Using advanced digital imaging technologies, classics professor and archaeologist Dimitri Nakassis is changing long-held perceptions of how prehistoric Greek communities functioned. 

Nakassis studies texts of early Greek communities, focusing on the Mycenaean societies of Late Bronze Age Greece. He co-directs an innovative project involving the digital preservation of administrative documents from the Palace of Nestor at Pylos, Greece. Inscribed on soft clay tablets, these records were written in the earliest known form of the Greek language using a syllabic script called Linear B that dates to the Late Bronze Age (1400–1200 BC).

“The reason I’m drawn to the Bronze Age is it’s a period that’s interesting, complex and sophisticated, but we don’t know that much about it,” Nakassis said. “What’s exciting for me about working in the Bronze Age is there is so much that’s out there left to be learned.”

Linear B tablets were first discovered in Greek archaeological excavations in about 1900, but archeologists and historians couldn’t read the texts, which were unlike the later Greek alphabet that was the precursor of our modern alphabet. The script used on the Pylos tablets is a syllabary. Instead of one sign representing a single sound, as with our alphabet, a syllabary sign represents a syllable. 

In 1939, a large cache of Linear B tablets was discovered during an excavation of a large palace at Pylos. The word “palace” used in this context is what archaeologists refer to as an administrative center. The remarkable find was possible because the palace where the tablets were stored burned down, and the fire baked the tablets into hard clay, preserving them for future archaeologists. The tablets found there have been dated to 1200 BC.

“As far as we know, none of these texts was intentionally baked, and none of them was designed to be used for more than a year,” Nakassis said. “Tablets were composed on an annual basis, like taxation records. Taxes were paid. Scribes recorded.”

Nakassis works in a time period that witnessed the rise and fall of the Mycenaean civilization, featuringambitious engineering projects such as bridges, an artificial harbor and the drainage of Lake Kopais in Greece to use as farmland. The Mycenaeans were also talented at painting frescoes; making jewelry out of gold and Baltic amber; and constructing large, elaborate burial sites.

The significance of the find at Pylos and its potential for casting light on Mycenaean civilization inspired Nakassis to use an innovative approach to representing the Linear B text using advanced imaging technologies.

The Linear B project uses 3D scanning and reflectance transformation imaging (RTI)—a kind of computational photography—to produce high-quality images of the tablets. With a tripod-mounted digital camera pointing down, Nakassis takes 54 photos of each inscribed surface of the clay tablets changing only the light source so that the object is illuminated from a variety of angles. The result is a polynomial texture mapping file that records the color and lighting conditions of each pixel. Changing the direction of the light over the inscribed signs allows him to see details in a way not possible before.  

With RTI, the shallow incised marks can be more clearly distinguished as intentional signs or as breaks running through the signs. 

The Linear B texts are administrative: lists of goods, delivery statements and records of marketable transactions. The tablets provide details on the manufacture and distribution of commodities such as wool, linen, animals, metals and harvested food, including barley, figs and olives.

“The tablets tell us how the palaces operated,” he said, “and what administrators were keeping track of using writing. There were probably only a handful of people who could read and write, so the tablets give us a specific understanding about the day-to-day operations of the palace.” 

When Nakassis started working on the Linear B tablets for his PhD dissertation at the University of Texas at Austin, he wanted to understand how the different officers of the state interacted with each other. He has learned that the systems were more flexible and responsive to society than the traditional model, which held that palaces were oppressive despotisms. 

His interest in documenting and understanding the tablets started in college. As a child, he spent summers with his family in Greece, where they visited archaeological sites. In college, he took courses in ancient Greek and classical archaeology. And then he was hooked.

Nakassis and Kevin Pluta of the University of Texas at Austin co-direct the Pylos Tablets Digital Project. They have been working on the texts since 2012 and have visited the Pylos palace excavation many times. The goals of the project are to digitally document all of the tablets and to produce a print edition of the administrative texts from the Palace of Nestor. 

In addition to enhancing readability of the tablets, RTI also helps with the conservation and archiving of the Linear B tablets. Availability of high-resolution digital images will allow scholars around the world to better interpret the texts and also reduces the need to handle the fragile tablets, helping to preserve them for future generations to study. 

Nakassis was awarded the 2015 MacArthur “genius” fellowship for his work at the palace at Pylos. His book, Individuals and Society in Mycenaean Pylos, used the methods he developed for researching the 964 individuals named in the Pylos texts and challenges a long-held assumption that an elite few controlled Mycenaean society. He argued that Mycenaean society was less hierarchical than previously thought, and that power and resources were more broadly shared among the community, providing an alternative view of the Mycenaean world as a more open society.

