Archaeological Institute of America

Landscapes of Predation: Exploring Hostile Social Environments in Small-Scale Societies presented by Dr. Catherine Cameron (CU Boulder, Anthropology)
2023-12-06 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Denver)
Ancient social environments are difficult to reconstruct, and archaeologists have a much poorer grasp of how the social environment affects where and how people live. One sort of social behavior that is often visible archaeologically is violence: raiding and warfare. Using ethnohistoric cases, I identify “landscapes of predation” created by intense social violence. I will describe the archaeological signatures that violence produces and illustrate the utility of this concept with examples from the American Southwest and Southeast.

Contexts and Circumstances in Designing the Divine in Ancient Egypt
2023-12-10 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | ARCE Egyptology Lectures Room 20 Social Sciences Building, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California Chapter, and the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, University of California, Berkeley, invite you to attend a lecture by Dr. Jennifer Miyuki Babcock, Pratt Institute:
“Contexts and Circumstances in Designing the Divine in Ancient Egypt”
Sunday, December 10, 2023, 3 PM Pacific Standard Time
Room 20 Social Sciences Building (formerly Barrows Hall), UC Berkeley
This lecture will be recorded.
About the Lecture:
How do we decide what a god looks like? Some ancient Egyptian texts describe the gods generally, and others are more precise. Yet a divinity’s true, underlying form is unknown. Nonetheless, depictions of deities on monumental and small-scale artworks are seen throughout ancient Egyptian history.
In this talk, we will look at some basic, common forms that ancient Egyptian gods adopt, and uncover the reasons behind these design choices. We will not only consider how the images illustrate a god’s specific divine power, but also how their representation may be determined by the context and placement of the god’s image.
About the Lecturer:
Dr. Jennifer Miyuki Babcock is Assistant Professor and Coordinator for the History of Art and Design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and at the Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY. Before teaching, Dr. Babcock was a Postdoctoral Curatorial Associate at The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at NYU, and has held research and fellowship positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Brooklyn Museum. She earned her Ph.D. at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU.
Among Dr. Babock’s extensive list of publications is the book Animal Fables in Ancient Egypt: Tree Climbing Hippos and Ennobled Mice (Brill 2022), which examines how drawings of anthropomorphized animals are linked to oral folklore and the religious environment of New Kingdom Thebes. Her interests include the cross-cultural and temporal transmission of artistic iconography in the ancient world, and studying cultural parallels between ancient and modern and contemporary lives.
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Parking is available in UC lots all day on weekends, for a fee. Ticket dispensing machines accept debit or credit cards. Parking is available in lots around the Social Sciences Building, and in lots along Bancroft. A map of the campus is available online at http://www.berkeley.edu/map/
About ARCE-NC:
For more information, please visit https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://arce-nc.org, https://twitter.com/ARCENCPostings, or http://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://arce.org/join-arce/ and select “Berkeley, CA” as your chapter when you sign up. See less

