Official series of the scientific publications of CAMNES in collaboration with the publishing house Arbor Sapientiae of Rome

Introduction to the editorial series

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The SANEM editorial series, ‘Studies on the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean’, is the official channel for the scientific monographic studies of CAMNES, Center for Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies, created with the support of the publishing house Arbor Sapientiae of Rome.
The logo of the series, a chimera with wings, was chosen as a symbolic embodiment of the close connections and merging traits of Eastern and Western cultures. Indeed, the iconography of the chimera was born within the Classical ambit, but its roots are to be found in the Near East as the examples found in Ebla (18th century BCE) and in Carchemish (11-9th century BCE) demonstrate.
Works of significant scientific value are published in the SANEM series regarding the broad fields of archaeology, anthropology, history, philology and art history of the ancient past of the Near Eastern and Mediterranean cultural areas. Particular attention is devoted to modern methods of investigation for the reconstruction and the interpretation of these cultures in a time span that stretches from prehistory to the Classical period.
According to the principles of CAMNES, the SANEM series is ideal not only for established scholars but also for the publication of the works of young researchers at the beginning of their academic careers and their research projects.
Given the international context in which CAMNES operates, the works of the series will be predominantly published in English, and subjected to double-blind peer review by the SANEM Scientific Committee, created specifically for the editorial series. In special cases CAMNES may also rely on a peer review outside the Scientific Committee.
All volumes in the series are to be published following an irregular chronological sequence and will be issued in paper and in digital editions.
 

Rethinking Osiris
Proceedings of the International Conference. Florence, Italy 26-27 March 2019

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CONTRIBUTIONS
Massimiliano FRANCI, Introduction; Mark SMITH, Following Osiris: New Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century; Nils BILLING ‘Meryre has come to you, Horus, so that you may make it for him, this great and perfect speech that you gave to Osiris’. Ritual identification of the king with Osiris’ in the pyramids of Unas and Pepi I; Mariano BONANNO, A New Osirian Solar Epithet in TT49? Considerations about the nocturnal sun in the chapel; Sara CARAMELLO, Osiris, the Aramaeans, and the Water; Maria Cristina GUIDOTTI, Unpublished images of Osiris in the Egyptian Museum of Florence; Nadine GUILHOU, Osiris and the Heavenly Bodies; Dagmara HałaDaj, Scenes and symbols of Osirian character in the iconography of Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Dynasty coffins from Thebes; Francesca IANNARILLI, The Nubian Osiris: traditions and elaborations of the Osiris’s cult in the Kushite culture; Ilaria INCORDINO, Osiris in Byzantine Egypt? Possible reminiscences of Osirian themes in pottery decoration from Manqabad monastery (Asyut); Eid MERTAH, Studying polychromed bronze statues of Osiris: a methodology; Irene MORFINI, Milagros ÁLVAREZ SOSA, A New ‘Osiris Tomb’ in Sheikh Abd el-Qurna – Luxor: From Myth to Architecture, Andrzej NIWIŃSKI, Osiris on the 21st Dynasty cofins; Massimiliano NUZZOLO, The Appearance of Osiris. A case of royal patronage or a bottom up process?; Gyula PRISKIN, The 104 amulets of Osiris at Dendera; Valentina SANTINI, The role of Osiris During the Amarna age: From Texts to Depictions; Marina SARTORI, Osiris and the (lotus) fan. On the birth of a rare iconographic association; Uta SIFFERT, Osiris—the Mummy par excellence? Investigating the iconography, development and function of the Mummy shape during the Middle Kingdom.

Constructing Kurgans
Funerary Customs in the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia During the Bronze and Iron Age

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Nicola Laneri, Sylvie Müller Celka, Giulio Palumbi: Constructing Kurgans: An Introduction; Adam T. Smith: Bronze Age Metaphysics: Burial and Being in the South Caucasus; Sabine Reinhold: Transforming the Horizon – Early Mounds and Monumentalised Landscapes in the North Caucasus and Their Social Context; Yilmaz Selim Erdal, Bakhtiyar Jalilov, Meliha Melis Koruyucu, Valentina d’Amico, Ömür Dilek Erdal: Kura-Araxes Kurgans at Uzun Rama, Azerbaijan: Interpretation of the Burial Customs and Human Remains; Muzaffar Magsud Oglu Huseynov: Tatarli Kurgans; Brenna r. Hassett, Haluk Sağlamtimur, Metin Batihan: The Radical Death of the 4th Millennium: Contextualising Human Sacrifice at Başur Höyük; Goderdzi Narimanishvili, Nino Shanshashvili, George Narimanishvili: Kurgans of Trialeti: The Roads to Eternity; Aynur Özfirat: Kurgans in the Highlands of Eastern Anatolia: From the Kura-Araxes Period to the Urartian Kingdom; Şevket Dönmez: Horse Burials in Anatolian Protohistory; Artavazd Zakyan, Mateusz Iskra, Hasmik Simonyan: The Internal Arrangement and Reuse of Kurgan Chambers in the Metsamor Cemetery; Zaur Hasanov: Two Different Funerary Rituals in the Kurgans of the Eastern Part of the South Caucasus in the Early Iron Age; Lorenzo Crescioli: The Scythians and the Southern Caucasus Region.

