Lecture by William Parkinson; William (Bill) Parkinson is an archaeologist who specializes in European and Eastern Mediterranean Prehistory. His anthropological and archaeological research explores the social dynamics of early village societies and the emergence of early states. He has over 30 years of experience conducting archaeological fieldwork and developing museum exhibitions for the Field Museum.

The modern world is plagued with unprecedented levels of social, economic, and political inequalities. But these inequities did not happen overnight; in places like southeastern Europe they emerged over the course of thousands of years as the small egalitarian farming villages of the Neolithic gave way to some of the earliest hierarchical kingdoms in the Iron Age. This is the story that was told in the First Kings of Europe exhibition, an ambitious international collaboration between twenty-six museums in eleven countries in southeastern Europe. In this presentation, Bill Parkinson gives an overview of his archaeological research into the emergence of social hierarchy in the region, as well as an overview of the exhibition he co-curated with his long-time collaborator, Attila Gyucha.