Dei-Problematik und deren durch und durch metaphorische (!... more konsequente Beschränkung auf die imago Dei-Problematik und deren durch und durch metaphorische (!) Präsentation in Gen. 1,26-28 u.a. hätte m.E. zu seriöseren Ergebnissen geführt. So aber bleiben mehr Fragen zurück, als der Verfasserin lieb sein kann.
Syllabus, resource list, and assignments for an M.A. Seminar developed for the History Department... more Syllabus, resource list, and assignments for an M.A. Seminar developed for the History Department at North Carolina State University in 2014, while I was in residence as a Postdoctoral Teaching Scholar.
"This course aims to provide an introduction the fields of epigraphy and paleography (as well as related disciplines), presenting the study of alphabetic Greek inscriptions as a useful tool for historians of the ancient world. Students will learn to reconcile disparate translations of Greek texts, and evaluate other scholars' dates, interpretations, and discussions of Greek inscriptions on a variety of media. In particular, facility with electronic resources and databases will be encouraged. Students enrolled in the course will produce one close study (and critical edition) of a Greek inscription for their midterm inscription project (worth 25% of the course grade), and will produce a longer discussion of a historical question dependent on inscriptional evidence for their final writing project (worth 35% of the course grade). A student presentation of an inscriptional case study (preferably connected to the student's final writing project, worth 25% of the course grade) will also be required of registered students."
Syllabus for a small advanced undergraduate seminar developed for the History Department at North... more Syllabus for a small advanced undergraduate seminar developed for the History Department at North Carolina State University in 2015, while I was in residence as a Postdoctoral Teaching Scholar. The syllabus is limited by the English-only requirement for readings in undergraduate seminars.
Syllabus for a small M.A. seminar developed for the History Department at North Carolina State Un... more Syllabus for a small M.A. seminar developed for the History Department at North Carolina State University in 2014, while I was in residence as a Postdoctoral Teaching Scholar.
Probably the most recognizable images of the divine from the northern coastal Levant are the bron... more Probably the most recognizable images of the divine from the northern coastal Levant are the bronze and gold-leaf figurines of the stylized striding god in his conical hat found at Ugarit, Byblos, and the like. These striking objects still often adorn publications about ancient Phoenician religion; however, this iconic artifact seems to taper out or disappear from the Phoenician archaeological repertoire following the collapse of the Late Bronze Age. This paper evaluates the available evidence for images of the divine from the Iron Age I-III period Levantine Phoenician “homeland,” which indicates that a significant shift in perception of the gods took place at the beginning of the Iron Age. This shift in how gods and goddesses were portrayed reflects not only the changing geo-political realities of the Iron I-III periods, but also an arguably related evolution in the structure of the divine hierarchy. Inscriptional evidence for the identification of divine figures will be used to evaluate the extant iconographical data, and controversial or ambiguous archaeological objects—including miniature clay masks and figurines—from coastal Syria, Lebanon, and Northern Israel will also be reexamined in light of this changing picture of the inhabitants of the heavens.
Scholarship on Iron Age Phoenician religion—especially Phoenician sacred space in the form of tem... more Scholarship on Iron Age Phoenician religion—especially Phoenician sacred space in the form of temples and shrines—has tended to emphasize similarities and continuity, underscoring shared features in sites from Spain to Syria. This approach has produced a kind of (mostly implicit) trait list, taking for granted a Phoenician canon of religious architectural features and related practices. While this constructed canonical repertoire sometimes includes details known from one or two well-known structures in the Phoenician Levant (i.e. coastal Syria, Lebanon, and Northern Israel), other reconstructions are based solely on western (often Punic) exemplars or even biblical characterizations.
A different picture arises, however, when Phoenician Levantine religious structures are studied as a discrete data set. This paper will provide a survey of all known religious structures from the Iron Age II and III (ca. 1000 – 300 BCE) period Phoenician “homeland,” emphasizing diachronic change and regional diversity in the period in question. A more inclusive accounting of the varieties of religious space in operation in Levantine Phoenicia raises new research questions about the social dimensions of religious practice in this period of accelerating political change.
Neo-Babylonian policy in the late 7th- 6th c. BCE central coastal Levant is often reduced to gene... more Neo-Babylonian policy in the late 7th- 6th c. BCE central coastal Levant is often reduced to generalizations based on Josephus’ accounts, and biblical representations of Phoenician cities are still brought to bear on the topic as historical truths. In particular, discussions of Phoenicia in this period tend to focus on the diminishing commercial significance of Tyre in the wake of Nebuchadnezzar II’s purported 13-year siege of that city, thought to have ended in the late 570s BCE. While Assyriologists have long been dubious about the plausibility of this siege (not directly mentioned in any Mesopotamian source), little has been done to reevaluate the likelihood of this military event using local Levantine evidence. In this paper, I collect all explicit textual references to a Neo-Babylonian siege of Tyre, alongside all texts thought to indirectly reflect the impact of the siege (e.g. references to Nebuchadnezzar’s building projects in Tyre itself), and evaluate them in light of the contemporary, extant archaeological and mortuary evidence from Tyre and its Levantine dependents.
