The American Schools of Oriental Research convenes its 2002 annual meeting in Toronto immediately preceding SBL's this November. Because of the proximity in time (ASOR meets from Wednesday evening through Saturday, 20-23 November, and SBL from Saturday afternoon through Tuesday, 23-26 November) and location (meeting venues are within blocks of each other), we hope there will be greater interchange between the two organizations and among members of both.

An offspring of SBL over a century ago, ASOR continues to work in areas of the world and in disciplines of investigation related to SBL concerns, while also having expanded its range of research across lines of geography, chronology and theoretical analysis. Thus, among the wider arenas of explorations in the Ancient Near East at large—archaeology of land and sea, excavation reports from all over the eastern Mediterranean area covering all periods from the Paleolithic to modern times—there are a number of sessions that might interest SBL members.

These include, among others:

• Wednesday evening plenary by David Stronach on Archaeology in Afghanistan

• Thursday evening plenary by Sy Gitin and Trude Dothan on the Philistines

• Friday evening plenary (free and open to the public) by Amy Dockser Marcus, author of The View from Nebo: How Archaeology Is Rewriting the Bible and Reshaping the Middle East and Wall Street Journal correspondent formerly based in Israel, on traveling the Holy Land with archaeologists.

• Thursday sessions like: Hebrew Bible, History and Archaeology
  
  Excavations at Megiddo
  
  Current Excavations

• Friday sessions like: Hebrew Bible, History and Archaeology
  
  Egypt and Canaan (three full sessions including 12 presentations)
  
  Southern Levantine Archaeology

• Saturday sessions like: Archaeology of the Roman Period (Qumran)
  
  Roman and Byzantine Periods
  
  Archaeology of Syria
  
  World of Women: Gender and Archaeology

SBL members might want to consider arriving in Toronto a day or so early and taking advantage of ASOR offerings. The Marriott Hotel Eaton Centre is just up the street, the program holds sessions surely to be of interest to SBL members and information about the conference is easily available at http://www.asor.org

Citation: Douglas R. Clard, " Highlights of the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research," SBL Forum , n.p. [cited Nov 2005]. Online:http://sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=113