Poggio Civitate’s Etruscan Workshop: A Cross-Craft Perspective
2025-11-20 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W 1st Ave, Spokane, WA, 99201, United States
Dr. Nora Donoghue, Gonzaga University visiting professor, will present her research into Etruscan workshop crafting interrelationships at Poggio Civitate.
Abstract:
Craft production in the ancient world is frequently analyzed by specialists who concentrate on a specific material or class of artifact. This approach overlooks the strong probability that ancient production processes were interrelated through shared resources, technological knowledge, or common workspaces. In this talk, Dr. Donoghue considers these cross-craft relations within a 7th-century BCE Etruscan workshop at the site of Poggio Civitate. This structure preserves a wide variety of evidence, including artifacts related to glass, ceramic, and metal production, alongside animal butchering, bone carving, and the assembly of composite objects like furniture. Focusing on production occurring within and around this structure, the talk will demonstrate that labor within this workshop was highly specialized and was ultimately carried out by craftspeople who worked in multiple media or maintained collaborative relationships with craftspeople of other related crafts.

Navajo/Dene Rock Art
2025-11-22 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Chicago) | Longview Park, 13525 Clayton Road, Town and Country, MO, 63141, United States
Powerpoint presentation by Richard Jenkison (Independent Researcher) who has spent decades studying the Navajo rock art sites in New Mexico.

Battlefield Archaeology
2025-11-23 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Chicago)
Zoom lecture by Douglas D Scott (Retired Supervisory Archaeologist with the Natinal Park Service). He will discuss theoretical and practical concerns in Battlefield Archaeology and bring examples from his field work at Little Bighorn and various Civil War battlefields.

More Than a Cosmetic Fix: How Experimental Archaeology Can Address the Issue of Burial Goods in the Museum Setting. Talk and Workshop
2025-12-13 14:30 - 16:30 (America/New_York) | Penn Museum, 3260 South Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Saturday, December 13
2:30 pm EST
Penn Museum, Classroom L2
In-person; RSVP required for workshop: https://forms.gle/FTwpThdMhwV7gPhS6
Talk and Hands-on Workshop
Holiday Party to follow!
Speakers: Isabella Pilla and Dr. Jane Hill
Title: More Than a Cosmetic Fix: How Experimental Archaeology Can Address the Issue of Burial Goods in the Museum Setting. Talk and Workshop
Abstract:
The Egyptian mummy as a cultural artifact has for more than a century been a focal point of interest within the Egyptological community and the museum-going public. In more recent years, however, the public has begun to raise concerns over the display of human bodies as museum objects. Is there another way to share with the public the richness of Egyptian funerary belief and tradition without invading the bodies of the individuals who were at the center of these practices? In this talk and workshop the authors will argue that by using the imaging, scanning, and 3-D printing technologies available to us today, it is possible to both scientifically study Egyptian mummification practices and share those findings with the public while still respecting the humans who provide us that information.
Lecture attendees will be invited to create their own Predynastic Egyptian style cosmetic palette. All the necessary tools and materials will be provided, but we ask that you RSVP (https://forms.gle/FTwpThdMhwV7gPhS6) for this event to be sure we have enough materials!
Speaker Bios:
Dr. Jane Hill
Dr. Jane Hill holds a doctorate in Egyptian Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. She also holds masters degrees in anthropology and art history/Egyptology from the University of Memphis. She has excavated and done epigraphic work on archaeological projects at the sites of Giza, Abydos, el-Amra, Saqqara, and Karnak Temple in Luxor Egypt. At el-Amra she discovered evidence of a Predynastic Egyptian town and cult center. In the U.S., Dr. Hill has excavated Native American sites of the Mississippian Period in the southeast region. Currently Dr. Hill teaches anthropology, archaeology and Egyptian Archaeology at Rowan University where she serves as curator of the Museum of Anthropology at Rowan University (MARU). Her research interests include co-development of major elite cemeteries and urbanism in Upper Egypt’s formative period, and the development of Egyptian administrative and writing systems.
Isabella Pilla
Isabella is an emerging museum professional and recent graduate from Rowan University, where she earned a dual degree in Anthropology and Psychology. During her time as a research assistant at Rowan’s Museum of Anthropology, she curated a project to explore the ancient Egyptian material culture and public engagement through archaeology. Her research focuses on the ethical concerns of ancient mummified displays and the application of experimental archaeological to research ancient artifacts in a non-invasive manner. Isabella currently works at Edelman Fossil Park and Museum where she continues to support educational programming and visitor engagement.
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Refreshments are served beginning at 2pm. The ARCE-PA Holiday Party will follow the workshop. You do not have to attend the workshop or party to attend the lecture.
Lectures are FREE to ARCE-PA chapter members, $7 for University of Pennsylvania Museum Members and UPenn Staff and Faculty, $5 for Students with ID, and $10 for the general public.
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The American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) is a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1948 by a consortium of educational and cultural institutions to support research on all aspects of Egyptian history and culture, foster broader knowledge among the general public, and strengthen American-Egyptian cultural ties. The ARCE Pennsylvania Chapter (ARCE-PA) is the local branch of the national institution. We host monthly events including scholarly lectures, Egyptian-themed workshops, social events, and guided tours of the Penn Museum’s Egyptian galleries. For more information or to learn about the perks of membership, please send an e-mail to info@arce-pa.org, or visit our website at www.arce-pa.org.

