Byzantine Studies
Fellows
Rina Avner (Israel Antiquities Authority), “The Church of the Kathisma on the Jerusalem–Bethlehem Road: Archaeological, Art Historical, and Historical Study”
My project at Dumbarton Oaks was to prepare a manuscript of a comprehensive monograph, complementing the technical archaeological final report (submitted in 2003 to the monograph series IAA Reports), on the Church of the Kathisma situated near Jerusalem. The church was excavated under my direction on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The excavations revealed a large octagonal structure (41 x 38 m) with an unusual complex plan. Three strata were recognized (dated to the fifth, sixth, and eighth centuries CE). Archaeological evidence indicates that during the eighth century the building was used simultaneously as a mosque within the church.
My goal this year was to update and pursue a thematic expansion of my dissertation, namely, to put the Kathisma within a broader Christian and Islamic context. Topics included the history of the building; pilgrimage; the beginnings of the veneration and cult of the Theotokos in the Holy Land and abroad; mutual influences between Jewish, Christian, and early Islamic traditions; architecture and art, such as the influence of the Kathisma on other martyria, including the Dome of the Rock; and the artistic influence of the wall mosaic of the Dome of the Rock on two important floor mosaics in the Kathisma.
Besides completing a draft of my projected book, a year of residence at Dumbarton Oaks enabled me to meet and exchange views with different scholars (Dumbarton Oaks staff, fellows, and visiting scholars), thus yielding new ideas for future research.
Marina Bazzani (Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford), “A Literary, Linguistic, and Historical Analysis of the Poems of Manuel Philes”
These months at Dumbarton Oaks have enabled me to work on the large corpus of poetry of the Byzantine author Manuel Philes (ca. 1270–1330s). I have focused on his historical, personal, and occasional poems, while leaving aside epigrams on works of art and religious subjects. I spent the first term of my fellowship reading and translating the poems. This has allowed me to gain a good understanding of Philes' way of composing verses, his use of language, images, and puns, as well as to observe how his style and tone may vary according to the recipients' status.
During the second term, I have carried out a content and style analysis of several occasional poems composed to request gifts of various kinds (hats, clothes, food). The close reading and the breakdown of the text have revealed the presence of extremely interesting material in these poems, and have shown how the author is always proceeding on multiple levels of thought in his compositions. This is often achieved through a subtle and sophisticated use of language and images, either by employing the same words in different contexts or by loading them with a different nuance in meaning, thus creating clever and unexpected turns of ideas; such detailed analysis of the text has helped me to understand the important role rhetorical skills play in Philes' verses.
This project has greatly benefited from the excellent library, the online resources and the stimulating environment at Dumbarton Oaks; I have been able to collect extensive material that I intend to use in the future to explore other aspects of Philes' poetry, such as the way the poet presents himself in his poems, his relation with contemporary intellectuals and his dedicatees, and the depiction of society his poetic texts convey. These texts are not only of interest in their own right, but they also offer key tools to gain a deeper comprehension of Byzantium and its society in the Palaiologan era.
Myriam Hecquet-Devienne (Université de Lille 3, CNRS), “Intellectual Circles in Byzantium in the Tenth Century”
Thanks to the wonderful resources of Dumbarton Oaks, I completed the bibliographical materials I had started to gather before my arrival, in particular about the intellectual circles in Byzantium in the tenth century and the epistolary documents.
I precisely described the features of the hands that copied Aristotle's manuscript, the Parisinus 1853, and the Venetus A of Homer. I gathered the codicological characteristics of these manuscripts in order to show their relationship with some other manuscripts that were probably copied by the same team of scribes. I also analyzed the work of textual criticism made on the text by the main scribe of each manuscript.
I examined the two epigrams the scribes copied on free pages of these manuscripts, which belong to the Palatine Anthology (Ⅸ 387, composed by Adrian, and 577, by Ptolemaeus). Both present interesting variant readings, not known otherwise.
I translated some very difficult letters of the corpus of an anonymous professor from the tenth century, who was in relation with the monk Ephrem, a scribe belonging, I believe, to this team of scribes. These letters show the criteria of this professor for "editing" the texts he had to copy (he also was an occasional scribe). They reveal how these texts were given to him, and how he tried to find positions for his students. He wanted to be distinguished from the mere scribes who only worry about their handwriting, without intellectual concerns, and lamented that advanced high training was so little appreciated.
Panagiotis Roilos (Harvard University, Spring), “Ancient Greek and Christian Rhetorical Tradition in the Work of Ioannes Sikeliotes”
During my fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks during the spring semester of 2009, I studied the influence of ancient Greek rhetoric and Christian literary tradition on the work of Ioannes Sikeliotes (late tenth–early eleventh century). Ioannes Sikeliotes is the author of the most extensive, innovative, and influential Byzantine commentary (almost 500 pages in C. Walz's monumental but occasionally problematic edition) on Hermogenes' Peri ideon. My research has focused on Sikeliotes' dialogue not only with Hermogenes but also with Plato (especially his Gorgias), Ailios Aristeides, the Neoplatonist Olympiodoros, and Gregorios of Nazianzos. In addition, I continued working on my translation of Sikeliotes' commentary and have completed the translation of more than half of this work. I have also identified a number of problematic readings in Walz's edition, which I shall take into account in my future edition of Sikeliotes' commentary.
Isabella Sandwell (University of Bristol, Spring), “Pragmatics, Preaching, and Social Change in Late Antiquity: The Sermons of John Chrysostom”
The past three and a half months have been a very productive time. When I arrived at Dumbarton Oaks, I had good knowledge of John Chrysostom’s homilies on Genesis and had carried out extensive reading in cognitive approaches to literature and communication. During my time here, I have been able to consolidate my knowledge of these cognitive approaches and begin applying them to Chrysostom’s first ten homilies on Genesis. Writing up these ideas for my research report and for a paper delivered at the Antioch day at Catholic University has greatly clarified my thinking. I now have a clear idea of how I will organize the research for my book on cognitive and pragmatic approaches to John Chrysostom’s preaching and the kinds of arguments I will be making. Some of the material used in the papers delivered at Dumbarton Oaks and Catholic University will be used in an essay to be published in a collection I am coediting with a colleague at Bristol University entitled Delivering the Word: Audience Reception of Exegetical Preaching in Western Christianity. My main goal for my time at Dumbarton Oaks was to write an article showing the problems and benefits of using cognitive approaches to John Chrysostom’s preaching. By the end of my time here, I will have completed a draft version of this article with the aim of submitting to a suitable journal later in the summer. During my time here, I also gave a paper in the Classics Department of Harvard University.