“I got interested in the people who appear in the tablets, because most scholars hadn’t paid much attention to those people,” Nakassis said. “The tablets track activities and what was going in and out of the palace. I wanted to know who these people were. What were they doing?” 

He is also working on a publication of new text that’s written in a different script found on Crete in the Bronze Age. This text is Linear A on ivory and Nakassis has used the RTI technology on it, as well. 

“We need to understand what the everyday people were doing then,” Nakassis said. “Especially in societies where so much of the economy was focused on agriculture. It’s not enough to just understand what was happening at the top of scale. We need to understand what’s happening at all levels and how those different levels interact with each other—to try to come up with good historical explanations.”

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Deep in the jungle of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula sits Punta Laguna, a small Maya village where chickens roam freely among the pole-and-thatch houses and villagers plant corn to make tortillas. But nobody there is living in the past.

The villagers have TVs, computers and smartphones. When Sarah Kurnick, an assistant professor at ����ֱ�� Boulder who was conducting research in the village, needed help transferring files via Bluetooth, one of the villagers showed her how. 

The Punta Laguna people honor their ancient Maya roots while embracing modern life. 

Kurnick is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in ancient Mesoamerica, particularly the Maya. She is co-directing a community archaeology project at Punta Laguna, a site of significant cultural importance to the people. Kurnick’s research provides a platform for them to engage with the site. The project is also co-directed by David Rogoff of Methodist University. 

“The site is part of an eco-tourism venture that was initiated by, and tangibly benefits, an indigenous group,” she said. “By studying the archaeology there, I’m able to work closely with a contemporary group of Maya people to help them understand their Maya past and to help them benefit from an archaeological investigation.”

The Punta Laguna archaeology site lies within the contemporary community of the same name, a small village of about 125 residents located in a spider monkey reserve. Research indicates the village has been occupied intermittently for more than 1,500 years.

Vanessa Monson, a graduate student in anthropology, is one of the students working with Kurnick this summer. The project provides her an opportunity to work in a different part of Mexico since her personal research is on the southern Pacific coast and she was interested in the community aspect of archeology. It is her first time working at a Maya site.

“Nearly everything has had a bit of an ‘aha’ feel to it,” Monson said. “There is nothing quite like reading about something for years and then experiencing it first-hand. For example, a lot of the initial publications that were first documenting Maya sites talk about how the ruins were swallowed up by the jungle. Our hike every day to reach the excavation area brings those descriptions to life.”

The project was kicked off in 2014 by conducting a survey of the site. That entailed researchers walking in straight lines through the jungle, hacking away at the dense foliage with machetes to uncover overgrown mounds and the ruins of structures. Along the way, curious monkeys would watch the team’s progress until getting bored and scampering off. When the team found something, they marked it with a GPS point, took photos, drew it and described it. Doing that, they were able to document the extent of the site, which provided a basic sense of what was there. It took them two field seasons (three to four months total) to complete the survey.

In addition to the monkeys, the reserve is home to a variety of wildlife: pumas, coati, deer, tropical birds and exotic plants. The Maya families who live on the five-plus million hectares of protected land own and operate the reserve’s tourism co-op, which helps support their village. To generate revenue, the town’s residents give tours of the monkey reserve and the ancient structures. While knowledgeable about the spider monkeys on the reserve, the community knows little about the Maya structures. 

An integral part of working with the villagers for Kurnick is learning their history from their perspective. When she talks with them about their past, it’s clear they’re proud of the history of resistance and revolt throughout the colonial period when the Spanish arrived around 1500. 

“It’s important to hear these fresh voices in a community that has been marginalized,” she said. “Working with local communities is incredibly difficult and slow, but I’ve been surprised and delighted by how well the Punta Laguna community has received us and has been eager to work with us and hosting us in their community.” 

Project goals are to:

• Understand the relationship between Punta Laguna’s current inhabitants and their ancestors 
• Practice community archaeology, that lets residents benefit from research they help design and carry out

The archaeology site consists of more than 200 structures, 40 mounds and a ceremonial-like center grouped among the largest buildings. In addition, there is a series of caves, several stelae (large stone slabs) anda cenote (a sinkhole filled with water that the ancient Maya used for funerary deposits).

