By Mahmoud Mardini, Associate Editor for Bioarchaeology
Recent years have seen a raise in the application of bioarchaeological approaches to the study of ancient Eastern Mediterranean populations. Bioarchaeological studies in the Eastern Mediterranean gained traction in the mid-20th century through the seminal work of John Lawrence Angel, who studied skeletal assemblages from Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus, exploring a broad range of questions pertaining to demography, pathology, human-environment interaction and population history. The field has noticeably progressed since the 1940s and 1950s and is currently exemplified through a holistic approach whereby archaeology, biology and social theory offer diverse lines of evidence, which is integrated under a bioarchaeological model.
To learn more about the fascinating field of bioarchaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean, an interview was conducted with Dr Efthymia Nikita (Cyprus) and Dr Nada Elias (Lebanon) (Figure 1). Dr Efthymia Nikita is Assistant Professor of Bioarchaeology at the Science and Technology in Archaeology and Culture Research Center of the Cyprus Institute. Dr Nada Elias is Associate Professor of Biological Anthropology at the Department of Arts and Archaeology of the Lebanese University (5th branch) and the Coordinator of the Master’s Degree in Arts and Archaeology at the Lebanese University.
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| Figure 1. Dr Efthymia Nikita (left) and Dr Nada Elias (right). |
Interview
Question 1
Mahmoud Mardini: Marhaba Drs Nikita and Elias, eager to learn about the current state and prospects of bioarchaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean from your own experiences in Cyprus and Lebanon. But first, can you share with the audience how you came to choose bioarchaeology as a career, and whether you had any setbacks along the way?
Efthymia Nikita: Hello Mahmoud, thank you for the invitation. I decided to become a bioarchaeologist at the end of the first year of my undergraduate studies at the Department of History and Archaeology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. At the time, I participated in my first archaeological excavation and we discovered, among others, a burial. We had so many specialists in our team but not a single bioarchaeologist. So, we could say so much about the material culture that surrounded this individual but nothing at all about the individual himself/herself. I felt that this is a major gap that should be filled in. What I did not realize at the time is that other Greek colleagues were already studying/working systematically in this direction, and I may have chosen an altogether different path, had I known that. So, my ignorance led me to a fascinating field! I cannot say I had any specific setbacks beyond the ones that any young scholar has to deal with: long lists of unsuccessful grant applications and an Inbox full of ‘We regret to inform you…’ emails regarding job interviews before securing a position at The Cyprus Institute.
Nada Elias: I was first studying archaeology at the Lebanese University and I was passionate about everything related to this field. Then while participating in the Beirut rescue excavations between 2005 and 2008, although I was still studying at the University, I dealt for the first time with human remains and I was pleasantly touched and fascinated. In fact, as archaeologists we always deal with cultural material made by Man, but we mainly forget about who made this cultural material. And I felt I wished to study the people responsible for all we see from the past. So, at the beginning my first concern was to know who is the person that I am excavating, his/her sex, age at death, health conditions, etc., but we had no anthropologist on site, so I was really frustrated because no one could answer these basic questions, so I started to search for answers to my questions. And then I was so curious about understanding how ancient people dealt with the dead, their belief systems and funerary rituals and practices. So these thoughts and wanderings pushed me to choose a subject related to anthropology while doing my master degree at the University of Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne in order to study the biological, social and cultural aspects of the ancient Beirut populations during the Roman period. And then, I did my PhD at the University of Bordeaux at PACEA laboratory. The choice of this laboratory was also because they deal with anthropology as a multidisciplinary field entangled between archaeology, history, ethnology, archaeothanatology and biology, and I wished to study ancient populations as a whole, since Man is a biological and social individual.
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Question 2
Mahmoud Mardini: What are some of your current projects in Cyprus (Efthymia) and Lebanon (Nada), and taken that archaeological research requires a lot of travelling for fieldwork, workshops, and conferences, how did Covid-19 affect your working schedule?
Efthymia Nikita: My students and I are currently working on several Cypriot assemblages temporally spanning prehistory to 18th century; the research questions are as diverse as the impact of the Arab invasions in the 7thc. CE, diachronic changes in the living conditions in ancient Kition, and the manifestation of genetic anemias. However, one of the most intriguing aspects of bioarchaeology is that scholars with this specialization can work with highly diverse materials, geographically and temporally. The research questions will obviously change but the methodologies are largely the same. As such, we are actively involved in projects across the Mediterranean (Tunisia, Morocco, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon). Covid-19 has prevented any fieldwork outside Cyprus for over a year now but, in our case, this was not necessarily bad since it has given us the opportunity to invest our time and resources towards progressing with our Cypriot projects and also towards creating a series of open access resources for our field, including a bibliographic database for bioarchaeological studies in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (www.biblioarch.com) and a series of best practice guides for different aspects of skeletal analysis.
