Spring Lecture Series: New Research | London Centre for the Ancient Near East

Convened by Dr Yağmur Heffron (UCL), with the assistance of Abaan Zaidi, İrem Nogay, Wenqi Fang.

Location varies, please check under each lecture. Online participation should be possible. Please sign up to receive a link via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lcane-seminar-series-new-research-tickets-1980393071989?aff=oddtdtcreator

19th January, 6.15pm. Dr Nancy Highcock (Oxford) New Horizons in Ancient Lycaonia: a late Hellenistic-period household at Türkmen-Karahöyük

Rm 309 UCL Roberts Building.

Although the Hellenistic period (c. 323- 30 BC) in Anatolia is well understood through the stone-built cities of the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, a much patchier picture emerges further inland. In 2024, the Türkmen Karahöyük Archaeological Project (TKAP) was launched at the site of Türkmen-Karahöyük, Konya as an international research effort to better understand the long historical trajectory of a prominent settlement in this region, including its culminating phase in the 1st c. BCE-1 st c. CE. Indeed, it is during the Hellenistic period, when the rider region was known as Lycaonia, that the site was at its maximum extent. Excavation of two 10 x 10 m squares of a large Late Hellenistic domestic mud-brick building (1st c. BCE) in 2024 revealed a destruction level that has left building’s architecture and contents in an incredible state of preservation, including a wealth of reconstructable in situ materials. This presentation will situate these initial results in the wider study of Late Hellenistic Anatolia. In addition, the excavation of the Late Hellenistic settlement at Türkmen-Karahöyük presents a ripe opportunity for an integrated collaboration between Classical and pre-Classical archaeologists that will shed light on the complex constructions of identity in a relatively region that experienced transformative societal changes at the end of the 1st millennium BCE.

Nancy Highcock is the Jaleh Hearn Curator for Ancient Middle East (Assistant Keeper) in the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum. She is also an Associate Faculty Member of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

Prior to her appointment at the Ashmolean in 2024, she was the interim Curator for Ancient Middle East at the British Museum and was a post-doctoral lecturer and teaching associate in Mesopotamian archaeology at the University of Cambridge.

Nancy is a Field Supervisor at the Türkmen-Karahöyük Archaeological Project, Konya, Türkiye. She has also worked at the sites of Niğde-Kınık Höyük and Tell Atchana in Türkiye.

Her research interests centre on the material culture and social histories of ancient West Asia, with a particular focus on ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia and the relationships between the two regions in the Bronze and Iron ages. She also works on the entanglements of material culture with collective identities and action, gender and social status.

9th February 6.15pm LECTURE CANCELLED Dr Joshua Britton (London) Measure for Measure: Weights and weighing in the Lower Town of Kültepe-Kaneš CANCELLED

Monday 2nd March Dr Glynnis Maynard (Cambridge)

Location: Archaeology G6 LT, Gordon Square (31-34) & (14) Taviton St

Title: Transplants in the heartland after 612 BCE? ‘Post-Assyrian’ perspectives from the site of Qach Rresh in Iraqi Kurdistan

During the last century of the Neo-Assyrian empire (c.715-612 BCE), the Assyrian heartland in Northern Iraq underwent a dramatic reengineering of its environment, with an intensification of the agricultural hinterland and the redistribution of settlers and deportees into rural spaces between key urban centers. Yet what happened to this human project in the wake of imperial collapse? Since 2022, the Rural Landscapes of Iron Age Imperial Mesopotamia Project (RLIIM) has sought to add new evidence to the still murky picture of ‘Post-Assyrian’/late Iron Age III archaeology in the wider vicinity of ancient Arbela (modern Erbil) at the site of Qach Rresh. Excavation across the site has revealed its extended use from the 7th to 4th centuries BCE, beginning from an initial construction phase of buildings theorized to have been used to administer agropastoral production. In recent seasons, it is evident that occupants of the site quickly abandoned these buildings’ original intended function, instead using them as refuse dumps immediately or near-immediately following Assyrian collapse, with one building (Building A) being repaired and reinhabited after it had degraded for an unknown amount of time. Moreover, finds attributed to the Achaemenid cultural horizon reveal new material evidence for Achaemenid presence in Northern Iraq. This talk will situate Qach Rresh within its wider historical milieu to deliver new insights into Assyria’s ‘post-Assyrian’ heartland.

Monday 16th March Dr Ben Dewar, Scribes of Xul: History, Horror, and the Occult in Death Metal Receptions of Ancient Mesopotamia, Archaeology G6 LT, Gordon Square (31-34) & (14) Taviton St

This talk analyses aspects of the reception of ancient Mesopotamia in extreme metal music, with a particular focus on the 1977 hoax grimoire, the Simon Necronomicon, as a source for these receptions. This topic has been highlighted in previous literature but has been received little in-depth analysis. The use of elements from this book (which combines early Assyriological scholarship, pulp fiction, and modern occultism) in the lyrics of early extreme metal innovators Celtic Frost and some of death metal’s most popular bands, such as Morbid Angel, Deicide, and Behemoth, has resulted in much of its terminology entering the general vocabulary of extreme metal, often divorced from its original context. As a result, explicit representations of the distant Mesopotamian past in death metal are caught between competing forms of authenticity: a historical authenticity grounded in academic scholarship, and a genre authenticity that prizes a knowledge of the tropes and vocabulary of extreme metal, horror, and the occult. How do bands negotiate the tension between historicity and genre authenticity in their representations of Mesopotamian antiquity? I approach this topic through case studies of three death metal bands that have frequently written material on the Mesopotamian past, Morbid Angel, Nile, and Devangelic. Using a theoretical framework of “reconstructionist” and “eclectic” reception that I adapt from studies on neopagan religions, I explore how these bands recontextualise and present their sources (both academic and esoteric) to construct authenticity for their death metal receptions of the Mesopotamian past.

Monday 23rd March Dr Frank Simons (Dublin) Burn your way to health and happiness – the ritual and incantation series Šurpu

Location: Archaeology G6 LT, Gordon Square (31-34) & (14) Taviton St

Abstract: The ritual and incantation series Šurpu ‘Burning’ is one of the most important sources for understanding religious and magical practice in the ancient Near East. The purpose of the ritual was to rid a sufferer of a divine curse inflicted due to personal misconduct. The text of the series is composed chiefly of the incantations recited during the ceremony. These are supplemented by brief ritual instructions as well as a ritual tablet which details the ceremony in full. The paper will present a comprehensive and radical reconstruction of the entire text, including the reintroduction of an entire Tablet, the absence of which was previously unsuspected, as well as restoring the missing beginning of the ritual.