和记棋牌娱乐教员博士. 凯伦·布瑞特 supervises the conservation of mosaics in a 6th-century Byzantine church at Petra, 约旦. The work of 布瑞特 and her team recently was featured in National Geographic. (提交的图)
2月. 17, 2022
By Patrick Glenn, communication assistant
Dr. 凯伦·布瑞特, an assistant professor of art history at 和记棋牌娱乐, 最近在一期 National Geographic’s “100 Wonders of the World因为她在Huqoq马赛克上的工作.
Dr. 凯伦·布瑞特
“I was really surprised,布里特说 of the publication. “我先是惊呆了，然后又欣喜若狂，激动不已. It’s all the more extraordinary because some of the other sites that are in that article or on that list of 100 are places like Machu Pichu and the pyramids in Egypt, 和记棋牌娱乐还没挖完呢.”
手工雕刻, 马赛克是由微型立方体组成的, 所谓的入场券, made of colored limestone and marble fitted together to pave floors or decorate the walls and ceilings of buildings.
布瑞特, 谁在2019年加入了西北学院, was invited to join the Huqoq Excavation Project team in 以色列 as the mosaics specialist in 2012 by director and friend Jodi Magness. The team did not expect to find mosaics in the late fourth-century synagogue in lower eastern Galilee, 以色列, so their discovery and the variety of mosaics add to their rarity.
“There are people who spend whole careers and never have the opportunity to work on material that is this exciting, because we have scenes in the mosaics in this synagogue that don’t exist in any other synagogue of this date anywhere,布里特说. “It’s the extraordinary nature of the mosaics, 我相信, that led to the mosaics at Huqoq being included in National Geographic’s 100 Archaeological Wonders of the World.”
Many Hebrew Bible and Old Testament episodes are portrayed through various mosaics. 约拿场景, Samson and Noah are depicted with ones of the Red Sea, but the scenes appear differently than in the West. A zodiac calendar fills the center of the synagogue while the Elephant Mosaic and commemorative panel add to the rarity and curiosity surrounding the Huqoq mosaics.
布瑞特 excavates a mosaic inscription in a 6th-century Byzantine church at Yattir, 以色列. (提交的图)
布瑞特 works in the field during the summer months. She works 关闭ly with excavators and conservators to remove multiple feet of debris and ensure the mosaic is in stable condition before documenting the floor. The five-week field season involves college educators and students. 布瑞特 documents the mosaics by taking measurements and performs tesserae density readings to calculate the number of cubes per square decimeter, which determines the quality of the mosaics.
布瑞特 begins her field days at the site at 4:30 a.m. 到5点.m., the sun is rising, and the team can begin digging. 在长达一天的挖掘过程中, she moves around the site and contemplates how the mosaics may relate to the space itself while sometimes digging and running wheelbarrows of dirt. 从五月底到七月初, 她帮助揭开马赛克, and the team explores a different area of the site with each new season.
一旦野外季节结束, 布瑞特 begins the publication process alongside late-antique historian and friend Ra’anan Boustan of Princeton University. The duo has been collaborating since 2015 to publish their work in multiple languages in both scholarly and popular venues, 包括国家地理.
“Archaeology is like this giant jigsaw puzzle in which you use everything that you have at your disposal to try to put together the past and understand what the conditions were in which people lived,布里特说. “Buildings like this help us reconstruct what their faith was and what their interests religiously were and, 在某些情况下, practices because sometimes you get a sense of the way that people moved through space based on the layout of the mosaic program.”
布瑞特’s involvement with the Huqoq Excavation Project also translates to her classroom. She stresses to her students that “context matters” while sharing stories in her introductory and upper-division art history courses. The archaeological work allows her and her students to reconstruct the past by using all available evidence such as mosaics.
“We’re not doing archaeology in the classroom,布里特说. “但当你以这种方式接近它时, as a way of discovering the past and also informing the present, I think it’s much more successful because the students are invested more deeply.”
她的工作把她带到了土耳其, 叙利亚, 黎巴嫩, 以色列, 巴勒斯坦权力机构, 约旦和埃及. International involvement on projects not only brings attention to the University but faculty, and students who engage in international travel return with cultural knowledge from engaging with diverse groups of people.
“这识别, 对于和记棋牌娱乐这个团队来说, underscores the rare quality of the mosaics and broader importance of the project,布里特说.
For more information about the Huqoq Excavation Project, visit huqoq.org.
