Archaeological Institute of America

Visualizing the Roman Villa: Virtual Preservation and Digital Archaeology at Oplontis
2025-10-23 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building, University of Texas at Dallas, 800 W. Campbell Road, Richardson, TX, 75080, United States
Dr. Michael Thomas, co-director of the Oplontis Project since 2005, has focused his research on two sites at ancient Oplontis: Villa A, a monumental seaside residence, and “Villa” B, a commercial complex dedicated to wine storage and distribution. This lecture explores how digital heritage methods have shaped the study and preservation of both sites. Through 3D laser scanning, photogrammetry, GIS mapping, and a linked database, the project has documented the architectural remains and decorative programs of both sites. A navigable digital model not only preserves both of these fragile sites in virtual form but also enables scholars and the public to explore, analyze, and interpret them in ways that extend far beyond the limitations of physical access. The commitment to born-digital publication ensures that these records and reconstructions remain open, adaptable, and sustainable. In combining preservation, accessibility, and interpretation, the Oplontis Project offers a model for how digital heritage can reframe our understanding of the environments in which ancient Roman lived and worked.

Windows on the Ancient Mediterranean: Glass and Society
2025-10-23 17:30 - 18:30 (America/Chicago)
A lecture co-sponsored by Tulane University’s Department of Classical Studies & the New Orleans Society of the AIA
Dr. Allison Sterrett-Krause, College of Charleston (SC) will lecture on Roman glass
As archaeologists, we are all familiar with artifacts of daily life, like pottery vessels, and artworks, like architecture, statues, mosaics, and wall paintings, from the ancient world. Glass straddled the line between artwork and object of daily life in the Greek and Roman worlds. We often see glass in museum collections and marvel at its beauty and preservation, but we rarely learn about this material in our studies. In this lecture, we’ll use glass as a lens to explore ancient society. We will investigate religious and commemorative practices, evidence for recycling and trade, the use of glass vessels as a social marker, and—of course—windows.
NOTE: a photo ID is needed for entry into the university library.

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
Doris Z. Stone New World Archaeology Lectures

Learn at Lunchtime virtual Lectures PHMC The PA State Museum
2025-10-24 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, PA, United States
Series of 4 Friday virtual lectures on archaeological subjects with four different lecturers.

The Myth of Ariadne from the Labyrinth to the Walls of Pompeii
2025-10-25 10:00 - 11:30 (America/New_York) | Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum at Miami University, 801 S. Patterson Ave, Oxford, Ohio, 45056
The Archaeological Institute of America- Dayton Society, Miami University Department of History, and the Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum (RCCAM) at Miami University present the Archaeological Institute of America’s Peter H. von Blanckenhagen Memorial Lecture by Dr. Lillian Joyce, Associate Professor of Art History at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Most people are familiar with the story of Ariadne helping Theseus escape the Minotaur’s labyrinth, saving him from a situation not unlike the Hunger Games. Ariadne leaves Crete by necessity as well as for her love of Theseus. En route to Athens, they stop at the island of Naxos, where the exhausted Ariadne falls asleep. While she slumbers, Theseus sets sail and abandons her. Alone on the island, she is discovered by the wine god Dionysus and his entourage. Smitten, Dionysus makes Ariadne his consort. This story was explored by Greek writers from Homer onward, but as it comes into the Roman world, poets, patrons, and painters are more interested in the plight of Ariadne rather than the feats of Theseus. Ariadne captivates the Romans and she appears in a great variety of media: glass, gems, sculpture, mosaics, and especially Pompeiian wall painting where the complementary episodes of Ariadne’s abandonment and rescue are the single most common theme in central panel paintings. This talk will explore the strategies that artists employed to make the episodes recognizable and compelling and then expand out to examine the spaces in which Ariadne appears and think about how people experienced these images of the wronged maiden who becomes the consort of a god.