Junior Fellows
Fotini Kondyli (University of Birmingham), “Late Byzantine Rural Sites in the North Aegean: Their Archaeology and Distribution Patterns”
During my fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks, my aim was to prepare for both electronic and standard publication of my recently completed PhD thesis entitled “Late Byzantine Rural Sites in the Northern Aegean: Their Archaeology and Distribution Patterns,” successfully defended at the University of Birmingham in December 2008. For my PhD thesis, I studied late Byzantine site function and distribution, factors influencing sites' location, the economic activities of rural sites, communication and trade routes, and the formation of fortification networks on the islands of Lemnos and Thasos in the North Aegean. My work focused not only on the identification and study of settlements but also of other sites such as forts, monastic estates, and activity loci on the two islands. Further, I developed a methodological framework that integrated archaeology with primary sources and ethnography in order to develop a holistic understanding of economy, the use of space, and societal change in the North Aegean during the late Byzantine period.
At Dumbarton Oaks, I also focused on advancing my work on the archaeology and distribution of late Byzantine sites and the economic exploitation and spatial organization of the rural landscape in a series of articles and conference papers. In one article, I am analyzing comparative material from excavations and multiperiod surveys in Greece in order to discuss the role of Byzantine archaeology in multiperiod projects in the Mediterranean. As part of this work, I am also critically evaluating the methodologies employed by previous studies in Byzantine settlement archaeology in order to develop a more sophisticated approach to understanding the Byzantine landscape. In doing so, I make intense use of reports, monographs, PhD theses, and journals dealing with similar archaeological investigations around the Mediterranean. The second article completed during my fellowship explores the economic activities of Byzantine monasteries in the late Byzantine period, using an interdisciplinary approach and combining my work archaeological, documentary, and ethnographic data with GIS spatial analysis. The two conference papers I completed this year, both to be presented in June 2009, deal with aspects of trade and traveling in the late medieval Mediterranean.
The research I undertook during my fellowship attempted to present and analyze aspects of the late Byzantine rural landscape and its settlements using an interdisciplinary approach. I had the opportunity to provide new data and different approaches on methodology, analysis, and interpretation of data, as well as discuss new aspects of the archaeology of the late Byzantine village and of the human-landscape interface in the Byzantine world.
Yuliya Minets (Kyiv-Mohyla Academy), “Constructing Ideas of Christian Life: The Strategies of Interpretation of the Biblical Texts by Palladius of Hellenopolis”
The main research question of my dissertation is the use of biblical texts to construct ideals of exemplary Christian lives in late antique writings. I pay particular attention to the different purposes and the target audiences of the texts analyzed. I investigate the narrative structures where the biblical quotations, references, and allusions to Scripture were used as well as their understanding and interpretation by late antique Christian authors, that is, the meanings which were read into the sacred texts and used for developing ideas and ideal images of Christianity in the fourth and fifth centuries. The main sources for the study are two texts of Palladius, bishop of Helenopolis: the Lausiac History and the Dialogue on the Life of John Chrysostom.
My goal this year at Dumbarton Oaks was to complete the main stages of research for my dissertation and to write the first draft of the text. I was able to finish all three main parts of my work. The first chapter contextualizes Palladius as a late antique Christian author and his works in the historical and intellectual situation of the fourth and fifth centuries. I investigated Palladius’s biography, his educational and social background, and his intellectual circle and teachers. I carried out the source study of the Lausiac History and Dialogue and prepared an overview of secondary literature. The Lausiac History and the Dialogue are particularly interesting because they were written by a single author but differ considerably both from a linguistic point of view and in their contents. The texts differ in features of style and rhetorical organization, in the level of theological understanding and elaboration of ideas, and in the use of well-known patterns and examples from the Bible, early Christian writings, and Classical literature.
In the second chapter, I focused, firstly, on textual studies of the biblical quotations and references in the Lausiac History and Dialogue, paying attention to the sources of citation, and to any literal alterations that the text of the Bible underwent due to Palladius’s intentional or unconscious changes because of the methods of a late antique author's work and the influence of other authors. Second, I investigated the narrative strategies and rhetorical construction that Palladius used to involve the biblical texts in his own narratives.
In the third chapter, I considered the different interpretations of the biblical texts in Palladius’s two works, which result from different attitudes to certain issues, such as wisdom, eschatology, pride, the appearance of the Holy Man, mixed male and female communities of ascetics, etc. These issues were important in late antique Christian discourse, and were variously evaluated and interpreted in different kinds of texts. Therefore, they work as a litmus test for a problem: to define the level of the particular text in its contemporary discourse. Correspondingly, they reflect the expectations, ideas, and worldview of the potential audience, and thus help us to define the place of Palladius’s works in the different intellectual trends of Christianity of the fourth and fifth centuries.
In the Lausiac History, Palladius tends to present ideas associated with the communities of monks in the Egyptian desert and, probably, with the lower layer of laypeople who sometimes were not so sophisticated in their understanding of biblical words. I do not mean that Palladius expressed simple ideas, rather he presented them in a form comprehensible to his audience. The Dialogue, on the other hand, is polemical narrative which delivers ideas appropriate for high-level and educated church authorities and secular officials. Its potential audience might be the members of John Chrysostom’s party who in 400–410 needed to “create” their own hero, prove their heroism in supporting him, and justify their suffering for truth.
