ASOR

ASOR is pleased to offer 10 Student Travel grants of $250 each for the 2026 Annual Meeting in Chicago this November. Students must be enrolled at an ASOR Institutional Member School to qualify for these grants. Grant applications are open until August 24, 2026: https://buff.ly/rLWvKmH

Our is a small, bronze statuette of a horse from Greece, ca. 750–730 BCE. It was likely created as a devotional gift to a god, with horses being a symbol of wealth at the time. Credit: Art Institute of Chicago. 2016.193.

From Aristotle to John Adams, great minds of government have revered Carthaginian democracy as the purest expression of a people’s will. What impact did it have in the development of Greek institutions of democracy? Read the latest ANE Today, "Did the Phoenicians Bring Democracy to Greece?, here: https://buff.ly/zzlfmjX

📸 : Punic inscription mentioning a common citizen of the People’s Assembly of Carthage, c. 4th-2nd centuries BCE. © Brett Kaufman

Amiella Musser, an undergraduate student at Dickinson College, received a 2025 Stevan B. Dana Fieldwork Scholarship to excavate at Tel Azekah. Amiella participated in the excavation of features potentially connected to Tel Azekah’s ancient water system. Read her fieldwork report here: https://buff.ly/n8eVfAd

We hope you enjoyed the long holiday weekend! Starting this Friday, May 29th, ASOR staff will be holding summer hours until Labor Day, September 7th. If you need to call the office, please do so during normal business hours Monday–Thursday or before 12:30pm EDT on Fridays. We wish you all a productive and relaxing summer!

Friends of ASOR sincerely thanks all of our fantastic webinar speakers and everyone who attended a webinar during the 2025-2026 season. Together, we raised almost $10,000 to ensure that webinars could be free and open to the public. The season's success would not have been possible without your support.

Check our webinars page later this year for updates about 2026-2027 webinars, and we hope that you will join us next season!

ASOR’s Committee on Publications announces a call for Editor(s) of the Bulletin of ASOR (BASOR). The new Editor(s) will serve a 3-year term starting January 2027 with the possibility of renewal for an additional 3-year term. BASOR is a peer-reviewed illustrated publication including technical articles covering the entire Near East and eastern Mediterranean world from the Paleolithic period through Islamic times. This is a compensated position, and all applications received by September 1, 2026 will receive full consideration. Learn more about this opportunity: https://www.asor.org/news/2026/05/basor-editors-call

Our is a fragmentary wall fresco from Teleilat Ghassul, ca. 4000 BCE (Late Chalcolithic). Rockefeller Museum, Jerusalem. Photo by Marsupium, CC by-SA 4.0.

In our newest ANE Today article, Marc Maillot, Chief Curator at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, presents a new exhibit—A Bestiary of Ancient Nubia—offering a fascinating synthesis of animals in Nubian art and culture. Read it here: https://buff.ly/XCpBa7A

📸: Worcester Art Museum, 1922.145.

From behind-the-scenes museum tours to up-close encounters with artifacts and archives, Friends of ASOR spent two unforgettable days exploring Philadelphia through the lens of archaeology, art, and curation. Read about exclusive visits to the Penn Museum, Barnes Foundation, and Philadelphia Museum of Art—guided by the scholars who brought the past to life along the way: https://buff.ly/GMGR13J