Skip to main content

Duke Professor Leads Effort to Digitize Archaeological Archives from the Middle East

Historic slides, excavation books, maps and unpublished materials related to archaeological excavations in the Middle East will be part of a new, digitized online archive organized by The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) at Boston University.

The initiative, which was recently awarded a grant for more than $300,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities, represents a "treasure trove" of data that will be of value to doctoral students, researchers as well as the public, says Eric Meyers, director of Duke's Center for Jewish Studies and a principal investigator on the project.

Meyers is leading the effort to digitize, arrange, describe and make accessible a body of archives focusing on archaeological excavations and the history of archaeology in the Middle East from 1871 to the present.

The archival material is currently dispersed across several institutions: the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, the Semitic Museum at Harvard University and at ASOR's headquarters at Boston University.

The ASOR Archives Initiative Advisory Committee will be co-chaired by Meyers, the Bernice and Morton Lerner Professor at Duke, and Rachel Hallote or Purchase College SUNY. Founded in 1900, ASOR is a non-profit organization dedicated to the archaeology of the Near East.

Meyers has been an active member of ASOR for more than 35 years (including three terms as president), and is the recipient of ASOR's Richard J. Scheuer Medal for leadership in his field of study and service contributions to the organization.