Archaeology Day – University of Alberta
2025-10-25 10:00 - 16:00 (America/Edmonton) | Business/ Tory Atrium, University of Alberta, 11211 Saskatchewan Dr NW, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Archaeology Day
Presented by The Department of History, Classics, and Religion and the Department of Anthropology, in collaboration with the Archaeological Institute of America.
Generous funding for this event is also provided by the Kule Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Alberta
October 25, 2025
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Location: Tory/Business Atrium, North Campus, University of Alberta
Join us for Archaeology Day! An event to celebrate and learn about research, teaching, and outreach related to archaeology at the University of Alberta. The event will include talks about current research and community engagement being done by staff, activities like stone tool making, pottery drawing, a student poster competition, tours of the Archaeology Labs and WG Hardy Classics Museum, other fun demonstrations, and information tables about archaeology in the province.
The event is hosted by the Department of Anthropology and the Department of History, Classics, and Religion, in collaboration with the Archaeological Institute of America.
This is a free public event and is family friendly!
Schedule of Events:
10:00 a.m. Event Opening
10:30 a.m. Flint Knapping and Stone Tool Demonstration
11:00 a.m. Talk: So you would like to become a Mediterranean Archaeologist? Opportunities at the University of Alberta, Dr. Margriet Haagsma, Professor, Dept. of History, Classics, and Religion, Room TBD
12:00 p.m. Student Poster Competition.
01:00 p.m. Talk: Stories Objects Carry: Working with Legacy Collections and Building Relationships, Christine Conciatori, Director, University of Alberta Museums, Room TBD
02:00 p.m. Public Archaeology activity
02:30 p.m. Flint Knapping and Stone Tool Demonstration
03:00 p.m. Pottery Drawing
04:00 p.m. Event Closing
Throughout the day there will be information tables, tours of the WG Hardy Museum, Archaeology Lab, Fossil Hominid Lab, and other activities.
Note that the Second Cup café will be open from 10-4!
Vendor participants will include:
– Archaeological Institute of America
– UAlberta Archaeology Certificate Program
– Bodo Archaeology
– Archaeological Society of Alberta
– Humayma Excavation Project
– Carthage Lamp Lab
– Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology
– UAlberta Anthropology Undergraduate Association
– Archaeology Survey of Alberta
– Cultural Resource Management Firms

Slip Into the Past
2025-10-25 12:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | Alexandria Archaeology Museum, 105 N Union St, #327, Alexandria, VA, 22314, United States
Experiment with 19th-century pottery slip designs, like marbling and dendritic patterns, and apply your own temporary tattoo in the style of transfer printed ceramic. Take part in this free, walk-in activity between 12 and 4 p.m. at the Alexandria Archaeology Museum. While supplies last. This event coincides with the Torpedo Factory Art Center’s Art Safari, happening throughout the building.

Spokane AIA Book Club
2025-10-26 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
This is the inaugural meeting of a new archaeology-focused book club sponsored by the Spokane chapter. We will likely meet monthly to discuss archeological news, books and to socialize among local archaeology enthusiasts.

Jodi Magness - The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls
2025-10-27 17:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus, Baltimore, Maryland, 21210, United States
Monday Oct. 27, 5:00 – 6:00, Johns Hopkins Homewood campus, Room TBA
Jodi Magness
Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism
Department of Religious Studies, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls
In 1946-1947, the first Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by accident near the site of Qumran. Eventually the remains of approximately 1000 scrolls were found in 11 caves surrounding Qumran. In this slide-illustrated lecture, we explore the archaeological remains of Qumran, which was inhabited by members of a Jewish sect who deposited the scrolls in the nearby caves, and examine the meaning and significance of the scrolls.

Sweden and the Baltic: A Story Told Through Trade - An International Archaeology Day Lecture
2025-10-28 18:30 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | National Arts Club, Gramercy Park South, New York, NY, 10003, United States
The Archaeology Committee is honored to welcome Ambassador von Uexküll, Sweden’s Deputy Representative to the United Nations, to our International
Archaeology Day Celebration, exploring how trade has shaped integration, prosperity, and identity in Sweden and across the Baltic Sea region.
From Viking voyages to Hanseatic dominance, commerce has long connected cultures around the Baltic and beyond. During Sweden’s Age of Great Power (Stormaktstiden), trade routes became strategic assets though efforts to control them often failed.
Global transactions later fueled the Industrial Revolution and continues to influence politics. From ancient customs to modern cooperation, trade remains a defining force in the region’s history – and its future.

From Berlin to Berkeley: The History of the Edward Gans Collection of Seals and Its Hidden Gems – a Ellen and Charles S. La Follette Lecture
2025-10-29 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
The Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures currently houses the Edward Gans Collection of Seals, comprising almost seven hundred seals and seal-related objects from a variety of periods, extending from the Neolithic Middle East to Post-classical Mesoamerica. Since 2023, a new team of Berkeley scholars has been working on the collection to prepare it for digital publication, and this talk arises from the provenance research undertaken as part of that project. This talk will highlight the fascinating story of how the Gans Collection came to be and the legacy of Nazi persecution that shaped the collection’s history, while also featuring several Sasanian seals in the collection of particular significance. This is one of the annual Ellen and Charles S. La Follette Lectures.

Water Histories: How 8,000 Years of Fluctuating Lake Levels in North-Central Florida Affected Indigenous Land Use and Regional Interactions
2025-10-29 17:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | University of Florida, Smathers Library Room 100, 1508 Union Rd, Gainesville, FL, 32611, United States
Recent survey of a tract of public land on Lake Pithlachocco in Alachua County, Florida revealed an 8,000-year record of horizontal stratigraphy extending 500m from and 5m above the modern lake shore. The first half of this record reflects the mid-Holocene expansion of surface water regionally, but the second half reflects a regime of low-frequency, high-magnitude flooding to which lakeside dwellers adapted their land use. Besides affecting settlement choices, fluctuating surface water impacted the potential of regional travel by boat, connecting Lake Pithlachocco to places far afield during extreme hydroperiods and stranding it from flow during extreme droughts.

