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
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lectureship

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/
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship

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) | VA
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.

Stress, Sex and Death: Health and Survival in the Context of Medieval Famine and Plague
2026-03-29 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | 303 Paterson Hall, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
The Ann Santen Endowed Lecture

Diving the Pyramids: Underwater Tombs and Excavation at the Royal Cemetery of Nuri, Sudan
2026-03-31 17:30 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | TBA (Northern New Jersey), Montclair, NY, United States
The Frederick R. and Margaret B. Matson Lectureship for Near Eastern Archaeology and Archaeological Technology

Justinian’s Tree: Underwater Environmental Histories in Byzantine Harbors
2026-03-31 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Chicago) | UT San Antonio, Downtown Campus, Durango Building, Room 1.116, La Villita, Durango Building, San Antonio, TX, 78207, United States
Anna Marguerite McCann and Robert D. Taggart Lectureship in Underwater Archaeology

Next to Turquoise Domes: Archaeological Investigations in the City of Bukhara
2026-03-31 19:30 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Semans Auditorium (Room 117), Belk Visual Arts Center, 315 N. Main St., Davidson, NC, 28036, United States
About the lecture:
Five extensive seasons of archaeological fieldwork have yielded a veritable treasure trove of new information about the long, complex history of the city of Bukhara, which was once a key node along the fabled “Silk Roads.” This presentation will introduce new data derived from finds and observations made at a series of fortifications, various kinds of dwellings, workshops, and burial contexts. They speak to a wide range of historical phenomena and problems, such as the potential existence of a Seleucid military colony in the area of the later city during the 3rd century BCE, the roots and stages of Bukhara’s urban growth as an important node within the Sogdiana trading networks during Late Antiquity (3rd to 8th centuries CE), transcontinental connections during the city’s heyday under the Samanid dynasty during the 10th century, and the health status of the urban populace on the eve of the Mongol invasion (late 12th/early 13th century).
About the speaker:
Dr. Sören Stark, Professor of Central Asian Archaeology at New York University, has close to two decades of experience in conducting and directing archaeological fieldwork in Central Asia. His current research interests are, among others, on Hellenistic and Late Antique/Early Medieval Sogdiana and the archaeology and history of nomadic groups close to oasis territories in Western Central Asia. His publications include a monograph on the archaeology of the 6th-8th century Türks in Inner and Central Asia, an exhibition catalogue on Early Iron Age kurgans from Kazakhstan, and numerous articles and book chapters on the history and archaeology of Sogdiana between the Hellenistic and the Islamic periods.

Justinian’s Tree: Underwater Environmental Histories in Byzantine Harbors 2
2026-04-01 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Chicago) | TBA (Austin), Austin, TX, United States
Anna Marguerite McCann and Robert D. Taggart Lectureship in Underwater Archaeology Time TBA

Highly Educated Slaves and Freedmen in Republican Rome
2026-04-08 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Rome) | John Cabot University – Aula Magna Regina, Via della Lungara 233, Roma, Roma, 00165, Italy
Slaves and freedmen played an important yet understudied role in the literary culture of the Roman Republic. Though their work went largely uncredited, they fulfilled vital roles as editors, researchers, and collaborators in the service of Rome’s literary and political elite.
During this public lecture, Prof. Flower (Princeton University) — Rome-SPQR Society Choice Lecturer – – will illustrate the stories of these gifted and highly educated young men, from Licinius the flute-player, who shaped the rhetorical style of the orator Gaius Gracchus, to the grammarian and teacher Tyrannio of Amisus, who was brought to Rome as a war captive.
Highlighting the unique social prestige of literary production and intellectual performance in a society pervaded by slave labor, Prof. Flower will show how the exorbitant prices paid for the highly educated encouraged a complex system of training young boys for the marketplace or acquiring educated captives as booty. Enslaved and manumitted intellectuals, far from being menial workers, shared close relationships with leading Romans of the day, and were relied on as coauthors and collaborators in a range of genres, with some gaining fame as authors themselves.
With lively case studies and insightful new interpretations of the ancient sources, this lecture will paint a more nuanced picture of enslaved labor in ancient Rome, revealing how the contributions of enslaved intellectuals were closely linked to the ambitious development of Latin literary culture and the dissemination of knowledge.

A Deep Dive into Deep Time: Archaeology Underwater
2026-04-10 18:30 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Toledo Museum of Art (Little Theater), 2445 Monroe St., Toledo, OH, 43697, United States
A lecture: The phrase “underwater archaeology” conjures notions of shipwrecks, ships lost at sea, and the dramatic catastrophes that sank them; however, the archaeology underwater can also reveal details about ancient landscapes that contain a record of past human occupations. Many of these sites are on the earth’s continental shelves where vast stretches of shallow, coastal lands were exposed at the end of the last Ice Age. These once dry landscapes supported life for plants, animals, and humans for thousands of years. Learn about these ancient submerged sites, the role they play in the global archaeological record and what unique data they have about the past. The talk will provide a general overview and the focus on 9,000 year old submerged sites in the North American Great Lakes.

TALK & SENSORY TOUR: Art and Science Mingle in Medieval Gardens of Al-Andalus
2026-04-11 17:00 - 19:30 (America/Chicago) | McGovern Centennial Gardens, Hermann Park, 1500 Hermann Park Drive, Houston, TX, 77004, United States
Explore the rich intersection of art, science, and nature in the medieval Muslim gardens of al-Andalus. This engaging program delves into how landscape, architecture, and water worked together to create spaces that were both sustainable and beautiful. Pollen studies show how these gardens reflected a deep understanding of ecology and design. Following the presentation, enjoy a guided stroll through McGovern Centennial Gardens with Hermann Park Conservancy staff to see how the same timeless principles continue to shape modern landscapes today.

Cities and Politics of Ecology in the Hittite Borderlands: the Fortress and Urban Settlement of Karaköy Kale Tepesi
2026-04-14 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Orlando 2), Orlando, FL, United States
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship Time TBA

Provincial Coin Portraits of Roman Imperial Women and the Portrait Dissemination System
2026-04-14 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | Cornell University, G22 Goldwin Smith Hall, Ithaca, NY, United States
William E. Metcalf Lectures in Numismatics

Haute Couture in Ancient Greece: The Spectacular Costumes of the Minoans and Mycenaeans
2026-04-14 17:30 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | Leigh Hall, room 208, 308 Buchtel Commons, Akron, OH, 44325, United States
Evening lecture for a general audience by Bernice Jones on dress and adornment in ancient Aegean world. The speaker will bring samples of costumes that student volunteers will model at the talk.

Ancestors, Tombs, and Treasure. New Work at the Mycenaean Greek Cemetery of Aidonia
2026-04-15 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | Butler University, Sunset Avenue, Indianapolis, IN, 46208, United States
The Mycenaean Cemetery at Aidonia has been shaped by looting and a international struggle for the repatriation of precious artifacts. This talk tells the story of Aidonia’s troubled past and highlights new archaeological work that sheds light on the secrets of Mycenaean Greek ancestors.

The Vindolanda Coins from a Century of Excavations
2026-04-15 19:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | Lean Lecture Room, Wishart Hall on the College of Wooster (to be confirmed), 1189 Beall Avenue, Wooster, OH, United States

“Digging in Circles: Miami’s Prehistoric Legacy”
2026-04-16 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Jepson Hall, Room 118, Richmond Way 221, Richmond, VA, 23226, United States
Lecture by Robert S. Carr, Director of the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy (https://www.archaeological.org/lecturer/robert-carr/) – Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lecture
