Honoring a Legacy, Inviting a New Generation: A Very Brief Introduction to the Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant Project

Abstract

The aim of this introductory article is threefold: (1) to situate the Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant (SSSL) project in the broader history of twentieth-century glyptic research, especially with regard to Othmar Keel’s multi-volume _Corpus of Stamp Seals from Palestine/Israel_ launched in the 1980s; (2) to explain the SSSL project’s research design as a strategic response to that unfinished initiative, the intrinsic potential of stamp seals research and the demands of a specific funding opportunity which emphasizes interdisciplinarity; (3) to consider SSSL as a trans-generational project, attentive to both transmission and innovation. The Digital Humanities transition offers crucial opportunities and challenges regarding all three aspects.