Dreadful were the vestiges of (the Revolutionary) War.
2025-12-27 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Chicago)
ZOOM lecture by Douglas Scott (Retired Supervisory Archaeologist with the National Park Service); A study of surviving bullet struck structures and objects from the first day of the American Revolution: Employing Forensic Firearm Examination Techniques to Historic Contexts.

Zoom Lecture: Forgotten Saint-Simonian Travelers in Egypt
2026-01-11 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | https://www.archaeological.org/event/zoom-lecture-forgotten-saint-simonian-travelers-in-egypt/
The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California chapter, and the UC Berkeley Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures invite you to attend a Zoom lecture by Dr. John David Ragan, Independent Scholar (PhD, NYU):
Forgotten Saint-Simonian Travelers in Egypt
Sunday, January 11 2026, 3 PM PST
Register in advance for this lecture:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/cAzvIld9RvanelhVxNRq1A
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
There are a few things you should know before you join the lecture:
* Advance registration is required. When you click on the link to “Register in advance for this lecture” you will receive instructions by email on how and when to join, along with a link on which you will click to join the meeting. Save the email, as you will need the link it contains to join the meeting. Please register now. Please do not share the join link with anyone, it is unique to your email address. Try to join at least 10 minutes before the meeting. When you do join the meeting, be prepared to be put in the waiting room until the lecture starts at 3 pm. This is a security measure.
* If you haven’t already installed Zoom, you should download and install the Zoom program (app) well before you try to join the meeting. There IS an option to use your web browser to join the meeting instead of the Zoom program, but the browser interface is limited and depends greatly on what browser and what operating system you’re using.
* For tutorials on how to use Zoom, go to https://learn-zoom.us/show-me. In particular, “Joining a Zoom Meeting” should show you what you need to do to join our lecture.
* All meeting attendees can communicate with everyone, or with individual participants, using the chat window, which can be opened by clicking on the chat button and which you can probably find at the bottom middle of your Zoom viewing screen. Participants will be encouraged to hold their questions for the speaker until after the lecture, and will also be encouraged to address their questions for the speaker to everyone, not just to the speaker, so that all can see them. “Everyone” is the default chat option.
If you have any questions, please email glenn@glennmeyer.net or arcencZoom@gmail.com.
About the Lecture:
This lecture and a book with the same title tell the stories of two French women and a French African man, travelers connected to the Saint-Simonian utopian socialists, who came to work for the Egyptian government in the 1830s. They have been marginalized and excluded from the historical record, because they were women, not part of the colonial elite, or of mixed racial heritage. This history brings them alive through extensive archival research and vibrant storytelling.
There is Suzanne Voilquin, a practicing midwife in Cairo who was involved in left-wing popular politics in Paris and became the editor of one of the first feminist newspapers ever published (1832–34). The second traveler, Thomas Ismayl Urbain, was born in French Guyana, where his mother was born a slave and his father was a French sea captain. “Jehan d’Ivray” is the pen name of the third traveler, a teenage woman who married an Egyptian studying medicine in France, and traveled with him to Egypt in 1879. She wrote more than twenty books, including a retrospective look at Suzanne Voilquin and women in the Saint-Simonian movement, bringing the story full circle to another generation.
Their stories brilliantly illustrate the paradoxes of nineteenth century colonialism in Egypt. Suzanne Voilquin grew up in the Parisian working class and sympathized deeply with Egyptians but initially exoticized the differences between Egypt and her home country, while Urbain, a literary pioneer in black pride, nevertheless joined the French army and saw his role in the colonial occupation as a means of helping indigenous people. These characters transcend the neat binary of East and West and offer a rich, nuanced window onto the experiences of French travelers in Egypt during the nineteenth century.
About the Speaker:
Dr. John David Ragan has a PhD in history from New York University and degrees from the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne, the University of Cincinnati, and Binghamton University. He has traveled in fifty countries, across Europe, North Africa, Latin America, New Zealand, Australia, Southeast Asia and the Himalayas, studying French in Paris, Arabic in Cairo and Tunis, German in Berlin, and Spanish in Salamanca and Mexico City. He is a working member of Laborers Union Local 942, Fairbanks, Alaska, and has published two books and numerous articles.
About Northern California ARCE:
For more information, please visit https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://www.facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://arce-nc.org, https://bsky.app/profile/khentiamentiu.bsky.social, and https://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://arce.org/membership/ and select “Berkeley, CA” as your chapter when you sign up.

