Archaeological Institute of America

What Do We Owe To Already-Looted Objects?
2025-04-14 17:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Cornell University, G22 Goldwin Smith Hall, Ithaca, NY, United States
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lectureships

The Past in the Past: Traditionalism in Archaic Crete
2025-04-14 17:30 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | WI
The Barbara Tsakirgis Memorial Lecture
Co-sponsored by the Department of Classics, Yale University

Archive Archaeology: The Invisible Hands of Colonial-Era Excavations in the Middle East
2025-04-15 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | WI

The Hidden Dead: Bioarchaeology of Ancient Maya Cave Ritual
2025-04-16 17:30 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology, Rhode Island Hall, Brown University, 60 George Street, Providence, RI, 02912, United States
Doris Z. Stone New World Archaeology Lectures

Funerary Dining or Offerings for the Dead? Archaeobotanical Evidence from the Shaft Tombs at Petra, Jordan
2025-04-16 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Cleveland Museum of Art, 11150 East Blvd, Cleveland, 44106, United States
The Frederick R. and Margaret B. Matson Lectureship for Near Eastern Archaeology and Archaeological Technology

Bound in Stone: the Captive Body in Ancient Maya Art
2025-04-17 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Jepson Hall, Room 118, Richmond Way 221, Richmond, VA, 23226, United States
Lecture by Dr. Caitlin Early, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Washington and Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks (AIA’s Nadzia Borowski Lecture)

Uncovering the Lake George Battlefield
2025-04-17 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | WI
Uncovering the Lake George Battlefield
Speaker: Siobhan M. Hart, Ph.D. Associate Professor and Chair Anthropology Department, Skidmore College
Location: Rye Free Reading Room, Rye, NY (Virtual)
Date: April 17, 2025
Time: 6:00 pm to 7:15 pm
The Lake George Battlefield State Park (Warren County, New York) contains the remains of twenty-five years of military action and encampment spanning the French and Indian War through the American Revolution. Within the park are the intact remains of notable battles and evidence of the daily life of soldiering in the 18th century. In 1776, the area became home to the largest smallpox hospitals in the American colonies, with several thousand smallpox patients brought and cared for here. This presentation will discuss past and current archaeological research at the Lake George Battlefield State Park and a shift towards the use of non-invasive geophysical techniques, limited excavation, and existing collections research.
Siobhan Hart (she/her) is an anthropologist and professor at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Her work is concerned with using material culture, place, and community collaboration to address inequities in the world today. As an anthropological archaeologist, she is interested in what we know about the past, how we know it, and how it matters to people today. She is curator of the Skidmore Archaeological Collection and author of the book Colonialism, Community, and Heritage in Native New England (2019, University Press Florida).

Monumental Queens in the Hellenistic World
2025-04-23 17:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | University of Buffalo, Goetz Library, Academic Center 320, 155 Lee Rd, Amherst, NY, 14228, United States

Kush and the Roman World: Warrior Queens along the Nile
2025-04-26 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | University of North Florida, Building 51 (Social Sciences), 1 UNF Drive, Jacksonville, FL, 32224, United States

Cleopatra and the Queens of Meroë
2025-05-08 17:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Whitman College Maxey Hall 207, 173 Stanton St., Walla Walla, WA, 99362, United States
This lecture will focus on the many sole-ruling kandakas (‘queens’) of the ancient kingdom of Meroë (Kush/Nubia), including those who ruled contemporaneously with Cleopatra and with Roman aggressions and occupation along the Nile valley. We will learn about the Nubian warrior queens who led troops in battle (and to victory) against Rome, and deconstruct the reductive stereotypes often peddled about the powerful female rulers of the Nile. We will contrast the queens’ self-presentation with the ways in which Roman-imperial authors attempted to re-inscribe them. Please join us for this in-person lecture given by a leading scholar of ancient Nubia and Egypt.

