Archaeological Institute of America

AIA Archaeology Hour January 2026: NAGPRA as a Path to Healing and Reciprocity
2026-01-28 20:00 (America/New_York) | NC
Join the AIA for the first AIA Archaeology Hour talk of the new year as new AIA President Brian I. Daniels hosts Danyelle Means for “NAGPRA as a Path to Healing and Reciprocity.”
This presentation will be given at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central/6pm Mountain/5pm Pacific.
Have you noticed empty exhibit cases at museums over the past two years as museums move to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)?
Means’ presentation reframes NAGPRA not as a legal obligation but as a vital opportunity for healing, reciprocity, and relationship-building between archaeologists, museums, and Indigenous communities. Drawing from Indigenous perspectives, the talk explores how NAGPRA challenges institutions to move beyond compliance and toward practices rooted in respect, sovereignty, and shared stewardship. By centering Native voices and experiences, this session invites the audience to consider how honoring ancestors and returning cultural items can transform the field into one of accountability, trust, and long-term collaboration.
Register here!

Founding the City: Carved Orthostats and Architectural Experimentation in Anatolia
2026-02-03 18:30 - 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Reed College, Performing Arts Building (PAB) 320, 3017 SE Woodstock Blvd., Portland, OR, 97202, United States
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship

"Late Victorian Race Science and its Legacies in Aegean Archaeology"
2026-02-06 17:00 - 19:30 (America/Chicago) | Swallow Hall, Room 101, 507 South 9th Street, Columbia, MO, 65201, United States
Interested in receptions of antiquity, discoveries in prehistory, and ideas about race during the late 19th and early 20th centuries? The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA)’s Central Missouri Chapter as well as the Classics, Archaeology, and Religion (CAR) Department welcome Dr. Anne Duray for her lecture “Late Victorian Race Science and its Legacies in Aegean Archaeology” on Friday, February 6th, at 5:30 p.m. in Swallow Hall, Room 101.
There will be a reception beforehand at 5 p.m.

The Ecstasy and the Agony:Excavations at La Venta, Mexico, an Olmec Capital
2026-02-11 17:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | University of Florida, Smathers Library Room 100, 1508 Union Rd, Gainesville, FL, 32611, United States
Lecturer: Dr. Susan Gillespie
Professor of Anthropology, University of Florida
In 1942 and 1943, excavations revealed fabulous buried deposits of jade and other precious items in a very unexpected place: La Venta on Mexico’s southern Gulf coast, an area of swamps and tropical forest. These finds produced an “ecstatic” reaction in the world of archaeology and shed light on the Olmecs, a mysterious early civilization in Mesoamerica (c. 1150-400 BC). Subsequent fieldwork in 1955 revealed even more astonishing discoveries: tons of jade and other greenstone objects recovered at an “agonizing” cost. The archaeologists encountered tremendous problems excavating La Venta. The site was already suffering damage by development, and subsequent looting destroyed much of what was left. The story of the ecstasy and agony of La Venta’s excavations is reconstructed through archival archaeology, analyzing the field records, maps, and photographs.

Josef Wegner - Digging into Egypt’s Late Middle Kingdom, Recent Discoveries at the Anubis-Mountain Royal Necropolis, Abydos
2026-02-11 17:30 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | Johns Hopkins University, Homewood campus Gilman Hall Room 50, Johns Hopkins University, Homewood campus, BALTIMORE, MD, 21206, United States
Wednesday Feb. 11, 5:30 – 6:30, Gilman Hall Room 50
Johns Hopkins University, Homewood campus
Dorothy Kent Hill Lecture
Josef Wegner, University of Pennsylvania
Digging into Egypt’s Late Middle Kingdom, Recent Discoveries at the Anubis-Mountain Royal Necropolis, Abydos

Soto’s Stuff: Spanish 16th Century Expeditions and What They Left Behind
2026-02-17 17:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | University of Florida, Smathers Library Room 100, 1508 Union Rd, Gainesville, FL, 32611, United States
Lecturer: Dr. Charles Cobb
Lockwood Chair in Historical Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History
2025 UF Research Foundation Professor
Over the last decade, research by a collaboration of archaeologists has made considerable strides toward identifying sites visited by Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto’s army in the American Southeast (A.D. 1539-1543). In addition to delineating the route traveled by Soto, our working group has now amassed a substantial sample of European metal objects recovered from Indigenous villages. This presentation provides new insights on the Soto route and on how the related artifacts shed light on patterns of discard, trade, and the ways in which Indigenous societies reshaped European material culture.

