June 2011, Daily News

Study Sheds New Light on Archaeology of the Dura-Europos Expedition

By Dan McLerran   Tue, Jul 12, 2011

A recent study of the photographic archives of one of the 20th century's most sensational archaeological excavations and discoveries lends powerful credence to the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words". Tucked away carefully within the archival collections of the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, more than 5,000 unpublished photographs taken between 1928 and 1937 recount a story in visual detail that cannot be fully told in the printed words of excavation reports, site journals or the popular press of the time.

The photographs were initially produced as part of the documentation plan and approach of an archaeological expedition to the ancient site of Dura-Europos in Syria. Consisting of a joint team from Yale University and the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in Paris and led by Michael Rostovtzeff of Yale and Franz Cumont of the French Academy, the excavation, which operated from 1928 until 1937, uncovered an enormously rich array of well-preserved artifacts and architectural remains that made headlines during the interwar period. Finds included a large Christian house-church and Jewish synagogue, hundreds of parchment and papyri, numerous temples, brilliantly fresh wall paintings, inscriptions, tombs, and astonishingly well-preserved Roman arms and armor that included painted wooden shields and complete horse armor. The richness and variety of finds were a testament to the ancient city's dramatic and varied history. Beginning as a Seleucid city in 303 B.C., it became a major center that flourished as a result of its strategic location adjacent to the Euphrates river along major trade routes. It came under Parthian control in the 2nd century B.C. and served, in part, as a frontier fortress with a multicultural population, as evidenced by inscriptions in Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin, Middle Persian, Syriac, Hatrian, Palmyrenean, Safaitic Pahlavi and artifacts that were recovered at the site. It was captured by the Romans in 165 A.D., falling finally to a Sassanian siege in 256-257 A.D.  It is the Roman period that is best documented. It is significant that, because Dura-Europos was largely abandoned and never rebuilt or occupied after the success of the Sassanian siege, and because of its dry climate, much of its material legacy remained comparatively intact and in a well-preserved state for future explorations and research. (See photos below, at the end of this article, for modern photographic images of the remains of Dura-Europos).

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Plan of Dura-Europos. Left map: Shaded sections indicate excavated areas. Wikimedia Commons. Numbers noted on right plan: 1: Palace of the Dux Ripae; 2: military HQ building; 3: Temple of the Palmyrene Gods; 4: mithraeum; 5: amphitheatre; 6: synagogue; 7: Palmyrene Gate; 8: Persian siege ramp; 9: agora; 10: citadel; 11: baths; 12: Christian building; 13: military temple; 14: temple; 15: old citadel; 16: military boundary wall. Armatura Press, Wikimedia Commons.  

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The recent study of the photographic archives was conducted by J.A. Baird of Birkbeck College, University of London, and published in the July 2011 edition of the American Journal of Archaeology. What he found was a collection of visual images that provide insights into the history and epistemology of archaeology as manifested through an examination of the historic excavation that took place during the interwar years. Along the way, he gives us a glimpse of the mentality, perceptions, and culture of the players on the excavation stage during that time.

Particularly enlightening is what Baird notes about the perception and treatment of the local workmen who conducted the everyday labor of the excavation. He explains this in terms of conceptions of time, colonialism, and valuation of the laborers as individuals and as a part of the expeditionary effort. 

"Time in these photographs refers both to the practice of taking the photographs -- the posing and framing -- and the excavators' construction of a time in the image," Baird writes. ".....They reflect a temporal breach that constructed an East in which modern peoples are equated with ancient........This perception of ancient and modern Eastern peoples being one and the same, which saw the local workers as being in the past, part of a ruined and decaying civilization, can be read not only in the texts, but also in the photographs, as noted in the use of the workmen to model ancient textiles." The local workmen were viewed and treated, at least in terms of the documentary record, as part of the past --  living objects of an ancient, dead civilization.

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Man standing in doorway of block B2, 1932–1933, sixth season. An early print of this image, with le Palud’s (the photographer's) stamp, survives in the archive as print number 174 (courtesy Yale University Art Gallery, Dura-Europos Collection, neg. z90 [from number sequence of new negatives made in 1982]).

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Colonialism, the social conventions it created and the perception it distilled upon the expedition planners, directors, photographers and researchers manifested itself in the use and placement of workmen at various key locations throughout the excavation site for photography as the work progressed. As Baird states:

"The use of local men and boys who are passive instruments for scale can be contrasted with the photographs of the Yale-French Academy team members, who were forever active, drawing and interacting but never digging, never with tools other than pens. Large frames and empty spaces with single workers posed within architecture contrast with the tight, portrait-style images of the Yale men, who are always shown engaged in appropriate activities, such as directing or drawing, within closer frames, showing that they were important as individuals.......the distance between the photographed and the photographer is much greater in most of the images in which excavators are shown at work but far in the distance: they are dehumanized, tiny figures in a landscape."    

Contrast this with the dig photo documentation and albums that we often see today in various archaeology online project blogs, websites and publications where the "down-and-dirty" excavators, composed of students, volunteers, archaeologists and other scientists and experts alike, are shown together or individually, with students and volunteers (whether they be visitors or part of the local population) doing meaningful recording, drawing, measuring, surveying and showing off the artifacts they individually found for the photographer. The "workmen", in this context, are important and are as much the story of the expedition as the discoveries and leading investigators themselves.

