For more than 200 years, archaeological sites in the Middle East have been dug, sifted, sorted, and saved by local community members who, in turn, developed immense expertise in excavation and interpretation and had unparalleled insight into the research process and findings—but who have almost never participated in strategies for recording the excavation procedures or results. Their particular perspectives have therefore been missing from the archaeological record, creating an immense gap in knowledge about the ancient past and about how archaeological knowledge is created.
 
Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent is based on six years of in-depth ethnographic work with current and former site workers at two major Middle Eastern archaeological sites—Petra, Jordan, and Çatalhöyük, Turkey—combined with thorough archival research. Author Allison Mickel describes the nature of the knowledge that locally hired archaeological laborers exclusively possess about artifacts, excavation methods, and archaeological interpretation, showing that archaeological workers are experts about a wide range of topics in archaeology. At the same time, Mickel reveals a financial incentive for site workers to pretend to be less knowledgeable than they actually are, as they risk losing their jobs or demotion if they reveal their expertise.
 
Despite a recent proliferation of critical research examining the history and politics of archaeology, the topic of archaeological labor has not yet been substantially examined. Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent employs a range of advanced qualitative, quantitative, and visual approaches and offers recommendations for archaeologists to include more diverse expert perspectives and produce more nuanced knowledge about the past. It will appeal to archaeologists, science studies scholars, and anyone interested in challenging the concept of “unskilled” labor.

Vivid sources for reconstructing the lives of Assyrian women

In this collection Cécile Michel translates into English texts related to wives and daughters of merchants and to their activities in nineteenth-century BCE Aššur and Kaneš. Discovered in excavations of the Old Assyrian private archives at Kültepe (ancient Kaneš) in Central Anatolia, these letters sent from Aššur reflect the preeminent role of Assyrian women within the family and in the domestic economy, as well as their contribution to long-distance trade. Contracts and other legal texts excavated at Kültepe attest to Assyrian and Anatolian women as parties in marriage and divorce contracts, last wills, loans, and purchase contracts. These unique finds paint a vivid portrait of women who aspire to be socially respected and provide a rare opportunity to reconstruct their daily lives as both businesswomen and housewives.

Features

• More than three hundred letters and documents transliterated and translated with commentary
• An overview of the study of women and gender in Assyriology
• A reconstruction of women's roles as textile producers, investors, and creditors within a long-distance commercial network

Cécile Michel is Senior Researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS, France) and Professor at Hamburg University (Germany). She is a member of the international group of scholars in charge of the decipherment of the 23,000 tablets found at Kültepe (ancient Kaneš) and of the Kültepe archaeological team. She is the coeditor of and contributor to The Role of Women in Work and Society in the Ancient Near East (2016), Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD (2017), and Mathematics, Administrative and Economic Activities in Ancient Worlds (2020).

Told through the voice of a canine narrator, Wûf is a surrealist wartime love story set in Turkey in the 1990s. The novel follows Mikasa, a street dog who recounts a tale of tragic wartime love at a kennel where he finds solace in storytelling and cigarettes. A book that took the Turkish literary world by storm, Kemal Varol’s Wûf tackles universal themes of love and loss with both humor and pathos. Translated by PEN/Heim Award winner Dayla Rogers, the novel renders in English a one-of-a-kind love story with a narrator its readers won’t soon forget.