“We Are For Egypt”: A Multi-faceted Public Outreach Project On Southern Illinois’ “Egyptian” Past
2023-12-16 15:30 - 17:00 (America/New_York)
Virtual Lecture on Zoom; Registration required
Saturday, December 16 at 3:30pm
For Zoom link, email: vp@arce-pa.org
Speaker: Dr. Stacy Davidson, Adjunct Faculty, History and Continuing Education at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS
Lecture Topic: “We Are For Egypt”: A Multi-faceted Public Outreach Project On Southern Illinois’ “Egyptian” Past
Abstract:
It is increasingly apparent that Egyptologists must make a concerted effort to bridge the gap between “traditional” modes of communication and engagement with the general public. In the case of Southern Illinois, an area called “Egypt” or “Little Egypt” for the last 200 years, the legacy of what “Egypt” meant to the inhabitants of the region and who “Egyptian” Illinoisans were has been difficult to understand due to a dearth of concise, easy-to-obtain information and a lack of engagement from the Egyptological community in blending studies in the reception of ancient Egypt with regional American history and culture.
To this end, the project, “We Are For Egypt: The History, Culture, and Legacy of Egyptian Southern Illinois,” was developed. Backed by a Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship, the project consists of three components designed with community outreach in mind. First, an educational Handbook collates geographic and historical information from the portion of Illinois known as “Egypt” or “Little Egypt” along with ancient Egyptian material—allowing residents to contextualize Southern Illinois’ Egyptian identity. Secondly, a musical album provides a platform for multi-genre musicians from Southern Illinois to showcase the region’s musical heritage. The album consists of five traditional songs as well as five newly-commissioned songs that express what “Egypt, Illinois” means to the musicians today. Lastly, a virtual exhibition housed at the Special Collections Research Center at Southern Illinois University’s Morris Library, provides an accessible platform for the handbook, album, and regional photographs—as well as additional commentary by Davidson and her producer Jenny Pape for a behind-the-scenes look into the process of developing the project.
In this presentation, Davidson elucidates the outcomes of this project: encouraging community engagement in local history and arts, showcasing the creative and artistic talent of the region, increasing awareness of “Egypt, Illinois” among the Egyptological community, offering pertinent Egyptological resources to the residents of Southern Illinois, stimulating the local economy, and modeling an avenue for scholars to utilize a traditional funding source, a national non-profit grant, in a way beneficial to public history and an underserved community.
Link to the digital exhibition: https://scrcexhibits.omeka.net/exhibits/show/egypt
Link to Davidson’s JAEI article: https://scribespalette.com/publicationsmedia/
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Stacy Davidson, a native of “Egypt/Little Egypt,” Illinois, is the resident Egyptologist and Adjunct Assistant Professor of History at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS. She established an Egyptology specialization in the Continuing Education Department at JCCC to further her goal of making Egyptology accessible to any who wish to learn. She is the co-founder and first President of the Missouri Chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE-MO) and the founder and Team Lead of the Egyptology State of the Field Project. Through the International Studies Department at JCCC, she has co-led a student study trip to London, Oxford, and Berlin to examine Egyptian and Mesopotamian artifacts and collections. Davidson’s article, “Untangling the 19th-century Roots of Southern Illinois’ Egyptian Regional Identity,” published in the Journal of Egyptian Interconnections (Dec 2022) is the first scholarly article written by an Egyptologist on the topic of “Egypt/Little Egypt,” Illinois. Professor Davidson is a 2020-2021 Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellow, a 2020-2021 JCCC College Scholar, and a 2021 NI
Lectures are FREE for ARCE members. For non-ARCE members admission is $10
Zoom registration is required, please email vp@arce-pa.org
If you are an ARCE member not on the ARCE-PA Mailing list, please email vp@arce-pa.org. For more information, visit arce-pa.org or email us at info@arce-pa.org

"Archaeological Narratives and the First Nations of Australia"
2023-12-30 14:00 (America/Chicago) | WEBINAR (St. Louis), St. Louis, MO
30 December 2023, Saturday at 2 PM (Central Standard Time Zone). ZOOM lecture by Dr. Harry Allen, Fellow at the University of Auckland in New Zealand: “Archaeological Narratives and the First Nations of Australia”. Zoom room opens at 1:45 and lecture promptly starts at 2 PM. Sign in at 1:45, please…

Connecticut Office of State Archaeology Year-in-Review Lecture
2024-01-11 17:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | University of Connecticut, 91 North Eagleville Road, Storrs, CT, 06269, United States
Dig into the new year with a lecture hosted by the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History (CSMNH) and the Office of State Archaeology.
The frozen winter ground puts most archaeological excavations on hold… but on Thursday, January 11th, State Archaeologist Dr. Sarah Sportman will be digging into Connecticut archaeology… in the form of a lecture! Dr. Sportman will highlight recent field work, research, and other activities undertaken by the Office of State Archaeology.
The lecture is free and open to the public! We hope to see you there!
If you require an accommodation to participate in this event, please contact the CSMNH at 860-486-4460 or CSMNHinfo@uconn.edu by Friday January 5.

The Molly House of the Late 18th century
2024-01-14 11:30 (America/New_York)
a lecture by Dr. Megan Rhodes Victor
One of my current research projects focuses on homosexuality and the 18th-century taverns which were known as molly houses in England and English Colonial North America. These molly houses served as clandestine locations for gay men and cross-dressers to interact, to socialize with others ‘like them’, to engage in more intimate relations, and to perform in elaborate gendered performances of marriage and birth. Taverns were largely male drinking spaces in the 18th century, and yet these were also one of the few places where women – especially unmarried or widowed women – could not only work but manage the business affairs. It is striking that these locations were the ones chosen for molly houses, rather than other, more gender-ambiguous locations. Currently, no archaeologists have excavated a known molly house or identified a tavern assemblage as possibly being connected to mollies – those homosexual males who frequented the molly houses.

