 work right now. Yeah. Hi, and welcome to Ask an Archaeologist. I'm Sarah Kanza, the host of today's interview. Ask an Archaeologist is a series of live streamed interviews co-hosted by the Archaeological Research Facility and the Phoebe A. Hurst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. During each program we hear from UC Berkeley affiliated archaeologists and answer audience questions. So you can submit your questions if you have any in the live chat box on YouTube anytime during this interview and we'll pose them to our speaker. So today's episode is episode 27 of Ask an Archaeologist and it is how I became a Reformed Biblical Archaeologist with Professor Aaron Brody. So welcome to the show, Aaron. Thank you. Nice to be here. Great. Thanks for coming. Aaron Brody is the Robert and Catherine Riddell Professor of Biblical, sorry, of Bible and Archaeology and Director of the Bade Museum of Biblical Archaeology in Berkeley, California. He's studied and worked on projects in Israel, Palestine and Jordan, and traveled extensively throughout the Middle East and the Mediterranean. He has held research posts at both the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, the University of Haifa, and the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan. Recently, his research has focused on household archaeology, household religion, metallurgy, ethnicity, identity, and interregional trade at Tel and Nazve, the site that forms the principal holdings of the Bade Museum at the Pacific School of Religion as modes for understanding the complexities of everyday life and ancient biblical peoples, of the ancient biblical peoples, sorry. So Aaron, we're very happy to have you on the show today and to hear about your work. Thank you. Thank you. So to get started, perhaps, could you just give us sort of a background of your journey in archaeology and how you first got interested in studying archaeology? Well, like a lot of things, I both blame and thank my parents. I'm the son of an academic and when I was four years old, we were on a sabbatical based in Holland, but this was 1970 in Europe. And so my parents like to travel. They like to visit archaeological sites and museums. And so it had a huge impression on me as a very young child. I have a shared collection from when I was four. So I'd like to say it was a straight path, but it wasn't quite, but I think that really cemented a lot of early interests in archaeology, in landscape, in interactions with foreign cultures, both modern and ancient, and so sort of laid the foundations. And do you have siblings who that also happened to, or did they have an opposite experience? I have two older brothers. Let's see, my oldest brother actually started off as a classical archaeology major at UC Santa Barbara, but eventually switched to pre-med. So, you know, I think like with a lot of folks who are interested, there are many times along the path when one can step off the path. I mean, I think again, he's interested, but you know, he didn't devote his profession to it. And my middle brother's an architect. So again, I think these things probably had influences in his own designs and that sort of thing, but not strictly as a profession. What a fun experience to be able to have as a kid. Yeah, unbelievable. You just feel very privileged. And so how did you get interested specifically in the Middle East? Well, that was also a little bit of a circuitous route. I actually did my undergraduate work at UC Berkeley. And I was, I got to Cal and was interested in archaeology and maybe art history. But as maybe some other 18 year olds do on a whim, you know, my roommate said something about a scuba diving class at Cal. And I thought, oh, underwater archaeology, that sounds cool. And so I did the class, became certified as an open water diver. It's a class that specifically trains mostly researchers at Cal how to do underwater, well, how to work with their equipment, but how to do underwater research really safely. And I started to look around for where one could study underwater archaeology. And as an undergraduate, it's extremely limited still, even after all this time. And it turned out that one of the programs was at the University of Haifa in Israel. And also sort of by Kismet, turned out that a family friend was running the overseas program. And so I wrote him a handwritten letter back in the day and said, you know, dear Mark, I'm interested. What do you think? And he wrote me back and he said, sounds great. I've signed you up for the for the junior year abroad. So yeah, it just sort of fell into my lap. That's fun. So as an undergrad, you were able to go on your junior year abroad to Haifa and specifically study underwater archaeology. Yes, and aspects related. The program in Haifa is actually maritime archaeology related. So it's a little less specific. But really what sealed the deal was that I got to do my first fieldwork. And ironically, it wasn't underwater. It was on harbor sites. So I could see the water from my excavation squares. But it was those, it was the fieldwork that really convinced me that I wanted to pursue a career in Near Eastern Archaeology. That's great. And did you end up doing underwater archaeology at some point? Just a tiny bit worked on some shipwreck excavation actually along the coast of Israel in the near Tel Dore, a place called Tantua Lagoon. But I did manage to actually spend most of my career working on coastal sites. So again, it's not underwater, but