Environmental Histories Of The Ancient Mediterranean In Ten Objects
2025-05-17 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Chicago) | Auditorium at the St. Louis Public Library, 1301 Olive Street, St. Louis, 63103, United States

Dr. Zoë Kontes (Kenyon College), Looting Antiquity: Greece’s Lost Marbles
2025-09-06 10:30 - 12:00 (America/New_York) | WI
The Parthenon Marbles may be the most famous sculptures removed from an ancient Greek building, but they are far from the only ones. Marble sculptures from the Temple of Aphaia on the island of Aegina and the mountaintop Temple of Apollo at Bassae were spirited away and sold at auction in the 19th century; they have remained abroad ever since. This talk will discuss the adventures the sculptures have had in their modern history, consider the important question of where they belong, and review the current state of looting in Greece.
Please note: this is an in-person event only and it will not be streamed or recorded.

AIA Archaeology Hour September 2025: Beer in Mesopotamia
2025-09-17 20:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | https://www.archaeological.org/event/aia-archaeology-hour-2025-26-beer-in-mesopotamia/
Join the AIA for a fascinating evening with Tate Paulette as he kicks off this season of AIA Archaeology Hour with “Beer in Ancient Mesopotamia.”
This presentation will be given at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central/6pm Mountain/5pm Pacific.

Register here!

New Approaches to Roman Urbanism: The Excavations of the Falerii Novi Project (Lazio, Italy)
2025-09-25 17:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | University at Buffalo, Academic Center 320 (Goetz Library), 155 Lee Rd, Buffalo, NY, 14228, United States
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lecture

Kentucky Society Lecture with Anne Duray
2025-09-25 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | Transylvania University., Lexington, KY, 40508
Time TBD

Play Again: Combining Archaeological and AI Methods to Study Ancient Games
2025-09-25 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Phoenix) | https://www.archaeological.org/event/play-again-combining-archaeological-and-ai-methods-to-study-ancient-games/
Play Again: Combining Archaeological and AI Methods to Study Ancient Games
with
Walter Crist, PhD
Lecturer
Faculty of Humanities
Centre for the Arts in Society
New Media & Digital Culture
Leiden University
The archaeology of ancient play has recently undergone a renaissance, as researchers have couched previous culture-historical research on ancient games in anthropological and archaeological theory, demonstrating the importance of play in ancient life. Further advances in AI technology allow for new applications of this technology in the study of ancient games, and the possibilities of such methods are only beginning to be explored. This research explores two case studies where AI-simulated play, when combined with traditional archaeological methods, provide new insights about ancient games.
Biography
Walter Crist is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University. His PhD dissertation (Arizona State University, 2016) examined the archaeological context of Bronze Age game boards in Cyprus to explore the intersection between gaming activity and social complexity. He is the lead author on the book Ancient Egyptians at Play, and has researched ancient games in Cyprus, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Greece, Turkey, and the Netherlands. As a postdoctoral researcher on the ERC Digital Ludeme Project, he constructed the Ludii Games Database, which documents the knowledge of the rules for traditional board games globally over the past 5000 years. Recent explorations on the ways that AI can inform archaeological research on games continue through his position as Vice Chair of the COST Action GameTable: Computational Techniques for Tabletop Games Heritage.
Registration is required. Follow this link to register: https://asu.zoom.us/meeting/register/KMQBlfk-TYCqAMr0j6l21w#/registration

Replacing Empires. The Archaeology of Political Transformation and Spatial Dynamics in 1st Millennium BCE Mesopotamia
2025-10-02 17:30 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | Foster Auditorium, Paterno Library, the Pennsylvania State University, 201 Old Main, University Park, PA, 16802, United States
Kershaw Lectures in Near East Archaeology

Archaeology and the Art Museum: How To Be an Archaeologically Informed Curator
2025-10-05 15:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada

Out of Anatolia: Hittites, Homer and the Trojan War
2025-10-08 17:30 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | Yale University, Phelps Hall, Room 401, New Haven, CT
Homer A. and Dorothy B. Thompson Lectureship

Buried in Enemy territory: A Spartan tomb in Athens
2025-10-09 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Edmonton) | Business Building 2-09, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Oscar Broneer Memorial Lecture

The Kingdom of Philoktetes: Northern Greece in the Age of Homer
2025-10-09 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | WI

Mothers, Wives, Warriors, Slaves: Violence and Women in the Ancient World
2025-10-09 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Phoenix) | WI
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship

Matrilineal Kinship in Aegean Prehistory: Settlements, Figurines, and the Absence of Men
2025-10-16 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W 1st Ave, Spokane, WA, 99201, United States
Dr. Sabina Cveček
Were communities in prehistoric Greece matriarchal, matrilineal, or simply centered around women? This question has fascinated archaeologists for decades. Early on, figurines of women were often seen as “Mother Goddesses,” meaning female deities often representing motherhood, fertility, and creation, but feminist scholars later cautioned against such broad interpretations. Still, the idea that ancient societies may have been organized around maternal kinship and matrilineal descent—where family ties pass through the mother—has resurfaced in recent years. In this talk, Sabina Cveček revisits the debate, exploring what different types of evidence—from how settlements were laid out to how figurines were used—can tell us about gender and family life in the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Aegean. She draws on ethnographic examples to show that matrilineal kinship does not automatically mean women ruled, a key distinction for better understanding how these early societies were structured. This lecture is sponsored by the National AIA organization.

Finding Bimini: The Unknown History of Ponce De Leon's Discovery
2025-10-16 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Brinkman Center, Clark State College, 100 S Limestone St, Springfield, Ohio

Diving the Pyramids: Underwater Tombs and Excavation at the Royal Cemetery of Nuri, Sudan
2025-10-19 15:00 - 16:30 (America/Chicago) | Mitchell Hall, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 3202 Downer Avenue, Milwaukee, WI, 53211, United States

The Impact of Roman Military Presence on the Arid Landscapes of Southern Jordan and Israel
2025-10-19 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Chicago) | 118 St Johns College, University of Manitoba, 65 Chancellors Cir, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3T 2N2
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lectureship

"Tutankhamun’s Funeral—What We Know from KV62"
2025-10-22 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Rehm Library, College of the Holy Cross, 1 College St., Worcester, MA, 01610, United States
Dr. Nicholas R. Brown, a postdoctoral fellow in Egyptology at Yale University and director of excavations at the ancient site of Deir el-Ballas, will explore what the archaeological record reveals about the state funeral in ancient Egypt. Dr. Brown will analyze the unique funeral procession scene depicted in the tomb’s Burial Chamber and its connection to a funerary rite known as the “Awakening of Osiris.” This talk will show how these images and artifacts were meant to transform the king into a divine being. The talk begins at 7 PM in Rehm Library, College of the Holy Cross, but there will be a small welcome reception at 6:30 PM, immediately upstairs in the Moran Lounge.

AIA Archaeology Hour October 2025: Shipping Stone for Justinian’s Empire?
2025-10-22 20:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | https://www.archaeological.org/event/aia-archaeology-hour-october-2025-shipping-stone-for-justinians-empire/
Join the AIA for a fascinating evening with Justin Leidwanger as he gives the International Archaeology Day month AIA Archaeology Hour talk “Shipping Stone for Justinian’s Empire?”
This presentation will be given at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central/6pm Mountain/5pm Pacific.

Register here!

A High Altitude "Big Bang": Late Formative Period Archaeology of the Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia
2025-10-23 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | Concordia University, H533, 1455 Blvd. De Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, H3G 1M8, Canada

Archaeology and the Art Museum: How To Be an Archaeologically Informed Curator.
2025-10-23 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Chicago) | Chazen Museum of Art, University Avenue, Madison, WI, 53706, United States
