Why sealing?

The KIŠIB project hosts a series of international conferences over its duration, each dedicated to exploring the role of seals and sealings in establishing and maintaining trust on both interpersonal and societal levels in ancient West Asia. Each conference brings together specialists in ancient Near Eastern studies with colleagues from related fields—including history, social sciences, anthropology, visual culture, and media studies—to examine how sealing practice and seal design conveyed trust between contracting parties across different periods, regions, and institutional contexts.

The first KIŠIB conference is inspired by Edith Porada’s 1993 essay ‘Why cylinder seals?’. By asking ‘Why sealing?’, we aim, on the one hand, to explore the materiality of sealings and seal impressions, and on the other to examine the actions and social networks in which they were embedded. In doing so, we address the core concerns of the KIŠIB project: sealing on clay as a communication strategy that was effective over millennia for “sealing” interpersonal relationships, establishing claims of ownership, fostering social trust, and defining authority and hierarchy. To better understand the complex interrelationships between artefacts, images, and inscriptions, as well as between people, objects, and actions, we require expertise from diverse perspectives across an interdisciplinary spectrum of participants.

Registration required, further information at project.kishib.org