Archaeological Institute of America

Spring 2025 National Lecture by Dr. Kiersten Neumann: Collecting the Ancient World: Early Explorations, Encyclopedic Museums, and World’s Exhibitions
2025-03-20 17:30 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | TX
Where is this artifact from? Who does it belong to? How did it get here? Who’s telling its story? Critical inquiry into the practice and politics of museums has reached a new zenith in contemporary discourse. From discussions of acquisition and repatriation to provenience (archaeological findspot) and provenance (an object’s ownership history) and the ethics of curation and modes of display, museum and art professionals—and the general public alike—are deliberating on the concept of museums and the responsibilities of such institutions towards the collections in their care. This talk will explore the early history of museums and collecting practices with a focus on cultural heritage collections from West Asia—beginning with the archaeological explorations of “the Orient” and colonial collecting practices dating back to the nineteenth century, followed by the creation of the “encyclopedic museum,” the popularity of world’s exhibitions, and the politics of representation and reception.
Short bibliography and/or website on lecture topic:
Kevin McGeough. 2015. The Ancient Near East in the Nineteenth Century: I. Claiming and Conquering; II. Collection, Constructing, Curating; III. Fantasy and Alternative Histories. 3 Volumes. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press.
Edward P. Alexander, Mary Alexander, and Juilee Decker. 2017. Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums. Third Edition. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.
James Cuno. 2008. Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Kershaw Lectures in Near East Archaeology

Archaeology, its Colonial Past, and its Collaborative Future: A Community Project in El-Kurru, Northern Sudan
2025-03-20 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Jepson Hall, Room 118, Richmond Way 221, Richmond, VA, 23226, United States
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lecture

Looking for Lucy: Revisiting the Foundation of Race & Gender in Historical Archaeology
2025-03-23 11:30 - 12:30 (America/New_York) | TX
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship

“Barbarians” and Bronzes: The Origins of Civilization in Ancient Vietnam
2025-03-23 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | AIA-LA, 1201 9th St., Manhattan Beach, United States
Two thousand years ago, China’s Han Empire stretched its imperial grasp beyond the mountains far to the south of the Central Plains, reaching into the domains of “barbarians”. Along its southernmost periphery lay the Red River Valley (RRV) of present-day Vietnam. In their chronicles, the Han claimed that they “civilized” the RRV’s “barbarians”. In contrast, many Vietnamese believe this time and location represents the birthplace of an indigenous, Vietnamese civilization that predates Han arrival. This view has been traditionally based on colorful tales and legends. One of the most enduring accounts tells of the Au Lac Kingdom and its capital city, known as Co Loa. Thus, at the heart of ongoing, intense, and sometimes nationalistic debates are two contrasting views. One sees “civilization” as a byproduct of Han arrival, while the other sees it as the outcome of local, indigenous cultural traditions. This lecture presents new and ongoing archaeological research that addresses these themes and questions. Specifically, it highlights recent investigations at the Co Loa site, considered to be the first capital and earliest city of ancient Vietnam.
Dr. Nam C. Kim
Professor, Dept. of Anthropology
University of Wisconsin-Madison
This talk will be hybrid: in-person with a Zoom streaming component.

Drunken Women with Spears? Funerary Practices and Female Identity in Pre-Roman Apulia
2025-03-24 18:30 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | College of the Holy Cross, Rehm Library, Worcester, MA

Egyptian Conceptions and Manifestations of Borders and Cultural Hegemony in the Late Bronze Age Southern Levant
2025-03-24 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | University of Georgia, Park Hall, Room 265, 200 Baldwin St., Athens, GA, 30602, United States
Kershaw Lectures in Near East Archaeology

Rituals of Death : The Tombs of Tibet’s First Kings
2025-03-25 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Anthropology Building AP130, University of Toronto St. George Campus, 19 Russell Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 2S2, Canada

Eldorado on the Nile: The Art of Luxury in Ptolemaic Alexandria
2025-03-26 19:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Charles Elliot Norton Memorial Lectureship
In collaboration with the University of Maryland, College Park Departments of Classics and Art History Archaeology

