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Reposted by Michael Press

Erin L. Thompson @artcrimeprof.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Fantastic detective work from @michaeldpress.bsky.social - tracking down the forged letter used to fake an old provenance for recently looted cuneiform tablets! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

How fitting that Commentary chose to illustrate this nasty, fraudulent piece of work with a notorious fake, the Jehoash Inscription. What a way to show you care about Jewish history.

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Of all the hysterical warnings over the last few years that "they're destroying our history", this -- from the senior editor of Commentary -- might be both the nastiest and the most dishonest 🧵

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Nearly two years into Israel's annihilation of Gaza and Museum of the Bible's partnership with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) is still going strong.

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Reposted by Michael Press

Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

In Revue Biblique, I have an article on the provenance of the "Nazareth Inscription", an Early Roman-period text that has been often linked over the last century with the earliest Christians. What can we actually say about it? 🧵

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

Euphemisms galore: Even the left-leaning Haaretz sees occupied East Jerusalem as merely "contested" & an illegal Israeli dig there as merely "controversial". Also, Elad does more than "promote Jewish settlement in Silwan", it's worked for decades to evict Palestinians.

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Genocide-denying Holocaust historian, in interview published yesterday: claim that 72% of deaths in Gaza are women & children is vastly inflated. Israeli military database, leaked today: at least *83* % of deaths in Gaza are civilians.

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has spent years promoting gimmicky, misleading tie-ins, timing announcements of finds for various holidays. But in June they apparently reached a new low: linking a discovery to Israel's unprovoked attack on Iran.

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

In a sense the powerful have always been above the law, but 1 thing that has changed is the illusion: the gap between rhetoric & reality, between symbolism & action, is now so obvious and extreme that the illusion has been openly shattered. (From June) www.theguardian.com/law/2025/jun...

theguardian.com

Are we witnessing the death of international law?

The long read: A growing number of scholars and lawyers are losing faith in the current system. Others say the law is not to blame, but the states that are supposed to uphold it

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

AI news analysis system promoting the work of AI in scholarship 🤔

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

Betteridge's Law of Headlines -- "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no" -- remains undefeated

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

Did AI write this? Why yes it did.

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Archaeology and cultural heritage continuing to play their role in the Israeli movement to annex the West Bank.

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Haven't seen it commented on, but it looks like this photo was taken in the infamous "Pilgrims' Road" or "Pilgrimage Way" tunnel under Silwan (East Jerusalem) -- an Israeli excavation violating international law, archaeological standards of the last 100+ years, and basic ethics.

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Reposted by Michael Press

Dor HaMidbar @dorhamidbar.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

Forget that old shit, how do they explain this?

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

The tragedy of the murder aside, I can't believe this is a real headline at something trying to be a reputable news outlet.

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

Hey @palexfund.bsky.social turns out the Joint Expedition to Samaria may or may not have happened.

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

A young Stanley Kubrick sits in on drums with George Lewis's Ragtime Band, New Orleans, 1950

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Mamilla Pool and the surrounding cemetery photographed by Auguste Salzmann, 1854 (Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection, LACMA) collections.lacma.org/node/216893

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Building a "Museum of Tolerance" on top of Muslim graves wasn't enough. Netanyahu has announced that Israel is going for more of Mamilla Cemetery -- by announcing plans to restore Mamilla Pool. www.thenationalnews.com/news/mena/20...

thenationalnews.com

PM’s Jerusalem Day declaration triggers archaeological dispute over Mamilla pool site | The National

Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu wants ancient reservoir site surrounded by Muslim burials to be developed into tourism site

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Wondering if Haaretz is getting tired of claiming there is some race here for more Dead Sea Scrolls. (The race ended 60 or 70 years ago. The Bedouin mostly won.)

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

"Biblical archaeology" is enough of a mess on its own without the tabloids making them look even worse

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

This sounds like the premise of a sitcom: 1930. Three once-prominent musicians (Jelly Roll Morton, Perry Bradford, Wilbur Sweatman) are living together & arguing about which one of them invented jazz . . . in the boarding house of Scott Joplin's widow.

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Reposted by Michael Press

Judith Barr @jebarr.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Reposting because frankly you just don’t get that much numismatics news these days

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Harlem stride pianist James P. Johnson and Langston Hughes collaborated on "De Organizer" (1940), a one-act blues opera about Southern sharecroppers forming a union. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J3e...

youtube.com

De Organizer (Reconstr. by J. Dapogny)

YouTube video by Release - Topic

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

US needs to catch up to the rest of the world

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

I'm going to miss Norwegian cuisine

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

Ancient Ashkelon was, up to 1948, farmland of the neighboring village of al-Jura. It was also where thousands would celebrate Arba'at Ayyub (Job's Wednesday) every spring, bathing in the sea to heal. These photos are from 1943. In a few years, all these people were gone. #Nakba

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

I'm "shocked" and "stunned" that the British tabloids have turned a claim about finding a 1st-century garden at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (that might match a description in the Gospel of John) into the actual discovery of "Jesus tomb".

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

The US Ambassador to Israel engaging in diplomacy

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Reposted by Michael Press

Seth L. Sanders @nabalkattu.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

The claim that illegal Israeli excavations in the West Bank, prohibited by international law, are being "boycotted" by journals is like someone saying the city of Halifax is "boycotting" the meth they're cooking in their trailer. It's banned because it's a bad idea and people shouldn't be doing it.

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

How many ways can you lie in a headline? There's an interesting archaeology story here, but not the one that's being promoted 🧵

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Still trying to figure out how Cleveland managed to lose this game.

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

How is it that a site that was completely abandoned in the 11th century yielded a hoard of Ottoman coins?🤔 Haaretz never says.

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

I once worked to develop a systematic method for attempting to identify "cultic" contexts in the archaeological record, and the main engagement I had was criticism that it was difficult to implement in practice and resulted in the identification of too few cultic contexts.

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Reposted by Michael Press

Cambridge University Press - Archaeology @cambup-archaeology.cambridge.org · 29/04/2025

The Paper of the Month from International Journal of Cultural Property is "Constructing Provenance with Old Collections: The Case of Cumberland Clark" by Michael Press, available #openaccess! 📚 cup.org/4izfTsl

International Journal of Cultural Property. Paper of the Month.

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

Just in time for Independence Day . . . the IAA makes its latest holiday tie-in h/t @Marianhouk

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

More than just an archaeological site: the hill of al-Muntar, the highest point in Gaza city, is named after the shrine of Sheikh Ali al-Muntar at the top of the hill, which long hosted an important mawsim (festival) of the region.

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

Jelly Roll Morton teaches Alistair Cooke the blues, 1938

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Michael Press @michaeldpress.bsky.social · 20/04/2025

Gaza is being obliterated, Israel has killed 10s if not 100s of thousands, & is besieging and starving those remaining . . . but we saved a few artifacts so let's pat ourselves on the back. This approach seems really perverse. www.youtube.com/watch?v=irpx...

youtube.com

Gaza's treasures pulled from the wreckage • FRANCE 24 English

YouTube video by FRANCE 24 English

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Reposted by Michael Press

Ben Ehrenreich @benehrenreich.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Late last year, @Harpers sent me to the West Bank to report on the state of the nonviolent resistance movement. Nothing I had seen over more than a decade of reporting there prepared me for the levels of fear and devastation I encountered. harpers.org/archive/2025...

harpers.org

After Nonviolence, by Ben Ehrenreich

The end of peaceful resistance in Palestine

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