Dr. Catalin Pavel
August 2021 - October 2021
Research Project: Angeli of Dacia. Negotiating a religious niche
His two-month research project stems from an interest in charting how religious space can be negotiated between monotheism (whether Jewish, Christian, or, later, Islamic) and (Roman/local) polytheism at the (Western and respectively Eastern) periphery of the Empire. An archaeological case study focuses on the Jewish religion in Roman Dacia, the evidence for which has only recently been exhaustively collected and must still be carefully disentangled from that of gnostic Christianity, Neoplatonic theurgy, and mere Judaic influences over various Oriental cults. Indeed, the interpretation of certain artifacts mirroring such syncretism runs the gamut between pagan allegiances (imperial theology) and mere apotropaic and proto-Kabbalistic implications. Intriguing are also the only angeli attested in Dacia, known from a votive marble slab set up at Ulpia and reading Deo Aeterno et Iunoni et Angelis.
Profile
Dr. Catalin Pavel is an archaeologist, currently an Assistant Professor at the Ovidius University in Constanța, Romania. He is a former doctoral or post-doctoral fellow of the Université Paris 1 – Panthéon Sorbonne, Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, Jerusalem (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow), New Europe College Institute for Advanced Study, Bucharest, and the University of Oxford (Chevening Fellow). Pavel participated in archaeological excavations in Romania, Germany, France, Morocco, Israel, the UK and particularly Turkey (Troy, Miletus and Gordion). His research revolves around methodological issues in archaeology as well as the interplay between art, religion and ancient societies. Pavel believes that specialists ought to be active in the communication of science and has published more than 250 non-academic articles on archaeology in cultural magazines.
CV
Selected Publications
Pavel, Catalin (2021), ”Ubique victor. Triumphus, Christianity and the ritualization of imperial continuity”, in: Emanuel Plopeanu / Gabriel S. Manea / Metin Omer, eds., Empire. Between Dispute and Nostalgy, Bern: Peter Lang, 13-28.
Pavel, Catalin (2018), ”The only Icarus statuette from Dacia: a military appropriation of the Icarus myth ?”, Apulum 55, 155-170.
Pavel, Catalin (2017), “Hephaistos and knowledge from below: crooked feet on Mount Olympus”, in: Michel Mazoyer / Valérie Faranton, eds., Homère et l’Anatolie, III, Paris: L’Harmattan, 77-114.
Pavel, Catalin (2016), “Art and the alphabet in the times of the Dipylon Master“, Gaia: revue interdisciplinaire sur la Grèce Archaïque 19, 25-56.
Pavel, Catalin (2015), “The palace of the procurator in Trier, or the promise and predicament of Roman archaeology”, Journal of Roman Archaeology 28, 738-750.
Pavel, Catalin (2014), “Homer and archaeology – perspectives from the East Aegean / West Anatolian interface”, in: Michel Mazoyer / Valérie Faranton, eds., Homère et l’Anatolie, II, Paris: L’Harmattan, 9-70.
Pavel, Catalin (2013), “The Social Construction of Disability in Prehistoric Societies – What Funerary Archaeology Can and Cannot Say”, in: Nils Mueller-Scheessel, eds., “Irreguläre“ Bestattungen in der Urgeschichte: Norm, Ritual, Strafe …?. Internationale Tagung, Frankfurt a. Main, 3.–5. Februar 2012, Kolloquien zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte. Bonn: R. Habelt, 39-48.
Pavel, Catalin (2012), “Recording the Excavations in Troy: 1855-2010”, Studia Troica 19, 255-283.
Pavel, Catalin (2010), Describing and Interpreting the Past - European and American Approaches to the Written Record of the Excavation, Bucharest: University of Bucharest Press.
