Please join us for our upcoming seminar on: "Technological innovation as a cultural brokerage - some examples from Early Islamic Palestine and Jordan" by Prof. Gideon Avni (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem & Israel Antiquities Authority).

Monday, January 18, 2021, from 17:30 to 19:00 (Israel time) via zoom.

ABSTRACT

The role of technology as a trigger of cultural and economic processes in the Early Islamic Near East has been only limitedly addressed based on the evidence of material culture. This talk will present several case-studies in which the introduction of new agricultural and industrial technologies affected economic systems and cultural aspects in daily life. For example, the change in dining habits and dietary preferences of both common people and elites is shown by new types of plants that were introduced into the region and by a change in the repertoire of pottery vessels. These changes are examined by analyzing the finds from recent excavations, addressing the impact of technology on the transformation of the Early Islamic world.

Gideon Avni is a Professor of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Head of the Archaeology Division in the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). His academic interests focus on various aspects of Late Antique, Early Islamic and Medieval archaeology, cultural and religious transformations, the diffusion of technologies and movement of people in the Near East and beyond. His recent publications are The Byzantine – Islamic Transition in Palestine, an Archaeological Approach (OUP, 2014), A New Old City – Jerusalem in the Late Roman Period (JRA suppl. 105, 2017), and 'Early Islamic Farmsteads and the Spread of Qanats in Eurasia' (Water History 10, 2018).