Between Syria and The Highlands
Studies in Honor of Giorgio Buccellati & Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati

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CONTRIBUTIONS
Acknowledgements, Foreword, Giorgio Buccellati & Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati, Author Biographies, Maamoun Abdulkarim, Afaf Laila: Ruweiha, a Village from Northern Syria During Byzantine Period: Study of Preservation of Domestic Architecture; Neville Agnew, Martha Demas: Integrating Conservation, Archaeology, and Community at Tell Mozan (Urkesh); Silvia Alaura: The Wandering Life of the Hittite Seal Dresden ZV 1769 at the End of the 19th Century: New Archival Light; Mohammed Alkhalid: Tales from the Desert Nomads: From Textual Sources till Gertrude Bell’s Letters; Alfonso Archi: Šamagan and the Mules of Ebla. Syrian Gods in Sumerian Disguise; Piotr Bieliński, Dorota Bielińska: A Tale of Two Temples of the Ninevite 5 Period; Luca Bombardieri: Give a Man a Fish or Teach Him How to Fish? Situated Learning and the Emergence of Communities of Practice in Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East; Marco Bonechi: How Kirta’s Love for Blue-Eyed Hurriya Clarifies Ebla Ophtalmic Terms and the 3rd Column of the ‘Barton Cylinder’; Federico Buccellati: Houses of Nippur: An Architectural Study using EnCAB; Amalia Catagnoti: Symbol of Wisdom, Decorated with Earrings: The Ear in the Ebla Texts; Dominique Charpin: Quelques Aspects Méconnus du Statut et du Rôle des Quartiers-bâbtum dans les Villes Paléo-Babyloniennes; Caitlin Chaves Yates: Tell Mozan’s Outer City in the Third Millennium BCE; Marta D’Andrea, Agnese Vacca: Alike but Different. Drinking Vessels in the Eastern Mediterranean around 2500-2000 BC; Vittoria Dall’Armellina, Elena Rova: Beasts and Wine. Zoomorphic Vessels and the Northern Corridor of the Near East; Rita Dolce: On the Basalt Base from Susa (Sb5): A Reinterpretation; Ernestine S. Elster: The Scepter of Sitagroi and Early Bronze Age Symbols of Power; Stefania Ermidoro: The Repentant God in the Flood Story. A Comparison Between When Gods Were Men and Genesis 6-9; Diane Favro: The Roman Bridge over the Chabinas: Meaning in Infrastructure; Candida Felli: Ladies and Cups: A Reconsideration of some Akkadian Artefacts from Northern Syria; Ellery Frahm: Seen Through a Glass Darkly: Reexamining Connections Between Mesopotamia and the Caucasus; Pelio Fronzaroli: About the Eblaite Names of the “Cultic Journey”; Thomas Gamkrelidze: La Patria Protoindeuropea e le Migrazioni Indeuropee; Rick Hauser: Learning from Canis 203. Impressions of an Absent Artifact; Frank Hole, Yukiko Tonoike: Traces of Third Millennium Pastoralism in the Jebel Abd al-Aziz Region; Marta Luciani: Between Enduring Symbols and Elite Identity: New Glyptic Evidence from Nuzi; Yasmine Mahmoud: Through the Eyes of the Ancients. The Perception of Beauty in 3rd Millennium Syria; Massimo Maiocchi: Thoughts on Ancient Textual Sources in Their Current Digital Embodiments; Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault, Olivier Rouault: Les Murs de Kilizu; Paolo Matthiae: A Note on Lions at Temple Entrances in Old and Middle Syrian Temples; Stefania Mazzoni: Up and Down in Early Syrian Palaces: Spaces of Power Performance and Economic Wealth; Diederik J. W. Meijer: Giorgio Buccellati’s critique and archaeological explanation; Maria Gabriella Micale: Some Considerations on Walter Andrae’s “Urformen des Kultbaues”, in Mensch und Baukunst. Eine Correspondenz 2 (1953): 1-5, or rather…On a Hidden Grundthema of Archaeological Research; Rauf M. Munchaev, Shahmardan N. Amirov: Collection of Seals from the Settlement of Tell Hazna 1 (Syria); Davide Nadali: Miniatures of Wars: Fights, Skirmishes and Conflicts in Ancient Near Eastern Seals; Luca Peyronel: Il ruggito del Leone. Qualche Osservazione sulle Immagini Ferine nel Mondo Siriano del III Millennio a. C.; Frances Pinnock: A Game of Goddesses (and Thrones?). Some Reflection about a Cylinder Seal Impression from the Royal Palace G of Ebla (ca. 2300 BC); Daniel Potts: Wild Water Buffalo (Bubalus arnee [Kerr, 1792]) in the Ancient Near East; Marina Pucci, Sebastiano Soldi: Going Red in The Iron Age II: The Emergence of Red-Slip Pottery in Northern Levant with Specific Reference to Tell Afis, Chatal Höyük and Zincirli Höyük; Marco Ramazzotti: Nel Segno di Ebla. Memoria Topologica per la Città del Trono al Centro delle Quattro Parti del Mondo; Monica Smith: The Terqa Cloves and the Archaeology of Aroma; Marie-Claude Trémouille, Roberto Dan: Between Philology and Archaeology. Some Comments on Urartian Landscape Management; Willeke Wendrich: Placentas, Sieves and the Ancestors.