Early Peoples in the Plateau: Nimíipuu Knowledge and Landscape Adaptation in the Bitterroot Mountains
2026-01-15 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W 1st Ave, Spokane, WA, 99201, United States
Join us for a lecture by WSU grad Student Jordan Thompson on early Northwest culture.
Abstract: Mountain environments and resources have played a significant role in Indigenous cultural and subsistence lifeways and knowledge systems yet remain underrepresented in landscape research. Recent archaeological evidence points to the Southern Columbia Plateau as an early entry point for the Peopling of the Americas. Understanding the landscape is essential to adaptation in new and changing environments, and archaeological methods combined with Indigenous knowledge are uniquely positioned to investigate these human-environment relationships. Indigenous oral narratives, correlated with geologic processes, reveal a deep record of landscape knowledge that may offer insight into early migration, environmental adaptation, and landscape exploration. In this talk, I will present on collaborative research which integrates geoarchaeology and ethnogeology to examine how land use, mobility, and placemaking shaped the establishment of seasonal subsistence cycle among the Nimíipuu (Nez Perce). Ethnogeology foregrounds Indigenous perspectives of place, complementing archaeological investigation by contextualizing the cultural meanings of stone artifacts. This talk will focus on Nimíipuu subsistence in an understudied portion of the western Bitterroot Mountain uplands, a segment of the Northern Rockies, in the North Fork Clearwater River watershed of Idaho by examining toolstone sources, their distribution across the landscape, and how these features acquire meaning. By combining geoarchaeological and ethnogeological frameworks, this talk explores how people come to know, understand, and connect to landscapes while developing a sense of place with reciprocal subsistence systems.

10,000 years of Oaxaca Cuisines from Mesquite Pods to Mezcal
2026-01-20 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | TBA (Santa Fe), Santa Fe, NM, United States
Doris Z. Stone New World Archaeology Lectures Time TBA

TBA (North Alabama (Huntsville))
2026-01-20 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Chicago) | TBA (North Alabama (Huntsville)), Huntsville, AL, United States
Kershaw Lectures in Near East Archaeology Time TBA

Life, Death, and Disease: Insights form Petra’s Tombs and Cemeteries 2
2026-01-21 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Chicago) | TBA (Nashville), Nasvhille, TN

Into the Mani: Death, Burial, and Legend on the Southern Greek Mainland
2026-01-22 16:30 - 17:30 (America/New_York) | Remote (Pittsburgh), Pittsburgh, PA, United States
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship
Register for Zoom: https://pitt.zoom.us/meeting/register/6xRhkuW-ScGmMN4GpWaPKA

