Showing posts with label Oriental Institute. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oriental Institute. Show all posts

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Open Access Publications at the Oriental Institute Research Archives

The following list includes (almost) all publications served from the webspace of the Research Archives of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. The great bulk of them are scans of books from the collections but the list also includes a set of older and recent doctoral dissertations written at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of the University of Chicago. A few born digital publications of the Research Archives are also included, based on quality, longevity and continuing access. All are catalogued in and linked to from the Research Archives catalogue, which is now a part of the Oriental Institute’s Integrated Database.   The Research Archives catalogue is one of the best places you'll find for searching bibliography on the ancient Near East. Bookmark it now and use it regularly!

[First published in AWOL in March 2009. Most recently updated 3 January 2015]


Dissertations in Ancient Near Eastern Studies Approved by the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, The University of Chicago.

Aaron Alexander Burke
June 2004: The Architecture of Defense: Fortified Settlements Of The Levant During The Middle Bronze Age

Katherine Strange Burke
June 2007: Archaeological Texts and Contexts on the Red Sea: The Sheikh’s House at Quseir al-Qadim

Aaron Michael Butts
June 2013: Language Change in the Wake of Empire: Syriac in Its Greco-Roman Context

David Michael Calabro
June 2014: Ritual Gestures of Lifting, Extending, and Clasping the Hand(s) in Northwest Semitic Literature and Iconography

Dennis R. M. Campbell
March 2007: Mood and Modality in Hurrian

A. Asa Eger
August 2008: The Spaces Between The Teeth: Environment, Settlement, And Interaction On The Islamic-Byzantine Frontier

Humphrey Hill Hardy II
June 2014: Diachronic Development in Biblical Hebrew Prepositions: A Case Study in Grammaticalization

Helene J. Kantor
March 1945: Plant Ornament: Its Origin and Development in the Ancient Near East

Michael Kozuh
March 2006: The Sacrificial Economy: On The Management Of Sacrificial Sheep And Goats At The Neo-Babylonian/Achaemenid Eanna Temple Of Uruk (c. 625-520 BC)

John S. Nolan
June 2010: Mud Sealings And Fourth Dynasty Administration At Giza

Foy D. Scalf
March 2014: Passports to Eternity: Formulaic Demotic Funerary Texts and the Final Phase of Egyptian Funerary Literature in Roman Egypt

Randy L. Shonkwiler
March 2014: The Behdetite: A Study of Horus the Behdetite from the Old Kingdom to the Conquest of Alexander

Jason Alik Ur
December 2004: Urbanism and Society in the Third Millennium Upper Khabur Basin

Grace White
December 1993: The Religious Iconography of Cappadocian Glyptic in the Assyrian Colony Period and its Significance in the Hittite New Kingdom

Bruce Williams
December 1975: Archaeology and Historical Problems of the Second Intermediate Period

Ilya Yakubovich
June 2008: Sociolinguistics of the Luvian Language
For an up to date list of all Oriental Institute publications available online see:
The Oriental Institute Open Access Publications

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Diyala Archaeological Database (DiyArDa)

Diyala Archaeological Database (DiyArDa)
An Oriental Institute / University of Chicago Publication and Research Project
Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities Division for Preservation and Access
The Diyala Database, for the first time, publishes all archaeological materials from the Diyala Expedition, one of the most important excavation projects ever undertaken in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). 

The current version of this database, using OracleTM as a backend, represents a partial release of these data. Future releases will add and update object descriptions and provide new interfaces with additional links to site photographs, field notes, diary entries, and architectural plans.

http://diyalaproject.uchicago.edu/pls/apex/DIYALA.diyala_image?p_ref_item=1684114

Significance of Excavations: Located in the lower Diyala river basin northeast of Baghdad, excavations at the sites of Tell Agrab, Tell Asmar (ancient Eshnunna), Ishchali (ancient Neribtum), and Khafaje (ancient Tutub), have provided some of the most comprehensive data for Mesopotamian archaeology and chronology. Undertaken by the University of Chicago‚ Oriental Institute (1930-1937) and by the University of Pennsylvania (1938-1939), these projects were of an unprecedented scale. Up to 25% of the total area of each site were excavated, uncovering not only the remains of palaces and temples, but also of houses, manufacturing facilities, streets, and urban defensive systems, with some soundings extending as deep as 16 meters below the mounds‚present surfaces. Covering the time between the late Uruk period and the end of the Old Babylonian period (3000-1700 BC), the Diyala material represents a crucial part of Mesopotamia's early history during which large territorial states emerged, cities grew to unprecedented sizes, and the cuneiform writing system emerged. 

Significance of Artifacts: Over 15,000 artifacts, representing all aspects of public and private life, were excavated carefully and recorded systematically: statues, votive plaques, seals, pottery vessels, tools, weapons, jewelry, cosmetic sets, weights, figurines, inlays, toys, and almost 2,000 tablets inscribed with cuneiform inscriptions. Following find divisions between the expedition and Iraq's Department of Antiquities these artifacts entered the collections of the Iraq Museum (Baghdad), the Oriental Institute Museum (Chicago), and the University Museum (Philadelphia). In spite of a comprehensive publication program that resulted in nine volumes‚four on architectural complexes and four on key artifact groups (sculpture, seals, pottery) some 75% of these finds (over 11,000 items) unfortunately remained unpublished to the present day. This is regrettable since this corpus is one of the largest artifact assemblages from a controlled excavation undertaken in Iraq, hence remaining a vital chronological backbone for Mesopotamia's early history. 

