Archaeological Institute of America

Ariadne’s Thread: Weaving 200,000 Years of Naxos’ History
2026-11-12 12:30 - 21:30 (America/New_York) | Alberta
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lectureship
Time and venue TBA

"The Changing Power of the Past at the Late Bronze Age Cemetery of Aidonia, Greece”
2026-11-12 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Jepson Hall, Room 109, 221 Richmond Way, Richmond, VA, 23173, United States
Lecture by Lynne Kvapil (Professor of Classics, Butler University)

Into the Mani: Death, Burial, and Legend on the Southern Greek Mainland
2026-11-15 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Concordia University, Denault Auditorium, 1530 Concordia West, Irvine, CA, 92612, United States
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Alumni Lecture

Foreign Faces in Etruscan Art
2026-11-18 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Alberta
Location TBA

St. Louis Society National Lecture with Dr. Derek Kennet
2026-11-21 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Chicago) | Alberta
Topic and Venue TBA

Tess Davis, “Blood Antiquities: Tomb Raiders, Art Smugglers, and the Black Market in Cultural Treasures”
2027-01-26 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | Semans Auditorium (Room 117), Belk Visual Arts Center, 315 N. Main St., Davidson, NC, 28036, United States
We all know the thrill of tomb raiding adventure novels and Hollywood films—Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, Thomas Crown—hunting for hidden treasures. But the real stories of looted and trafficked cultural property are far darker. In reality, it’s no longer daring explorers who dig up the past, but opportunistic criminals, war profiteers, mafia networks, armed insurgents, and even terrorist organizations.
The Antiquities Coalition, founded in 2014 by Deborah Lehr, was created to combat this cultural racketeering. As a “think and do tank,” the Coalition unites business leaders, government officials, lawyers, security experts, and other professionals in working towards a future when the past is preserved for the next generation, not looted, smuggled, and sold to the highest bidder.
In this exclusive talk, Executive Director and attorney Tess Davis takes you behind the scenes to reveal the high-stakes, illicit world where stolen art and cultural treasures fuel crime, conflict, and corruption—and the ways we can fight back.

"The Strait of Hormuz through time: tracing the archaeology of a key global trading connection from the Bronze Age to the Portuguese"
2027-03-07 15:00 - 16:30 (America/New_York) | Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, 1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way, St. Catharines, Ontario, L2S3A1, Canada
Derek Kennet (University of Chicago)

The Queens of Nimrud’s Northwest Palace: Beauty, Power, and Presence in the Neo-Assyrian World, c. 8
2027-04-04 14:00 - 15:30 (America/New_York) | Penn Museum, 3260 South Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Too often overshadowed by the legacy of Assyria’s ancient kings, this presentation illuminates
the queens who reigned with them in ancient Iraq during the ninth and centuries BCE. We focus
on the queens of Nimrud’s Northwest Palace because it is here that Iraqi archaeologists
discovered their royal tombs. The tombs contained heaps of precious jewelry and regalia, along
with cuneiform inscriptions, and even some skeletal remains. Putting together these artifacts of
death, and connecting them to the art, architecture, and written record of the era, we can
reconstruct the beauty, power, and presence of Nimrud’s Northwest Palace queens in life and for
eternity.
