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Next article FreeFrom the EditorStephanie L. BudinStephanie L. Budin Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreHello, Readers! This summer brings a new and fascinatingly diverse issue of Near Eastern Archaeology to your mail-box or in-box (or both). The word “diversity” has been seeing a lot of use in the Humanities and Social Sciences lately. Usually it refers to the ethnic make-up of a student body, or the racial make-up of a faculty, or some such combination of human capital. In this instance, however, “diversity” refers to the range of times, places, methodologies, and topics of significance within the over-arching category of Near Eastern archaeology. Most basic to this field is digging, and in this issue we have two articles on what came out of the ground from such “dirt archaeology.” A magnificent hoard of silver and jewelry from Bronze Age Megiddo graces the pages, giving a taste of ANE aesthetics and elite (if perhaps atypical) storing practices. Much later in time is evidence for Greek influence in the religion of Roman Ashkelon, specifically a cult of Dionysos the Releaser in local funerary cult (“grapes and panthers and bottles, oh my!”)Objects make up half the story of the ancient Near East; the other half is words, a field often associated with philologists. But writing, “words that stay,” must also be appreciated for its physicality, and the cross-over between iconography and epigraphy is never so strong as with hieroglyphics. In a study of the tomb of a Middle Kingdom functionary named Henenu in Thebes, we get the opportunity to see in practice modern techniques of Egyptian paleography, from the study of different “hands” and the processes of rendering official inscriptions to the modern practice of creating databases.Digging in the dirt gets us so far. Lately, there has also been a focus on digging in museums. A recent trend in studying dinosaurs is “Drawer Paleontology”— going through the thousands of shelves and files and cases of bones dug up throughout the century to see what was found and hidden and that now may shed new light. A longstanding meme in classical archaeology was that the greatest discoveries of the century would be when someone went through the apothekê (basement) of the Thebes Museum in Greece. All due respect to Thebes, but such a find has come to light closer to home in Philadelphia, where two stunning Punic stelae from North Africa emerged from the basement of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. An even greater basement emergence occurred in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, when the Cesnola collection of Cypriot Art was granted its lovely new exhibit space. How that collection was gathered and became the foundation of the Met’s international prestige in the Gilded Age is another of this issue’s topics.Finally, one might ask to what end archaeology, if not for the edification, understanding, and preservation of the present. Thus here we present the ongoing restoration of a medieval shrine to the biblical patriarch Joseph, including the research that went into understanding its manifestations throughout history and the methods now being used to preserve this priceless cultural artifact for posterity.From Egypt and Israel to Philadelphia and New York; from the Bronze Age to the Gilded Age to the Silicon Age. Near Eastern archaeology has a breadth and range that covers the globe, really, allowing us to understand where we came from, how we got to where we are, and how to persevere into the future. More likely than not, the answers are in the basement. Next article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Near Eastern Archaeology Volume 82, Number 2June 2019 A journal of ASOR Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/704707 Copyright 2019 American Schools of Oriental ResearchPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.