The team has mostly found broken pieces of ceramics from plates, bowls and jars, and tools of stone and obsidian. A few artifacts are displayed in a community museum at the village, including colorful polychrome pots and an intact obsidian blade.

“An archaeologist is interested in using physical items to study the human past,” she explained. “Anthropology is about studying humans. We’re looking at physical remains of the past, but we’re not focused on just the objects. We’re interested in what objects tell us about people and human actions” 

A recent grant from the National Science Foundation will enable them to continue for at least another three years. 

“I’m delighted to work with an excellent group of archaeologists and anthropologists, and with administrators at ����ֱ�� Boulder who really support community archaeology and this type of research,” Kurnick said.

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Sandy Lane, Between You and Me, 2018.

As he’s done so many times before, George Rivera will pack up 117 pieces of art into a suitcase and board a plane heading to a place where rifles can seem more common than paintbrushes. 

This time, his boarding pass will take him to South Korea to put on an art exhibit roughly three miles south of the North Korean border, just outside the demilitarized zone (DMZ). The ����ֱ�� Boulder Art & Art History professor will stow the art in an airplane overhead compartment for more than a dozen hours and ride across the Korean countryside, finally destined for South Korea’s DMZ Museum.

Running from June 22 to Dec. 22, the exhibit will include 23 pieces from current ����ֱ�� Boulder students, specifically created to reflect the tensions of the DMZ and history of border conflict on the Korean peninsula.

The artists in the show were instructed to make diptychs—compositions created on two separate panels—no larger than a sheet of printer paper so they can all fit in Rivera’s suitcase. Each piece addresses the theme of liminal space, or the state of being on both sides of a physical boundary like the five-mile-wide, landmine-ridden DMZ. 

One piece, All-Healing, by ����ֱ�� Boulder alumna Claire Jackel, explores the divide through mirrored drawings of the ginseng plant, which is commonly grown on both sides of the border. 

“The plant has been used for centuries to improve clarity, promote relaxation, and heal many other ailments” she captioned her work. “I have drawn the roots reaching for one another in recognition of each side’s common roots and in hope for ‘all-healing’ peace.” 

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMNh-PClUTk&feature=youtu.be]
 

Artnauts

The Korean trip is just Rivera’s latest in an extended stint of globe-hopping as ambassador for his art collective, .

He formed the group—a portmanteau of “art” and “astronauts”—in 1996 as a way to take art to places of contention internationally and address social issues of our time. He has now put on more than 300 art exhibitions in more than a dozen conflict-affected countries around the world.

Rachael Choi. DMZ is Forgotten, 2018. 

While Artnauts art provides commentary on regional conflicts, the exhibitions are not intended to push outside solutions for local issues. 

The mission, said Rivera, “is to connect to a common link, to human problems we all face.” 

Before joining ����ֱ�� Boulder’s Art & Art History department, Rivera spent 20 years as a sociology professor. He believes that experience brought a heightened social consciousness to his teaching and work to bring art to communities impacted by conflict.

“They are human beings. They get caught up in the webs of conflict and history, but they’re just like you and me,” he said.

Rachael Choi, a rising senior in the Leeds School of Business, is one of the students whose art will be displayed at the DMZ Museum through the end of the year. She originally signed up for Rivera’s course in search of a creative outlet.

“My mother was an art teacher, so art has always been dear to me,” said Choi. “As a business student, I struggled to find time for creative expression, leading me to pick up photography.”

As a Korean-American, Choi was especially interested in the exhibition and passionate about her contribution: DMZ is Forgotten.

The piece alludes to the way the Korean War, often dubbed the Forgotten War, has faded from the world’s collective memory. 

“With the current administration in the United States, as well as the political climate between North and South Korea lately, I've personally been thinking about the future in unification. It's a heavy topic,” she said. “It breaks my heart to think about how some parts of South Korea do not believe North Korea belongs with them as one nation when there are families who have been split for decades, hardly being able to see each other.”

Cargo plane transporting art in the Amazon (Credit: George Rivera/����ֱ�� Boulder)

Around the world

From Russia to Chile, Bosnia to the Palestinian territories, after more than 20 years of bringing art to conflict areas, Rivera has traveled the world with the Artnauts. As he found out firsthand, it’s not easy toting an industrial-sized load of art up one of the most famous rivers in the world. 

After a 2012 exhibition at Universidad de los Llanos in Colombia, the country’s minister of culture offered the Artnauts a grant to work with local artists on a traveling exhibition to 30 venues throughout the Colombian Amazon. 