“She is the Son of Bastet”: Gender in Papyrus Louvre 32308
2026-01-25 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | ARCE-NC Lectures, Rm 126 Social Sciences Bldg., UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California chapter, and the UC Berkeley Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures invite you to attend a lecture by Rachel Barnas, UC Berkeley:
“She is the Son of Bastet”: Gender in Papyrus Louvre 32308
Sunday, January 25, 2026, 3 PM PST
MELC Lounge, Room 254 Social Sciences Building, UC Berkeley
Because of nearby construction, please allow extra time to park your vehicle.
This is an in-person lecture and is not virtual. No registration is required.
The lecture will be recorded for later publication on the chapter’s YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernCaliforniaARCE
About the Lecture:
Magic was a tool for dealing with a host of everyday problems in ancient Egypt, from headaches and snakebites to bad luck and nightmares, and employed a wide variety of strategies accordingly. Underlying many of these different strategies was a shared reliance on the power of analogy, which was used to impose a desirable mythological template on immediate, everyday reality. To accomplish this superposition, tools, problems, and even the speaker or subject of a spell could all be assigned mythic identities, ensuring that success was already predestined.
What happened, though, when there was a mismatch between the divine identity needed and some aspect of the subject’s everyday self? This situation presents itself in the case of one amuletic papyrus, Papyrus Louvre 32308, in which a female patient is cast as multiple male deities. Such casting raises a number of questions: Was this gender conflict seen as a problem? How does the text navigate this apparent conflict? Why not just pick some female deities and avoid the problem altogether? Exploring the answers to these questions through close reading of the Louvre papyrus and comparison to similar spells can help us refine our notions of when the bounds of gender could or could not be pushed in ancient Egypt and why, revealing just how much ancient magical texts can tell us about their users.
About the Speaker:
Rachel Barnas is a PhD candidate in the Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures department at UC Berkeley. She received her B.A. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from Yale University in 2013 and her M.A. in Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations from the University of Toronto in 2020, both with a focus in Egyptology. Her dissertation project examines patterns of literary and grammatical device usage in Ramesside non-funerary magical texts, as a means of analyzing the relationship between how the ancient Egyptians used language and how they experienced and understood their world. She has also worked in both curation and epigraphy, including as Terrace Research Associate at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and as a member of the IFAO team documenting the tomb of Padiamenope (TT33).
About Northern California ARCE:
For more information, please visit https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://www.facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://arce-nc.org, https://bsky.app/profile/khentiamentiu.bsky.social, and https://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://arce.org/membership/ and select “Berkeley, CA” as your chapter when you sign up.

Boxes, Banks, Bags, and Bones: Carrying and Storing Money in Ancient Rome
2026-01-27 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | Semans Auditorium (Room 117), Belk Visual Arts Center, 315 N. Main St., Davidson, NC, 28036, United States
About the lecture:
How did the Romans carry, store, and save their money? This talk surveys the archaeological evidence for the wallets, purses, bags, boxes, and chests in which the ancient Romans placed their coined money at home and on the go. From reused cooking pots to bronze arm purses and ceramic “piggybanks,” we will explore what the methods and means of containing coined money reveal about Roman daily life, religious practice, and the social and cultural norms around the function of physical currency in the ancient world.
About the speaker:
Dr. Robyn Le Blanc, Assistant Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Archaeology at UNC Greensboro, specializes in the archaeology and coinage of the Roman provinces. Her current research explores how Roman colonies used their coinages to negotiate a local identity. She is also developing a project on Roman money boxes. In 2021-2022 Dr. Le Blanc was the Kershaw Lecturer in Near East Archaeology for the Archaeological Institute of America, and she has recently given invited talks for the American Numismatic Society and the Oxford Numismatic Society. She has participated in excavations in Israel, England, and Montenegro, and she is co-director of WIRE: Women in the Roman East (see more at wireproject.org).

AIA Archaeology Hour January 2026: NAGPRA as a Path to Healing and Reciprocity
2026-01-28 20:00 (America/New_York) | CT
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!

Dr. Stephen Humphreys zoom lecture about the Camden Revolutionary War battlefield.
2026-01-31 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Chicago)
Dr. Stephen Humphreys is the CEO of American Veterans Archaeological Recovery program. One of his projects involves the Camden Revolutionary War battlefield.

