Esdeveniments

Eastern Pottery in a Western World: new insights on Eastern Sigillata from Pisa through the lens of Archaeometry (POSTER PRESENTATION)    Marisol Madrid i Fernández(1), Clàudia Ortega Palacios1, Simonetta Menchelli(2), Helga Maiorana(2), Andrea Camilli(3)    (1)University of Barcelona, (2)University of Pisa, (3)Ministero della cultura, Direzione regionale musei della Toscana    New perspectives on Levantine Eastern Sigillata A revealed through archaeometry (ORAL PRESENTATION)   Marisol Madrid i Fernández1, Dalit Regev2, Clàudia Ortega Palacios1   1 University of Barcelona  2 Israel Antiquities Authority 

Speakers: Professor Rocío Da Riva, University of Barcelona A series of first millennium BC cuneiform texts from Assyrian and Babylonian temple and private archives provides valuable information on religious...

The Connected Past: Religious Networks in Antiquity The University of British Columbia, Vancouver Canada Optional network science workshop Oct. 2nd-3rd 2024  Network approaches are used by archaeologists and historians as tools to model relational ties between individuals and groups in the past as key predictors of historical outcomes. The growing uptake of these approaches comes in an era recently dubbed the “Third Science Revolution” (Kristiansen 2014), where the advancement of Big Data and computational techniques have revolutionized the types and amounts of information at our fingertips and our means of analyzing and visualizing its patterns. This workshop and conference aim to build bridges between often divergent disciplinary skillsets: the quantitative and computational side of network analysis and the qualitative questions and explanations that undergird network theory alongside historical and archaeological work.  A special area of focus for the conference will be the application of network perspectives to the emergence and spread of religious beliefs and practices, positioning these phenomena as deeply intertwined with the human and material connections that comprised the ancient world. Religion has often been regarded as both an intensely local and intensely transcultural force for ancient communities. Now, at the digital frontiers of the twenty-first century, the resurgent interests in large-scale questions on human development have opened up new opportunities to study religion from relational and quantitative perspectives combined with deep qualitative and historical approaches developed in the humanities.

Series: Cuneiform Monographs, Volume: 57 Authors: Rocío Da Riva and Nathan Wasserman The Divine Love Lyrics is a thematically cohesive collection of approximately 50 cuneiform texts from the 1st millennium BCE, originating in Assyria and Babylonia. These texts are connected to religious ceremonies in Babylon that revolved around the city’s principal deities: Marduk, his wife Zarpanitu, and his lover, Ištar of Babylon. Long recognized as a significant corpus in Assyriology, particularly through the pioneering work of W. G. Lambert, the Divine Love Lyrics have often been referenced in discussions of love, sexuality, and ritual in Mesopotamian culture. Yet, despite their importance, no comprehensive edition or detailed study of these complex and often enigmatic texts has been undertaken—until now. This book aims to fill that gap. By expanding the known corpus, clarifying its structure and themes, and providing a meticulous edition and translation of each tablet, it offers a thorough philological foundation for future research. The study deepens our understanding of this fascinating yet challenging body of texts, shedding new light on their literary, religious, and cultural significance within the later phases of ancient Mesopotamia. Copyright Year: 2025   E-Book (PDF) Availability: Published ISBN: 978-90-04-74159-1 Publication: 29 Sep 2025 EUR €139.36 EUR €134.00 excl. VAT   Hardback Availability: Not Yet Published ISBN: 978-90-04-74158-4 Publication: 02 Oct 2025 EUR €142.04 EUR €134.00 excl. VAT

Date: Friday, 24 October 2025 | Time: Starts at 15:00 | Venue: Join us at the Andreas Mouskos Auditorium, The Cyprus Institute | Speaker: Prof. Rocío Da Riva, Department of History and Archaeology, University of Barcelona. Abstract: From Babylon, at the heart of modern-day Iraq, the Neo-Babylonian Empire expanded across much of the Near East during the 7th and 6th centuries BCE. Though relatively short-lived, this empire generated a rich corpus of inscriptions that illustrate the relationship between the imperial heartland and its peripheral territories. This presentation will examine a remarkable subset of that evidence: the inscribed monuments commissioned by Kings Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BC) and Nabonidus (556-539 BC) and located in the mountains of Lebanon and Jordan, respectively. These monuments, not only anchor Babylonian kingship in distant territories but also pose important methodological challenges for field-based epigraphy. Hence, this presentation will address both the methodological issues involved in studying inscriptions in the field and the historical implications of these extraordinary monuments, silent witnesses to the ancient grandeur of the Mesopotamian empires. About the Speaker: Born in Madrid, Da Riva studied in Ghent, Erlangen and Würzburg. She obtained her PhD at the University of Würzburg (2001), and is currently professor in the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Barcelona. She has worked on cuneiform collections from several museums in Europe, North America and the Middle East. Her main research interests are: administrative and historical texts, political history and religious and literary texts from Babylonia, as well as cuneiform epigraphy, and she has published several articles and books on these topics. Da Riva has given lectures and seminars in universities and research centers around the world, and has been visiting researcher in several international institutions during stays of various lengths. Da Riva has been fellow of the DFG Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe “Rethinking Oriental Despotism” at the Freie Universität Berlin, visiting professor at the Venice International University and Professeur Invité at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She has also taught courses at the Yarmouk University of Irbid and at the Universität Tübingen. At present she directs the archaeological study of the site of Sela, in Jordan, where she carries out research on Iron Age Edom.