Rivera, a strong believer in the power of art as a medium to connect people around the world, jumped at the chance to navigate undeveloped terrain, to transport his exhibits to tribal groups that had never seen contemporary Western art.

“I think as artists, we should make art that matters,” Rivera said.

Artnauts exhibit in the Amazon (Credit: George Rivera/����ֱ�� Boulder)

When he found out landing strips in the middle of the rainforest wouldn’t be an option, he loaded the exhibit onto a cargo plane and landed on the Amazon River.

When roads weren’t accessible, he used barges to transport trucks carrying the entire exhibit down the river. 

When exhibition spaces weren’t available in some tribal centers, he displayed the art on the inside of the trucks.

Sometimes, his mission is less smooth.

“You can see them coming at you,” Rivera recalled about three close calls with bullets in the West Bank.

One of those times, he was photographing art along the ����ֱ��i West Bank barrier during an Artnauts trip to Bethlehem. 

As the rounds whizzed by, Rivera said he froze, helpless to move until it would have been too late. 

He emerged from the gunfire unscathed, invigorated in retelling the story and unfazed by the prospect of doing it all again.

When the Artnauts decide to show an exhibit, Rivera said, “You don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’re going.”

Not slowing down

Over two decades since traveling to Mexico City for his first Artnauts project, Rivera has shown no signs of slowing down. He already has plans for exhibitions in Chile and Croatia later this year. 

He also dreams of someday holding exhibitions in two more countries with conflicted histories: Vietnam and Cambodia.

“We’ve got to bring humanity to the inhumanity they’re facing around them,” said Rivera. “They need it the most."

  View selected works from the DMZ Museum exhibit

Artnauts exhibition in the West Bank (Credit: George Rivera/����ֱ�� Boulder)

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It was a dark and stormy night ... Nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley was writing Frankenstein on a dare. Two hundred years later, the classic horror novel of the anguished, misunderstood creature still captures the imagination of generations of readers.

Shelley’s monster came alive on the page, thus launching what has been argued to be the first true science-fiction-horror novel that has inspired countless writers.

“A large part of this novel’s enduring appeal is the dynamic relationship between the protagonist and the antagonist,” Jones said. “That push and pull makes for a gripping story. But, once Mary Shelley’s gotten you hooked on that struggle, she works in some real horror that still resonates: that our actions have consequences we could have never guessed. Sure, she’s dramatizing the anxiety of her time—is all this scientific progress going to help us or hurt us?—which is still a concern today, but more than that, she’s warning us that we’re never just tipping a single domino over.”

Assistant Professor Rebecca Kuglitsch, who heads the Gemmill Engineering, Mathematics and Physics Library, calls it a generative book.

“It’s a cool story to inspire college students,” Kuglitsch said, “because Mary Shelley was just 19, on a vacation with friends, during bad weather with nothing to do, and got dared to write a scary story. The book’s appeal touches on so many aspects of the human experience.”

Shelley wrote a story that, she explained, “would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror—one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart.”

Frankenstein is relevant in today’s brave new world as science tackles ethical questions about the use of stem cells, animal-to-human organ transplants, and blurring the boundaries between artificial intelligence and human interaction. 

March marks the 200th anniversary of ������԰��Բ��ٱ𾱲�’s publication. University Libraries is daring ����ֱ�� undergraduates to craft their own Frankenstein creation.

Students are invited to submit a creative work in any medium: story, dance performance, short film, visual art, sculpture or computer game. They are encouraged to explore the themes Shelly touched on, such as creation, scientific responsibility, gender roles, consequences of innovations, science and religion, science and community, or resurrection. The Frankenstein Bicentennial Creative Contest is for students in any discipline to get creative with the novel’s themes.

University Libraries will host a March 13 event to announce the winners. Students’ creative works will be displayed and the top three submissions will be awarded a prize.

In addition to the creative contest, a yearlong series of activities is being planned.

“Frankenstein is a great text for showing intersections of a variety of disciplinary areas,” said Juliann Couture, interdisciplinary social sciences librarian. “There are components of women and gender studies, history of science, artificial intelligence, and ethics. We invite students to explore and play with genres and stories the way Shelley did. Have fun with it.”

The submission deadline for the Frankenstein Bicentennial Creative Contest is Feb. 16. Winners will be announced during the event on March 13. For more information, go to the .

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Professor Nabil Echchaibi on KGNU radio | Photo credit to

The Henry Luce Foundation has awarded a three-year, $500,000 grant to the at the University of ����ֱ�� Boulder to support an investigation of the changing nature of religious scholarship in the digital age.