Preserving Cultural Heritage & Uncovering Hidden Histories: USACE Walla Walla Archaeology
2025-10-30 17:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Whitman College Maxey Hall 207, 173 Stanton St., Walla Walla, WA, 99362, United States
Please join us to hear a talk by Leah Bonstead and Scott Hall, archaeologists with the Walla Walla district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Preservation and exploration of local and regional histories is a critical and often overlooked responsibility of federal organizations. At USACE, archaeologists are dedicated to the ethical stewardship of cultural heritage, working closely with tribes, environmental planners, engineers, and state historical-resource organizations. Come learn more about the work of our Walla Walla district archaeologists in this endeavor.

Reading Matthew’s Gospel in the Cemeteries of Roman Syria and Judea
2025-10-30 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Phoenix) | Zoom, Virtual, FL, 33155, United States
Why does the Gospel of Matthew prefer a different word for burials, taphoi, than the other New Testament gospels? And why does Matthew consistently revise his sources to describe Jesus’s burial as costly? Matthew emphasizes that Jesus was anointed with expensive spices and buried in a rich patron’s new tomb, which makes it appear as though he wanted to portray Jesus as receiving an elite burial. If, however, we read Matthew’s descriptions of burials in light of archaeological evidence of changing mortuary practices in provincial Syria and Judea, where the gospel was composed sometime in the late first century, his motives appear more complicated. Quick though he is to indicate that Jesus received a rich man’s burial, Matthew is clear that this did not include any of the lavish displays of status that were increasingly common on elite tombs in Matthew’s context. Through a critical analysis of both text and funerary archaeology, this presentation explores how the author of Matthew and his earliest audiences responded to and participated in cultural and socioeconomic changes induced by geopolitical shifts in the Roman East.
Biography
Dr. Tony Keddie is Associate Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Religions and Fellow of the Ronald Nelson Smith Chair in Classics and Christian Origins at the University of Texas at Austin. An award-winning social historian, Keddie’s interdisciplinary research focuses on the intersections of religion and economics in the Roman East, particularly among Jews and Christians in Judea and Asia Minor. He is the author of four books, including Class and Power in Roman Palestine; co-editor of five books, including Revelation and Material Religion in the Roman East; and author of more than two dozen articles.
Registration required. Follow this link to register: https://asu.zoom.us/meeting/register/wggxz9iBS2WOCEFg3nGIUA

Kingdoms of Asia
2025-11-02 10:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Fresno Chaffee Zoo, 894 W. Belmont Avenue, 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.

(Early) International Archaeology Day at the RMSC
2026-10-03 11:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | Rochester Museum and Science Center, 657 East Avenue, Rochester, NY, 14607, United States
Join members of the Rochester Society of the Archaeological Institute of America for hands-on archaeology activities! Appropriate for all ages, this program will give participants the chance to interact with archeology enthusiasts and sample artifacts. Kids can enjoy play-doh, coloring pages, and archaeology toys, and even try out some archaeology for themselves in a sandbox!

Arkhaios Cultural Heritage and Archaeology Film Festival
2026-10-12 09:00 - 2026-11-18 00:00 (America/New_York)
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.

International Archaeology Day
2026-10-13 18:30 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | The National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Parks S., New York, NY, 10003, United States
We feel privileged that Ambassador James Larsen, the Permanent Representative of Australia to the United Nations, will address the National Arts Club on the occasion of International Archaeology Day, the committee’s most significant annual lecture of each series. Previous such programs have included Permanent Representatives to the United Nations from Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Malta, Sweden, and Sri Lanka.

Archaeology Day of the Dead
2026-11-01 10:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Fresno Chaffee Zoo, 894 W. Belmont Avenue, Fresno, CA, 93728, United States
The activities in this event will consist of the following:
1. Archaeological Outreach at the Zoo
The Fresno Chaffee Zoo will host a major celebration for Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) on Sunday, November 1st, and has invited the Society to participate. Recognizing the high attendance anticipated for this event, the Society will host an educational table staffed by our board members. This presence will allow us to engage with the public, promote the importance of archaeology and anthropological studies, distribute educational materials, and recruit new members. Archaeology aligns perfectly with the thematic essence of Día de los Muertos; it serves as a profound reminder that death is not a final erasure, but rather an entry point for studying the vibrant cultures, civilizations, and enduring lessons left behind by past generations.
2. Guided Tour of the Kingdoms of Asia Exhibit
The Society will host an in-person, guided tour of the Fresno Chaffee Zoo’s newly opened Kingdoms of Asia exhibit. This immersive installation features monumental replicas of ancient Khmer architectural marvels and sacred sites, including the Bayon Temple, Ta Prohm Temple, and Kbal Sapean. The original 13th-century Cambodian temples are globally renowned, highly studied by archaeologists and art historians, and have served as iconic filming locations for several Western movies. This specialized tour will delve deeply into the historical significance of these structures, decoding their rich symbolic elements and explaining their roles in ancient Southeast Asian cultures.
