Introduction

Beginning in June of 2006, students enrolled in courses with WSR founder Bruce Zuckerman at USC and Wayne Pitard at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) were involved in making hi-tech images of ancient Near Eastern cylinder seals and then having the unusual privilege (for undergrads) of conducting original publishable research on them.

While the seals themselves are normally housed in the William R. and Clarice V. Spurlock Museum collection in Urbana, the best set-up to photograph them happened to be located at USC, so UIUC students followed the seals out to Los Angeles to join USC students in learning how to conduct the highly specialized photography. The students used the images in their personal research projects in Fall, 2006 and Spring, 2007. Zuckerman says, “This is the most complex research and teaching experiment I’ve ever tried to do.”

Contact Details

Office

Administrator, School of Religion