Anthropological Archaeology

This is the first circular and call for papers of the forthcoming online conference on the "Archaeology of the bone objects in the eastern Mediterranean, Near East,  the Black Sea area and the Balkans  during the Hellenistic, Roman and Early Byzantine periods" which will be held on 14th of May, 2025 on Zoom.us.
Ancient bone objects were found in relatively large quantities in the entire Mediterranean, from Spain to Syria and Egypt to France, where they were manufactured between the Neolithic and Medieval periods. The art of carving animal bones involves especially antler and horn. However, the spectrum of the worked bone objects recovered from Anatolia, rest of the eastern Mediterranean, Near East, the Black Sea area and Balkans is very varied, and reflects different characteristics of Graeco-Roman and Byzantine daily life. In these areas they were also utilised as grave goods secondarily. They were exported or imported over the entire ancient Graeco-Roman and Byzantine worlds.
In this conference papers dealing with ancient artefacts or objects manufactured by worked bone, antler, ivory, animal teeth, mother of pearl and cockleshell will be included. Main material groups made by bones are as follows: items connected to personal grooming, weaponry, artifacts used in to spinning or in pottery decoration, artifacts related to cosmetics, jewellery, combs, pins for clothing and women’s hair, items related to dressmaking and textile (particularly sewing needles, weaving implements or buttons), parts of soldiers’ equipment, items used for leather working, amulets and other magical items, knife handles, musical instruments, playing stones (e.g., lopsided dices), frames of various kinds (e.g., of mirrors), furniture (including fittings, wood sidings and inlayed decoration), boxes, plaques, writing items (for example, κάλαμοι, calami in Lat.), liturgical and religious items (e.g., crosses and reliquaries), half-finished products and miscellania. Just as in other Roman sites in the rest of the ancient world, hairpins are the most numerous artifacts made of bone or antler in the Eastern part of the Empire. Gaming pieces represent the other widespread and customary instrumentum category of the worked bones. Several other material groups also used during the proceesing of bone artefacts, for example, some objects may have been filled with coloured wax to make them to stand out.
So far the study of this material group has been overlooked, whereas there is still a huge amount of unpublished material from excavations, field surveys and museums in the entire Mediterranean and rest of the ancient world. There is a regular conference series of the Worked Bone Research Group (WBRG; cf. <https://www.wbrg.net/>) which include almost all periods and areas. In our e-meeting in 2025 we only focus on bone objects between the fourth century B.C. and the sixth century A.D., and attempt to set out a comprehensive model for the study of bone objects, including their definition, typology, chronology, contexts, function, regional characteristics, production and distribution patterns in the whole eastern Mediterranean geographies, including the Near East, Black Sea area and Balkans. The increasing number of recent finds in our concerned areas over the last thirty years, thanks to the development of preventive archaeology, has tended to challenge our previous observations and assumptions on Graeco-Roman and Byzantine worked bone objects.
It is also our intention to create a complete bibliography of previous publications on bone objects for several areas and chronologies.
We warmly invite contributions by scholars and graduate students from a variety of disciplines related to this material group. Intended to bring together scholars of Greek, Roman and Early Byzantine instrumenta / artefacts’ archaeology to discuss a range of issues concerning this material group characteristics, this video conference should be an excellent opportunity to increase our knowledge about ancient worked bones. The following theme groups are the main questions of the conference which are prescriptive:

- Bone objects from archaeological field projects, museums and private collections,
- Graeco-Roman bone objects in comparison with the bone objects of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic periods, Bronze and Iron Ages,
- Graeco-Roman bone objects in comparison with the Minoan and Mycenaean bone objects,
- Etymology of bone objects in ancient Near Eastern, eastern Mediterranean and Aegean languages,
- Ancient Greek, Latin and Byzantine textual sources on bone objects,
- Typological evolution and design of bone objects,
- Selection criteria for some certain animal genres for bone-working,
- Decoration of bone objects, as detailed chronologies should be established for both the produced forms and their decoration,
- Chronologies of these objects that can highlight the social spread of these products,
- Manufacturing technics, manufacturing tools, major production centers and workshops of bone objects in the Hellenistic, Roman and Early Byzantine periods, their organisation and interactions.
- Distribution of bone objects, economic and social aspects: in what type of socio-economic context are they found?,
- Typological and functional features of bone objects during the Hellenistic, Roman and Early Byzantine periods: what might the utilitarian, social and/or symbolic functions or practices of these objects have been?
- Identification of the economic factors that contributed to the standardization in the bone-working,
- What ancient Greeks, Romans and Byzantines thought about afterlife? Bone objects in the eastern Mediterranean funerary contexts,
- The role of monastic or religious economy on Early Byzantine bone-working,
- Commodities and their trade through bone objects,
- Relations of bone objects to metal, terracotta, glass, wooden or stone objects: how did this material group fit in with objects made from different materials, particularly metal, glass, or wood? Can any stylistic links be found between them?
- Roman bone objects in the eastern and western Mediterranean and Europe, and their differences,
- Hellenistic and Roman gravestones and other iconographic media depicting bone objects,
- Conservation of worked bone objects, especially excavated finds: current strategies and future approaches,
- Archaeometric analyses of these objects,
- Miscellanea.