The Impact of Roman Military Presence on the Arid Landscapes of Southern Jordan and Israel
2025-03-27 16:30 - 17:30 (America/New_York) | TX
The Frederick R. and Margaret B. Matson Lectureship for Near Eastern Archaeology and Archaeological Technology

Archaeology of the Ọyọ Empire (West Africa): Chivalry, Colonies, and Household Politics in the Early Modern Period
2025-03-27 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Florida State University, Carraway 315, Carraway Bldg, Tallahassee, FL, 32304
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lectureships

Dying as a Macedonian in Egypt: Styling Social Identity through Hellenistic Burial Practices
2025-03-27 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | University of Virginia, Campbell Hall 158 (Architecture School), Bayly Dr, Charlottesville, VA, 22903, United States

The deep prehistory of the human presence in the world’s high mountains and plateaus
2025-03-27 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Memorial Art Gallery, 500 University Ave, Rochester, NY, 14607

New Light on King Herod's Harbor
2025-04-02 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Nashville Parthenon, 2500 West End Ave, Nashville, TN, 37203, United States
Anna Marguerite McCann and Robert D. Taggart Lectureship in Underwater Archaeology

The Past in the Past: Traditionalism in Archaic Crete
2025-04-06 08:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Santa Rosa Junior College Campus, Petaluma, CA
The Barbara Tsakirgis Memorial Lecture
Time and venue TBA

Archive Archaeology: The Invisible Hands of Colonial-Era Excavations in the Middle East
2025-04-07 16:30 - 17:30 (America/New_York) | Princeton University, East Pyne Building 010, East Pyne Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08544
The Elizabeth S. Ettinghausen Lecture

Augustus’ war against Antony and Cleopatra as Seen through the Coins
2025-04-08 17:30 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | University of Akron, Folk Hall 165, 150 E. Exchange St, Akron, OH, 44304
William E. Metcalf Lectures in Numismatics

Kush and the Roman World: Warrior Queens along the Nile
2025-04-08 18:30 - 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Reed College, Performing Arts Building 320, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland, OR, 97202

The Past in the Past: The Power of Monuments in Ruin presented by Dr. Art Joyce
2025-04-09 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Denver) | Eaton Humanities Room 250, Pleasant Street 1610, Boulder, CO, 80302, United States
This presentation examines two ruined monumental architectural complexes in prehispanic Oaxaca, Mexico: The Main Plaza of the mountaintop city of Monte Albán in the Valley of Oaxaca and the acropolis of Río Viejo on the coastal floodplain of the Lower Río Verde. Both complexes were built during the Formative period and became the ceremonial centers of important cities and foci of politico-religious life for larger regions. The two complexes, however, had vastly different histories from their initial construction through their time as ceremonial centers and their afterlives as decaying ruins. Although both fell to ruin during the prehispanic era, they continued to be places of intensive affect that were central to the constitution and transformation of broader communities in their respective regions. Drawing on new materialist approaches as well as on Native American ontological perspectives in Oaxaca and elsewhere in Mesoamerica, I argue that even as ruins, both complexes were powerful animate beings linked to agricultural fertility, sacrifice, ancestors, and cycles of creation. The presentation considers how the material vibrancy of these ruins differed in ways that both brought together and destabilized community and hierarchy. After the abandonment of Monte Albán, its Main Plaza, viewed from afar by the people in the valley below, continued to assemble substances important to human well-being including rain, earth, mountain, sky, ancestors, and divinities. People from communities in the valley periodically journeyed to the plaza to make sacrificial offerings thereby constituting a broader identity and community, although one that was much changed relative to the time when Monte Albán was a city. In contrast, the earthen architecture of the acropolis, located in the center of Río Viejo, rapidly eroded and decayed in the tropical lowland climate. The Late Classic period reemergence of hierarchy in the lower Río Verde Valley activated material memories of rupture held in the ruins that threatened and resisted new forms of community and political authority. As a result, nobles were drawn back to the architectural complex to appropriate that power though the emplacement of a complex offering that may have healed and reanimated the building. The processes of ruination at the two monumental complexes discussed here therefore actualized different capacities contributing to the gathering of a new kind of community in one case, and its resistance and eventual dissolution in the other. This presentation makes the broader point that even ruined buildings can be powerful in ways that threaten, resist, empower, or transform human projects.

