The Fortress of the Figs: Cross-Cultural Materialities and Identities on the Byzantine-Islamic Frontier

The Elizabeth A. Clark Center for Late Ancient Studies (EAC-CLAS) is pleased to welcome Dr. Asa Eger (UNCG) to give a lecture entitled "The Fortress of the Figs: Cross-Cultural Materialities and Identities on the Byzantine-Islamic Frontier," focusing on his excavations at an 8-12th century Early Islamic/Middle Byzantine frontier fort called Tupras Field, or Hisn al-Tinat. Professor Eger is a 2025-26 Fellow at the National Humanities Center and professor of the Islamic world in the Department of History and the Program in Archaeology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). He received his PhD in 2008 from the University of Chicago in Islamic Archaeology with a specialization in the early Islamic period. Dr. Eger has been teaching at UNCG since 2009. In 2011-12, he was a fellow in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University and a fellow at Dumbarton Oaks in Byzantine Studies. From 2016-17, he was a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies. Since 1996 he has been conducting surveys and excavations in Anatolia and Syria-Palestine (the Levant) from the Byzantine period through the Late Islamic period. He focuses on frontiers, landscape archaeology, and environmental history, as well as urbanism and the relationship between cities and their hinterlands. He also specializes in ceramic material culture. He has conducted surveys and excavations in Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus and currently is co-director of the Caesarea Coastal Archaeological Project in Israel since 2022.