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Ethics and Gray Areas in Papyrology

Thursday, November 13, 2014 - 12:30pm to 2:00pm

Nevll Classroom, Penn Museum, 3260 South Street, Philadelphia, PA

"See Something? Say Something! Archaeological Ethics and the Gray Areas of Papyrology"

The Penn Cultural Heritage Center presents a lecture by Douglas Boin, of Saint Louis University.


Brown Bag Lecture – Please Bring a Lunch!

Across disciplines, the academy is witnessing an explosion of interest in how objects and sites—from hand-drawn maps to buildings like churches and synagogues—can deepen our understanding of people and their histories. Indeed, material culture studies are now changing much of what we know about the ancient and late Roman Mediterranean world (my particular field of research).

With much of this new work, however, has come the need for a new, urgent conversation. For many of the ethical considerations that the archaeological community has championed for decades—who found this object? where did it come from? when did it leave its country of origin?—are not being given the same weight by researchers working outside these fields.

In this presentation we will look at several high-profile announcements involving material from the Mediterranean—particularly from sites of current turmoil, like Syria and Egypt—as case studies for pinpointing some of the ethical "gray areas" that are the source of current conversations and debate between archaeologists, classicists, papyrologists, and ancient historians, and religious scholars.

To conclude, I suggest how the cultural heritage community at large can take the lead in helping the members of these overlapping academic professional organizations, and even journalists, to establish a consistent set of guidelines for researching (and reporting on) their next "exciting" discovery.

Image posted with permission of the illustrator, Marta Monteiro.
All events are sponsored, in part, by the PoGo Family Foundation.