The Department of Archaeology and History at La Trobe University presents a seminar by Ina Kehrberg-Ostracz (University of Sydney).
The recent publication of The Hippodrome of Gerasa is a study of Roman circuses, a project conceived, and directed in the field from 1984-1996 by the late architect Antoni Ostrasz. The detailed excavations and complex fieldwork for the restoration of the Jarash Hippodrome were abruptly ended by his untimely death in 1996. The unusual publication of his manuscript provides the researcher as well as the restorer of ancient monuments with unparalleled insights for anastyloses, or accurate architectural reconstructions, of the edifice. The large-scale excavations provided evidence not only for the restoration but equally so unveiled the rich archaeological history of the site, before the foundations of the hippodrome, to its primary use as a circus, and to subsequent occupancies of the circus complex as an industrial quarter. These were main dedicated to pottery workshops, mass-producing ceramics over several centuries. The study of the architectural and archaeological remains at the hippodrome encapsulates the sequence of the urban history of the town, from its early beginnings, to Roman Gerasa and Byzantine and Islamic Jarash, (including vestiges of the seventh century pneumatic plague and still visible earthquake destructions), up until later Ottoman settlements.
About the speaker: Ina Kehrberg-Ostrasz graduated in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Sydney where she taught Archaeology and completed her postgraduate thesis. She began working as an archaeologist and ceramicist in Jordan with the University of Sydney in 1975, followed by several long-term residential archaeological projects at Jarash; principally, the Jerash Hippodrome Restoration Project, 1984-1996 (directed by Antoni Ostrasz). She co-directed the Jarash City Walls Project from 2001 to 2003, and from 1997 to 2008 she collaborated in the French Upper Zeus Temple Restoration Project. She has also acted as the ceramicist for the Jarash Hinterland Survey from 2005 to 2010 (directed by Fiona Baker & David Kennedy). Ina is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, an Honorary Lecturer at ANU and teaches masterclasses in the study of ceramics and other artefacts.
When: 3pm (Melbourne time / AEST), Thursday 20 May 2021
Where: online (Zoom)
Register here (by 12 noon 20 May): https://latrobe.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ilxV0prYQDOdUCmc70KWCQ