Dislodging Disciplinary Silos at Dura Europos

February 15, 2023 Founded by the Seleucids, successively occupied by the Arsacids (Parthians) and Romans, and spectacularly conquered in a Sassanian siege, the borderland town of Dura-Euopos (Syria) was home throughout its history to a fascinatingly diverse population. Since its initial excavation, the site has become justly famous thanks to unique circumstances of preservation that resulted in the site’s retention of significant organic materials and other traces of daily life long-vanished elsewhere. Together, the multiethnicity and significance of the site’s finds make it a rare (and invaluable) archaeological resource that transcends modern disciplinary boundaries. And yet, the site and its important archaeological resources have been too often considered the purview of ‘Western’ disciplines, despite the fact that the site’s Arsacid occupation was indeed its longest phase. This talk will first explore how the original excavators’ choices with regard to data-processing and publication strategies have had an enduring impact on who mobilizes Durene data and to what intellectual ends. It will then turn to introduce the efforts of the International (Digital) Dura-Europos Archive (IDEA), a project recently funded by the NEH and designed to help cut across the disciplinary silos that still very much shape research on the site. Hunnell Chen, Anne. "Dislodging Disciplinary Silos at Dura-Europos," Pourdavoud Center Lecture Series. February 15, 2023. https://pourdavoud.ucla.edu/media/vid...