Vitalijs Permjakovs (University of Notre Dame), “The Origins and Evolution of the Byzantine Rite for the Consecration of Churches”
In the course of my Junior Fellowship in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, I worked on a project investigating the evolution for the Byzantine rite of the dedication of churches (encaenia) from its origins in Late Antiquity until the emergence of dedication rites in the euchologia of the eighth–twelfth centuries. As a result of my research, it was possible to investigate the complex origins of early Christian practices of dedication, especially with respect to the apparent appropriation of Roman traditions of dedicatio/consecratio of a new temple. I have examined the Christian sources from fourth to sixth centuries, reflecting the varied customs for the inauguration of a new church building in different urban centers of eastern Roman empire with special focus on Jerusalem and Constantinople. As part of my work for this project I have prepared the translation of liturgical hymns pertaining to the annual feast of the Dedication of the Church of the Holy Anastasis in Jerusalem, which survived as part of the "Old iadgari" (Georgian translation of the Jerusalem Tropologion, fifth–eighth centuries). Also, using the resources at Dumbarton Oaks and the microfilm collection of the Library of Congress, I have translated and collated the texts pertaining to the annual festival of dedication from two unpublished Georgian manuscripts, Sinai iber. 12 (eleventh century) and Sinai iber. 54 (tenth century), both of which appear to reflect the liturgical rite of Jerusalem at the end of the first millennium. At the same time, it was crucial to survey all the available (published and unpublished) manuscript sources for the Byzantine rite euchologion in order to observe the evolution of the rite of consecration of an altar and of the dedication of the church from the eighth to the thirteenth century (ms. Grottaferrata G. b. I was the latest I studied), as well as the variety of other rites used for similar purposes in the Byzantine tradition (e.g., consecration of an antimension). Comparison with the rites for consecrating an altar in the West Syriac, Armenian, and Coptic traditions has shown some significant parallels with similar texts of the Byzantine tradition which can indicate a common, possibly Palestinian, origin for this ritual, first attested in the euchologion Barberini gr. 336 at the end of the eighth century.
Jeanne-Nicole Saint-Laurent (Brown University), “Apostolic Memories: Religious Differentiation and the Construction of Orthodoxy in Syriac Missionary Literature”
As a Junior Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, I completed and defended my dissertation entitled “Apostolic Memories: Religious Differentiation and the Construction of Orthodoxy in Syriac Missionary Literature.”
The support of the scholars at Dumbarton Oaks as well as the resources of the library’s collection made it an ideal place for me to complete this project. In this diachronic study, I argued that Syriac missionary narratives traced the gradual religious differentiation of the Syriac-speaking Churches in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries (Byzantine Chalcedonian, Persian “Nestorian” Church of the East, and Non-Chalcedonian Miaphysite).
My project examined literary strategies of religious differentiation in Syriac missionary literature as a whole: (1) apostolic legends; (2) historicized portraits; and (3) embellished missionary hagiographies. The sources that I analyzed demonstrated how Syriac missionary texts work together as a system that authors used to represent their history. I also found poems, homilies, and liturgical sources that featured the missionary saints whom I studied, and I will be able to incorporate these texts in the larger expanded book version of my dissertation. My research was enhanced through dialogue with other Byzantinists whom I met this year at Dumbarton Oaks, both fellows and visiting scholars. I am grateful for this productive year of study and research, and as I begin my career as a professor at St. Michael’s College, the growth from this fellowship year will nourish me as a teacher and emerging scholar.
Summer Fellows
Mine Esmer (Istanbul Technical University), “Proposals for the Conservation of the Middle Byzantine Period Monuments of Istanbul and their Neighborhoods, Three Examples: Vefa Mosque, Fethiye Mosque, and Atik Mustafa Paşa Mosque”
The summer fellowship has provided me with a great opportunity to use resources available at Dumbarton Oaks. The subject I have chosen to study is very complex and extremely challenging. The long history of the buildings, their past repairs and additions, their neighborhoods, modern users, and the social environment around them present important problems to consider and to solve. I am determined to reach my aim by considering these problems and listing a number of solutions for the preservation of the buildings including their neighborhoods.
In order to conduct a thorough analysis of these Byzantine-era structures, I have to carefully examine the past repairs of the buildings. The Byzantine Institute has carried out restorations and has very detailed photographic and drawing surveys of the Byzantine buildings in Istanbul. My aim during the period of my fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks was to complete an in-depth analysis of this archive. The great opportunity afforded by the use of the research materials at the library of Dumbarton Oaks enabled me to undertake a comparative study of each individual photograph and drawing of the monuments. I also gave some of my recent photographs as a gift to Dumbarton Oaks Photo Archive, which I thought would be helpful to other researchers at Dumbarton Oaks who are studying topics similar to mine.
Regarding my long-term goals, with all the documentation I have so far gathered at Dumbarton Oaks and previously in Istanbul, I will set up folders for the monuments I am focusing on, involving the historical sequence of changes during their lifetime and also including their current state. In that way, I will be able to carry out a comparative study at the end of which I will be able to propose a list of solutions for their preservation. I have no doubt that my research here at Dumbarton Oaks has equipped me with very necessary knowledge. I was able to make contacts with colleagues which will lead to international collaboration. By 2010, I hope to complete my dissertation, presenting guidelines for the preservation of some middle Byzantine–era monuments of Istanbul, to assist with the conservation of those long neglected monuments.
Réka Forrai (Central European University), “Greek in the West: The Medieval Papacy and the Western Translation Projects”
My research on Greek-Latin medieval translations is a two-sided coin, and the Dumbarton Oaks library offered me an overwhelmingly full coverage of sources and readings (in both traditional and electronic formats) for all issues connected to the Greek side of this coin.
The involvement of the papacy in the translation activities from Greek to Latin throughout the Middle Ages is a bold statement to be thoroughly qualified. The different case studies and their place in the general picture were one of my main concerns at Dumbarton Oaks.
First, I carried out essential background research on the historical context of the phenomenon of papal patronage of translation projects. I have made progress especially in the field of papal-Byzantine relations throughout the centuries, in its many dimensions: political, ecclesiastical, theological, and cultural. I have done readings on the major ecclesiastical and political conflicts, on ecumenical councils, on diplomatic activities, on the impact of crusades on cultural interaction, on mendicant presence in the East, on Greek scholars traveling to the West, and the way all these elements fueled or hindered the unfolding of translation activities.
Second, I have sketched several of my case studies to be presented. I have drafted short profiles of the translators and popes involved. I have investigated the textual history of groups of Greek manuscripts with special relevance to medieval translation projects, such as the manuscripts used by Burgundio of Pisa and William of Moerbeke, but also, in a broader context, the knotty problem of the presence of Greek manuscripts in southern Italy.
