"Studies in Late Antiquity" Announces Inaugural Best Article of the Year Award
Studies in Late Antiquity is pleased to award its inaugural Best Article of the Year Award to two articles: J. Riley Snyder's "Beyond Urban Planning: Challenges of Resource Management in the Construction of Late Antique Capital Cities" (SLA 8.3) and Mira Balberg's "Binding the Heart: Fantasies and Anxieties of Slaveholding in Late Ancient Jewish Sources" (SLA 8.4).
Balberg uses talmudic literature and bowls with Syriac magical inscriptions from Sasanian Babylonia to investigate the paradoxes of late ancient slaveholding culture, and shows how enslavers sought to control their slaves' physical and interior selves, and attempted to force their slaves to choose slavery, thus assuming the very free will that enslavers denied.
Snyder, on the other hand, applies the lens of modern project management to documentary sources and archaeology to investigate late antique urban construction, illuminating the complex networks of people and material necessary to create, move, and use the untold millions of bricks that comprised late antique Ravenna and Constantinople.
The article prize committee selected these two articles because of their innovative methodologies, strong arguments, and their exciting use of sources. The committee was also compelled by the way these articles exemplify the diversity within and scope of the study of Late Antiquity—reaching from Babylonia to Ravenna. Though the articles engage vastly different source bases and methodologies, both use material and textual sources to expand and deepen our understanding of late ancient daily life, in all its complexity and brutality.
We invite you to read both articles for free for a limited time. You may purchase single copies of issues 8.3 and 8.4, in which the articles appear, on the journal's site. For ongoing access to SLA, please subscribe and/or ask your library to subscribe.