Augustus’ war against Antony and Cleopatra as Seen through the Coins
2025-04-09 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | Augustana College, Hanson Hall of Science, Room 102, 738 35th St, Rock Island, IL, 61201

Archaeology of the Ọyọ Empire: Domesticity of Governance & Politics of Dependency, 1600-1836
2025-04-10 17:30 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | UMass Amherst, Integrated Learning Center S211, 650 N Pleasant St, Amherst, 01003, United States
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lectureships
Dr. Akin Ogundiran, “Archaeology of the Ọyọ Empire: Domesticity of Governance and Politics of Dependency, 1600-1836”
Thursday, April 10 at 5:30pm EST
UMass Amherst, Integrated Learning Center S211
For Zoom attendance, register here: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/meeting/register/UU0SqUeGS8mVuL6k98vAnA
Between ca. 1650 and 1800, the Ọyọ Empire was the largest political formation in West Africa, south of the River Niger. Over the past twenty years, Akin Ogundiran has conducted archaeological research in the capital, colonies, and provinces of the empire to understand the strategies of Ọyọ expansion and the everyday lives of different segments of its population. In this talk, Ogundiran juxtaposes the materialities of military conquest, colonization strategies, and household politics to tell an intimate story of one of the most important imperial formations in Africa during the Early Modern Period. Here, the regional and multi-sited scope and the residential contexts of the archaeological research allow for a fine-scale understanding of how domesticity, gender, class, labor, technology, mobility, and the landscape were manipulated to fashion the Ọyọ Empire. In the process, ideas about personhood, family, and sexuality were also transformed. The archaeology of the Ọyọ Empire contributes to a truly global understanding of the Early Modern Period.
About the Speaker
Akin Ogundiran is the Cardiss Collins Professor of Arts and Sciences, Professor of History, and Courtesy Professor of Anthropology and of Black Studies at Northwestern University. He is the current President of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists. His research interests include the topics of empire and community formation in West Africa and the African Diaspora over the past 2,500 years, with emphasis on the archaeology and cultural history of the Yoruba World. Professor Ogundiran’s publications include The Yoruba: A New History (Indiana University Press, 2020), recipient of the 2022 Vinson Sutlive Book Prize and the 2022 Isaac Oluwole Delano Prize for Yoruba Studies. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a Member of the Nigerian Academy of Letters.
This year’s AIA National Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lecture is co-sponsored by the AIA–Western Massachusetts Society, UMass Amherst Department of Classics, UMass Amherst Department of Anthropology, and W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies

Kush and the Roman World: Warrior Queens along the Nile
2025-04-10 18:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Eugene Public Library, 100 W 10th Avenue, Eugene, OR, 97401, United States

Africans, Europeans, and Finding Castle Cormantine: Archaeology and Cultural Entanglement on the 17th Century Gold Coast
2025-04-10 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Chicago) | Valparaiso University, Room TBA, 1700 Chapel Drive, Valparaiso, IN, 46383, United States

Augustus’ war against Antony and Cleopatra as Seen through the Coins
2025-04-11 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Chicago) | University of Oklahoma, Room TBA, Norman, OK, 73019

The world in between: Egypt and Nubia in Africa ∙Telling the story through museum artifacts
2025-04-14 16:30 - 17:30 (America/New_York) | Princeton University, East Pyne Building 010, East Pyne Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08544
Homer A. and Dorothy B. Thompson Lectureship

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

The Past in the Past: Traditionalism in Archaic Crete
2025-04-14 17:30 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | TX
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) | TX

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

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)
