Project Description
This project is part of a long-term inventory and research initiative focusing on the Euphrates Expedition Survey that the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) conducted with a team of international archaeologists between 1974 and 1978. The material collected constitutes over 300,000 objects and includes pottery, jewelry, metalwork, figurines, and clay tablets and is one of the largest Syrian archaeological collections in the United States.
The premier multi-component site, Tell Hadidi, located in Northwest Syria on the banks of Lake Assad, was primarily occupied between 3000 BC and 1335 BC with some later, much smaller, Roman and Medieval settlements. The site was destroyed in modern-day conflicts in Syria and the fate of the material housed at the Aleppo Museum is currently unknown. This means that the MPM collection has become a more vital and valuable resource for current and potential researchers around the world.In addition to the Tell Hadidi site material, the second largest site represented in the collection comes from el-Qitar. Until recently, however, the collection has had little direct research conducted on it. The efforts of two University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee master’s theses (Rosenow [2005] and Henry [2015]) and one PhD dissertation (Boor 2012) have helped to document aspects of this vast collection through publication (See attached bibliography). The UWM faculty mentor (Anthropology Professor Bettina Arnold) and the MPM supervisor (Anthropology Curator Dawn Scher Thomae) chaired and/or served as committee members on these thesis proiects. Other UWM students have also worked on the inventory and documentation of the collection (Fehring, Stock, and Roth) but there are additional possibilities for emerging archaeologists from UWM to engage with this collection.
Tasks and Responsibilites
The proposed project is to develop a comprehensive inventory of the el-Qitar collection currently housed at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Items will be identified, described, and documented using available on-site and electronic resources and the student will be trained in ceramic analysis.
Desired Qualifications
None