with a kind of maritime focus. And most of those sites have been or are on the coast of modern-day Israel. And it always includes my research as well, the research questions I was asking. What is that? Can you just talk a little bit about the differences between excavating on land and how an underwater excavation works in terms of collecting samples and the work day? What is that like? Some of the principles apply and then there are a lot of differences. So of course underwater you're limited in time by the scuba equipment. Instead of a trowel and a pottery basket and things like that, you usually have a giant suction hose. But you're supposed to be digging in squares and recording things by level. Some of the stratigraphic principles apply and the methodologies apply. But depending on how deep you're going, individual excavators can only be down sometimes underwater for fewer than 15 minutes. So you have to have a team doing it in shifts. And actually in some ways, those very early lessons helped convince me that it might have been easier to work on land than underwater. But again it was the ideas that kind of captured me the kind of the, not just maritime archaeology, but the interconnectivity of ancient peoples. Fascinated me. And in some ways that's less represented by underwater archaeology, which is primarily focused on shipwreck archaeology. You can have settlements that are subsided underwater or you can excavate harbor sites that are underwater, but still the majority of underwater work that goes on is on shipwrecks. And that's a much more limited kind of focus. Right. Interesting. Well so can you tell us about your current field work? Oh sure. Well I am affiliated with excavations at a harbor site called Tel Akko in the northern part of Israel. Although I'm actually able to get into the field much less frequently than before just because of family responsibilities and other kinds of considerations that didn't affect me when I was 18 or 19, but you know have settled in. Right. And currently with the pandemic nobody's going to the field, so we're all on hold. Yeah absolutely. But honestly so since coming to Pacific School of Religion in 2002, I've mostly been digging in the basement in our museum holdings. And so it's a different kind of work and a different set of processes, but I found it to be meaningful in different ways. Great. Well so can you talk a little bit about what is in the basement at the bottom of the museum and what kinds of work has been done with that material over the years? Yeah absolutely. Well let's see. So my predecessor WF Bade who taught at Pacific School of Religion and was in Berkeley from 1902 to 1936 towards the end of his career decided to excavate a site in what was then the British mandate of Palestine. And so again sort of true to the title for this talk he was very biblically informed, chose a site that was being argued about in the scholarly literature primarily over what was its ancient identification. So what was the sort of biblical name of this you know sider? And chose one of the two that was being argued about and excavated it between 1926 to 1935 in five different seasons. And so you know following the the laws of the time he was able to export about half the materials that he excavated to Berkeley. And so those are that's the principal holdings we have. There are a few other smaller collections. But to me what the real treasure trove is is that we have all the original documentation from this project. So it's you know it's this legacy excavation but we have all of the original architectural plans, photographs, notes, etc etc. So with some caveats we can still do contextual research on the collection today because of the amazing work that he did back in the 20s and 30s. And would you say that I mean you don't have to answer this if you don't want to but would you say that that was unusual to be so meticulous about documentation and to have saved that much and actually have it still associated with the collection? Yeah absolutely. And one of the things unfortunately Bade passed away about six months after the project was finished. Wow. To the credit of his of his New Testament colleague at the school Chester McCowan took up the reins and the materials were still processed and published which is pretty amazing. But one of the things that Bade did publish actually is one of the earliest field manuals of excavation for the Middle East or the Near East. And so it through that you really get into into the world of what it was like to dig in the 1920s and 30s. But the fact that he actually put it down on paper shows his meticulous nature and that sort of rippled through the different layers of the different experts and how things were not only dug but also recorded and then of course preserved. Right that's amazing because yeah we rarely have that kind of metadata type stuff associated with with the collections in museums how fabulous. So do you think that that careful documentation has really helped the collection to be usable by people doing research? Yes absolutely. So of course it's since arriving in 2002 the collection has been the the focus of my research. So I kind of crawled up onto land from the from the seashore. And the reason why it's been meaningful is because of the my ability to put things into context. But of course I've also opened up the collection to other researchers graduate students undergrad etc. And so most of that research I would say is possible you