On these themes and questions, all approaches and methods susceptible to bring some progress to our current knowledge are of course welcome: archaeology, physical anthropology, archaeozoology, osteoarchaeology, bioarchaeology, palaeohistology, ancient history, history of art, cultural anthropology etc.
A special focus of the workshop is the identification of workshops from different regions, cities and areas, in particular capital cities (such as Byzantium, Ephesus, Pergamum, Antioch-on-the-Orontes, Alexandria, Athens, Rome etc.) with main workshops. A regional approach will enable us to understand the influences and contacts between workshops. Were these exclusively urban activities, or also rural? What motivated their establishment? Political powers, raw materials, the development of urban centres and the urban elite (merchants, craftsmen, religious orders, etc.) or economic outlets? And, are there any imitations or copies in certain localities suggesting competition between workshops?
Another important topic is the manufacturing techniques which were varied and depended on the composition and morphology of each raw material type as much as on the artefact to be produced. Regardless of the raw material, the manufacturing process of an ancient bone object was usually multi-stage:

1. Selection and acquisition of the raw material;
2. Preparation of the raw material, including cleaning, drying and cutting into pieces;
3. The appropriate working processes using instruments like knives, chisels, files, lathes and bow-drills;
4. Finishing the worked objects by grinding, polishing and colouring.

The previous finds reflect that mostly manufacturing techniques were related to an organized production where the different manufacturing stages were standardized and predefined which can be identified as a chaîne opératoire. Particular attention should be paid to these technical aspects, which are the integral parts of the uniqueness of most of the ancient worked bone objects.
We also need to look at the distribution of these objects on a local, regional, and even supra-regional scale, and trade networks. Some have crossed the overseas, such as Anatolian products unearthed in England. How can these exchanges be explained?
Our conference is primarily virtual, and will take place on Zoom; but if any of participant will wish to appear in Izmir physically, she/he is welcome to present her/his paper in our conference room to the audience which will also be livestreamed and broadcasted simultaneously on Zoom. The conference is free.

Marrakech, embedded in the Haouz Plain north of the High Atlas, was founded by the Almoravids in the XIth century. With the city’s flourishing political, cultural and economic development from the XIth/XIIth century onwards, a neighbourhood of tanneries was established in the eastern part of the medina, still existing today. The artisanal transformation of raw animal skins into high-quality leather and its processing into various products has thus represented an important cultural heritage for almost a millennium. A new research project ‘dbagh’ sheds light on this complex topic from an anthropological and archaeological perspective. The focus is on precise documentation of the ‘traditional’ tanners’ quarter in order to document the tacit knowledge handed down over generations, as well as the material culture and structures. In addition, a little-known area of small tanneries to the north of the medina will be analysed.

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ملخص: تأسست مدينة مراكش، الواقعة في سهل الحوز شمال الأطلس الكبير، على يد المرابطين في القرن الحادي
عشر. ومع ازدهار المدينة سياسياً وثقافياً واقتصادياً منذ القرن الحادي عشر/ الثاني عشر فصاعداً، تم إنشاء حي للمدابغ في
شرق المدينة، والذي لا تزال معالمه قائمة حتى اليوم. وبالتالي، فإن صيرورة التحويل الحرفي للجلود الحيوانية إلى جلد عالي
الجودة ومعالجتها، للحصول على منتجات مختلفة، يمثل بح ق تراثاً ثقافياً مهماً منذ ما يقرب من ألف عام. ويلقي مشروع بحث
جديد بعنوان: ”دباغ“، الضوء على هذا الموضوع المعقد من منظور أنثروبولوجي وأثري. ومن ناحية أولى، ينصب التركيز
على التوثيق الدقيق لحي المدابغ التقليدي، من أجل دراسة المعرفة الضمنية التي توارثتها الأجيال، فضلاً عن الثقافة المادية
وهياكل الانتاج. وعلاوة عل ى ذلک، وقع الحرص عل ى تحليل مكونات منطقة غير معروفة من المدابغ الصغيرة في شمال المدينة.

Recent archaeological research in western Jordan, and the (semi-)arid regions of the southern Levant more generally, have prompted wide-ranging inquiry regarding technologies, economic interconnections, settlement patterns and subsistence strategies during the 11th and 10th centuries BCE. For western Jordan in particular, recent proposals have focussed on questions related to the nature of socio-political organization, arguing for the presence of both sedentary and nomadic hierarchies that challenge existing interpretations of largely decentralized agropastoral subsistence-based communities. Central to these discussions are a series of small, fortified sites, originally identified as the ‘Mudayna’ sites of the Wadi al-Mujib region. Recent archaeological research north of the Wadi al-Mujib, however, has identified that this type of site is not geographically restricted, but part of a broader regional, yet decentralized, pattern of agropastoral subsistence communities. This article introduces the site of ʿAyun adh-Dhib, an additional site of this character north of the Wadi al-Mujib. Findings from an archaeological survey conducted in 2023 at ʿAyun adh-Dhib support the notion of an emerging regional pattern of social adaptive responses to living in specific ecological niches during a period of social and political transition in the early Iron Age.