By the end of my stay, a preliminary structure of the whole research also took shape. I have worked out a sensible periodization which is meaningful for the organization of my data. I have also tried to address some of the methodologically challenging problems of my project, such as maintaining the coherence of my argument without falling into the error of claiming a continuous and uniform papal policy throughout the period covered.
Michael John Jeffreys (University of Oxford), “Lead Seals in Dumbarton Oaks and the Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire”
The Prosopography of the Byzantine World (PBW) project, which I manage, had on its website details of some 3,300 Dumbarton Oaks seals, more than half not from Dumbarton Oaks publications. Many of these references were wrong or suspect. After energetic checking and detective work during the summer, our website will soon acquire information on more than 200 new Dumbarton Oaks seals and 350 others with corrected references. I hope the availability of good references will drive out the bad. During this process dozens more improvements were made in the seal descriptions.
I offered expertise in two areas of John Nesbitt’s current work, metrical seals and twelfth-century prosopography. Metrical work was eliminated and prosopography extended at John’s suggestion. I first spent ten days on an electronic index to Varzos’s badly flawed but indispensable book on twelfth-century prosopography. The index has already saved two days of my time, and an hour or more for two other fellows. John Nesbitt and I then picked out and photocopied about 500 record cards of seals from three major twelfth-century families, the Komnenoi, Doukai, and Kontostephanoi. I have made the easy identifications of owners, and worked out some more difficult cases, leaving others for the future. For cases where identification is probably impossible I am writing helpful summaries of the possibilities.
About one week was spent on other essential work: proofs for the edition of the Letters of Iakovos Monachos, the final version of an article on Psellos, a collaborative article on the First Crusade for which I found useful bibliography, and a lecture on the European discovery of popular Byzantine historical poetry.
Andreas Rhoby (Institut für Byzanzforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna), “Byzantine Epigrams on Icons and Objects of Minor Arts”
In the summer of 2006, I had the great chance to use the facilities of Dumbarton Oaks for the first time (as a reader). I was then working on the first volume of the Vienna-based project Byzantine epigrams on objects, supervised by Wolfram Hörandner. Completing this volume dedicated to Byzantine epigrams on frescoes and mosaics would have hardly been possible without consulting Dumbarton Oaks’s Library and Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives.
About one year ago, I started working on the second volume of the above-mentioned project. It focuses on Byzantine epigrams preserved on icons and objects of minor arts. Despite the fact that the library of the Institute of Byzantine Studies at the University of Vienna is one of the best in our field, I soon recognized that dozens of books and articles would not be available for me (not even by interlibrary loan). Knowing that I would find them at Dumbarton Oak, and being familiar with all the other very helpful Dumbarton Oaks resources, I applied for a summer fellowship.
In the last weeks, after consulting the missing publications, my work on Byzantine epigrams on icons and objects of minor arts is now more or less completed. I have already started the process of reviewing the manuscript that contains the presentation of almost two hundred epigrams preserved on icons and objects of minor arts. The presentation of each epigram includes the description of the object and the position of the inscribed verses, the critical edition of the Greek text, its translation in German, and a commentary on linguistical, philological, and historical/prosopographical, etc., matters.
The second purpose of my stay was to look for proper images of the described objects. I was not only able to find them in several books belonging to the Dumbarton Oaks Library but also in the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives.
Before submitting the volume to the Austrian Academy of Sciences (hopefully in the first half of 2009), the following things still have to be done. First, the process of reviewing has to be completed. Second, a long introductory chapter with general remarks on meter, language, and the interaction of word and image has to be written. And third, several indices (index locorum, index verborum, etc.) have to be created.
To sum up: Without using Dumbarton Oaks’s facilities both the first and the second volume of the project Byzantine epigrams on objects would have remained incomplete. By consulting the missing publications and by finding new epigrams both in books and on images preserved in the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives, I am now better informed about the function and the circulation of Byzantine epigrams. The argument (which can be read in earlier publications) that the number of Byzantine epigrams still preserved on objects is very small cannot be maintained any more. Our projects now include more than one thousand inscriptional epigrams, of which several were found during research at Dumbarton Oaks.
I deeply hope I will have another chance to work at Dumbarton Oaks, perhaps for the third volume of the project, which will be dedicated to the large number of Byzantine epigrams preserved on stone. It has always been a fascinating experience.
Ufuk Serin (Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey), “Late Antique and Byzantine Rural Settlements in Caria (Western Asia Minor) in the Light of New Archaeological Evidence”
My research at Dumbarton Oaks surveys the rural settlements and countryside in Caria in the late antique and Byzantine periods. This research is part of a larger project, including a comprehensive archaeological survey of the Gulf of Mandalya from the pre-Hellenistic through the Byzantine periods. The archaeological survey of the Gulf of Mandalya is directed by Professor R. Pierobon Benoit from the University of Naples Federico Ⅱ, and covers the results of five years of fieldwork (2003–2007). The surveyed area largely remains under the jurisdiction of Iasos (mod. Kıyıkışlacık), the major city in the area, giving its name to the entire territory.
As for the late antique and Byzantine periods, the archaeological evidence in the surveyed area comprises the remnants of two late antique villages, several churches (isolated or in association with other structures), a small bath building, as well as the ruins of several different identified (cisterns, necropoleis, fortifications) and unidentified structures. To these must be added surface finds, particularly architectural elements and pottery.
In this context, my research at Dumbarton Oaks has mainly focused on the understanding and identification of different types of rural dwelling units and areas (villages, habitats, and farmhouses) in terms of settlement patterns, land use, and management, not only in the surveyed area but also throughout the entire Byzantine Asia Minor. In comparison to some other regions of the Byzantine Empire (e.g., Jordan, Palestine, Syria, as well as Macedonia, parts of Greece, and southern Italy), research into rural settlements in Asia Minor is still limited, with the exception of Bithynia, Central Anatolia, Cilicia, Lycia, and the Euphrates Valley in southern Turkey. The two late antique villages discovered at Alagün and Zindaf Kale in the 2005 and 2006 seasons are particularly worth noting. The settlement at Zindaf Kale includes the remnants of several structures, two of which are relatively well preserved, with a major period of occupation attributable to the fifth–seventh centuries AD. The archaeological evidence indicates that the area was also inhabited through the later Byzantine and Ottoman periods.