know because of the the documentation. Or I would say without it would be much less meaningful. So it's in some ways I mean one of the things I've been trying to do is to breathe new life into the collection and that's not just revitalizing exhibits and you know drawing in the public to see things in the museum but it's also working on you know what's in the collection what's behind the scenes to to bring its attention to professionals and the public at large as well. There's still many stories that can be told with that material. That's fascinating so we have a question I just want to remind our listeners that they can ask questions by typing them into the chat box on YouTube. And I'm just going to transition to this question that came up that is asking about the biblical archaeology review. And that it has always seemed to simultaneously embrace modern scientific practice and also also hold it at arm's length and you have any insight into why this is the case. You know I could broaden that out to the field in general because I think that you know semi-popular or popular magazine really reflects the field at large. You know one of the nice things I would say that's developed in the last 20 years actually is the diversity of interests and researchers and students who have gotten into the field from you know landscape archaeology garden archaeology prehist I mean etc etc just across the board. And yet there's you know still a core who want to see sort of the the older fashioned this is my sort of semi-joke about being a reform biblical archaeologist who want to see those sorts of questions and agendas being you know put forth. And so you know that's a popular magazine it needs to keep up its readership and so you get a mix of you know professionals and semi-professionals writing for it that cover I would say every spectrum of our subfield. And it's a big field I mean it's there's a lot of interest in this topic. Do you see so when Bade was excavating at Nasbe was I'm assuming at that time there were lots and lots of excavations going on in Israel and in the region and do you do you see that sort of the biblical leanings or whatever of the time period reflected in the way he collected the data that he that ended up at the museum or do you see sort of yeah the the yeah I would I would say of the period on the on the collection. You know absolutely I would say probably less in the way he collected it and but more in in what his focus interests were and then subsequent focus interest. So my kind of pet peeve about about the field in general is where the questions are coming from and so I prefer to take you know kind of anthropological kinds of questions and apply it to even this legacy material the older material in terms of my work on that you know household archaeology or questions about identity or about metallurgy things like that. And but there's still again it's not just Bade there's there's still plenty of current colleagues who are using our ancient textual sources to really frame the questions that they're asking of the archaeology or the material culture and you know I still love the firm opinion that it's very rare for textually based questions to be able to be answered through material culture or through excavation. Well that actually ties nicely to another question from listener which says that you mentioned new stories to be told with these early collections and can you elaborate on that and how archaeologists use museum collections to reinterpret the past? Oh sure yeah that's a great question. I'll very selfishly just talk about some of my own specific research as an example so I don't have any pictures but anyway the the site that we're talking about in what archaeologists would call the late Iron Age. Biblical historians would call at the time of the divided monarchies so this is approximately you know I don't know 875 to 586 BCE. If you know so at that time the site of Tel Anasbe is a large village population about 850 to a thousand. It is walled which is unusual for a village but inside those walls I can't even call it a city because all you have are a bunch of common households so there's no monumental architecture there's no public architecture and so that's why it's been interpreted as being a large village and I think that's a correct interpretation. Well from that particular time period the daily lives of you know villagers are very rarely mentioned in textual sources which tend to focus on and not just biblical sources but extra biblical textual sources when you think about it literacy was in the the purview of the elite. Very few people could read or write that's true until very modern times in global history and so letting those common people speak for themselves through their material remains I think can help us rewrite history to put it in modern parlance it would be like trying to write a history of the 99% in the US instead of the 1% right so letting the but those voices of the 99% for the ancient world are largely mute they're not represented in textual sources so one has to use archaeology to represent those voices so. Great and do you have the work that goes on with the collections of the museum do you display that and I know that so I want to make a plug for the Bade Museum first of all if you are in the Berkeley area the Bade Museum is in this lovely building just next to UC Berkeley campus on the north side and you should visit it maybe Erin can tell us the opening hours but it's it's just