SANEM 2

Settlement Patterns and Political Landscapes in the Upper Tigris River Valley

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Located between the Caucasus, the Syrian-Iraqi border, south-eastern Anatolia and western Iran, the upper Tigris River region lies at a crucial intersection between Anatolia and Mesopotamia and became, since the early Holocene, a focal point in human history. There, communities during the Neolithic period experienced vibrant local developments. During the Uruk expansion in the 4th millennium BCE, the region played a key role in the relations between southern Mesopotamian societies and Anatolian people. The region served as a site of contact between commercial and imperial forces throughout the Bronze and the Iron Ages when it was highly affected by the contacts led by the Assyrians with the northern local political entities. By the end of the 1st millennium BCE, the region had become the location where “East” and “West” met.
Despite its central role in the evolution and history of the Near East, until the late 1980’s the valley was terra incognita in terms of archaeological research. The start of archaeological projects in the region was due to the planned construction of a series of dams along the upper course of the Tigris. The aim of this study is to connect all the data collected from the rescue survey projects carried out in the last decades with those available from the archaeological excavations and to focus on the changes in settlement patterns throughout the millennia. This volume is an attempt to organize our knowledge over the upper Tigris River valley, in light of the last decades of research, and as a reassessment of the available archaeological data according to the topographic method, under a diachronic perspective.

Stefano Giuntoli

Arbor Sapientiae (Roma), 2015

Questa monografia ha per oggetto lo studio della necropoli etrusca di età ellenistica di Pian delle Rusciare, la prima in ordine di cronologia di intervento di scavo nell’area di Macchia della Riserva, situata nelle immediate vicinanze di Tuscania (VT). La necropoli comprende undici tombe del tipo a camera ipogea e a fossa, praticate nella roccia tufacea naturale, in gran parte sottoposte a violazione totale o parziale. Due delle tombe a camera hanno restituito complessivamente sei sarcofagi di nenfro, con coperchi di tipo architettonico. I materiali dei corredi recuperati non sono numerosi e consistono in manufatti di bronzo, di ferro e in vasellame in ceramica a vernice nera, dipinta a decorazione lineare, sovradipinta, acroma depurata e grezza, spesso rinvenuti in condizioni di integrità o di completa ricomponibilità. Alcuni di essi risultano particolarmente significativi, come ad esempio uno specchio bronzeo decorato con una scena del mito greco dell’allattamento di Telefo bambino da parte di una cerva, la cui esegesi lascia intravedere una trama di rapporti con un sistema di valori della società etrusca del tempo, e due vasi a vernice nera con un’iscrizione graffita con le lettere CU, che sembrano rinviare alla presenza in questa necropoli di un ramo della importante gens Curunas, già documentata nella stessa Tuscania e a Tarquinia. In senso più generale, lo scavo di Macchia della Riserva/Pian delle Rusciare contribuisce ad integrare le nostre conoscenze riguardo alla consistenza, all’estensione e alla dislocazione delle necropoli tuscaniesi nel corso dell’età ellenistica, fornendo ulteriori spunti di riflessione sulle modalità del popolamento dell’area nel corso di quest’epoca.