The project officially kicks off today, May 18, at the , where the center is based, with a meeting of prominent international scholars from a variety of fields and disciplines.

“Religion is more and more at the center of contemporary political and social life,” said Stewart Hoover, professor of media studies and director of the CMRC. “This project begins with the fact that religion’s role is increasingly defined by modern media.”

The research effort will bring together scholars, researchers and practitioners in a focused effort to develop new and innovative tools for research, collaboration and communication. 

“The center’s global reputation for research focused on religion and spirituality in the media age, combined with the interdisciplinary nature of our college, make this an ideal project to be led by ����ֱ��,” said CMCI founding dean Lori Bergen. “The profile of religion in the media and in public discussion is growing and our faculty and students are excited for the opportunity to collaborate on developing new tools in this area.”

Alongside their research efforts, the project’s team will develop a new web platform designed specifically for academic collaboration, idea development and multi-platform communication, including digital, print, video and interactive forms.

“It’s not just about the way religion is being made and re-made through modern media, it is also about how we can use digital media as scholars and professionals to transform our work,” said Deborah Whitehead, associate professor in ����ֱ�� Boulder’s Department of Religious Studies and one of the project’s directors. 

The working group will also interact with wider networks of academics and practitioners, hosting seminars and workshops on the Boulder campus and at relevant meetings to engage important innovators in journalism, creative arts, digital practice and public education.

“Religions today exist to the extent that they exist in the media,” said Nabil Echchaibi, founding chair of CMCI’s Department of Media Studies and CMRC associate director. “It is simply the case that to understand religions today we have to understand how they are mediated, how they use media and how they are understood through media.”

In addition to Echchaibi, Hoover and Whitehead, the working group includes Sarah Banet-Weiser of the University of Southern California, Anthea Butler of the University of Pennsylvania, Christopher Helland of Dalhousie University, Marwan Kraidy of the University of Pennsylvania, Mirca Madianou of the University of London, Peter Manseau of the Smithsonian Institution, Nathan Schneider of ����ֱ�� Boulder, Jenna Supp-Montgomerie of the University of Iowa and Sara Taylor of Northwestern University.

“Our working group is made up of people who can contribute a great deal through their own research, but who can in turn have influence in the academic world to change the way universities think about and do research on religion,” said Hoover.  

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Pixabay image.

But there might be more than just hard work to people's successes and fates. The coincidental detail of where one's last name falls in the alphabet can affect life outcomes, according to Professor Jeffrey Zax and graduate student Alexander Cauley, both of the . Those with names in the latter half of the alphabet are negatively impacted – an occurrence that can begin at an early age.

"If your name is at the end of the alphabet, you're less likely to be identified by teachers as an outstanding student," said Zax. Zax and Cauley presented their  on the subject in January to the Allied Social Sciences Association.

For the study, the team used the data of 3,281 males from a Wisconsin-based longitudinal study that intermittently surveyed the participants from the time they graduated from high school in 1957 through 2011.

Among the data, they looked at sets of people who were nearly identical in IQ, academic performance and other areas, but had alphabetically different last names. Then they compared the participants' academic and life outcomes.

"Statistically, we were looking at two people who were carbon copies of each other," said Zax. "Even though they were the same in every other way, the fellow with the initial at the front of the alphabet was substantially more likely to be designated informally by teachers as an outstanding student."

The team found that the name-alphabet correlation, coined “alphabetism,” set in motion in the classroom carried on into early career-hood.

"This was all just really dramatic. It's purely the initial doing it," Zax said. "The probability of being designated an outstanding student drops by about 10 percent for a 10-letter gap. If you're a Clark, you're maybe 10 percent more likely to be identified as an outstanding student than your twin who happens to take on the last name of Norton."

Luckily, as people reach mid-adulthood the problem disappears, presumably because the effects of alphabetism are "superseded by observable characteristics that are more directly expressive of ability" in people, stated the authors in the paper.

"The good piece of news is that the effects that we saw seem to dissipate by the 30s," said Zax. "We saw them very strongly at the end of high school and through college and in the first labor market experiences. They were gone by the age of 35 and they remained absent at 52."

Zax has advice for students with late-in-the-alphabet names (a situation he knows personally): "Get noticed! Find some other way to distinguish yourself."

As for teachers, his advice is to call the class roll in reverse order – something he's been doing for 15 years.

"That's my little personal blow against alphabetic injustice," he said.

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