Anatomy of a Byzantine-Islamic Frontier Fort: Cross-Cultural Materialities and Identities at the Site of Hisn al-Tinat

A. Asa Eger, UNC Greensboro

Dr. Asa Eger's talk centers on his excavations at an Early Islamic/Middle Byzantine frontier fort, known as Tupras Field or Hisn al-Tinat, dating from the 8th to the 12th century. He is a 2025-26 Fellow at the National Humanities Center and a professor of Islamic studies in the Department of History and the Program in Archaeology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). Dr. Eger earned his PhD in Islamic Archaeology from the University of Chicago in 2008, specializing in the early Islamic period. He has been teaching at UNCG since 2009. In the 2011-12 academic year, he was a fellow in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University and also held a fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks in Byzantine Studies. From 2016 to 2017, he was a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies. Since 1996, Dr. Eger has conducted surveys and excavations in Anatolia and Syria-Palestine (the Levant), focusing on the Byzantine period through the Late Islamic period. His research interests include frontiers, landscape archaeology, environmental history, urbanism, and the relationship between cities and their hinterlands, as well as ceramic material culture. He has worked on archaeological projects in Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus, and since 2022, he has served as co-director of the Caesarea Coastal Archaeological Project in Israel.