By Mahmoud Mardini, Associate Editor for Bioarchaeology
The geographic uniqueness of the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (EMME) is indisputable. The EMME has witnessed large-scale societal and cultural change over millennia, and facilitated connections between different cultures across different continents. Human adaptation and evolution in this region have been systematically studied using diverse approaches, among which bioarchaeology holds an important role, as evidence by the plethora of published literature, especially in the last decade. Nonetheless, this published literature is often difficult to identify, such as in the publication of 'grey' reports, graduate theses, excavation monographs and national archaeological journals (frequently written in the official language of the country/ region). Since bibliographic entry is often the first step in formulating research questions and contextualising results, the issue of limited bibliographic access becomes very serious.
To mitigate this limitation, a team of bioarchaeologists at the Science and Technology in Archaeology and Culture Research Centre of the Cyprus Institute, led by Assist. Prof. Efthymia Nikita, developed an open-access database, called Bi(bli)oArch, containing titles and abstracts of human bioarchaeological studies from the EMME region. The database currently includes 3,521 titles. All titles and abstracts written in languages other than English have been translated to English so as to be approachable to international scholarship. The papers in the database can be filtered by region and theme, with an advanced option for simultaneously filtering multiple regions, thematic keywords, and year of publication (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Screenshot of Bi(bli)oArch database interface with a display of all searchable parameters and selected results.
While the regional search follows modern-day territorial borders (Figure 2), it is acknowledged that these state borders had little meaning in the past and are purely contemporary projections of political thought. For simplicity and due to geographical proximity, countries along the Levantine coast and Jordan were grouped under the term ‘Levant’, whereas countries situated from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf were grouped under ‘Arabian Peninsula’. The thematic parameters adopted in the classification of each paper use the following keywords: Activity, Ancient DNA, Biodistance. Demography, Diet, Isotopes, Metrics, Mobility, Nonmetrics, Pathology, Stature, Taphonomy, and No Keyword.
| Figure 2. Map indicating the regions included in Bi(bli)oArch. Photograph by GPinkerton (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Near_East_(orthographic_projection).svg), distributed under a CC-BY 4.0 license. |
An additional functionality of the Bi(bli)oArch database is that it allows trends in bioarchaeological research in the EMME to emerge. As an example, Figure 3 illustrates the progression of human bioarchaeological research in Cyprus, Iran, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula over 10-year intervals starting from the 19th century throughout 2021. It is seen that all countries/regions show similar ascending trends in published articles over time, with the exception of Cyprus. Cyprus shows a striking descending pattern in the 2011–2021 bracket compared to the 2001-2010 bracket. Despite this decreasing trend, Cyprus still has the highest number of published bioarchaeological papers in comparison with Iran, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula. It is also worth-noting that 2021 is ongoing so the observed trend may well become less pronounced. Active human bioarchaeological research started early in Cyprus and Iran, during the 20s and 30s, trailed by Iraq in the 50s, and lastly followed by the Arabian Peninsula in the 70s and 80s. Reasons for the fluctuations in human bioarchaeological research in these countries, specifically for Iran and Iraq, are beyond the scope of this article. Nonetheless, Iran in the 80s and Iraq in the 90s and 00s witnessed severe political and economic turmoil, most likely impeding consistent scientific progress.
Figure 3. Line graph showing 10-year intervals against number of published Human bioarchaeological papers.
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The purpose of the current article is to promote and maximize visibility for Bi(bli)ioArch. Bi(bli)ioArch was created with the goal of becoming a community-wide effort that would make research more accessible and easily discoverable. We invite scholars and colleagues actively involved in the EMME region to contribute by submitting missing articles from the database and bringing to our attention errors in the existing entries. By visiting the website (https://www.biblioarch.com), colleagues willing to contribute can fill in a Google form with the necessary details pertaining to any missing article (Figure 1).
PS: Stay tuned for ZooBi(bli)oArch!
Reference:
Nikita, E., Mardini, M., Mardini, M., Tsimopoulou, C. and Karligkioti, A., 2021. Bi(bli)oArch: An open-access bibliographic database for human bioarchaeological studies in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 39: 10315. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2021.103151
Keeping perspective
While engaging in the above initiatives, as a Lebanese researcher residing in Cyprus and involved with projects in Lebanon, I feel the need to highlight the struggles all citizens of Lebanon are undergoing. Electricity and gasoline supply have been disrupted to such an extent that hospitals and medical services have been debilitated, while the majority of the population's food security is in jeopardy. I feel privileged to be living abroad and have the opportunity to engage in initiatives such as Bi(bli)ioArch, but at the same time I wonder how can Middle-Eastern researchers produce quality research when their families are living through psychological trauma, unrest, and instability?
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