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

Provenance Research in the Fight Against Looting
2026-02-07 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | ARCE-NC Lectures, Rm 126 Social Sciences Bldg., UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California chapter, and the UC Berkeley Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures invite you to attend a Zoom lecture by Sara Aly, Griffith Institute:
“Provenance Research in the Fight Against Looting”
Sunday, February 22 2026, 3 PM PST
Register in advance for this lecture:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/MvauTi1wT0OHniyDLJXJHw
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the lecture.
There are a few things you should know before you join the lecture:
* Advance registration is required. When you click on the link to “Register in advance for this lecture” you will receive instructions by email on how and when to join, along with a link on which you will click to join the meeting. Save the email, as you will need the link it contains to join the meeting. Please register now. Please do not share the join link with anyone, it is unique to your email address. Try to join at least 10 minutes before the meeting. When you do join the meeting, be prepared to be put in the waiting room until the lecture starts at 3 pm. This is a security measure.
* If you haven’t already installed Zoom, you should download and install the Zoom program (app) well before you try to join the meeting. There IS an option to use your web browser to join the meeting instead of the Zoom program, but the browser interface is limited and depends greatly on what browser and what operating system you’re using.
* For tutorials on how to use Zoom, go to https://learn-zoom.us/show-me. In particular, “Joining a Zoom Meeting” should show you what you need to do to join our lecture.
* All meeting attendees can communicate with everyone, or with individual participants, using the chat window, which can be opened by clicking on the chat button and which you can probably find at the bottom middle of your Zoom viewing screen. Participants will be encouraged to hold their questions for the speaker until after the lecture, and will also be encouraged to address their questions for the speaker to everyone, not just to the speaker, so that all can see them. “Everyone” is the default chat option.
If you have any questions, please email glenn@glennmeyer.net or arcencZoom@gmail.com.
About the Lecture:
Since the days when the pharaohs ruled over Egypt, funerary materials have been affected by the greed of people. An enormous amount of wealth was invested in preparations for the afterlife, but often this richness represented by gold and precious minerals in the funerary equipment became the booty of many, rather than the resting place for one. Unfortunately, the scale of destruction due to the ongoing looting is greater today than ever and several illegally sourced artefacts from Egypt constantly appear on the art market. Authorities consistently work to detect these objects by tracing the activity of dealers and galleries, but a lot still needs to be done. Source countries require tougher laws and international legislation needs to become stricter. Moreover, the knowledge of specialists must be employed in a systematic way to assist in the rescue of these objects. Museum curators should implement due diligence, learn about the art market, and understand how to conduct provenance research. This practice helps with the identification of looted artefacts by analysing an object and comparing it with published examples of the same kind, allowing its origins to be identified and some lost archaeological context to be recovered.
About the Speaker:
Sara Aly’s research focuses on the circulation of illicitly sourced Egyptian artefacts on the art market, following a collaboration that started 6 years ago with the Circulating Artefacts project at the British Museum. Her MA dissertation at the University of Manchester (2023) examined upper coffin fragments appearing on the art market. Since 2023, she has been a member of the Franco-Egyptian Archaeological Mission of Western Thebes, working at the Ramesseum, where she analyses coffin and cartonnage fragments. From 2023 to 2025 she worked as an Art Market Expert at the British Museum helping to identify and recover missing items from the museum’s collection. Now based at the Griffith Institute, Sara is studying the archival material of J.J. Clère related to his documentation of Egyptian objects in the possession of antiquities dealers and collectors between the 1930s and the 1980s.
About Northern California ARCE:
For more information, please visit https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://www.facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://arce-nc.org, https://bsky.app/profile/khentiamentiu.bsky.social, and https://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://arce.org/membership/ and select “Berkeley, CA” as your chapter when you sign up.