Nada Elias: Since our liberty of physical movement was more or less restrained during the Covid-19 pandemic period, I shifted my focus on working on anthropological publications. Same as many archaeologists struggling with the publications of many excavated sites that they had not had the time before to process, I was glad I had plenty of time to reconnect with writing and reading as well. So, during the Covid-19 pandemic, I worked on the article submission of many burial spaces from Roman Berytus (Mdawar 168 and Mazraa 571), and on the publication of a collective burial in Qornet Ed Deir from the Romano-Byzantine Period (Jabal Moussa Biosphere), as well as on the article submission of a collective medieval burial in Deir El Salib Hermitage (Qadisha Valley). Currently, I am co-directing with Professor Pierre Zalouaa a large interdisciplinary forensic anthropology project launched by the Syriac Maronite Church with the support of the General Directorate of Antiquities since spring 2018, as part of the canonization project of the Patriarch Estephan El Douaihy (1630 – 1704) by the Vatican. The principal aim of this project is to find the remains of the Patriarch Estephan El Douaihy in order to proclaim him a saint. Thus, the approaches used in this project were mainly based on the entanglement of historical, archaeological, anthropological, forensic and genetics studies. In a first step the archaeological excavation of the remains took place in the collective burial of the 17 Maronite Patriarchs located in the Church of Saint Marina in Qannoubine Valley. Then, in a second step forensic anthropological studies of the remains in addition to the DNA analyses were carried out in order to shed light on the identity of the deceased. We are now doing the correlation of biological and historical data in order to determine the identity of the greatest number of individuals. This transdisciplinary study of the patriarchs’ collective burial project is involving archaeologists, anthropologists, geneticists in a novel, field-based context.
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Question 3
Mahmoud Mardini: Much is known archaeologically about Cyprus and Lebanon. Despite the surge of research in bioarchaeology over the past decade, do you think this field is a step behind when compared to other more ‘traditional’ archaeological sub-disciplines? How can we contribute as a sub-discipline to archaeological research in the Eastern Mediterranean?
Efthymia Nikita: It is not easy to answer this question because I cannot tell how ‘far ahead’ other aspects of archaeological research may be compared to bioarchaeology. What I can say is that bioarchaeology actually has a very long tradition in the region thanks to the pioneer work by Lawrence Angel, and over the past couple of decades several very competent local scholars have emerged, who continue to develop this field actively. To my knowledge, we are still largely lacking dedicated graduate programmes, though certain initiatives have taken place in this direction. Bioarchaeology has a huge potential to enhance our understanding of the past as it examines the most direct evidence of our ancestors, their bones. It offers information regarding demography, pathology, activity, diet, mobility and many other key aspects of past life and, when combined with material cultural evidence, palaeoenvironmental data and textual information, it can generate far more nuanced narratives of the past of this region.
Nada Elias: As you said, much is known archaeologically about Lebanon and compared to what is known anthropologically about the ancient population of Lebanon, the anthropological data is less abundant. But still, currently the interest in biological anthropology investigations is high especially as it involves the correlation of human remains and funerary practice data while dealing with ancient civilizations. I think the main contribution to archaeological research in the Eastern Mediterranean is the focus on the interdisciplinarity of the archaeo-anthropological approach. Second, to directly publish the results of these investigations in national and international journals (or books) in order to make them known to the scientific community (and to the public) and to have scientific debates that help to develop the field. And finally the main contribution to archaeological research is to train students and researchers willing to continue and develop this multidisciplinary discipline.
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Question 4
Mahmoud Mardini: The global economy post-Covid is experiencing a recession and the political dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean are not too comforting, do you think this will affect the momentum human bioarchaeology has gained in recent years? Where do you see human bioarchaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean in the next 10 years taken the gradual increase in local specialists and early-career researchers?
