Experiential Learning Workshop: Nubian Archaeology (In person only)

Saturdays, August 1–August 15, 3 weeks, 1–3 pm, LaSalle Banks Room, ISAC (basement). In person only and not recorded.

Non-members: $75, ISAC Members: $60, ISAC docents and volunteers and UChicago alumni: $50, UChicago/Lab School/Charter School Staff, Faculty, and Students: $25

Instructors: Debora Heard, PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Chicago, Kate Rose, Research Fellow, CAMEL Lab, ISAC and Director of Programs, Institute for Field Research (IFR) and Tasha Vorderstrasse, PhD, ISAC, Manager, Continuing Education Program

Certificate of completion available upon request after the successful completion of all three classes

Learn practical skills learning about the archaeology of Nubia in this hands-on workshop! The archaeology of Nubia (modern southern Egypt and northern Sudan) remains an understudied field, particularly in comparison to other parts of the ancient world. Recent exhibitions, including the ISAC special exhibition, "A Bestiary of Ancient Nubia" are exposing a larger audience to this region and demonstrating Nubia’s important place in the ancient world. In this in-person workshop, participants will learn how to analyze archaeological data, draw pottery, and gain basic GIS skills. Each session will devote approximately one and a half hours to building these skills, before visiting the ISAC Museum’s special exhibition and the Nubian Gallery for the remainder of the session to see and discuss the objects on display.

Week One, August 1: Data Analysis (Debora Heard)

This week will help us understand how we can critically look at large amounts of archaeological data and come to meaningful conclusions at how people lived in the past in Nubia. Focusing on the many burials that were found by the ISAC in the 1960s during the Nubian Salvage campaigns, it will show how we can analyze large amounts of data.

Week Two, August 8: Pottery Drawing (Tasha Vorderstrasse)

In the second session, participants will learn the basic skills involved in drawing ceramic material. One of the most ubiquitous objects at many archaeological sites, pottery is a critical element for dating the habitation or occupation of a site, and pottery drawing is a necessary step in the process of analysis and dating of pottery. In this session, participants will learn how to draw and ink pottery, as well as how new technologies, such as 3D-scanning, have advanced the usefulness of pottery analysis to the overall understanding of archaeological cultures.

Week Three, August 15 :Mapping Nubia- Intro to Spatial Archaeology and GIS

In the final session, participants will explore how we understand the landscapes and regional patterns of ancient Nubia! Participants gain a basic understanding of GIS (Geographic Information System) and other scientific mapping tools like Google Earth. Using the resources of the ISAC CAMEL lab, participants will try out their new skills by creating their own map of archaeological sites in Nubia!

Instructor Bios:

Debora Heard is a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology specializing in the archaeology, history, and languages of ancient Nubia and Egypt at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation research engages in a regional and temporal analysis of the inscriptions and iconography of the Upper Nubian Kushite temples dedicated to the gods Amun and Apedemak. For more than 15 years, she has worked with ISAC – giving public lectures, teaching courses, and helping to develop and participate in special programming dedicated to ancient Nubia and Egypt. She has excavated at the 4th Cataract of the Nile River in Sudan as a member of the Oriental Institute/ISAC Nubian Expedition and served as a curatorial assistant in the original installation of the ISAC Museum’s Robert F. Picken Family Nubian Gallery. Debora has also served as an intern in the Department of Egyptian and Nubian Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and conducted research at the British Museum, Ashmolean Museum, and the Griffith Institute at the University of Oxford.

Kate Rose is a dedicated anthropological archaeologist, specializing in landscape studies and ancient urbanism in the Near East and North Africa. As the Director of Programs for the Institute for Field Research (IFR), she is passionate about the intersection of fieldwork and pedagogy. She has served in various leadership positions on projects in Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, and Spain. She was a researcher with the ERC DiverseNile Project at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany from 2022 to 2024. She defended her dissertation in 2022 at Harvard University. She has also held numerous lectureships and teaching positions at Harvard University and Boston University.

Tasha Vorderstrasse is the Manager of the Continuing Education Program at the University of Chicago. She received her PhD in Near Eastern archaeology from the University of Chicago in 2004. Her work focuses on understanding the identity of past communities through archaeological and textual evidence as well as the interconnections between different regions. She administers and teaches in the ISAC adult education program, and also does teacher workshops and tours of the ISAC Museum for UChicago students and other groups on a variety of topics from post-colonialism and the ISAC to legal history, medicine, and queens and princesses in the ancient world. She has conducted classes and teacher workshops for the ISAC on Nubian queens, and published the article "Centering Nubian Queens in the Ancient World: Histories, Historiographies, and (Mis)Interpretations" in the 2024 volume Queens in antiquity and the present: speculative visions and critical histories and co-written two chapters for the current ISAC Museum exhibition catalog,