Archaeological Institute of America

Kingdoms of Asia
2025-11-02 10:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Fresno Chaffee Zoo, 894 W Belmont Ave, Fresno, CA, 93728, United States
The activities in this event will consist of the following:
1. The guided tour of the Kingdoms of Asia Exhibit at the Fresno Chaffee Zoo. This Exhibit is new and contains monumental replicas of ancient Khmer temples and sacred sites, including for example, Bayon Temple, Ta Prohm Temple, and Kbal Sapean. The first two temples are very famous in Cambodia, which can be dated to c. the 13th century and became filming locations for several Western movies. The temples have also been studied by archaeologists and art historians. This in-person tour will explain in detail the significance of these sites and their symbolic elements in ancient Southeast Asian cultures.
2. Promotion of archaeology at the Zoo. There will be a lot of people at the Zoo on the Saturday of International Archaeology Day. The Society will have a table where our board members will promote the importance of archaeology and studies of civilizations, disseminate knowledge, hand out information, recruit more members to the Society.

"Lanka - The Crucial Hub of the Ancient Maritime Silk Road" with Dr. Palitha T.B. Kohona
2025-11-25 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
Dr. Palitha Kohona — Sri Lanka’s former Permanent Representative to the United Nations, former Head of the UN Treaty Section, and former Ambassador to China — discusses the importance of Sri Lanka to the Chinese Silk Road. Sitting in the middle of the Indian Ocean at the southern tip of India, meeting point of monsoon winds and swirling ocean currents, Sri Lanka occupies a strategic geographical position. Throughout history, Lanka has attracted a multitude of sailors from friendly and marauding navel powers, merchants seeking its exotic products or exchanging them for wares from distant lands, Buddhist monks searching for the sublime Dhamma, invading empire builders who vainly attempted to conquer the island. Archaeology suggests that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ships from China visited Lanka, serving as a lucrative hub and central link in trading ventures within the Southern Maritime Silk Route.
Register for the online stream here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1749161622499?aff=oddtdtcreator

"Across Jordan in the Footsteps of Alois Musil: Archaeology and Discovery" with Sylva Pavlasová
2026-03-03 15:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York)
Join a fascinating online lecture about Alois Musil with Sylva Pavlasová, head of the Mashrek unit of the Middle East Department at the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who recently returned from Jordan, a nation rich with traces from Neolithic, Nabataean, Roman, Early Christian, Byzantine, and Islamic times to the establishment of the modern Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Musil, a theologian, orientalist, and explorer, was nicknamed Sheikh Mousa by local Bedouin tribes. A major Czech scholar of the 19th and 20th Century, fluent in 35 dialects of Arabic, leader of two Bedouin tribes with friends amongst local Arabs — Musil amassed important knowledge related to Jordan´s history. In 1898, he rediscovered the Islamic desert castle of Qusayr ‘Amra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Arkhaios Cultural Heritage and Archaeology Film Festival
2026-10-12 09:00 - 2026-11-18 00:00 (America/New_York) | MA
The multi-day Arkhaios Cultural Heritage and Archaeology Film Festival is an annual juried competition, part of Archaeology Month celebration. It is free, open to the public, and is an educational event showcasing the discovery of past cultures gained from ethnological or archaeological research, and illustrated through documentary films.
The Virtual Edition is an international online screening of all the Official Selection films. During the week of the Festival, there are several in-person Arkhaios Festivals in the US, showing the best films from the Arkhaios Official Selections.
