Date:
Location:
Dr. Melissa Cradic, Lecturer in History and Judaic Studies at University at Albany, SUNY and Curator at the Badè Museum of Biblical Archaeology
Melissa S. Cradic received her Ph.D. in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology from the University of California-Berkeley. A field archaeologist specializing in the Bronze-Iron Age Levant, she currently curates a collection from Tell en-Naṣbeh at the Badè Museum and teaches history and archaeology of ancient Israel. Her research has been supported by NEH, Palestine Exploration Fund, and ASOR, which awarded her the 2022 Community Engagement and Public Outreach Award for her digital humanities project “Unsilencing the Archives.” She has held residential fellowships at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem (2016-2017), Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (2019-2020), Getty Research Institute (2021-2022), and German Archaeological Institute in Berlin (2022). Through Open Context/Alexandria Archive Institute, she collaborates on ethical open data initiatives sponsored by NEH, NSF, and IMLS. Her research uses archaeological and historical sources to investigate ritual performance, embodiment, and memory in the ancient Levant and neighboring regions.
This talk proposes a new framework for investigating mortuary culture in the ancient Levant that challenges the way that disturbed and re-used graves are viewed. Using high-resolution archaeological field data, I argue that post-depositional interaction with bodies and gravesites constituted a key element of mortuary culture that was deeply rooted, and which shifted over time as cultural and imperial influences changed. Such interventions bear the hallmarks of performed commemoration that are consistent with ancient Near Eastern sources about posthumous roles of the body, identity, and person. Unlike traditional studies that address the lived identities of the dead, this project examines the continuing social and material roles of the dead after burial. This talk examines who became an ancestor and how the living grounded ideas about the otherworldly realms of the (dis)embodied dead within their material worlds.
Note: Lecture will be recorded.