Efthymia Nikita: The Arts and Humanities have been massively affected by the global economic crisis brought forward by Covid and other factors. It is alarming how many world-renowned Departments of Archaeology in UK universities are threatened with closure post-Brexit. It is not possible to tell how bioarchaeology more specifically may be affected in the short- and long-term. For now, we are extremely lucky not to have experienced any major impacts in our region. As to where bioarchaeology will be in 10 years’ time, our field has made major leaps from human bones being originally perceived as ‘redundant’ and getting reburied without prior study to being acknowledged as an integral part of any archaeological study. As mentioned above, our region still largely lacks dedicated graduate programmes in this field, so I anticipate this to be an emerging field in the following years, either independently or as part of broader Archaeological Science curricula. Research-wise, I would anticipate a stronger emphasis on assemblages from the historical periods, given the rather biased focus on prehistoric remains that currently characterizes bioarchaeological research in the region. The potential of historical bioarchaeology is being increasingly acknowledged and I expect it to gain further momentum in the coming years. Finally, I am hoping to see more meta-analyses of already published data. It is incredible how much research has already been conducted but we largely ignore it as a big part of it has been disseminated in national outlets. It is certainly time to synthesize these data and this was the main motivation behind our Bi(bli)oArch initiative.
Nada Elias: It is true that the global economy post-Covid is experiencing a recession and the political dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean are not too comforting. But, as humans we experienced many challenges as our ancestors already did. So my vision of the future is more optimistic and I try not to entertain negativity. As we live in the present, I prefer to focus on what I can do and how. So I think if everyone continues to work and to develop archaeo-anthropological researches in the present, the field of Anthropology will probably be full of a better knowing of ancient populations and more development hopefully.
Question 5
Mahmoud Mardini: Public outreach is currently an integral part of bioarchaeological dissemination, do you have any involvement aimed at the general public which involves workshops, short-courses, public lectures, social media presence (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.)? In your opinion, are there any further steps we need to take for attracting the interest of the general public?
Efthymia Nikita: In Cyprus we participate annually in the Researcher’s Night, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action organized by the Cypriot Research and Innovation Foundation. In the context of this event, we organize a series of hands-on activities that give the opportunity to students to interact with the human skeleton and understand the range of information that can be extracted from skeletal remains. In addition, we recently produced an open-access guide for Archaeological Science Classroom Activities, which includes several activities focused on bioarchaeology, additionally to zooarchaeology, archaeobotany and archaeological materials. This guide is currently available in English and Greek but it is also being translated in Arabic; it can be freely accessed here: https://zenodo.org/record/4641959#.YK84UKFRVdg. Finally, the Cyprus Institute organizes regularly lectures and seminars and, pre-Covid, we held several school visits in our laboratories. There is always room for more outreach. An area where I believe we should focus our attention is the integration of aspects of bioarchaeology in school books of history in collaboration with the teachers and the national ministries of education.
Nada Elias: Archaeology, heritage and anthropology are closely related to research on origins, roots, identity and allegiance. Although they are tools for the study of mankind and earlier societies, but with the values they represent, they are also able to control and influence minds due to the difficulty or impossibility of subjecting them to standards of quality and quantity. So it is crucial to build a connection with the public for many reasons, first by helping the public to know the history of their predecessors and to raise awareness especially to children, to the importance of preserving and protecting cultural heritage and to respect others now and before (e.g. by respecting beliefs of ancient civilizations as well). Social media helps in the public outreach of bioarchaeological dissemination. I am currently only active on Facebook and on the Instagram page of the Laboratory that I have founded at the Lebanese University (AEL: Laboratoire d’Anthropologie et d’Ethnoarchéologie au Levant) but I hope to be more active in the future when I finish some of my current projects. In my opinion, in Lebanon the public is missing on-site interaction with archaeologists or anthropologists. This can be solved if archaeologists and anthropologists are filmed while excavating and make these films part of documentaries accessible online during the pandemic; or to have bi-weekly open days at archaeological sites for the public and school students. In addition, building small ethno-archaeological villages next to important sites, like the one built in Çatalhöyük, is a great idea especially for school students, so they can spend days interacting with history and archaeology; and having 3D models in schools and universities of mummies or skeletons and graves excavated in Lebanon could also be very educational.
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Question 6
Mahmoud Mardini: Thank you very much for sharing some of your insights into the world of bioarchaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean. To hopefully end this interview on a positive note, do you have any advice for students interested in pursuing bioarchaeology as a career?
Efthymia Nikita: Just a general career advice for any discipline: Be persistent, do not take rejection personally (we have all been there more times than you think), and remember that you may find professional happiness in career paths you never imagined!
Nada Elias: Thank you Mahmoud for this lovely interview. I see anthropology as a very interesting and challenging discipline, but it really needs passion, patience and perseverance. I always advise students to pursue what they are really passionate about, anthropology or anything they really love. It is crucial to be in synchronization with what you do, in order to do it right and with passion.
If you want to learn more about the work of Dr Efthymia Nikita and Dr Nada Elias, please visit their respective academia.edu page:
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