This reanalysis shows that a land blockade of the island of Tyre is more likely than the 13-year military siege described in later literary texts, while highlighting the difficulties of separating legend from historical reality in this period in the Levant. When this revised understanding is examined alongside the Hoftkalender Prism and Nebuchadnezzar II’s inscriptions at Wadi esh-Sharbin (along with three others at the Nahr el-Khalb and in the Beqaa), our picture of Neo-Babylonian “policy” in Phoenician territory can be considerably refined.
Discussions of Phoenicia in the Neo-Babylonian period tend to focus on the changing role of Tyre ... more Discussions of Phoenicia in the Neo-Babylonian period tend to focus on the changing role of Tyre in the wake of Nebuchadnezzar II’s siege (or rather, blockade) of that city, ending in the late 570s BCE. While this event did indeed have dramatic implications for Carthage and the balance of trade in the Mediterranean, other aspects of Phoenician administration and commerce under Neo-Babylonian rule have gone un- or under-explored. This paper will go beyond Josephus’ account of Tyrian royal affairs to survey other types of archaeological and inscriptional evidence that bear on the history of Phoenician sites in this period. What changes would Arwad, Byblos, Beirut, Sidon, and cities further south have experienced? How might the status of Phoenician colonies abroad reflect these “homeland” changes?
A brief reconstruction of Phoenicia’s political structure and economic role under Neo-Babylonian rule will be offered, moving site-by-site through its territory to illustrate the available evidence. Diachronic change at each site will be discussed where possible. Although this is difficult to detect in a period lasting just sixty-five years, data from the early Achaemenid period in Phoenicia may in some cases shed light on the status that certain sites carried over from Neo-Babylonian arrangements. Finally, Phoenicia’s value to the Babylonians will be assessed given the implications of this new reconstruction.
Despite the archaeological advances of the last forty years in both Levantine territory associate... more Despite the archaeological advances of the last forty years in both Levantine territory associated with the Phoenicians (modern coastal southern Syria, Lebanon, and northern Israel), and at western Phoenician or Punic colonies, relatively little has been written on the specific problems of understanding life for Phoenician women in the Iron Age I – III (ca. 1200-ca. 300 BCE) periods. Literary figures like the biblical Jezebel or Euripides’ chorus are sometimes still the focal point for discussion of roughly half the inhabitants of the northern coastal Levant.
Utilizing information from the excavation of domestic contexts (in Beirut, Sarepta, and other sites), a database of over 1400 burials from the Levantine Phoenician homeland, inscriptions and other sources, this paper explores the extant evidence for these Iron Age I-III Phoenician women. What can burials of women tell us about their social roles and values? How applicable is information on women obtained from Neo-Hittite, Aramean, Israelite, or Judahite sites? The challenges of locating women archaeologically, given the specific limitations of Phoenician homeland archaeology, and of weighing textual evidence from neighboring Iron Age I-III period cultures will also be addressed.
A series of Iron Age II – III Levantine Phoenician sites have yielded archaeological evidence of ... more A series of Iron Age II – III Levantine Phoenician sites have yielded archaeological evidence of intentional dog burials – eight in a 10th-8th century BCE cemetery at Khaldé, one under a broken vessel in the small salvage excavations at 5th-4th century BCE Tell el-Burak, and indications of an “extended dog cemetery” found in excavations of the 6th-4th century BCE fortifications in Beirut. The 5th century BCE dog cemetery at Ashkelon, further south, produced more than 1200 partial or complete dog burials, and has also been attributed to Phoenician influence. Several hypotheses have been suggested to explain the practices, beliefs, or cult which produced the cemetery at Ashkelon, variously citing cultural influence from the Aegean, Anatolian, Egyptian, Israelite, and Mesopotamian spheres.
But might a better understanding of the range of human mortuary practices in the Phoenician Levant shed light on the significance of these dog burials? Referencing a database of over 1400 human burials from the northern coastal Levant, this paper examines whether these dog burials should be seen as evidence of an extension of “Phoenician” mortuary rites to non-human members of the community, or as a product of a distinct cult that required the ritual burial (or slaughter) of these canines. Given the complex continuum of Iron Age Mediterranean beliefs about the dog, an analysis of “internal” evidence from the northern coastal Levant may well offer additional insight into this puzzling practice.
