Anna Collar
I am particularly interested in the spread of new ideas - especially new religious ideas - through social networks. My focus has been the Graeco-Roman Near East and east Mediterranean, and my current research, as part of the Emergence of Sacred Travel in the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean project at the University of Aarhus, is exploring the interface between Syrian cults, Syrian migration and social networks in the Roman Empire.
In my first book (Religious Networks in the Roman Empire: the spread of new ideas, CUP 2013) I examine the spread of religious ideas through social networks - focusing on the cults of Jupiter Dolichenus, Theos Hypsistos, and Diaspora Judaism - by taking a bottom up approach to the epigraphic and archaeological evidence. The book was a finalist in the American Academy of Religion's Best First Book in the History of Religion book prize in 2014.
I cut my teeth excavating Bronze Age Palaikastro on Crete; but spent five years supervising at the Iron Age-Late Antique sanctuary at Dülük Baba Tepesi in eastern Turkey, run by the Universität Münster. I have worked as a professional archaeologist for the University of Cambridge Archaeological Unit, and I am currently involved in a rescue survey project on the Goksu Valley in Turkey in collaboration with Bitlis Eren University, Leicester and UCL.
Address: Department of Culture and Society – Section for Classical Archaeology
Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5
Building 1461, Room 318
8000 Aarhus C
Denmark
In my first book (Religious Networks in the Roman Empire: the spread of new ideas, CUP 2013) I examine the spread of religious ideas through social networks - focusing on the cults of Jupiter Dolichenus, Theos Hypsistos, and Diaspora Judaism - by taking a bottom up approach to the epigraphic and archaeological evidence. The book was a finalist in the American Academy of Religion's Best First Book in the History of Religion book prize in 2014.
I cut my teeth excavating Bronze Age Palaikastro on Crete; but spent five years supervising at the Iron Age-Late Antique sanctuary at Dülük Baba Tepesi in eastern Turkey, run by the Universität Münster. I have worked as a professional archaeologist for the University of Cambridge Archaeological Unit, and I am currently involved in a rescue survey project on the Goksu Valley in Turkey in collaboration with Bitlis Eren University, Leicester and UCL.
Address: Department of Culture and Society – Section for Classical Archaeology
Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5
Building 1461, Room 318
8000 Aarhus C
Denmark
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Books by Anna Collar
and history has been the adoption of new perspectives which
see human societies in the past—as in the present—as made up of networks of interlinked individuals. This view of people as always connected through physical and conceptual networks along which resources, information, and disease flow, requires archaeologists and historians to use new methods to understand how these networks form, function, and change over time. The Connected Past provides a constructive methodological and theoretical critique of the growth in research applying network perspectives in archaeology and
history, and considers the unique challenges presented by datasets in these disciplines, including the fragmentary and material nature of such data and the functioning and change of social processes over long timespans. An international and multidisciplinary range of scholars debate both the rationale and practicalities of applying network methodologies, addressing the merits and drawbacks of specific techniques of analysis for a range of datasets and research questions, and demonstrating their approaches with concrete case studies and detailed illustrations. As well as revealing the valuable contributions archaeologists and historians can make to network science, the volume represents a crucial step towards the development of best practice in the field, especially in exploring the interactions between social and material elements of networks, and long-term network evolution.
Editor of Special Journal Issues by Anna Collar
Papers by Anna Collar
and history has been the adoption of new perspectives which
see human societies in the past—as in the present—as made up of networks of interlinked individuals. This view of people as always connected through physical and conceptual networks along which resources, information, and disease flow, requires archaeologists and historians to use new methods to understand how these networks form, function, and change over time. The Connected Past provides a constructive methodological and theoretical critique of the growth in research applying network perspectives in archaeology and
history, and considers the unique challenges presented by datasets in these disciplines, including the fragmentary and material nature of such data and the functioning and change of social processes over long timespans. An international and multidisciplinary range of scholars debate both the rationale and practicalities of applying network methodologies, addressing the merits and drawbacks of specific techniques of analysis for a range of datasets and research questions, and demonstrating their approaches with concrete case studies and detailed illustrations. As well as revealing the valuable contributions archaeologists and historians can make to network science, the volume represents a crucial step towards the development of best practice in the field, especially in exploring the interactions between social and material elements of networks, and long-term network evolution.