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Excavation of the Torah niche in the Dura Europos synagogue in 1932-1933. 

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The early 20th century and colonial conceptions and conventions of gender, too, are reflected in this photographic record. Writes Blair of his observations of the photo images at both Dura-Europos and at the excavations at Verulamium, expeditions that occurred within the same era:

"Gender, too, comes into play in both sets of images. In one of the few images I can locate of the only female archaeologist at Dura, she is down on her hands and knees scrubbing a Roman mosaic floor. At Verulamium, we see this same image in a photograph now sold as a postcard in the gift shop in the local museum. Both were taken in 1933, and both relate to the broader gender roles of that period."

The way the ruins were often portrayed in these old photographs reinforced the image, both in the excavators' minds and those of the public, of the romantic, exotic past, lending validity to what Baird terms the "imaginary geographies" of the scholar-excavators of that time period. As he states, "In the construction of the exotic, we glimpse the stereotypes of the Orient that produced descriptions of Roman houses as having diwans and harems. This is an exotic fashioned from geographic as well as temporal notions of difference. The photographs themselves helped excavators fashion imagined geographies........"  

Not so imaginable was the brutal labor of the workmen-excavators that was depicted in many of the unpublished images, a reality that was commonplace among the massive excavation expeditions at the time. They were not seen in the images that graced the published reports. "The physical labor, brushed out of the clean, "scientific" images, has allowed us to continue to forget the terrible conditions under which much of the data was recovered." The romance, adventure and scientific discoveries of archaeology was what the American and European scholars, the traditional stakeholders of the endeavor, wanted to project to the outside world, and this is what the outside world saw. Photographs and documents that recorded the nitty-gritty aspects, the "blood, sweat and tears", so to speak, became lost and largely forgotten in the "back room vaults" of photographic records and certain written documents. 

To the credit of the great early 20th century "big digs" like Dura-Europa, however, modern archaeology is deeply indebted to the precedent they set for the emerging importance of the photographic record in archaeological investigation. At no other time was this example of recording better employed in the history of the science, especially as it applied to the documentation of ancient art and text:

"Photographs were key in the large volume of correspondence between those in the field and those at Yale, and while they were not retained with the correspondence in the archive, there are constant references to them in the letters that demonstrate the primacy of the image as a means of communication between the archaeologists at Dura and at Yale.........

In the field photographs of objects, the relative proportions are indicative of the relative importance placed on, and interest in, specific types of objects. For instance, by far the largest proportion of this class of photographs is of painted fragments (painted wall plaster fragments, wall paintings in situ, painted tile) and inscriptions (including inscribed objects). This reflects the place of paintings and "art" generally to the excavators and the importance of text."  

Although today archaeological documentation, analysis, interpretation and presentation generally place equal importance on the small and unglamorous artifacts, site features, and other elements of the research and investigation of ancient sites and the valuable information about past life-ways that they convey to the astute consumer, there is still little more exciting to popular audiences and scholars alike than the well-preserved ancient wall painting that stimulates the senses, the inscription that tells a story, or the imposing ancient pyramid that makes the common observer ask, "who built this magnificent edifice and why"?

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Excavation of the Dura Europos synagogue paintings in 1932-1933 : The West Wall. 

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Information and quotations for this article were obtained from the study report, "Photographing Dura-Europos, 1928 to 1937: An Archaeology of the Archive", by J.A. Baird, published in the American Journal of Archaeology, Volume 115, No. 3 (July 2011), pp. 427 - 446.  The American Journal of Archaeology is a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America.

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Photo Images of Dura-Europos as it Stands Today

The Palmyrene Gate, the principal entrance to the city of Dura-Europos. Courtesy Heretiq, Wikimedia Commons.

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Temple of Bel at Dura-Europos. Courtesy Heretiq, Wikimedia Commons.

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Remains of the christian church with the western wall recently restored. Wikimedia Commons.

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A view of the remains of the Dura-Europos synagogue.  Courtesy Marsyas, Flickr.

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Most of the city of dura-Europos was built entirely of mudbrick. Courtesy Heritage Key, Flickr.

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Some of the ancient plaster can still be seen along the mudbrick walls of structures. Courtesy Verity Cridland, Wikimedia Commons.

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A view of the southern wadi and part of the walls of the city of Dura-Europos. Courtesy Heretiq, Wikimedia Commons.

By Dan McLerran

As Founder and Editor of Popular Archaeology Magazine, Dan is a freelance writer and journalist specializing in archaeology.  He studied anthropology and archaeology in undergraduate and graduate school and has been an active participant on archaeological excavations in the U.S. and abroad.  He is the creator and administrator of Archaeological Digs, a popular weblog about archaeological excavation and field school opportunities.  

Comments(1):

1. Great Article

   Wednesday, July 13, 2011 Richard

   Dan, This article on Dura-Europas is excellent. It shed new light on the importance of photography and artwork performed during site excavations. They do become part of the site diaries, journals and even the artifacts as they themselves become artifacts for future researchers. Richard