A series of Iron Age Levantine Phoenician sites have yielded archaeological evidence of purposefu... more A series of Iron Age Levantine Phoenician sites have yielded archaeological evidence of purposeful dog burials – eight in a 10th-8th century BCE cemetery at Khaldé, one under a broken vessel in the small salvage excavations at 5th-4th century BCE Tell el-Burak, and an “extended dog cemetery” found in excavations of the 6th-4th century BCE fortifications in Beirut. The 5th century BCE dog cemetery at Ashkelon, further south, produced more than 1200 partial or complete dog burials, and has also been attributed to Phoenician influence. Because the Lebanese dog burials have not all been thoroughly published, this practice has not been examined in detail outside of discussion of the Ashkelon dog cemetery.
This paper examines intentional dog burial as a Mediterranean phenomenon, seeking to understand the Phoenician examples in light of the treatment of dogs at death (and their ritual associations in other contexts) in neighboring Mediterranean cultures. Examples from the Aegean, Anatolian, and Egyptian cultural spheres will be examined. Rather than seeing the Levantine burials as evidence for a Phoenician practice to be delineated on a purely “ethnic” basis, a more complex continuum of Iron Age Mediterranean beliefs about the canine will be proposed as necessary to understand this phenomenon.
As ASOR works to establish new guidelines and suggested practices with regard to presenting, publ... more As ASOR works to establish new guidelines and suggested practices with regard to presenting, publishing, and working with objects of unknown origin, it may be useful to examine the policies already in place within the national and international professional organizations of the museum field. The guidelines put forth by various committees of the American Association of Museums (AAM), the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), the International Council of Museums (ICOM), and other organizations have already struggled with these issues and have crafted a series of policies to guide museums in navigating international legislation (from UNESCO / UNIDROIT), establishing “best practices,” and in making case-by-case decisions about acquisition and display.
Examining these museum-oriented policies will assist not only in crafting our own guidelines for academic “best practices,” but will also highlight the dangers of relying on decisions made by museums in determining what “should” or “shouldn’t be” fair game for study and publication. As we continue to wrestle with the questions that came up in last year’s workshop – Do museum catalogs count as a “first publication”? Are items on permanent loan from private collections subject to the same ethical standards as other museum collections? Is “public access” to artifacts more important than their “cultural patrimony” or the integrity of the archaeological record? Etc. – a closer examination of how the museum field has envisioned and articulated its own ethical role seems a crucial next step.
Using a database containing every known burial from Iron Age homeland Phoenician mortuary deposit... more Using a database containing every known burial from Iron Age homeland Phoenician mortuary deposits (in the form of cemeteries, "tophets," and individual or clustered burials), this paper explores the mortuary record of the Phoenician homeland diachronically, focusing on the Iron II – Persian Period transition. Despite the diversity of the Phoenician mortuary record throughout the Iron Age, significant changes in preferred burial goods, placement of bodies, methods of burial, and use of inscriptions are evident during this 6th-5th century transition. Examining this data regionally along the Levantine coast will allow a thorough and detailed inventory of the constellation of changes evident in the archaeological record. Finally, I will offer some preliminary suggestions about the significance of these modifications for our understanding of the changing nature of Phoenician identity as expressed in royal, elite, “ordinary,” and child burials under the influence of the Achaemenid Empire.
This paper examines the mortuary record of the Iron Age I-II (1200-525 BCE) in the Phoenician hom... more This paper examines the mortuary record of the Iron Age I-II (1200-525 BCE) in the Phoenician homeland (the coastal Levant, from southern Syria through Lebanon and into northern Israel). Though much attention has been focused on burial practices in the Phoenician / Punic colonies in North Africa and elsewhere throughout the Mediterranean, only a few key studies have begun to systematically evaluate Phoenician burials from the mainland Levant. Recent excavations of the cemetery at Tyre, as well as the publication of monographs on the funerary stelae corpus and the refinement of the Phoenician ceramic sequence, make a complete catalog of Phoenician mortuary data all the more timely and potentially useful.
Using a database containing every known burial from homeland Phoenician mortuary deposits in the form of cemeteries, "tophets," and individual or clustered burials (some discovered as early as the 1860s), I will explore the potential and limitations of this sporadic and uneven data set. Implications for our understanding of the social history or cultural diversity of Iron I-II Phoenicia will be discussed, drawing on anthropological models and other regional case studies of this kind.
Our knowledge of Phoenician mortuary practice is in large part extrapolated from cemetery landsca... more Our knowledge of Phoenician mortuary practice is in large part extrapolated from cemetery landscapes in Phoenician / Punic settlements throughout the Mediterranean, despite over 100 years of archaeologically obtained burial evidence from the Phoenician Levantine homeland. The problem is not a dearth of evidence, but obstacles like early record-keeping, political divisiveness, and war-damaged archives. The Khaldeh cemetery, uncovered during the 1960s Beirut airport expansion, contained 422 Iron I-II burials. Though never fully published, and despite data lost to the Lebanese civil war, an investigative analysis of its contents, layout, and evolution can aid in understanding Levantine Phoenician commemoration of the dead.