To begin to conceptualise walking to a sanctuary as sacred work we need somewhere to walk to – we require a sanctuary that prerequisite a difficult journey. Urban sanctuaries still involve a journey of some sort, but to really consider the journey as labour entails a journey that is physically demanding. My discussion will take mountains and the sanctuaries in their peaks as the archetypal ‘difficult place’ to get to, looking at how mountains have been conceptualised, before using remote sensing to attempt to reconstruct a journey to the sanctuary of Zeus and summit of Mount Kasios in Asia Minor.
Turning our focus onto the performance of the connection/s that extra-urban sanctuaries have with their city/ies, in other words, onto the journey itself, we illuminate something not usually looked at – the demand that these places exert on worshippers, that they physically express their devotion to the deity through movement. Focusing on the walked journey offers a way to reconceptualise our notion of cult participation and economy.
In this paper, I explore the worship of the Near Eastern storm god, Hadad/Zeus Hadados/Jupiter Dolichenus in his original context of north Syria at the time that the area was coming under Roman Imperial control. The worship of Jupiter Dolichenus seems to have been common across both north Syria and in the smaller kingdom of Commagene to the north, which remained independent from Rome until AD 72. The first century AD Syriac letter of Mara bar Sarapion gives us a valuable insight into the emotional reactions people had to the annexation of Commagene, describing the great grief of the refugees fleeing the city of Samosata, removed from their homes, people, and crucially, the places of worship of their gods.
I will look again at the evidence for the worship of Hadad/Zeus Hadados/Jupiter Dolichenus in the area (largely inscriptions but also including other artefacts, iconography and physical sites), seeking out clues that might hint at continuities of earlier or distinctly local practices, while also observing the changes in the way the deity was represented or addressed, which will illuminate the local religious beliefs, structures and social networks within a broader and changing political regime – that eventually led to this initially localised deity finding worshippers across the entire Roman Empire.
Practical Networks Workshop, August 22nd-23rd 2017
Deadline call for papers: May 21st 2017
Notification of acceptance: May 29th 2017
Five years have passed since the first Connected Past conference (Southampton 2012) brought together scholars working in archaeology, history, physics, mathematics and computer science to discuss how network methods, models and thinking might be used to enhance our understanding of the human past. Much has happened in these intervening years: applications of network analysis have expanded rapidly; a number of collected volumes dealing explicitly with network analysis of the past have been published (e.g. The Connected Past, OUP 2016; Special Issue of the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 2015; Network Analysis in Archaeology, OUP 2013); and several dedicated groups of scholars are thriving, including the Connected Past itself which hosted conferences in Paris and London, but also the Historical Network Research group, Res-Hist and others. The Connected Past 2017 will provide an opportunity to take stock of the developments of the past five years and to discuss the future of network research in archaeology and history. How will new network models, methods and thinking shape the ways we study the past?
We welcome submissions of abstracts that address the challenges posed by the use of or apply network approaches in historical/archaeological research contexts, welcoming case studies drawn from all periods and places. Topics might include, but are not limited to:
● Missing and incomplete data in archaeological and historical networks
● Networks, space and place
● Network change over time
● What kinds of data can archaeologists and historians use to reconstruct past networks and what kinds of issues ensue?
● Categories in the past vs categories in our analysis: etic or emic, pre-determined or emergent?
● Formal network analysis vs qualitative network approaches: pros, cons, potential, limitations
Please submit your abstract limited to 250 words before midnight (GMT) of May 21st 2017 to [email protected]
NB. If there is sufficient demand, we will endeavour to organise a crêche for delegates’ children (under 3). An extra fee may be payable for this, although fee-waivers may be available in certain circumstances. Further details would be provided in due course. In order to allow us to assess demand, please let us know in advance if this would be useful for you.
The often large and complex datasets common in archaeology and history have stimulated the use of various techniques from network analysis as a tool for exploring these data, and such applications are already proving to be innovative and fruitful approaches to topics such as the transmission of ideas and technologies, the movements of people, objects and belief systems, interregional interactions and maritime connectivity. This growing interest is reflected in the increasing number of conferences on network analysis we have seen in these disciplines, including ‘Networks in the Greek World’ in Rethymnon, Crete (2006), ‘Communities and Networks in the Ancient Greek World’ held in Dublin (2009), a session at the Society for American Archaeology (2010), and a session at Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) Beijing (2011).
These meetings have resulted in original archaeological and historical applications of network analysis published in collected volumes and journal papers, and clearly attest to its potential. However, the adoption of network techniques within archaeology and history remains surprisingly limited. Existing applications have not yet tapped into the full potential of a network perspective. The nature of historical and archaeological data as indirect and fundamentally fragmentary reflections of past dynamic processes certainly presents network analysts with a challenge, but one that promises to allow archaeologists and historians to make valuable contributions to the “new” science of networks, especially as regards the exploration of temporal change in networks over supra-generational and potentially evolutionary timeframes.