a beautiful space and they have you have exhibits that turn over occasionally right so could you describe that space and how you've used it so we're we're housed at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley 1798 scenic avenue I do want to say that we are closed right now because the pandemic so keep an eye on our and plan actually to be close to the public I would say through the fall semester of 2020 but but do stay tuned so yes we have a number of exhibits one of the things that we've been working on since shelter in place is trying to make more of our resources available online I know that it's not a substitute but hopefully you know if you can find our website you can see some of our resources get a little bit of an entree to the collection and then it'd be wonderful once the pandemic is over inshallah as they say that you can come and visit in person as well and see exhibits mostly related to again the the daily lives of these biblical people the things that aren't about like I said in most of our biblical texts mm-hmm and so you have a you have an exhibit about the collection that is sort of a permanent exhibit that people can come and see a sampling of what the pottery and that kind of stuff what other what kinds of holdings do you have in the nausea collection mostly pottery let's see well yeah you know like a lot of excavations because of the of the climate most of what's preserved is pottery but we've got a wide variety of ancient metals stone vessels chip stone wares let's see we even have some animal bones Sarah and it's a wide variety of different materials and we tend to display things following different themes of daily life and then also introduce the the visitor to concepts of archaeology so how how we even get these things that we you know these these mute objects that we need to read so to speak a question from the audience is asking do many students and researchers make use of your collections and can you describe any recent projects that students have done um let's see I would say you know fewer students um let's see we have a number of current work that's that is going on I mean I've been continuing to do my own work focused on notions around ritual in these households we have several Israeli researchers who are looking at more general questions about things like the Persian period or the Hellenistic period at the site and how it represents the the region at large there's a researcher from SF State who's looking asking anthropological questions actually of our photography collection that is photos that were taken during the project um let's see what else is going on recent work on the female figurines there's another Israeli researcher who's doing Provenian studies photography of ceramics from a wide point of view of the of the collection so it's fairly varied yeah yeah how many female figurines are there from the excavation funny you should ask um no so we have the it's a sort of hot topic and the archaeology of the region these female pillar figurines are called and interestingly enough for a small village site we have the second largest collection after Jerusalem so after all these decades of hundreds of years of digging in Jerusalem I think there are fewer than 500 examples from Jerusalem we have the count varies but somewhere between 140 to 180 examples from our little three-hecter site so wow so is that can you comment on that or is that a subject of ongoing research that oh well yeah it does it also touches on my research so I'll talk about that because these female figurines that were probably you know some aspect of of religion we don't exactly know what but have you know religious ties were clearly being used in conjunction with other ritual objects uh typically for uh concerns that affected these extended families and and households so Carol Myers who teaches at Duke University has done some wonderful studies relating these female figurines to to women's religious culture and again just as sort of tying into one of the earlier questions those are things that tend not to be talked about in terms of our biblical texts as a matter of fact in the in the official texts which tend to be you know not just elite but also very male focused these kinds of things tend to be either frowned upon uh or even you know talked about in very negative terms but it of course it doesn't mean if things are are forbidden that they weren't going on and so um and you can think of a host of different things and they probably were being used by the the chief the the head female of these households to help protect not only herself but um the the need the ritual needs of her her extended family yeah that's fascinating if you um have publications or any links that you can point to um that talk about this research that's being done on the on the body's collections feel free to send them to me and then we can put them in the description of your video here so future viewers can follow some links to see what's been done put in a brief plug so all of my work is published also on my academia.edu website so you can follow up there as well great great well we have a few more minutes and um a couple more questions coming in from the audience so I'm gonna um go to this next one which is this person is curious to know if you've had a chance to read this week's article in The New Yorker in search of King David's lost empire and if so um what you thought of it and its presentation of the the field of biblical archaeology