My research also included a typological study of the small provincial baths in western and southern Asia Minor. The remnants of a small structure—somehow identified by previous scholars as a church—found at Zeytinlikuyu to the southeast of Iasos belongs, indeed, to a bathhouse, as indicated by the steam channels into the arched doorway connecting the two inner spaces, and the remains of cocciopesto. Little of this structure is visible; however, it probably belonged to a type of bath classified as the “row (or linear) arrangement” common on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor, particularly in Lycia, from the Roman through the early Byzantine periods. The remnants of a large basilica recovered nearby indicate that the bath was included in a larger, and probably ecclesiastical, complex.
This summer fellowship has also enabled me to complete another publication, Making Byzantium Understood: Re-Interpretation and Representation of Byzantine Cultural Heritage in Turkey, which is included in a three-year project (2005–2008) funded by the European Commission.European Commission: Euromed Heritage Ⅲ: Byzantium-Early Islam (ByzeIs), Project Nº ME8/AIDOC/2000/2095–13 (CRIS 2003/076–566). This project, coordinated by Elliniki Etairia, Thessaloniki Branch, includes, along with the Middle East Technical University/Ankara, a partnership of different institutions, from Cyprus, Greece, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority. The aim of this project was to determine the best practice methods for a better management of the Byzantine and early Islamic cultural heritage in the Mediterranean region.
Antonios Tsakalos (Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens), “The Rock-Cut Monastery of Karanlık Kilise in the Göreme Valley: Monasticism, Art, and Patronage in Byzantine Cappadocia”
During this fellowship, my aim was to undertake research leading to the publication of my PhD dissertation, which focuses on the middle Byzantine rock-cut monastery of Karanlık kilise in the Göreme valley (Cappadocia). In general, I tried to check systematically the bibliographical references cited in the footnotes, and especially to consult the most recent publications in order to update the information provided in my text. Being conscious that the task undertaken needed more than two months to be completed, I decided to focus particularly on two major topics treated in my thesis.
First, research on the different forms of Byzantine monasticism allowed me to better understand the archaeological material and to consolidate my hypothesis that the Karanlık kilise monastery was a small coenobium, to which several ascetics living in the surrounding area would have been attached.
Second, the role of the seven donors depicted in significant places in the katholikon of the monastery was undoubtedly decisive. It seems that the donors conceived their participation in the foundation of Karanlık kilise as involving a kind of “mission,” probably concerning the interests of the Byzantine Church.
In addition, undisturbed concentration on my research for two months and the opportunity to work again on a text completed a couple of years ago offered me the chance to realize that several modifications, such as the shortening of certain parts of the text or reorganization of the existing material in several instances, would render the final presentation more coherent and effective.
Ivan Jordanov (Konstantin Preslavsky University, Shumen, Bulgaria), “Corpus of the Byzantine Seals from Bulgaria, Volume 3”
The project I have been researching at Dumbarton Oaks is Corpus of the Byzantine Seals from Bulgaria, Volume 3: Byzantine Institutions (Secular and Ecclesiastical) located in the Capital Constantinople. It will include nearly 1,200 seals of title-holders of various institutions (civil, military, and ecclesiastical) who resided in Constantinople.
After the material was classified it turned out that more than 1,500 seals could not be attributed to any of the above rubrics. These are seals of private individuals containing one or two names, anonymous seals, monogrammatic seals, and approximately 1000 seals which cannot be deciphered because their texts are incomplete. They are important for medieval Bulgarian history because they were found in various settlements of former medieval Bulgaria and thus their publication is also obligatory.
Meanwhile new Byzantine seals were found in Bulgaria that supplement or correct what was already published in the first two volumes.
Volume 3, the final stage of the project, will include all Byzantine seals found in modern Bulgaria arranged according to the existing classifications. It will include seals already published with references to the relevant publications and in cases of new finds or new readings they will be noted appropriately. Thus all the material will be documented so as to illustrate the ranks and official hierarchy in Byzantium as elucidated by the material from Bulgaria.
During my stay at Dumbarton Oaks, I arranged the text and the respective photos according to the following scheme:
- Imperial palace, nos.1–715 (Imperial seals, nos. 1–126; Offices at the Palace, nos. 218–363; Titles at the Palace, nos 364–715)
- Central administration, nos. 716–965
- Army, 966–1089
- Provincial administration, nos. 1100–1617
- Church, nos. 1618–1796
- Seals of private individuals, nos. 1797–2586
- Undeciphered seals, nos. 2587–3500.
Garden and Landscape Studies
Fellows
Mahvash Alemi (Rome, Italy),
“Safavid Gardens as the Representation of their World and Culture”
During my fellowship I worked on the draft of my book Safavid Gardens As the Representation of their World and Culture. Its first chapter is a critique of the recent construction of the word chaharbagh as a garden with a four-fold plan. Chapter two offers an analysis of gardens in cities as described through restored Safavid maps, based on my critical study of sources, mainly Kaempfer's manuscripts. The third chapter is about gardens in the rural world, including productive, sacred, and hunting landscapes. Chapter four is on Navidi's poems and garden, revealing the essence of creation as mirrored in the heart of a Sufi. The remaining sections examine the representation of gardens in Safavid painting (relying particularly on the Houghton Shahnama, a recent Dumbarton Oaks acquisition), gardens represented in carpets and tents, and the use of inter-textuality to link the Safavids to ancient kings and rituals. I have finished the first and fourth chapters and made significant progress in the remaining chapters by refining the plan of the book, adding new ideas to the chapters on paintings, carpets, and tents, and updating my work on mausoleum gardens. This was possible thanks to the resources at Dumbarton Oaks, the generous assistance of librarians Sheila Klos, Linda Lott, Deborah Stewart and Bridget Gazzo, and the continuous work of Ingrid Gibson for interlibrary loans. The discussions on common cultural aspects of Chinese and Persian gardens with Xin Wu, the talks with the Director of Studies, John Beardsley, and the garden fellows Nina Gerlach, Jennifer Raab, and Eric MacDonald, and the fortunate presence of the distinguished fellow Stephan Bann opened new perspectives. I was also invited to give talks on my work at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and at the Middle East Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
Eric A. MacDonald (University of Georgia),
“The Art which Mends Nature: The Contributions of Garden and Forest to the History of American Environmentalism”
During the term of my fellowship in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, I expanded my research of a horticultural journal entitled Garden and Forest, which was published in the United States from 1888 through 1897. This research included an examination of nineteenth-century texts related to gardening, landscape design, horticulture, and forestry, as well as recent historical accounts of the development of these fields. I also studied manuscript materials at the Loeb Library of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and at the Library of the Arnold Arboretum. I used this research to begin composing a book manuscript that offers an account of the contributions of Garden and Forest to American environmental thought and environmental practices during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The manuscript consists of ten chapters, and during the fellowship term I completed preliminary drafts of seven. In late March, I presented a paper based on my research at the annual meeting of the Nineteenth Century Studies Association. Another paper has been accepted for a symposium on American landscape architectural history, which will be held in May 2010 at the University of Maryland. Aside from my research on Garden and Forest, I enjoyed consulting informally with the Dumbarton Oaks garden staff on various landscape management matters. My experience at Dumbarton Oaks renewed my passion for environmental design history, and strengthened my professional commitment to bridging historical scholarship and contemporary landscape management.
