From the Editors

With this issue, JEMAHS continues its coverage of cutting-edge technological approaches to archaeological challenges. Ian Hodder has famously called archaeology a bridge between the physical and human sciences—presumably built upon the concreteness of the sites and artifacts with which we work. If we “are living in a material world” as the old popular song goes, it behooves us to remain aware of all of the possibilities offered by modern technology for examining that world in ever increasing detail. Reconstructing the past is a heady business and our colleagues who work in the lab or toil away at producing spectacular digital images keep us grounded in a reality that is not just possible, but probable.

First conceived as yet another conservation effort to preserve the Dead Sea Scrolls, the digitization project described by Pnina Shor, Marcello Manfredi, Greg Bearman, Emilio Marengo, Ken Boydston, and William Christens-Barry began as a non-invasive monitoring methodology of their physical state based on multi-spectral images. As a result of this project, the best possible images to date of these immensely important texts were captured, thus motivating the Israel Antiquities Authority to image all of the Scrolls, including thousands of fragments, and put everything online—making it available to the public and the scholarly world alike in a way never before imagined.

While new technologies have had astounding results in many cases, Laura Mazow, Susanne Grieve, and Anthony Kennedy offer a warning about accepting those results without question. Organic residue analysis, by now a commonly used process to determine artifact function, has been a mainstay for archaeologists working on Near Eastern sites with plentiful ceramic evidence. Pointing out that the significance of sampling methods is often understated and the various instruments used to perform the analysis are too often seen by the archaeologist as infallible, their article presents a case study that highlights the role of selectivity in residue analysis. Theirs is a cautionary tale against generalized interpretations that can lead to false results.

Jamie Quartermaine, Brandon Olson, and Ann Killebrew demonstrate how a number of new image-based modeling tools can be successfully applied to the creation of precise and accurate architectural plans. Focusing on the sites of Tel Akko and Qasrin, their exploration shows that digital drafting can be effectively undertaken during the course of the excavation process and also provide a medium where modern technology can be combined with previous documentation on sites to produce data of “unheralded spatial accuracy.”

Jesse Casana and Mitra Panahipour demonstrate how analysis of recent satellite imagery can reveal patterns of looting and damage to archaeological sites in Syria. The tragedy of Syria’s civil war has been extensively covered, including the damage to its patrimony (see the Forum section in JEMAHS 1: 319–75). The devastation of the extraordinarily rich archaeological heritage of Syria, home to the world’s first sedentary agricultural villages and thousands of major sites, is sadly evident in the illustrations provided by the authors.

Finally, Sandra Scham reviews the spectacular “Heaven and Earth” Byzantine-period exhibition now making its way from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

This issue contains a wealth of new information on archaeology and heritage in the eastern Mediterranean that we hope will be both appealing and enlightening to our readers.