“What Do We Owe to Already-Looted Objects?”
2026-02-09 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Jepson Hall, Room 118, Richmond Way 221, Richmond, VA, 23226, United States
Lecture by Elizabeth Marlowe, Professor of Art History and Chair of the Art department at Colgate University
(https://www.archaeological.org/lecturer/elizabeth-marlowe/)

Daniel Healey, Provenance Researcher, Worcester Art Museum: "Orphaned Antiquities & Cold Case Files: Investigating Provenance in the New Era of Museum Restitution"
2026-02-09 18:30 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | CT
The Clarence and Anne Dillon Dunwalke Lecture
Provenance refers to an artwork’s history of ownership, from the time of its creation or archaeological discovery to the present. Provenance researchers track down a wide range of sources—scholarship, auction catalogs, financial records, inventories, correspondence, photographs, markings on artworks themselves, and more—to reconstruct an object’s past and retrace its path to the museum. This work has been compared to that of an investigator, and provenance researchers routinely described as “art detectives.” Over the past decade, these metaphors have become increasingly relevant as law-enforcement agencies across the U.S. have arrested dealers, seized antiquities from the nation’s leading museums, and made hundreds of repatriations to countries around the world—all to great fanfare and press coverage. The collision between the worlds of law enforcement and museums has revolutionized the field of provenance research and redefined the standards of ethical and legal collecting in this country. As a former Antiquities Trafficking Analyst for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and now the Provenance Research Specialist at the Worcester Art Museum, I will share stories from the frontlines of provenance research—stories of looting, forgery, and repatriation—that explain why museums need “art detectives” now more than ever.

COZA/COSANO/COZANO: Socio-Economuc Interactions among Middle Republican Cities in Central Italy
2026-02-12 17:30 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | Kirkhof Center, room 2270, Grand Valley State University, Allendale campus, Allendale, MI, 49401, United States
Join us for discussion of innovative new approaches to the study of ancient coins! Dr. Melissa Ludke will discuss her numismatic work at early Roman Cosa and beyond. Dr. Ludke serves as Numismatic Specialist at the the Cosa (Terme) Excavations. She has published several papers on numismatics and is working on a book about Cosa during the Middle Republic.
The Latin colony of Cosa has long experienced archaeological investigation and, more recently, re-analysis, but Cosa’s earliest history remains elusive. However, new numismatic evidence from Cosa is raising interesting questions. Who was minting these coins, why do they appear at certain regional centers and nowhere else, and do these small objects represent larger processes of network connectivity? Dr. Ludke addresses these questions and more, using a geospatial network-based approach through QGIS, and a Least-Cost Path analysis to track potential socio-economic interactions between Cosa and contemporaneous regional centers.

Linda Cordell and Her Many Contributions to Southwest Archaeology
2026-02-17 18:30 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Pecos Trail Café, 2239 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, NM, 87505, United States
(Lecturers: Dr. Maxine McBrinn and Dr. Judith Habicht Mauche) Linda Cordell was extraordinarily active in southwestern archaeology during her resources in the work of others. Because of this, her influence extended well beyond her own students to those of many of her colleagues. One of her last personal endeavors was working with the Tijeras Pueblo Ceramics Project. Examples of her prodigious influence on archaeological research will be presented.

Public Lecture: Professor Jean-Michel Roessli (Department of Theological Studies, Concordia University)
2026-02-19 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Concordia University, H 411, 1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd W, Montreal, QC, H3G-1M8, Canada
On Thursday, February 19th, Professor Jean-Michel Roessli (Department of Theological Studies, Concordia University) will deliver a presentation entitled, Orpheus in Early Judaism and Early Christianity: Texts and Images. The talk will take place at 600pm in Hall Building 411 (SGW).

U-2 Over Egypt: A Remote Survey of the Nile Delta using Cold War Aerial Photography
2026-02-19 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | University of Louisville Center for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (CACHe), 1606 Rowan Street, Louisville, KY, 40203, United States
The KY Society of the AIA and the University of Louisville Department of Anthropology present a free public lecture by Dr. Oren Siegel (University of Toronto). During the height of the Cold War, the United States flew a series of reconnaissance missions using U-2 spy planes over Egypt. Film negatives from two flights that cover much of the Nile Valley and Nile Delta from 1959 have recently been declassified, and the resulting imagery is both earlier and higher resolution than publicly available CORONA satellite imagery. This talk will discuss the ongoing work by the Brown-Toronto U2 Aerial Photography of Egypt Project to digitize this imagery from the National Archives and Records Administration and make these photographs publicly available to all interested researchers. Beyond this, I will showcase the results of our ongoing remote survey of Beheira Governorate using U-2 imagery, highlighting how this imagery gives us a unique window onto a landscape that has changed significantly over the last 5 decades. The talk will close by looking at how this compares to other satellite imagery and aerial photography and highlight the potential of this dataset for archaeological research.