Junior Fellows
Nina Gerlach (University of Heidelberg, Fall),
“The Garden as Film Backdrop: Construction of Cinematic Garden Space”
During my fellowship, I analyzed the role of the cinematic garden set as an educational argument in Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle (1958) and Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961). Linda A. Pollock considers gardening to be one of the most frequently used metaphors with reference to childhood (2002). Such a metaphorical construction is possible because gardens are in general suitable for creating a visualized criticism. Given the shifting existence of gardens, between pure natural and cultural existence, they share the hybrid state of res mixta with thecondicio humana and are thereby provided for contexts of metaphorical universalism. Additionally in a tradition of an ethical naturalism that viewed nature as a point of reference for ethical judgment the notions of nature and goodness can be philosophically solidified. Rousseau's pedagogical concept could be read as a theory that combines these two ideas in the other most frequently used metaphor vis-à-vis childhood: innocence. Emphasized as natural purity, childhood is understood as the state of life completely unspoiled by human interventions. Both research objects confirm this idea of a retrospectively viewed natural paradise ex negativo since the decline of this original state goes along with the representation of architecturalized garden sets and of a childhood that is strongly dictated by adults. For instance, Clayton conceptualizes the spitefulness of the children as natura lapsa, visually indicated by a garden location, which combines the Victorian garden of Sheffield Parc with a Neogothic gazebo and garden staffage influenced by the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499) in an aesthetic of the foreign. Simultaneously, the bad behavior of the children can be narratologically explained only as a result of the insanity of the puritanical governess or the supernatural influence of the other adults, the ghosts.
Jennifer Raab (Yale University), “The Language of Landscape: Frederic Church and the Culture of Detail in Nineteenth-Century America”
During my fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks, I completed my dissertation and will graduate from Yale in May. While in residence, I wrote my final two chapters and revised the entire dissertation, which is entitled Frederic Church and the Culture of Detail. I will begin a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at the end of the summer.
My stay at Dumbarton Oaks was invaluable, not only because of the time, freedom, and resources that the fellowship provided, but also because of the community of scholars that I found here. My final chapter examined Frederic Church’s landscape at Olana (Hudson, New York), and I arrived in September unsure of how to conceptualize a physical landscape, and how, specifically, I was going to situate Olana in relation to Church’s landscape paintings. Presenting my research report and hearing the responses from those within and outside my field was enormously productive. My conversations throughout the year with the fellows in Garden and Landscape Studies, and particularly with our director, John Beardsley, aided and advanced my work on my last chapter significantly. I pursued new research directions and explored surprising connections that I never would have discovered had I not been in residence here. My understanding of what constitutes landscapehas been deepened and enriched, and I look forward to pursuing these ideas not only as I revise my dissertation for publication, but also as I begin to develop courses and exhibitions for the years ahead.
Summer Fellow
María del Carmen Magaz (Universidad del Salvador),
“Public Space: Development of Garden and Park Conservation Practices, Current Debates, and Laws”
My aim during the summer fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks was to appraise the legal debates on public space conservation worldwide and the current status of laws, norms, codes, and ordinances in the United States and in Europe.
Reviewing the documents and charters of international organizations like theUNESCO World Heritage Committee, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), the International Council of Museums (ICOM), the Council of Europe, the Draft European Landscape Convention, the Greenways system in North America, the National Capital Parks, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the American Society of Landscape Architects proceedings, and several American cultural landscape foundations, I have found that legislation about cultural landscape has only recently emerged as a suitable area for international attention, and there is much to be learned about its protection, management, and planning.
Cultural landscape is a very important and inclusive concept that brings together the cultural and natural environments and is considered today a new frontier for environmental law. It strongly emphasizes public involvement and expresses the diverse cultural, ecological, social, and economic heritage that is the foundation of regional and national identity. It is necessary to develop legal approaches that consider all these ideas together. However, the most important consideration is that isolated laws do not work without people to care for and to be part of the conservation project. In exploring these issues, I have availed myself not only of the important library resources at Dumbarton Oaks but also those of the Library of Congress, in particular its Law Library.
On my return to Argentina in my position as advisor to a senator of the National Congress, I will be able to propose to Congress a number of laws inspired by my research at Dumbarton Oaks as well as by recent in-depth discussions with specialists. My experience will allow me to focus on the efficiency of local public policies geared to the city and to its people. Buenos Aires is one of the most important Latin American cities in terms of its public parks and squares, but it lacks legislation on heritage conservation, especially of its cultural landscapes. New laws should be passed before our Bicentennial in 2010. The research at Dumbarton Oaks on Debates and laws on garden and park conservation practices allowed me to acquire the information to update and better articulate appropriate legislative action and will be the basis for our legal projects, taking into account local idiosyncrasies.
