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Follow the Pots
Follow the Pots
The ‘Follow the Pots’ research program explores two interconnected
sides of an archaeological looting story: the conventional
archaeological investigation of the emergence of prehistoric urbanism
and increasing social complexity in the Early Bronze Age of the southern
Levant, and the multiple and contested values of this archaeological
heritage to multiple stakeholders today.
What this means is that we study how archaeologists, people living in
the southern Ghor, looters, middlemen, museum administrators,
government officials, antiquities dealers, and collectors think about,
acquire, and use pots and other grave goods from the Early Bronze Age
(EBA) cemeteries of Fifa, Bab adh-Dhra` and en-Naqa/es-Safi.
Follow the Pots (FTP) emerges from several years of archaeological
fieldwork and analysis by Chesson and Kersel, and more broadly the
Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain. In this examination of the social
lives of archaeological objects, the artifacts have at least two lives as
(1) as grave goods in 5,000 year old tombs; and
(2) as looted and excavated artifacts in the present, where they are
launched on new lives as museum pieces, tourist trinkets, and
archaeologically studied objects.
FTP arises from our realization that only by integrating ethnography
and archaeology can we hope to produce a holistic and cohesive story
about the use and reuse of these EBA materials.
Directors: Drs. Morag M. Kersel (Dept. of
Anthropology, DePaul University) and Meredith S. Chesson (Dept. of
Anthropology, University of Notre Dame) with much-appreciated support
and guidance from Dr. R. Thomas Schaub (EDSP, Emeritus Indiana University of Pennsylvania)
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