Israeli Archaeologists Visit and Lecture



Students and visitors to the department's fundraising event.  Left to right:  Hilda Torres, Sarah Carlton, Norma Franklin, Mark Browning, Delores Browning, David Ilan, and Alan Kaiser 

 The UE Department of Archaeology and Art History was lucky enough to receive a visit from two prominent Israeli archaeologists, David Ilan and Norma Franklin.  Dr. Ilan of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology at Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem delivered a lecture at Temple Adath B’nai Israel.  Read more about it in the article from the Evansville Courier and Press.  Dr. Franklin, who is affiliated with the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa and is the co-director of the Jezreel Expedition with our own Dr. Jennie Ebeling, shared the stage with Hilda Torres, Sarah Carlton, and Kelly Goodner at a panel discussion about recent archaeological work at Jezreel.  Students also had the opportunity to meet with our guests in small groups throughout their time in Evansville and both archaeologists came away impressed with the high caliber of UE students. 

Drs. Franklin and Ilan were also honored guests at a fundraising event (pictured above) for the Browning-Miller Advancement for Archaeology Endowed Fund, a scholarship to help students attend field schools and internships.  The fundraiser gathered so many of the Evansville elite that it made the society page of the Courier and Press!  

Dr. Ilan's visit was supported through a partnership between the Patricia H. Snyder Concert and Lecture Series and the Bronstein Trust.  Dr. Franklin's visit was made possible through the generous support of the University of Evansville.

Student Elizabeth Frost Digs at Poggio Civitate in Murlo, Italy

This summer I participated in a dig at Poggio Civitate in Murlo, Italy. Since this was my second summer there I was able to specialize in conservation where I cleaned and preserved Etruscan artifacts. Over the summer I worked with two professional conservators who taught me the process. First I learned to clean the different types of recently found artifacts we work with, such as terra cotta, bronze, and iron. I put artifacts back together and learned how to stabilize them using plaster and other materials.

I worked on one project through the entire six weeks I was there. It was a fragmented pan tile that had been previously worked on but not finished. This is what it looked like before:

I spent many hours figuring out which pieces went where, like an odd puzzle. Then once I figured out where they went and which ones did not even belong to this artifact, it was time to adhere it together, which I did at least three times because it kept falling apart (It was a really humid summer!). But finally after much hard work and determination I finally finished it!  Now all that’s left to do is to paint the fills.

Although it could be frustrating at times, this was one of the best ways I could have spent my summer. I learned many new things, all of which helped me figure out I want to go to graduate school for conservation. Life on any dig is interesting, but life at Murlo is something I will never forget.