Beatrix Farrand Distinguished Fellow
Stephen Bann, CBE (University of Bristol, Spring), “Ian Hamilton Finlay and the Creation of the Garden at Stonypath/Little Sparta”
Most of my current research concerns the history of museums and collections, from the seventeenth century onwards, and painters, photographers and printmakers in nineteenth-century France. The opportunity of the Beatrix Farrand Fellowship has enabled me to turn my attention to the history of a contemporary garden: Ian Hamilton Finlay's Stonypath/Little Sparta. Finlay was one of the first garden creators to be featured in the Contemporary Landscape Design collection at Dumbarton Oaks. Documents relating to his career as a poet and artist also exist in several American institutions. This stay has enabled me to make an overall survey of these archival materials, and has resulted in several different outcomes. I wrote a substantial draft of an essay on Finlay's early artistic influences, including his contacts with major American poets and artists. I was also able to index and annotate the unique collection of digitized color slides of the garden held in the Dumbarton Oaks collection. Taken in 1976 and in the 1980s, these had never been identified individually. My project led to correlating them with other early photographs, as well as analyzing the ways in which photography featured in Finlay's self-criticism, through the testimony of documents in various collections (Indiana, Texas, Smithsonian). In my research paper, I speculated on how a history of Little Sparta utilizing such different kinds of resources might develop. In my related paper for the forthcoming symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, I will be discussing the significance of the immediately preceding stage in Finlay's career (1965/66).
Pre-Columbian Studies
Visiting Scholar
Christopher Donnan (University of California, Los Angeles, Spring)
Fellows
John W. Janusek (Vanderbilt University),
“Pre-Columbian Urbanism in Comparative Perspective: Space, Society, and Long-Term Human-Landscape Relations”
A central purpose of my proposed project was to develop a theoretical framework for conceptualizing past cities in the New World by comparing key early examples from Mesoamerica and the South American Andes. Living the Dumbarton Oaks experience, which has involved intensive reading and conversing across disciplines, encouraged me to refocus that project in unexpected but very effective and gratifying ways. It became clear that my original project was too geographically dispersed for me to develop a substantive framework for effectively treating both the similarities and substantial distinctions among Pre-Columbian centers. My project thus split into two books: one based on the original idea, to be written second, and one more theoretically robust and geographically focused, which has become my primary project.
The manuscript I have been researching and writing (tentatively entitled: Ancient Andean Centers: Nature and the Social Construction of Space and Time) has a fundamental argument: that Pre-Columbian centers/cities were not simply spaces for social activity to happen but they also actively shaped human activity and experience, including intuitive experiences of space, time, value, and personhood. I develop this position via two themes. First, in line with recent turns in urban geography and sociology, a center or city is, as Lewis Mumford noted long ago, a geographical plexus. This perspective shifts the focus on cities as centered places to the networks and connections that give rise to and are anchored in them. Second, in line with emerging ideas at the junction of numerous disciplines, this project focuses on past cities as dynamic components of particular societies and landscapes, and as characterized by especially dense, mutually generative relations among humans, the physical environment, and its perceived animacy. I argue that for much of the Pre-Columbian world, urbanism is best understood in light of an animistic view of human-environment relations, or what I term an animistic ecology, in which centers emerged as places for mediating relations among human and perceived non-human agents.
The geographical focus of this manuscript is the south-central Andean highlands. Over the past eight years I have been conducting archaeological research in the Machaca region of Bolivia, where I am investigating the origins of urbanism and social complexity. Writing this revised book project has allowed me to effectively integrate this new research, with which I am currently deeply engaged, with the thematic issues outlined above. I now have four chapter drafts for the volume, effectively the first half of the book, three of which are manuscripts I am submitting to journals. The first chapter establishes the theoretical framework outlined above, the second synthesizes relevant comparative examples of early pre-urban centers and later cities from across the Pre-Columbian world, the third introduces early centers in the south-central Andes, and the fourth engages pre-urban centers in the region where I have been conducting recent research, focusing on the site of Khonkho Wankane. The following three chapters will tackle the transformation from pre-urban to urban centers.
Antti Korpisaari (University of Helsinki),
“Ethnic Diversity in the Tiwanaku Period (ca. 500–1100/1500 AD) South Central Andes”
My project at Dumbarton Oaks was part of a longer undertaking, funded in Finland by the Emil Aaltonen Foundation. Consequently, I felt that rather than to try to write as much text as possible at Dumbarton Oaks, in the long run it was better to go through and scan books and articles for current and future reference, as literature on Andean prehistory is quite hard to come by in Finland. I found the Dumbarton Oaks library excellent and its staff very helpful, and in the end I was able to take several gigabytes' worth of scanned literature home with me. My library also grew greatly due to the possibility of downloading North American dissertations and theses through the Harvard E-Research portal.
Even if writing was not the main objective of my fellowship term, I did do quite a bit of that, as well. My major project was to work toward finishing the manuscript of a mini-monograph on the results of the archaeological excavations on the island of Pariti, Bolivia. I managed to all but finish the text part and to prepare the numerous figures and their captions. During my stay at Dumbarton Oaks I was also able to finish and send off three article manuscripts on the Tiwanaku culture and/or the Andean Middle Horizon. All in all, I consider my time at Dumbarton Oaks as having been both very productive and extremely enjoyable, for which reason I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks to the staff and my fellow Fellows!
Michael W. Love (California State University, Northridge),
“Early Social Complexity in Ancient Mesoamerica: Public and Private Perspectives”
The goal of my project is to synthesize the results of two major excavation efforts, at the sites of La Blanca and El Ujuxte, on the Pacific coast of Guatemala. These two research efforts were carried out with similar research designs, and in tandem examine the dynamics of political economy in the Preclassic period, and household responses to the expansion of centralized political power. During the eight months spent at Dumbarton Oaks, I advanced significantly in preparing articles on the work at both sites. Specifically, the work I accomplished includes the following:
- I completed an overview of the development of urbanism on the Pacific coast and highlands of Guatemala (a preliminary version of the article will be published in the volume The Southern Maya in Late Preclassic);
- I completed a summary view of the household excavations at La Blanca (a shortened version of the work will appear in the volume Formative Period Soconusco);
- I completed a Spanish-language article on the excavations of monumental architecture at La Blanca (the English-language version will form a chapter in the monograph on excavations at La Blanca);
- I completed an article on domestic ritual at La Blanca and its relationship to the reproduction of social identities;
- I completed a chapter on the pottery of El Ujuxte, including type descriptions, tabulations, and the development of a pottery-based chronology for the Late Preclassic of Pacific Guatemala;
- I prepared a new map of El Ujuxte; and
- I prepared a new map of La Blanca.