SoRS (School of Religious Studies) editorial series based on the relationship between material culture and religion published by CAMNES in collaboration with Oxbow Books

Chief editor:
Nicola Laneri
Editorial board:
Ian Hodder, Peter Dubovsky, Francesco D’Andria, Alessandro Naso, Pascal Butterlin, Aren Maier, Julia Shaw, Salima Ikram, James Brown, Paolo Matthiae
Introduction:

THE SACRED BODY
Materializing the divine through human remains in antiquity

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SACRED NATURE
Animism and Materiality in Ancient Religions

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ARCHAEOLOGY OF SYMBOLS
ICAS I: Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Archaeology of Symbols​

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List of CAMNES publications in chronological order starting from the bottom

This study analyses the social and symbolic value of the material culture, in particular the pottery production and the architecture, and the social structure of the local communities of a broad area encompassing Eastern Anatolia, the South Caucasus and North-western Iran during the last phase of the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. This broad area is known from the Assyrian texts as ‘Nairi lands’. The second part of the study, furnishes a reassessment of pottery production characteristics and theories, as well as of the socio-economic structure and issues, tied to the sedentary and mobile local communities of the Nairi lands. The study brings into focus the characteristics, the extension and the distribution of Grooved pottery, along with other pottery typologies, by providing an accompanying online catalogue with detailed descriptions and high-resolution images of the pots and sherds obtained from public and private institutions in Turkey and Armenia. Moreover, the socio-political organisation and subsistence economy issues are addressed in order to advance a possible reconstruction of the social structure of the Nairi lands communities. Particular attention is devoted to the pastoral nomad component and the role played within the Nairi phenomenon. The study includes a very large corpus of text images and high-resolution color images of the pottery of the area under examination, gathered by the author in order to offer a reliable tool and compendium.

Edited by Valeria d'Aquino, Guido Guarducci, Silvia Nencetti, Stefano Valentini

Archaeopress Archaeology (Oxford), 2015

This volume presents the proceedings of the workshop ‘Archeologia a Firenze: Città e territorio’, organized by CAMNES, Centre for Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies, in collaboration with the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Toscana, in April 2013. This event experienced an extraordinary participation by experts in the field, and resulted also in a significant success in terms of public archaeological awareness. Almost twenty years after the exhibition ‘Alle origini di Firenze’and the publication of its Catalogo, which is considered a signal point in Florentine archaeology, the workshop provided an opportunity for discussion between all those who conducted research, protection and enhancement of the archaeological heritage of Florence thanks to the presentation of the most recent excavations. Moreover, the origins of the city that took the leading role during the Renaissance were discussed, finding in its roots the very reasons for its glorious destiny. The sessions, organized in chronological order – from prehistoric to medieval topics – were supplemented by contributions concerned with conservation and enhancement of the historic landscape whose reconstruction through research and excavation activities constantly requires new discussions and often additional reflections.

Testi di / Texts by Valeria d'Aquino, Laura Torsellini, Michele Nucciotti, Francesca Paraskoulakis, Silvia Nencetti
Revisione testi inglese / English text review Guido Guarducci
Grafica / Graphics Neolab

Comune di Firenze (Municipality of Florence, Italy), 2013

The archaeological map 'Florence and its Provinces: The Archaeological Locations' was created by CAMNES under request of the City of Florence in Italian and English and is distributed free in all the tourist information points of the City and downloadable in digital high resolution on the right (click on the images).

Edited by Luca Bombardieri, Anacleto D'Agostino, Guido Guarducci, Valentina Orsi e Stefano Valentini

BAR International Series, Archaeopress (Oxford), 2013
 

The present volumes collect the proceedings of the 16th edition of the Symposium on Mediterranean Archaeology (SOMA) that was held in Florence, Italy, between 1-3 March 2012 at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Florence and at the Auditorium of the Center for Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies (CAMNES).
This edition of the Symposium focused on the "Identity and Connectivity" of the Mediterranean and the Near East, from recent prehistory up to the medieval period. The 145 contributions explore and analyse these aspects within different contexts and through multiple approaches, which ultimately enlarge our knowledge and create new bridges over these important and very much related cultural areas through their archaeological heritage.

Edited by Guido Guarducci and Stefano Valentini

Scienze e Lettere Editore (Roma), 2012

This volume contains the proceedings of the IV National Congress of the Young Archaeologists organized by the Center for Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies (CAMNES) who wanted to resume such a format already experienced in Naples, Bologna and Sassari in order to promote and enhance the activities of the young Italian archaeologists who have talent, curiosity and motivation, the same that through the long process of study, which characterizes their training, help to enhance the value of scientific discipline. The meeting was an opportunity for sharing and comparing between direct participants (approximately 65 from all over Italy) that presented their projects of study and research included in a time span between the Prehistory and the Middle Ages, between the Mediterranean and the ancient Near East. With a common fil rouge: new technologies and new scientific approaches and methodologies in archeology, in an attempt to identify and develop new synergies involving interdisciplinary research and use of the archaeological heritage.