A team of international scholars is currently investigating the remains of a late Roman synagogue at Huqoq, in Israel鈥檚 Lower Galilee. The main aim of the project is to date the building on the basis of scientific excavation with a view to contributing new data to the current scholarly debate on the dating of ancient monumental synagogues. Excavations at the site have also unearthed unique and well-preserved mosaic pavements depicting various biblical and non-biblical scenes.
The project鈥檚 results shed important new light on Jewish daily life and Jewish communities in the late Roman and Byzantine periods, and they have ramifications for the study of Jewish-Christian relationships in antiquity. In addition, our work is also bringing to light a monumental medieval structure, which is providing us with new information on medieval Jewry in Palestine, about which very little is known. The Huqoq Excavation project is directed by Prof. Jodi Magness (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), with the assistance of Dr Dennis Mizzi (University of Malta).
This project is investigating the remains of a Galilean workshop from the Roman period in which Jewish chalkstone vessels were produced. These vessels, which circulated widely and only among Jews in Palestine, were connected with Jewish purity practices. The aim of the project is to excavate and document this workshop in order to learn more about the production of these vessels and determine when their production ceased. The results have important implications for our understanding of Jewish daily life in Roman Galilee. Excavations at the site have now concluded, and the publication of the final report is in process. The project is directed by Dr Yonatan Adler (Ariel University, Israel), with the assistance of Dr Dennis Mizzi (University of Malta).
The network for the Dispersed Qumran Caves Artefacts and Archival Sources is a collaboration between Prof. Joan Taylor (King鈥檚 College London), Prof. Marcello Fidanzio (ISCAB, Lugano), and Dr Dennis Mizzi (University of Malta). Its aim is to gather and analyse material pertaining to the Qumran caves that has been dispersed in museums and collections around the world. The importance of these caves stems from their association with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are among the most important archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century.
The team studies artefacts (e.g., pottery, textiles, leathers, and wooden remains) as well as written and photographic dossiers of people who visited or investigated the caves between the 1950s and 1970s. The aim is to bring to light new data about the Qumran caves in the hope that these could help scholars reconstruct the material profiles of the respective caves in more detail. Between 2016 and 2019, the project was funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
This is a project run by the Department of Classics and Archaeology. Its goals are to document the archaeological remains unearthed in excavations carried out in the 1960s and 1970s and to open new areas for excavation. The project is shedding new light on the rural Maltese landscape in the Punic and Roman periods. Dr Abigail Zammit and Dr Dennis Mizzi, both of the Department of Oriental Studies, contribute to this project.
To date, Maltese is the only officially-recognised European language with Arabic roots. This research area, which Dr kurstin Gatt supervises, takes the Arabic roots of Maltese as its focal point with the overarching aim of contributing to the growing scholarship at the intersections of Arabic and Maltese. Secondly, this research project also strives to strengthen the link between the Maltese language and Arabic dialectology by focusing on linguistic aspects of etymological and semantic value. These aspects include tracing the linear history of a Maltese word, change in word form, change in word meaning, the genetic relationship between Maltese and Arabic, cognates, comparative reconstruction, local formations, and sound change.
In particular, this research project intends to:
—create an online etymological database of Arabic lexemes in Maltese.
—compare and contrast discursive cultural material in Maltese, such as proverbs, with other folk heritage.
The results of this research project will be published as peer-reviewed articles and as an online open-access digital platform, hoping to engage other local and international scholars in this field of research.
This project, under the supervision of Prof. Martin R. Zammit, aims at providing a historical context to a hoard consisting of 208 coins exhibited at the Mater Ecclesiae Museum of the parish church of G魔arb, in Gozo. The hoard was discovered by the sexton behind a recessed stone cupboard in the sacristy. The provenance of the coins is mostly North African. A historian and numismatic experts are collaborating on this project. The results of this project should be available during 2020.
This project, under the supervision of Dr Kurstin Gatt, investigates different forms of discourse emerging from the Arabic-speaking environment, focusing on the intersections of the linguistic, literary, religious, and political aspects of discourse. In this study, ‘discourse’ is understood in its broadest sense, encompassing a mixture of written and orally-transmitted texts of literary and linguistic significance. This study has fixed points of reference in space and time; it examines discourses emerging from or related to the Middle East and North African region (MENA) during the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century. The language placed under scrutiny is Arabic, namely, Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and vernacular Arabic. From a theoretical perspective, this research project draws inspiration from modern scholarship about discourse analysis, rhetorical studies, and linguistic, literary, and cultural theories.
More specifically, this research area investigates the following discourses:
- literary discourse
- political discourse
- post-2011 revolutionary discourse
- Salafi-jihadi discourse
- vernacular discourse
To date, research related to this project has been presented at local and international conferences, including the Annual International Multi-Disciplinary Conference organised by the University of Malta Junior College, the BATA Annual Conference, the BRISMES Annual Conference, and the International Congress of DAVO. The results are published in the following articles and books.
Gatt, Kurstin. Decoding D峋故縄SH: An Analysis of Poetic Exemplars and Discursive Strategies of Domination in the Jihadist Milieu (Reichert Verlag, 2020).
Gatt, Kurstin. “Poetry as a Communicative Vehicle in the Jihadi Milieu: The Case for Modern Extremist Poetry.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (Routledge, 2021).
Gatt, Kurstin. “Popularising the Political: Jihadi Chants as a Popular Medium of Communication in Jihadi Circles.” In Approaches to Arabic Popular Culture (University of Bamberg Press, 2021).
Gatt, Kurstin. “The Political Potential of Ya Hef in Contemporary Syrian Politics.” In Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 15, no. 4 (Brill, 2022): 440–54.
Gatt, Kurstin, and Kristina Stock. Contemporary Arabic Political Discourse (Reichert Verlag, forthcoming).
Gatt, Kurstin. “The Sound and Sense of Jihad: Revisiting the Notion of Jihad in Jihadi-Themed Arabic Chants.” In Disentangling Jihad, Political Violence, and Media (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming).