Introduction to the collected essays of Professor Dai Morgan Evans

This note outlines several features common to the reception of ancient ruins by the Christian populations of three countries, each located on a different continent. Most of the sites were and are strongly associated with the realm of the dead. Fear of misadventure or calamity typically inspired a respectful avoidance of such pre-Christian sites…[Read more]

We develop and apply a deep learning-based computer vision pipeline to automatically identify crew members in archival photographic imagery taken on-board the International Space Station. Our approach is able to quickly tag thousands of images from public and private photo repositories without human supervision with high degrees of accuracy,…[Read more]

GERMAN: Waren die Götter Astronauten? Davon ist Erich von Däniken überzeugt. Der erfolgreiche Autor ist seit Jahrzehnten der einflussreichste Protagonist auf dem Gebiet der Paläo-SETI bzw. Prä-Astronautik, einer grenzwissenschaftlichen Laienforschung, die die Position vertritt, dass Außerirdische vor Urzeiten die Erde besucht und die Entwi…[Read more]

The course provides an extensive survey of the archaeology of the Roman world, as well as an introduction to archaeological methods. Students will acquire the analytical skills necessary to interpret material culture and learn how to use archaeological remains to reconstruct various aspects of ancient societies. Emphasis for this class is on the…[Read more]

This graduate seminar approaches the urban and rural landscapes of peninsular Italy from the Early Iron Age until the Gothic Wars, with the goal being to examine key points of intersection (and departure) between the spheres of ‘town’ and ‘country’. In adopting an holistic approach to these categories that are often juxtaposed, the seminar…[Read more]

This graduate seminar approaches the urban and rural landscapes of peninsular Italy from the Early Iron Age until the Gothic Wars, with the goal being to examine key points of intersection (and departure) between the spheres of ‘town’ and ‘country’. In adopting an holistic approach to these categories that are often juxtaposed, the seminar…[Read more]

Troy has long captured the human imagination. The story of its fall and the tales of both its inhabitants and besiegers have caught the attention of artists and their audiences from antiquity to post-modernity. It seems we are drawn to the struggle that is Troy and the Trojan War, to the paragons of virtue, and the archetypes of other, less noble…[Read more]

Troy has long captured the human imagination. The story of its fall and the tales of both its inhabitants and besiegers have caught the attention of artists and their audiences from antiquity to post-modernity. It seems we are drawn to the struggle that is Troy and the Trojan War, to the paragons of virtue, and the archetypes of other, less noble…[Read more]

This course considers the archaeology and settlement history of the Mediterranean basin from the later ninth century B.C. to the middle of the fifth century B.C. in order to study, in a contextualized way, the interconnectedness of cultures and economies in this region. The interchange and exchange that occurred in the archaic Mediterranean world…[Read more]

The ancient city of Athens provides us with a wealth of archaeological and cultural information about the ancient world. Using Athens and its surroundings as our laboratory, this course will focus on the development and growth of the ancient city-state from the Bronze Age through to the third century A.D. The course will explore the archaeological…[Read more]

This course offers a survey of the archaeology of settled landscapes in the ancient Mediterranean world, including both the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean basin. In particular, the course will focus on city-country dichotomies in order to study the patterns of development, demography, and land use in selected case study areas. While the…[Read more]

One of the medical manuscripts recovered from Tomb No. 3 at Mawangdui (dated 186 B.C.E.) states that, “When a person is born there are two things that need not to be learned: the first is to breathe and the second is to eat.” Of course it is true that all healthy newborn human beings possess the reflexes to breathe and eat. Yet, the imp…[Read more]

The Persian King Darius I (reigned 522-486 BCE) constructed a canal connecting the Nile to the Red Sea – an ancient precursor to the Suez Canal that made it possible to sail from Egypt to Persia, and to places in between.

In a groundbreaking endeavour to triangulate three important traditions of our collective cultural heritage, the Arkeologisk Museum of the University of Stavanger presents Eden and Everything After, a conceptual exhibition organised around notions of the loss of – and slim hope of reconnection with – the lost paradise. Mirroring the boldly exp…[Read more]

Poland has been recognized as important in the widespread migration of the Vikings, yet subject to little theoretical inquiry. I became particularly interested in the ways in which the Vikings in Poland understood and negotiated their world. To my knowledge, nobody has drawn together the pan-European evidence about the image of the two mythical…[Read more]

The paper presents for the first time to the public some wooden fragments of an ancient Egyptian ‘mummy cover’, kept in the ‘Egyptian Corner’ of the University of Pavia Archaeology Museum (Italy). The fragments, belonging to an original ancient Egyptian artefact which dates back to the end of the New Kingdom, are here published after a restora…[Read more]

We offer an archaeological analysis of the visual display of “space heroes” and Orthodox icons in the Russian Zvezda module of the International Space Station (ISS). This study is the first systematic investigation of material culture at a site in space. The ISS has now been continuously inhabited for 20 years. Here, focusing on the period 200…[Read more]

A 12-page paper illustrating the likely presence, in geoglyph form, of a probably long-established cult art form in the UK, as elsewhere.

The aim of space archaeology is to understand the interaction of technology and human behaviour in off-Earth environments. This paper presents the methodology and results of the first archaeological study focused on human habitation in outer space. The International Space Station (ISS) is the only extant, continuously-occupied location in space,…[Read more]