over the decades and I don't know if you're I actually did read that article so like um yeah I think it's it's very representative of where Israeli archaeologists are with these questions and especially representative of you know an older generation of Israeli archaeologists um but uh you know my my takeaway is that again you know even in the title it's about King David's king uh not kingdom King David's uh empire um and so there are already some problematic things uh I don't think King David really had an empire if he even existed uh etc etc so but it gets to the core of what I was mentioning before which is that if you're trying to use archaeology to reconstruct you know the the history or the life of an individual like a king David um you know most of the time it just can't be done because these are are you know people who had very short-term lives and so short-term history is just awful to try and reconstruct from archaeology but if you ask questions like I mean even a general question like you know was was there an ancient state in this region you know at this time that's a little different than did King David you know reign or that sort of thing so I think again I think we need to ask new questions even of the older material and ones that are not framed by the bible so you've been working in that region for several decades now I guess sounds like and um there's been a lot of sort of many ups and downs I'd say politically can you comment on how that impacted your work or sort of archaeology in general over time in terms of you know how smoothly excavations can go and I know a lot of people shifted to working in other countries at at one point um so yeah and frankly have shifted back to working in Israel after the Arab Spring so I mean I think um I mean I remember this is actually a nice time to memorialized David Stronak who just passed away very recently and who I studied under at Berkeley and I remember him you know through I think through his stories about working in Iran and Iraq and I very quickly picked up on the fact that as someone who wants to do you know work in that region you have to have a plan B if not even a plan C and I would say you know even within the Levant that's true as well you know if field work is going to be supported you know largely by volunteer which is a slightly different paradigm than work in other countries in the region those volunteers aren't going to come you know if there are scud missiles that are coming in from Lebanon or you know or an attack from Gaza and so you know you just have to be both tuned in but also very flexible I mean in some ways it's like this this pandemic I mean you can't ask people to be in harm's way it's just not it's not ethical and yet I think in a non-colonial way we can still do meaningful work in the region and should be doing meaningful work and also supporting local colleagues who are doing meaningful work and so I'm all about the flexible model now I'm not running a field project and so I you know it's a slightly different set of perspectives but it's it's a turbulent region and I think as you know foreign researchers we both have to be very tuned into you know what's going on the ground but again like I said just willing to you know not do things for the sake of a project that might risk you know human life actually you know so very dynamic region and just to finish up I wanted to ask you a more personal question about I know you've traveled a lot with your family in all over the place and not necessarily at a field project but has that that how has that impacted your sort of experience of archaeology by seeing it through the eyes of your your kids you know it's made it a lot more fun again that's right when they can go to a site and just you know start picking up some stones and having fun trying to chip away at them brings the kid out in me which is is great but it's also been a lot of you know fun to be able to share those kinds of experiences that I had you know as a four-year-old plus with my family you know from my family to you know to my younger generation to you know my own children and I think it brings an education and wide ends experiences that are just so so vital you know in this this strange world that we're living in you know whether it's sort of hyper global or hyper local being able to navigate those different worlds I think is you know vital to you know at least my kids education and so I've just been thrilled to be able to share that kind of thing you know even sort of passively with them not talking to them too much about it but just you know bringing them letting them have those experiences that I had in a slightly different world you know in the 70s so yeah that's we can thank your parents for inspiring you and thank you for inspiring your children um well yeah we uh that we're out of time now so I want to thank you so much Erin for joining us today to talk about your experience with archaeology and yeah if people can once things open up again go visit Erin at the museum if you have a chance you're in the area um and thank you to those of us those of you who joined us today on youtube and um we hope you can join us tomorrow uh July 1st we'll have professor Ted Penya talking about making sense of material culture at Pompei so we hope to see you then and please if you can fill out the feedback form that the link is in the in the description of the video below um when you have a chance that will be really helpful thanks so much