Egyptian Blue, humanity’s first inorganic pigment
2026-02-19 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W 1st Ave, Spokane, WA, 99201, United States
Join us for a lecture by Professor John McCloy, Washington State University, who will present results of an investigation into the materials science and processing parameters to fabricate Egyptian blue faience.
Recently, our group at Washington State University, with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute, recreated Egyptian blue to uncover the science behind its color, ranging from gray or green to deep blue. We produced 12 versions of Egyptian blue and compared them with artifacts, using advanced X-ray techniques, spectroscopy, and quantitative color measurements. We found Egyptian blue is a complex mixture of phases, with hue controlled by particle size, glass content, and cuprorivaite–silica ratios. Even small changes in materials or heating could dramatically shift its color.
These findings reveal ancient craftspeople as skilled materials scientists. Beyond cultural insights and conservation, Egyptian blue’s infrared glow continues to inspire modern technologies, linking past creativity with future innovation.

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

Piramesse – from the City of Wonders to Terra Incognita
2026-02-21 15:30 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Online via Zoom, PA, United States
Saturday, February 21
3:30 pm EST
Virtual on ZOOM
FREE lecture; RSVP required for Zoom link
Speaker: Dr. Henning Franzmeier, Senior Research Associate, The Cyprus Institute, Nicosia
Title: Piramesse – from the City of Wonders to Terra Incognita
Abstract:
Where today just a typical Egyptian village is located, surrounded by fertile, green fields, 3300 years ago, Ramesses II founded his capital Piramesse. In contrast to Akhenaton’s Akhetaton, Piramesse was not founded at a virgin site but instead Ramesses II chose a site with a lot of tradition to which he could connect. During his long reign, the city became the one of the largest settlements not only of Egypt but the whole koiné spanning the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia. Texts portray Piramesse as a place where food is abundant, where temples and colossal statues were erected, and where the king would receive the envoys bringing the silver tablet with the famous peace treaty with the Hittite Empire. A few years later, the king received his Hittite wife after the god Seth had made winter become summer so that the long journey could be finished safely. Moreover, it was a military headquarters and center of trade between Egypt and the outside world. When entering Egypt, Piramesse was the first city the traveler would have seen, serving as a showcase and a stage of pharaoh’s power.
But what does remain of the city and what can we say after nearly a century of excavations? And what happened so that the memory of Piramesse only survived via its mention in the bible as Ramses, while the location remained disputed and was only identified by Mahmoud Hamza in 1930?
This lecture will tell the biography of Piramesse from its beginnings before Ramesses II through its heydays in the 19th Dynasty until its decline when it finally vanished almost completely from the surface after the end of the New Kingdom. Using the results of the excavations since 1928, the major features of the city will be shown and finds will be used to illustrate the long and rich history of the city.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Henning Franzmeier has been working at Qantir-Piramesse for the past 20 years and directed the excavations since 2015. Over the past ten years, he has taught at UCL Qatar in Doha, the University of Innsbruck, and the University of Bologna, and also worked for the Humboldt-University in Berlin and The Cyprus Institute in Nicosia. In 2014, he received his PhD from the Free University of Berlin with a thesis on the New Kingdom cemeteries at the Middle Egyptian site of Sedment – a reassessment of the 1920/21 excavations of William Matthew Flinders Petrie. His MA thesis at the University of Göttingen dealt with a well of Ramesses II at Samana near Qantir-Piramesse. His interests range from settlement archaeology to the history of Egyptology and the analysis of funerary assemblages.
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The American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) is a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1948 by a consortium of educational and cultural institutions to support research on all aspects of Egyptian history and culture, foster broader knowledge among the general public, and strengthen American-Egyptian cultural ties. The ARCE Pennsylvania Chapter (ARCE-PA) is the local branch of the national institution. We host monthly events including scholarly lectures, Egyptian-themed workshops, social events, and guided tours of the Penn Museum’s Egyptian galleries. For more information or to learn about the perks of membership, please send an e-mail to info@arce-pa.org, or visit our website at www.arce-pa.org.

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

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.