From Farmers to Kings: The Emergence of Social Hierarchy in Prehistoric Europe
2026-02-17 17:30 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College, 1 Quinlan St, Lynchburg, VA, 24503, United States
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.

Digging in Circles: Miami's Prehistoric Legacy
2026-02-21 15:00 - 16:30 (America/New_York) | Palm Beach Museum of Natural History, the Mall at Wellington Green, 10300 Forest Hill Blvd., Wellington, FL, 33414, United States
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lectureship

The Origins of the Alphabet and How It Spread Across the World
2026-02-22 14:00 - 15:30 (America/New_York) | Knight Auditorium, The Spurlock Museum(UIUC), 600 S.Gregory Street, Urbana, IL 61801, Illinois, 61801, United States
Public Lecture by Professor Wayne T. Pitard
Abstract:
Essentially all of the alphabetic scripts in the world descend from a single script invented probably during the 20th century BCE by a Canaanite in the southern Levant. This lecture will provide a tour of the extraordinary development of the alphabet from its beginnings to its eventual spread across the Mediterranean and the world. We will examine the script’s origin and how the signs were conceptualized by their creator(s). We will look at the alphabet’s extension, first across the eastern Mediterranean where it developed into the distinctive Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, and Aramaic scripts, and then moved southward into the Arabian Peninsula, where it evolved into the Arabic system. Then we will examine how the early alphabet, which only expressed consonants, was revolutionized by the Greeks, who began using some of the letters as vowels. We will follow the development of the Greek alphabet into both the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabets that exist throughout Europe and much of northern Asia. Finally, we will touch upon the spread of the Arabic alphabet across northern Africa and eastward into India, and the Latin alphabet’s movement to the Americas and parts of southern Africa during the European colonial period of the 15th-20th centuries. All of this has made the alphabetic writing system the most widespread method of writing in the world.

Bone by Bone: The Commingled Remains from the Tomb at Tell Abraq, UAE (2200-2000 BC)
2026-02-22 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Santa Rosa Junior College Campus, Petaluma, CA
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship Time TBA

Petra's Forgotten Past
2026-02-24 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Vancouver) | Buchanan A202, Unversity of British Columbia, 1866 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1, Canada

The Elk Ridge Community in the Mimbres Pueblo World
2026-02-25 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | University of Florida, Smathers Library Room 100, 1508 Union Rd, Gainesville, FL, 32611, United States

AIA Archaeology Hour February 2026: Metropolitan Walls of the Ọyọ Empire
2026-02-25 17:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | NC
Join the AIA for a virtual trip to West Africa as Akin Ogundiran delivers the February AIA Archaeology Hour talk “Metropolitan Walls of the Ọyọ Empire.”
This presentation will be given at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central/6pm Mountain/5pm Pacific.

Register here!

The Making of Myth & Marble: Bringing the Torlonia Sculptures to the U.S.
2026-02-26 17:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Whitman College Maxey Hall 207, 173 Stanton St., Walla Walla, WA, 99362, United States

