Photos of the 9/18 Archaeology Lecture: The Levantine Ceramics Project

Talk by Dr. Andrea Berlin, Boston University, Archaeology Program. History is a lock-box – but we archaeologists have a magic key: pottery! Pottery makes people and their activities visible. The LCP is a digital tool devoted to pottery made anywhere in the Levant, anytime from the Neolithic period to the end of the Ottoman empire (5500 BCE-1920 CE). It is a custom-built web application that allows anybody to submit, share, and digitally publish data on vessels, wares, petro-fabrics, and scientific analyses – information that betters our understanding of Levantine societies, cultures, and economies. The LCP is open-access: anybody may contribute information. Entries can be edited, so the site is both an archive and an updatable research tool. The LCP connects scholars to scholarship, and accelerates collaborative research on Levantine history of all eras.