Antioch in Plural: Intersectional and Decolonial Analyses of Archaeological Research, 1920–1939

Abstract

Antioch is plural because its mosaics were dispersed across different places. It is plural because the people connected to them left fragmented traces in the record. It is plural because the archive itself is full of gaps. And it is plural because different interpretations coexist.

It is this plurality that forms the starting point of the dissertation.

Antioch in Plural examines archaeological research conducted under the French Mandate in Syria and Lebanon between 1920 and 1939, focusing on the American-French excavations in and around Antioch between 1932 and 1939. Through the excavation and modern histories of mosaics and other archaeological objects that were unearthed, fragmented, shipped abroad, and distributed among museums, universities, and private collections, the dissertation investigates the conditions under which these objects were removed from the places where they were found and what was left behind.
The dissertation begins from a central contradiction. While archaeological objects gained visibility and importance, the local women, men, and children who participated in the excavations often remained absent from historical narratives and archival records. What roles did they play in the discovery, excavation, transport, and documentation of archaeological objects? How were their contributions recorded, recognized, or erased? How were they represented in excavation reports, photographs, museum collections, and scholarly publications? Particular attention is given to the gaps and absences in the archival record and in the display of mosaics, and to what these gaps reveal about processes of meaning-making, representation, and aesthetic experience.
Through a series of micro-histories assembled from documents, photographs, objects, archival records, and field observations, the dissertation traces both the dispersal of objects and the fragmentary traces of people. In doing so, it approaches Antioch not as a single archaeological site, but as a relational landscape and a fragmented assemblage of objects, people, absences, and institutions whose histories continue to unfold across different places, archives, and forms of memory.

Short biography

Ezgi is an artist, curator, and researcher. Since 2019, she has been a PhD candidate in Art and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Since 2022, she has also been a University Assistant (predoc) at the Department of Transcultural Studies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her research has taken her to the United States, France, Lebanon, and Turkey, where she has conducted archival research at institutions including the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University, the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum at the University of Chicago, and the Institut français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo) in Beirut. Ezgi has received several grants and fellowships for her research, including the Marietta Blau Scholarship from the Austrian Agency for Education and Internationalisation (OeAD, 2023–2024), a Fellowship for International Communication from the Austrian Research Association (ÖFG, 2023), and the GO.INVESTIGATIO Archive and Travel Grant from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW, 2024–2025). She has presented her research at several international conferences.