Life, Death, and Disease: Insights form Petra’s Tombs and Cemeteries
2026-02-26 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | UMass Amherst, Herter Hall 301, 161 Presidents Drive, Amherst, MA, 01003, United States
Kershaw Lectures in Near East Archaeology
Dr. Megan Perry, “Life, Death, and Disease: Insights from Petra’s Tombs and Cemeteries”
Thursday, February 26 at 5:00pm Eastern
UMass Amherst, Herter Hall 301
For Zoom attendance, register here: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/meeting/register/GD44nDLmTwKs_QZUh44AFw
ABSTRACT
Ensconced within the sandstone hills of southern Jordan, evidence from mortuary structures in the ancient Nabataean city of Petra tells powerful stories about life, illness, death, and commemoration of its residents. This talk will focus on their experiences across the life course through bioarchaeological evidence of disease, diet, and immigration from the skeletal remains recovered from tombs within the city. In addition, evidence of mortuary behaviors within these tombs will reveal the rich and varied forms of remembrance after their deaths. This integrated approach, shifting away from Petra’s temples and monuments, offers new perspectives on resilience, identity, and memory in a dynamic ancient city.
SPEAKER BIO
Dr. Perry is a Professor of Biological Anthropology at East Carolina University. She teaches courses on human osteology, death and disease in Classical antiquity, and human diseases and ancient environments. Most of her research focuses on 1st century B.C. – 7th century A.D. Jordan, but she supervises graduate students interested in numerous aspects of bioarchaeology. She has been working on archaeological projects in Jordan for 30 years and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Center of Research (ACOR) in Amman, Jordan. She is currently Director of the Petra North Ridge Project, which focuses on the excavation of 1st century A.D. tombs and 1st – 4th century domestic structures.
This year’s AIA National Lecture (Kershaw Lectures in Near East Archaeology) is co-sponsored by the AIA–Western Massachusetts Society and the UMass Amherst Department of Classics.

New Approaches to Roman Urbanism: The Excavations of the Falerii Novi Project (Lazio, Italy)
2026-02-26 17:30 - 18:30 (America/Chicago) | University of Missouri, Mumford Hall 133, Mumford Hall, Columbia, 65201, United States

Soldier Burials, Landscapes, and Memory in Early Iron Age Greece
2026-02-26 18:00 - 19:00 (America/Denver)

Spectacles of Cultural Heritage Destruction in Global Media
2026-02-28 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Chicago) | https://www.archaeological.org/event/spectacles-of-cultural-heritage-destruction-in-global-media/

Decorating for Death
2026-03-03 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | TBA (Eugene), Eugene, OR
Time TBA

TBA (Hawaii (Honolulu))
2026-03-05 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Honolulu), Honolulu, HI

Petra's Forgotten Past: Uncovering the Iron Age Foundations of Nabataean Society 2
2026-03-05 17:30 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | Johns Hopkins University, Homewood Campus, Shaffer Hall Room 3, Baltimore, 21218, United States

Matrilineal Kinship In Aegean Prehistory: Settlements, Figurines, And The Absence Of Men
2026-03-05 17:30 - 18:30 (America/Chicago) | Jones Hall 108, Uptown Campus of Tulane University, 6801 Freet St, New Orleans, LA, 70118, United States

Climate Change and Resilience in Medieval Anatolia
2026-03-12 16:00 - 17:30 (America/Edmonton) | Business Building 2-09, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
AIA’s George H. Forsyth, Jr. Memorial Lecture (Link: https://www.archaeological.org/endowment/george-h-forsyth-jr-memorial-lectures/)
Dr. Marica Cassis, Department of History, University of Calgary
What does climate resilience mean in the context of the Late Roman and Medieval World of Anatolia? Current excavations at the site of Çadır Höyük in Yozgat province, central Türkiye provide insight into how communities adapted and changed in response to a variety of climate and social changes over the course of these periods. In examining this evolution, we gain a greater sense of how medieval society made sense of their changing environmental conditions through changes to their physical environments and their use of natural resources.