This conference will provide a platform for pioneering, multidisciplinary collaborative work in the field of network science. It aims to bring together the disparate international community of scholars working to develop network-based approaches and their application to the past and to provide a forum for the discussion of the most recent applications of the techniques, in order to ask what has been successful or unsuccessful, to foster cross-disciplinary collaborations and cooperation, and to stimulate debate about the application of network science within the disciplines of archaeology and history in particular, but also more broadly across the entire field.
The LGASSP was started in 2013 with the aim of documenting the endangered archaeological heritage of the Lower Göksu valley in the Mersin Province of Turkey.
This heritage will be lost forever with the construction of the Kayraktepe Hydroelectric Dam, as this will form a huge artificial lake that will flood the whole valley. For this reason, our team surveyed the area between the towns of Silifke (ancient Seleucia ad Calycadnum) and Mut (ancient Claudiopolis) in 2013 and 2014. The extensive surveys conducted during these two seasons has allowed us to discover several new sites and we have been able to push back the date of earliest occupation in the valley into the Chalcolithic period.
These initial surveys have also allowed us to better understand the evolving settlement patterns in the valley from prehistoric times until the medieval period.
Data from previously known sites were also collected during the 2013 and 2014 seasons as a part of a more intensive methodological approach to the study of ancient settlements and their relationships with their environment, and our 2015 season has been mainly aimed at developing this approach through more detailed studies and more intensive investigations.
In 2015, the team continued documenting archaeological sites and monuments in the valley before the construction of the Kayraktepe Dam, which will submerge the heritage and the landscape. The 2015 season was almost totally devoted to intensive surveys conducted in two alluvial plains with relatively rich archaeological deposits: one in the area where the Kurtsuyu River joins the Göksu River; and the other where the Ermenek River meets the Göksu River.
These intensive surveys were accompanied by geophysical studies and aerial photography. This article presents a summary of the field season, a discussion of the different fieldwork methods that were applied and tested, the results of the intensive surveys, and a fresh consideration of the local settlement patterns and their temporal development in light of the findings.
The 2015 season of this Bitlis Eren University project, which is conducted in collaboration with the University of Leicester, was funded by the British Academy through a Newton Advanced Fellowship. The survey project will continue in 2016 with the generous support of the British Academy and we hope to start excavating the site of Çingentepe in 2017 in collaboration with the Silifke Museum.
The 2015 fieldwork team consisted of Tevfik Emre Şerifoğlu (director), Naoíse Mac Sweeney (co-director), Carlo Colantoni (field director), Nazlı Evrim Şerifoğlu (fieldwork assistant, illustrator and photographer), Anna Collar (Roman and Byzantine specialist), Stuart Eve (database and GIS manager) and Özlem Evci (the government representative). Graduate students Bengi Başak Selvi, Panagiotis Georgopoulos, Nevra Arslan, Songül Yetişir and Şıvan Ayus took part in all fieldwork activities.
UPCOMING PRESENTATIONS
Şerifoğlu, T.E., MacSweeney, N., Colantoni, C. 2016 April
Before the Flood. The Lower Göksu Archaeological Salvage Survey Project. The results of three seasons of survey along the Göksu River Valley of Mersin Province, Turkey. 10 ICAANE, Vienna (Austria).
FURTHER READING
Şerifoğlu T.E., Mac Sweeney, N., Collar, A., Colantoni, C. and Eve, S. 2016 (submitted).
Lower Göksu Archaeological Salvage Survey Project, The Third Season. In Anatolica XLII.
Şerifoğlu, T.E., N. MacSweeney and Colantoni, C. 2015
Lower Göksu Archaeological Salvage Survey Project: the Results of the 2013-2014 Seasons. In Archaeology of Anatolia. Cambridge Scholars Press, pg. 228-254 (in press).
Şerifoğlu, T.E., N. MacSweeney and Colantoni, C. 2015.
Lower Göksu Archaeological Salvage Survey Project, the preliminary results of the second season. Anatolica 41: 177-190.
Şerifoğlu, T.E., N. MacSweeney and Colantoni, C. 2014.
Lower Göksu Archaeological Salvage Survey Project, the preliminary results of the first season. Anatolica 40: 71-92.
Şerifoğlu, T.E., Mac Sweeney, N. and C. Colantoni, 2013: 'The Lower Göksu Archaeological Salvage Survey', Heritage Turkey 3:31.