Excavating Antioch
The Archaeology of an Ancient City
Edited by Nicole Berlin Edited by Elizabeth Molacek
Hardback (Published)
(September 2026)
ISBN: 9781950446834
8.5 x 11 inches
Price: $75.00
In stock
Reexamining the 1930s excavations of Antioch, this volume brings together artifacts and scholarship to confront the project’s colonial and ethical legacies. It reconnects dispersed objects with their archaeological and archival contexts, addressing the fragmented histories that continue to shape the study and display of the site.
Founded in 300 BCE, Antioch-on-the-Orontes was one of the great metropolises of the ancient world—a cosmopolitan center of trade, culture, and religion that ranked among the most important cities of the Roman Empire. Its archaeological record, rich in mosaic pavements, sculpture, coins, and everyday objects, offers a vivid picture of urban life spanning nearly a thousand years. Yet the story of how that record came to light through excavation—and where it ended up—is as complex as the city itself.
In the 1930s, Princeton University led a landmark series of excavations at Antioch under the French Mandate of Syria, assembling an international consortium of American and French institutions. Over eight seasons of fieldwork, the project recovered hundreds of artifacts and was widely hailed as the “dig of the century.” But the colonial structures that enabled these excavations, and the system of partage that dispersed the finds among partner institutions worldwide, produced a fragmented and ethically complicated legacy that has yet to be fully addressed.
Excavating Antioch: The Archaeology of an Ancient City confronts that legacy directly. Drawing on three years of original research, it brings together approximately 120 understudied objects and architectural fragments from the storage collections of four American museums—the Baltimore Museum of Art, Dumbarton Oaks, the Harvard Art Museums, and the Worcester Art Museum—alongside newly digitized archival materials from Princeton University’s archaeological excavation records. Many of these artifacts have never been fully cataloged, photographed, or published.
The result is a reassessment of Antioch’s material culture and its modern afterlife. Essays by leading scholars examine the city’s urban fabric, the institutional ambitions and diplomatic negotiations behind the excavations, the local workers who made them possible, and the journeys these artifacts took from excavation sites in Hatay to museum storerooms across the Atlantic. An object catalogue presents new research on each artifact, reconnecting them with their archaeological contexts and with one another.
At a moment when debates over cultural heritage, colonial collecting, and museum ethics are more urgent than ever, Excavating Antioch offers a model of transparent, collaborative scholarship—and an invitation to see both an ancient city and its modern legacy in a new light.
List of Figures
Contributor List
Foreword
Acknowledgements
About the Editors
A Note to the Reader
Reflections on Curating Antioch: The Lost Ancient City
Introduction
Part I: Antioch and Its Afterlives: Ancient City, Mosaics, and New Research
Chapter 1: Entering Ancient Antioch: A Walk Along the Colonnade
Chapter 2: Maritime Mythology and Iconography in the Mosaics of Antioch at the
Hatay Archaeology Museum
Chapter 3: The Mosaics of Epiphaneia (Issos)
Chapter 4: Harvard’s Mosaics from Antioch and the Afterlife of Acquisition
Chapter 5: The Getty Mosaic from the Baths of Apolausis
Part II: The 1930s Excavations of Antioch
Chapter 6: Fragmenting Antioch: Partage, Practicalities, and a Legacy of Division
Chapter 7: Princeton University and the Excavations at Antioch-on-the-Orontes
Chapter 8: “Other Material than Mosaics”: The Worcester Art Museum and the Antioch Excavations
Chapter 9: Archaeological Labor at Antioch (Antakya)
Chapter 10: Gladys Baker and Wellesley College at Ancient Antioch
Chapter 11: Visualizing Memory in Antioch: Archive, Image, and the Creation of Heritage
Chapter 12: Princeton University Archives
Appendix
Object Catalogue
References
Index
- Edited by Nicole Berlin
- Edited by Elizabeth Molacek
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