Escape from Pompeii: Tracing survivors from the 79 CE eruption of Vesuvius
2026-03-14 11:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum at Miami University, 801 S. Patterson Ave, Oxford, Ohio, 45056
Escape from Pompeii: Tracing survivors from the 79 CE eruption of Vesuvius
Dr. Steven Tuck, Archaeologist and Professor in the History Department at Miami University
Dr. Tuck will change the story of Pompeii from one of death and destruction to one of survival and hope. Through his research, he has traced those Romans who escaped the eruption of Vesuvius and discovered how and where they rebuilt lives, families, and businesses, while carrying with them reminders of their former lives.
About the Speaker:
Steven L. Tuck is Professor of History and Classics at Miami University. He has been recognized eight times for his undergraduate teaching and is the author of A History of Roman Art and many articles and chapters on Roman art, especially the art of gladiators and spectacle. He has also published extensively on disasters and disaster response in the Roman world. He has also created five courses for The Great Courses and some of his work has been featured in the recent PBS documentary “Pompeii: The New Dig” and in a recent episode of NPR’s Radiolab. His current research involves tracing those who escaped Pompeii during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, which appears in his new book Escape from Pompeii: The Great Eruption of Mount Vesuvius and its Survivors Oxford University Press, 2025.

TBA (Mississippi/Memphis)
2026-03-18 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Chicago) | TBA (Oxford MS/Memphis TN), United States

The Shipwreck at Gnalić—Gagliana Grossa (1569-1583)
2026-03-22 14:00 - 15:30 (America/New_York) | https://www.archaeological.org/event/the-shipwreck-at-gnalic-gagliana-grossa-1569-1583-2/
The George F. Bass Lectures

Breaking Bronze for Demeter: Indigenous Religion and the Making of Greek Sicily
2026-03-24 17:30 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | Mount Holyoke College, Skinner Hall, Room 216, 9 Blanchard Circle, South Hadley, MA, 01075, United States
Dr. Alex Moskowitz – Breaking Bronze for Demeter: Indigenous Religion and the Making of Greek Sicily
Tuesday, March 24, at 5:30pm
Mount Holyoke College
Skinner Hall, Room 216
Alex Moskowitz is a classical archaeologist and historian interested in rewriting conventional narratives of colonization in the Archaic Mediterranean through the lens of the experiences of communities indigenous to the sites subject to Greek and Phoenician settlement. His current research focuses on Sicily and explores the development of metallurgical knowledge and craft communities throughout the first half of the first millennium BCE. With a theoretical perspective underpinned by postcolonial studies and anthropological approaches to the study of craft production and community, he investigates how metal tools and artisanal practices document the choices made by populations navigating changing social, political, and economic conditions. Alex is currently preparing a monograph based on his dissertation work, entitled The Origins of Greek Sicily: Communities, Metals, and Colonization. Beyond the material culture of Sicily and the Greek world, Alex is also interested in studying articulations of cultural identity within Archaic lyric poetry and Greek historiography.
Alex received a PhD in Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Michigan. Before that, he completed an MA at the University of Georgia and a BA at Swarthmore College. Alex is an active field archaeologist who has conducted fieldwork with various projects in Greece, Italy, and Kosova. He is a long-time staff member of the American Excavations at Morgantina, where he co-directs the Khora of Archaic Morgantina Project and supervises fieldwork for the Agora Valley Project. He is excited to talk with students interested in learning about archaeology and participating in archaeological field projects.
This year’s Ellen and Charles S. La Follette Lecture is sponsored by the Western Massachusetts Society of the AIA and the Mt. Holyoke College Department of Classics and Italian.

Landscapes of Time and Memory: Foragers in the Mojave Desert 3
2026-03-24 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | Carraway Building (CAR), 315, 909 Antarctic Way, Tallahassee, FL, United States

New Approaches to Roman Urbanism: The Excavations of the Falerii Novi Project (Lazio, Italy) 3
2026-03-25 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Buffalo), Buffalo, NY, United States
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lectureship Time TBA

AIA Archaeology Hour March 2026: Dating Australia’s Oldest Rock Art
2026-03-25 20:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | NC
Take a virtual trip Down Under with the AIA as we catch up with Helen Green (University of Melbourne) as she presents the March edition of AIA Archaeology Hour: “Dating Australia’s Oldest Rock Art.”
This presentation will be given at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central/6pm Mountain/5pm Pacific.
Register here.
