Zoom Lecture: Nadia Ben-Marzouk - Crafting Communities into Contact

Public Zoom Lecture:
Nadia Ben-Marzouk, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow
Title: Crafting Communities into Contact: Contextualizing Glyptic Interconnections in the Levant, Egypt, and Aegean (ca. 2500-1500 BCE)

Only on Zoom. No in-person audience or post-event reception.

Zoom ID
885 1729 8718

Passcode
887879

Abstract: Stamp and cylinder seal amulets have long factored into debates on the nature of east Mediterranean interconnectivity during the late third to early second millennium BCE. This lecture presents new research identifying and contextualizing the widespread appearance of a glyptic koine—and thus shared visual language—in the Aegean, Egypt, and the Levant alongside new manufacturing techniques, shared material choices, and the development of emergent writing systems with (semi)-pictographic scripts, arguing for sustained interaction and a new focus on the role of skilled labor in the making of an east Mediterranean exchange system.

Bio: Nadia received her Ph.D. in Levantine Archaeology from UCLA in 2020. From 2021-2023 she was a postdoctoral researcher on the SNSF Sinergia project, “Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant.” Her research examines eastern Mediterranean craft production systems, with a focus on the identities and embodied knowledge of producers, and the contexts in which production-related knowledge was transmitted.