September 2012

A Warm Welcome to the Dumbarton Oaks Fellows, 2012/13

Noah Mlotek — 2012-09-07T20:02:13Z

The academic year at Dumbarton Oaks begins on September 10, and we are delighted to welcome our new Fellows in Byzantine, Garden and Landscape, and Pre-Columbian studies! The twenty-three Fellows resident this fall hail from as far afield as Harvard, Oxford, Gent, Birmingham, Bonn, and Milan; and are working on topics ranging from money in Byzantium, to concepts of “Heaven” and “Hell” in early colonial Christianization, to the social and cultural history of gardening in imperial Russia. A full list of our Dumbarton Oaks Fellows is available here.

God’s Regents on Earth: A Thousand Years of Imperial Seals

Noah Mlotek — 2012-09-07T20:15:00Z

For over a thousand years the Byzantine Emperor ruled over the empire as God’s regent on earth. His was the ultimate authority. The emperor was the granter of titles and offices, distributer of largesse, master of the Church, commander of the army, head of the bureaucracy, and supreme judge. The decisions of the individual who sat on the throne had repercussions throughout the Byzantine world and far beyond. Decrees, letters, judgments, and commands left Constantinople every day signed by the emperor in red ink and secured with the imperial seal. These seals not only protected and authenticated imperial documents, they also served as imperial propaganda.

Dumbarton Oaks is proud to announce the online exhibit, God’s Regents on Earth: A Thousand Years of Byzantine Imperial Seals, curated by Jonathan Shea, Post-Doctoral Associate in Byzantine Sigillography and Numismatics with assistance from Seals Intern, Lain Wilson. Displaying seals from the Dumbarton Oaks collection, the exhibit offers high resolution images, presents comparative views of the obverse and reverse, and enables the viewer to juxtapose distinct seals. Each seal is accompanied by a brief outline of the life of the ruler who issued it, and an assessment of what the object reveals about that ruler’s character, beliefs, and policies.

For a further exploration of the collection of seals at Dumbarton Oaks, please visit the Byzantine Seals Online Catalog. With a collection numbering over 17,000, Dumbarton Oaks is home to the world’s largest collection of Byzantine Seals.

Thanks are due to Eric McGeer, Kathy Sparkes, Lisa Wainwright, Noah Mlotek, and Prathmesh Mengane for their help in preparing the exhibit. All photographs were taken by Joe Mills who is tirelessly photographing all 17,000 seals in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection.

Farewell to Michael Lee

Noah Mlotek — 2012-09-07T20:50:00Z

After completing his three-year term as Post-Doctoral Associate in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, Michael Lee will move on, this fall, to become Ruben McCorkle Rainey Professor in the History of Landscape Architecture and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia.

While at Dumbarton Oaks, Dr. Lee has contributed to a number of in-house publications, including Clio in the Italian Garden and the forthcoming symposium volume Technology and the Garden.

Staff Highlight

Noah Mlotek — 2012-09-07T20:46:01Z

Cécile Morrisson, Consultant for Byzantine Numismatics, participated in a seminar on “L’histoire économique du Moyen Age” organised in the Fondation des Treilles (Tourtour, Var, France), June 19-22, 2012, in honor of Pierre Toubert, with a paper on “La place de Byzance dans l'histoire économique médiévale (v. 717-1204): méthodes, acquis, perspectives” (The place of Byzantium in medieval economic history [c. 717-1204]: methods, conclusions, perspectives).

Off the Press

Noah Mlotek — 2012-09-07T20:50:00Z

We are pleased to announce the publication of Trade and Markets in Byzantium, edited by Dumbarton Oaks Consultant for Byzantine Numismatics, Cécile Morrisson.

How are markets in antiquity to be characterized? As comparable to modern free markets, with differences in scale not quality? As controlled and dominated by the State? Or, in completely different terms, as free but regulated? In Trade and Markets in Byzantium seventeen scholars address these and related issues by reexamining and reinterpreting the material and textual record from Byzantium and its hinterland for local, regional, and interregional trade. Special emphasis is placed on local trade, the least studied of the three. To understand the recovery of long-distance trade from its eighth-century nadir to the economic prosperity enjoyed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the authors analyze the variety and complexity of the exchange networks, the role of money as a measure of exchange, and the character of local markets. This collection of ground-breaking research will prove to be indispensable for anyone interested in economic history in antiquity and the medieval period.

New Director of Pre-Columbian Studies Colin McEwan

Noah Mlotek — 2012-09-07T20:46:01Z

With the beginning of the 2012/13 academic year, Colin McEwan will become full-term Director of Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks.

Before making the move to Dumbarton Oaks, Colin headed the Americas Section within the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the British Museum. For eleven years prior to heading the section, Colin served as Curator of Latin American Collections in the Department of Ethnography, also at the British Museum. He received his BSc from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland and his MA and PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Colin will bring to Pre-Columbian Studies grounding in archaeological fieldwork and museum curating. Although an Andeanist by training, he has promoted at the British Museum the broadest view of Pre-Columbian studies and has attended not merely to the Mesoamerican and Andean but also to the Caribbean, Amazonian, and Patagonian areas.

Dumbarton Oaks looks forward to building on the strengths of the department of Pre-Columbian Studies under the leadership of Colin McEwan.