The Project: Launched in 1992 the Diyala Database Project will, for the first time, publish all archaeological data from these excavations in an integrated database. Supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities Division for Preservation and Access (1994-1999, 2004-2010), the University of Chicago's Women Board (1997), and by the University of Chicago's Provost Innovative Technology Grant (1999, 2000) archival materials, object registers, field diaries, photographs, plans, and correspondence were scanned, object descriptions entered into database tables, and new photographs of artifacts taken at the Oriental Institute Museum.
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Monday, April 6, 2009

The Electronic Publications Initiative of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago

The Oriental Institute has published a short statement about its Electronic Publications Initiative. They report that
Statistics on downloads of electronic files and sales of printed books are tracked, and sales of the printed volumes have not decreased! Indeed, after the complimentary distribution of twenty-one titles in 2008 that had for many years only been available in print, sales of these titles increased by 7% compared with the previous two years.
This strikes me as very significant indeed! If open access can now demonstrated to increase the sales of back list titles, one of the primary arguments against providing open access for back-list titles evaporates. In fact it seem to indicated that open access, if thought of as promotional, might actually increase a publisher's revenue stream. It would be nice to see the documentation for this OI data presented in detail. It will also be interesting to see how this pattern develops over time.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Oriental Institute Research Archives Catalogue Online

The online catalogue of the Oriental Institute Research Archives contains entries for materials catalogued in the library since 1987, and complete analytics (essays, articles and book reviews) for materials catalogued since 1990. The catalogue also includes earlier materials, and retrospective cataloguing of the entire collection will ultimately make all Research Archives materials accessible. At present, the Research Archives on-line catalogue contains well over two hundred thousand entries, searchable through a library database program.



It is an excellent source of bibliographical data for ancient Near Eastern studies

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Open access to Oriental Institute Publications

Being an enightened institution, the Oriental Institute allows public access to basic statistics on access to its website. Over the winter break I played a little with the numbers for 2008, and posted a note on them over at The Oriental Institute: Fragments for a History of an Institution.

I'm reproducing part of that posing here. This section lists the twenty-five most frequently downloaded digital versions (pdf) of formal publications of the Oriental Institute for 2008. Note that some of these are fairly recent, but others are old standards.

  1. Oriental Institute 2002-2003 Annual Report, downloaded 4853 times.

  2. OIS 4. Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond, Nicole Brisch, ed., downloaded 3152 times.

  3. OIS 3.Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean, Nicola Laneri, editor, with contributions by Nicola Laneri, Ellen F. Morris, Glenn M. Schwartz, Robert Chapman, Massimo Cultraro, Meredith S. Chesson, Alessandro Naso, Adam T. Smith, Dina Katz, Seth Richardson, Susan Pollock, Ian Rutherford, John Pollini, John Robb, and James A. Brown, downloaded 2924 times.

  4. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 14, R, 1999, downloaded 2806 times.

  5. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 12, P, 2005, downloaded 2781 times.

  6. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 1, A, part 1, 1964, downloaded 2679 times.

  7. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 18, T, 2006, downloaded 2613 times.

  8. SAOC 62. Proceedings of the 51st Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Held at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, July 18–22, 2005, Robert D. Biggs, Jennie Myers, and Martha T. Roth, eds., downloaded 2416 times.

  9. OIS 2, Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures, Seth L. Sanders, editor, with contributions by Seth L. Sanders, John Kelly, Gonzalo Rubio, Jacco Dieleman, Jerrold Cooper, Christopher Woods, Annick Payne, William Schniedewind, Michael Silverstein-, Piotr Michalowski, Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Theo van den Hout, Paul Zimansky, Sheldon Pollock, and Peter Machinist. (second printing), downloaded 2198 times.

  10. SAOC 61. Sacred Space and Sacred Function in Ancient Thebes, Peter F. Dorman and Betsy M. Bryan, editors, downloaded 2192 times.

  11. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 19, T [Tet], 2006, downloaded 2163 times.

  12. MAD 2. Old Akkadian Writing and Grammar, I. J. Gelb, 1952, downloaded 1993 times.

  13. AS 27. Studies Presented to Robert D. Biggs, June 4, 2004 From the Workshop of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, Volume 2, Martha T. Roth, Walter Farber, Matthew W. Stolper and Paula von Bechtolsheim, eds., 2007, downloaded 1886 times.

  14. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 10, M, part 1, 1977, downloaded 1621 times.

  15. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 1, A, part 2, 1968, downloaded 1504 times.

  16. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 10, M, part 2, 1977, downloaded 1495 times.

  17. OIMP 28. Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past, edited by Geoff Emberling and Katharyn Hanson, 2008, downloaded 1495 times.

  18. OIS 2, Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures, Seth L. Sanders, editor, with contributions by Seth L. Sanders, John Kelly, Gonzalo Rubio, Jacco Dieleman, Jerrold Cooper, Christopher Woods, Annick Payne, William Schniedewind, Michael Silverstein-, Piotr Michalowski, Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Theo van den Hout, Paul Zimansky, Sheldon Pollock, and Peter Machinist. (first printing), downloaded 1491 times.

  19. The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CHD), P, fascicle 3 (pattar to putkiya-), 1997, downloaded 1481 times,

  20. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 11, N, part 1, 1980, downloaded 1370 times.

  21. The Demotic Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Janet H. Johnson, editor: Prologue, downloaded 1362 times.

  22. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 9, L, 1973, downloaded 1306 times.

  23. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 2, B, 1965, downloaded 1306 times.

  24. OIP 132. The Egyptian Coffin Texts, Volume 8. Middle Kingdom Copies of Pyramid Texts, James P. Allen, 2006, downloaded 1296 times.

  25. OIMP 25. Embroidering Identities: A Century of Palestinian Clothing.
    By Iman Saca in collaboration with Maha Saca, 2006
    , downloaded 1255 times.
OIS 2 in its two printings is the 9th and 18th most popular digital publication of the OI during 2008 - collectively it would be No. 2, downloaded 3689 times.