University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’, Palazzo Corigliano, Sala Conferenze, Piazza S. Domenico Maggiore 12, Naples - November 5-7, 2025 | Between Stylish Religious Ceremony and Raunchy Street Brawl: the Changing Atmospheres of the 'Divine Love Lyrics'  

Wednesday at 14:00 GMT marks the December Annotation Stammtisch, which is running to coincide with the Linked Pasts programme. This time, we'll hear from Rocio Da Riva on the project RelNet: 3 December 14:00 GMT — Rocio Da Riva on Project RelNet: religious networks in Late Babylonia Using I millennium BCE Babylonian cuneiform ritual texts as sources and Nodegoat as a research platform, RelNet scrutinises sacred landscapes and the connections between Babylonian cult centres, analysing temple festivals, religious journeys and their participants and venues. While cuneiform texts offer infinite possibilities for this, they also present a series of issues and challenges related to both the nature of the sources and the methodology.

L’equip va presentar dues comunicacions: la primera, “Conflicte i destrucció en territori cossetà: les monedes de la ciutat de les Masies de Sant Miquel (Banyeres del Penedès, Tarragona)”, es va centrar en l’anàlisi de les monedes recuperades en context estratigràfic en aquest nucli urbà, especialment un petit tresor de divisors d’Emporion i imitacions.  La segona comunicació, “Les monedes del campament de Ventafarines (Aitona, Lleida): la retirada dels pompeians d’Ilerda (49 aC)”, va presentar els primers resultats de les prospeccions arqueològiques realitzades a la comarca del Segrià, i el conjunt de monedes vinculades a un dels campaments pompeians durant la seva retirada d’Ilerda, perseguits per les tropes de J. Cèsar. 

Aquest 11 d’abril els companys del Centre d’Estudis Lacetans (CEL) han extret més de 300 peces de ceràmica ibèrica (àmfores, tenalles, kalathoi...) cuites el 29 de novembre de 2025 en un forn construït al jaciment dels Estinclells (Verdú, l’Urgell), en el marc del projecte “Característiques i evolució del poblament d’època ibèrica (ilergècia oriental) i època romana a l’Urgell”.  Aquest forn és una reproducció experimental dels forns excavats a la zona del Penedès en el projecte “El canvi sociocultural a la Cessetània oriental durant la protohistòria i l'època romana republicana”.  Els resultats d’aquesta experiència refermen el compromís de l’equip en la recerca i transferència del coneixement científic. 

Workshop “Temples, traditions and texts: cultural production under Seleucid imperial rule”, Barcelona 16.-17. April 2026 (Reial Monestir de Pedralbes & Reial Acadèmia de Farmàcia de Catalunya). Temples, traditions and texts” brings together specialists in Assyriology, Mesopotamian archaeology, Biblical Studies, Egyptology, and the history of Hellenistic Greek culture to investigate textual production in the broader framework of Seleucid imperial rule. Our shared focus is the spectrum of cultural responses—ranging from resistance and contestation to accommodation and creative adaptation—to processes oen described as “forced” or “hegemonic” Hellenization within the societies of the ancient Near East and Egypt. By concentrating on temple milieus and their priestly corpora, the workshop aims to illuminate the role of learned elites in negotiating imperial domination, cultural pressure, and the emergence of a transregional koinè in the Seleucid and early post-Seleucid periods. At the core of our discussion stand priestly texts—ritual series, cultic instructions, commentaries, chronicles, historiographical compositions, scientific and divinatory corpora understood not as static repositories of tradition but as dynamic instruments of identity construction and cultural boundary maintenance. We will examine how these texts reconfigure older traditions in dialogue with, or in tension against, new political configurations and the encroaching presence of Greek language, institutions, and forms of knowledge. In particular, we ask how scribal strategies such as archaism, canonization, recontextualization, and selective innovation functioned as modes of discursive resistance or controlled integration vis-à-vis Hellenistic imperial culture. Sessions of the workshop: 1. Communities and festivals; 2. Temples and priests; 3. History and Memory. This workshop is organized by R. Da Riva (Universitat de Barcelona) and funded by the ICREA Acadèmia Research Award