We are delighted to announce the Joint Winners of CBRL’s Undergraduate Dissertation Prizes 2024!
Ellen Baxter, UCL Institute of Archaeology
Dissertation Title: Plastered and Cranially Modified Skulls: The Development and Connection of Post-Mortem Treatments in the Neolithic Near East
“Plastered and cranially modified skulls have been found amongst a significant number of other undecorated and removed skulls in the Neolithic Near East. They are believed to be part of a wider importance of the skull in this period, however, the extent to which they are a shared practice has been long debated. My dissertation aimed to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between plastered and cranially modified skulls within the Neolithic Near East. To achieve this, I examined the relationship between plastering and cranial modification by analysing the spatial-temporal connections of multiple factors, both within and between the two practices. My research concluded that while plastered and cranially modified skulls display links and developments within themselves, they unlikely belong to a shared practice and are instead part of a wider importance surrounding the post-mortem removal and reburial of skulls.
My dissertation was completed as part of my degree in the Ancient World at University College London from which I graduated in June. I have since taken the opportunity to travel around Central and South America and am now hoping to pursue a career within the field of archaeology.”
Joseph Santhouse, Faculty of History at University of Cambridge
Dissertation title: Jewish Divination in Medieval Egypt and Syria-Palestine, c.950-c.1250
“Divination as a practice amongst medieval Jewish communities had only really been studied in relation to its cultural antecedents. We hear much of its strong Greek influences, for example, but very little of who actually practised it. My dissertation aimed to assess the extent of its social prevalence in medieval Jewish life throughout the Levant. This took me on journeys much further than I expected, from disputations between rabbis across North Africa, to correspondence between families split by the Mediterranean.
My principal sources for this dissertation were found in the hundreds of thousands of manuscripts which had been deposited in the Cairo Geniza (trans. storeroom) by the Jewish communities of Cairo over the past millennium. The majority of these Geniza fragments were brought to Cambridge University Library, where they are housed to this day. With the help of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, I was able to view these manuscripts in their original form. Very few have been studied, let alone translated, and my dissertation aimed to shed both new light on previously studied manuscripts, as well as translating and analysing manuscripts that had been left virtually untouched since they were deposited roughly a thousand years ago.
The dissertation was split by sources that differed in function and provenance. Firstly, I examined the rulings and writings of various rabbis between c.950 CE and 1250 CE, namely Saadia Gaon, Hai Gaon, and Maimonides. In doing so, I traced the development of rabbinic throughout the Medieval period in the levant, which often accepted divinatory practices when we read against the grain. Secondly, I analysed instances of divination that were recorded in correspondence, in a corpus of manuscripts which we could call ‘travel documents’. They show the social spread of bibliomancy (divination by book), from the families of traders and rabbis, to non-elite people and most surprisingly, women. Finally, I studied the manuscripts that were themselves part of the divinatory process, often in the form of oneiromancy (dream divination). Here we find divination by important Jewish community figures such as Yakhin b Nethan’el, seeking to divine the judgement of the caliph, as well as the often-autodidactic divinatory texts by non-elite Jews. This all pointed to a much more widespread culture of divining amongst the Jewish communities of the Levant than was previously thought to exist.
I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Ben Outhwaite, as well as my Directors of Study, Dr Magnus Ryan and Dr Geraint Thomas. Thank you to the Dean of Peterhouse, Revd Dr Stephen Hampton and the trustees of the Bruckmann Fund, whose support was integral to my success. And thank of you of course to my parents and family whom I love so much.
Having graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Cambridge, I am now studying as an Eiffel Scholar for a master’s degree in Medieval History at the Sorbonne University, Paris.”
