Month: September 2019

Apparently it’s proofs season here, since I’ve been busy reading a lot of my own writing lately, looking for errors that should long since have been corrected (by me). The good news is that all of these things will actually be published soon. They include:

Archaeology of Empire in Achaemenid Egypt. Edinburgh Studies in Ancient Persia. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020. (This should be available in November 2019; download the discount flyer here.)

“The Canon of Ancient Iranian Art: From Grand Narratives to Local Perspectives.” In Amy Rebecca Gansell and Ann Shafer (ed.), Testing the Canon of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. (This should be available in November or December 2019. It looks like my title was changed; probably I agreed to it and don’t remember. I wrote this paper back in 2015, and it was instrumental in getting me my current job. I’m really happy to see it in print finally.)

“An Urartian Belt in the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Origin of the Parthian Shot.” Getty Research Journal 12 (2020). (Co-authored with Alexis M. Belis; this will be published in the spring of 2020. It publishes a belt in the Getty villa and explores the history of the Parthian shot motif, including an argument that it originated in Urartu. This was a fun article to write.)

If I were to give an award for the weirdest job ad, there would be a new contender as of today.  I won’t name names, but I will quote the ad itself, which is for an ‘Assistant Professor with specialization in Mediterranean Identity and Race in Antiquity,’ and it will be obvious that the position is at a Canadian university:

The Ideal candidate will be someone, who can design and teach courses such as “Ancient Colonization and Diasporas,” “Warfare in the Ancient world” and “Slavery in the ancient Mediterranean,” which emphasize the strategies all cultures involved developed for mutual interaction, connection and inclusion.  The successful candidate – Ideally a qualified scholar from an equity-seeking group – will be expected to initiate a high-quality research program on Greco-Roman interaction with the diverse indigenous populations of the Mediterranean, exploring parallels with the Canadian indigenous experience.  This research, which is competitive for funding through Canada’s tri-council awards, will have independent facets, but also entail collaboration with colleagues in another field or fields, such as Art History, Gender Studies Geography, History, Languages Literatures and Cultures, Linguistics, Religious Studies and Sociology.  By involving students, the research will further enhance the Department’s strong emphasis on experiential learning.

This ad is for a unicorn. If they fill this position with someone who actually meets all of these qualifications, I’ll eat my hat. Of course, they may already know of someone who meets these qualifications, but this is how rumors get started…

Here is a discount flyer (30% off when you order direct for my book Archaeology of Empire in Achaemenid Egypt, which will be available in November. Buy it today! (Well, buy it in November.)