Stella Nair (University of California, Riverside),
“Retreats without Surrender: The Architecture of Sanctuary at Chinchero, from Thupa 'Inka to the Spanish Occupation”
Andrew K. Scherer (Baylor University),
“Death and Burial among the Classic Maya”
My research at Dumbarton Oaks was directed towards the preparation of a book on Classic Maya mortuary practices. Many scholars treat Classic Maya burials as expressions of a single monolithic funerary tradition. In contrast, my work advances the thesis that although the Classic Maya held certain universal beliefs about death and burial, localized traditions developed regarding the proper treatment of the dead in funerary contexts. My research demonstrates that different Maya polities maintained distinctive funerary rites that distinguished them from the rites performed in other polities.
My research at Dumbarton Oaks focused on the western Maya kingdoms of Piedras Negras, Yaxchilan, and Palenque. These three polities provide particularly interesting case studies; despite their proximity and entangled histories, they developed distinctly different funerary traditions by the Late Classic period. I argue that these differences in part relate to the construction of polity identity at these Maya centers. Importantly, aspects of these polity-specific traditions are replicated across all social strata and also at subordinate communities within these respective kingdoms.
Aside from this primary research project, I co-edited the 2008 research report of the Sierra del Lacandón Regional Archaeology Project, presented the paper Water in the West: Chronology and Collapse of the Western Maya River Kingdoms at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, and lead-authored the article Tecolote, Guatemala: Archaeological Evidence for a Fortified Late Classic Maya Political Border which was submitted and is currently under review with the Journal of Field Archaeology.
Verónica I. Williams (Instituto de Arqueología, University of Buenos Aires, Fall),
“To the Edge of the Empire: The Dynamics of Inca Rule in the South Andes”
Four months of intensive reading and writing at Dumbarton Oaks allowed me to complete a manuscript on the subject of the Inca domination of northwest Argentina and northern Chile, an area that constituted much of Qollasuyu, or the empire's southeastern quarter. This research was based on both historical sources and archaeological data, including new information from recent studies. Drawing upon the wealth of recent scholarship in the Inca heartland around the capital of Cuzco, as well as new research from the southern region, this manuscript is the first treatment of the southern Inca Empire in English.
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library contains one of the most complete collections of historical sources on Pre-Columbian societies in the Americas, which were essential for the preparation of the present manuscript. Sad to say, none of the countries of the study area (Argentina, Bolivia and Chile) offers such a comprehensive collection, because their holdings traditionally reflect national interests. For example, while libraries in Argentina have many titles devoted to Inca history in northwestern Argentina, they lack recent treatments concerning other parts of the empire. Because of my experience and familiarity with Argentine research, I was able to focus on the Dumbarton Oaks holdings for reference to Bolivia, Chile, and the core region of the empire. The fall symposium, lectures and concerts enhanced my residency, as did the exchange of ideas among colleagues during my stay at Dumbarton Oaks.
Summer Fellows
Jessica Joyce Christie (East Carolina University),
“The Sculpted Outcrops of the Inka”
The main goal of my fellowship was to advance my book manuscript entitled The Sculpted Outcrops of the Inka which is due at University of Texas Press in late January 2009. I am at the stage of finalizing each chapter and have completed about 75,000 of the total 100,000 words. I was able to enrich many sections by consulting sources, in particular Spanish chronicles and Peruvian publications, which are not readily available at my university library. I further benefitted from many interactions with other fellows, visiting readers and staff, especially Alexandre Tokovinine, and from the thoughtful feedback on my writing provided by Joanne Pillsbury, Director of Pre-Columbian Studies. A crowning experience was to see and look at all the paintings in the recently discovered Galvin Manuscript by Fray Martin de Murua (1590), a facsimile copy of which is available in the Rare Book Collection of Dumbarton Oaks.
Part of my time was taken up by editing and finalizing two other publications. My edited volume Landscapes of Origin in the Americas: Creation Narratives Linking Ancient Places and Present Communities was completed during my term and is being published by University of Alabama Press. I finished several encyclopedia entries on the Inca, Pachacuti, and Cuzco for Michael Francis, Department of History at the University of North Florida, who is the editor of Facts on File.
Justyna A. Olko-Bajer (University of Warsaw),
“The Concept of Chichimec in Native Identity and Perception, Pre-Hispanic and Colonial Central Mexico”
My research at Dumbarton Oaks encompassed a broad query of several categories of sources and was planned as a systematic collection of data in the early phase of the project that focuses on multiple dimensions of the concept of chichimecayotl and Chichimecs, semi-barbarian groups from northern Mexico and supposed ancestors of Nahua communities. The excellent library resources enabled me to explore Nahuatl and Spanish sources belonging to historical and religious genres, but embracing also selected documents associated with the indigenous nobility. Another category of sources essential for my research was pertinent iconographic material, especially selected pictorial manuscripts, including some of the late colonial Techialoyan codices and Títulos primordiales, as well as colonial paintings containing representations of inhabitants of northern Mesoamerica. I was able to gather relatively ample documentation associated with the perception of the sixteenth-century Chichimec groups in the light of the guerra chichimeca taking place in the northern frontier of Mesoamerica. An indispensable part of the project was a systematic reassessment of previous research dealing with this subject matter.
I hope that this multifaceted and interdisciplinary analysis, planned to be be continued in the forthcoming years, will contribute to the understanding of important pre-Hispanic and early colonial concepts associated with indigenous identity, historical traditions, historiography, and ethnic stereotypes. During my stay at Dumbarton Oaks I was also working on a paper entitled Memory, transformation, and survival: The constructions of identity in native genealogies of New Spain, and made final revisions to my book conceived as a systematic introduction to the cultures of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica (to be published in Polish).