Accept No Imitation? Amphora Packaging and Roman Wine Consumption on the Bay of Naples
2024-01-17 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Chicago) | Roger’s Park Social, 6920 N Glenwood Ave, Chicago, 60626
Talk by Jennifer L. Muslin (Loyola University Chicago, Classical Studies)
Most ancient Romans enjoyed wine and believed that everyone, from emperors to enslaved peoples, should drink it daily. To meet such high demand, viticulture, winemaking, packaging, and trading happened all over the Mediterranean, with the highest quality vintages coming from Central and Southern Italy and Sicily. Roman wines were stored and traveled in large, ceramic containers called amphorae that were durable, heavy, and built to withstand multiple fillings. Winemaking regions in the Empire often manufactured their own versions of these vessels, perhaps to insure brand identification, and refurbished and reused amphorae from other regions to store and export their products. When different wines were packaged using the same recycled amphorae, how could a buyer trust that she was getting a good quality vintage and not a hangover in disguise? New research at the first century C.E. packaging facility of Oplontis B near Pompeii is changing what we know about the social history of Roman wine, amphora use and reuse, and consumer choices on the Bay of Naples and the ancient Mediterranean world.
**The event is free and open to those who are 21 and over** Please register at eventbrite
Dr. Jennifer L. Muslin (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is the Director of Pottery Studies and Finds at the Roman industrial site of Oplontis B for the Oplontis Project, a UT Austin-sponsored archaeological excavation based in Torre Annunziata (NA), Italy. She has published articles and book chapters on Roman pottery, Roman houses, and Pompeian wall painting and is currently writing two books on more 1,500 amphorae that the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei excavations of Oplontis B recovered from 1973-1991. She teaches classical studies at Loyola University Chicago.

From Fish Skin Bags to Coconut Fiber Armor: Revitalizing Anthropological Collections in an Era of Climate Change
2024-01-20 10:30 - 12:00 (America/New_York) | University of Dayton, 300 College Drive Ave, SC 114, Dayton, OH, 45469, United States
A lecture by Amy Margaris, Oberlin College
Specimen collecting was a cornerstone of 19th century science and anthropology. 150 years later anthropological collections can still be found at many colleges, lingering in closets or forgotten on storeroom shelves. Using cultural heritage items at Oberlin College as my starting point, I’ll explore the question: What use are they today, and for whom?

Recent Work at Memphis and the Fayum: An Overview of Methodologies and Results
2024-01-21 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
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 Raghda (Didi) El-Behaedi, University of Chicago:
“Recent Work at Memphis and the Fayum: An Overview of Methodologies and Results”
Sunday, January 21, 2024, 3 PM Pacific Time
Zoom Lecture. This meeting will not be recorded. A registration link will be automatically sent to ARCE-NC members. Non-members may request a registration link by sending email with your name and email address to arcencZoom@gmail.com. Non-members, please send any registration requests no later than Friday, January 19. Registrations are limited to 100, so the sooner you register, the better.
About the Lecture:
This lecture will present an overview of two cases studies, Memphis and the Fayum, to illustrate different methodologies of site exploration in Egypt. Memphis, the first capital of unified Egypt and one of the ancient world’s most recognizable cities, continues to be an enigma in the present day. Located at the confluence of Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt, Memphis’ strategic placement evoked the symbolic and geographic union of a once fragmented country. Despite its profound historical significance over more than 3,000 years, very little is known about the city itself. This is especially true for the area of Kom el-Fakhry, which houses the oldest in-situ remains found at Memphis so far. A preview of the results from the 2023 excavation season conducted at Kom el-Fakhry will be presented.
The Fayum, a natural depression located 100 km southwest of Cairo, is bounded by the Sahara Desert except for in the east, where a branch of the Nile River once fed its massive freshwater lake, Lake Moeris. For thousands of years, anthropic activity in the form of settlements, religious centers, harbors, and quarry sites continued in the Fayum, along the very shores of Lake Moeris. However, starting in the Holocene epoch, changing environmental and climatic conditions caused fluctuations of floodwaters from the Nile, which in turn caused drastic instabilities in the lake’s water level. The present work attempts to understand how the ancient Egyptians adapted to the shrinking lake from the Neolithic to Ptolemaic period, using cutting-edge satellite remote sensing, GIS, and geophysical techniques.
About the Speaker:
Didi El-Behaedi is an Egyptian Archaeology PhD candidate at the University of Chicago and a National Geographic Explorer. Her research interests include understanding ancient Egyptian settlement patterns and ancient landscapes through the lens of remote sensing, GIS, and 3D modeling. Didi is the co-director of the Memphis-Kom el-Fakhry Archaeological Project (MKAP) and has conducted archaeological fieldwork at several other sites in Egypt, including Tell Edfu, Deir el-Bahri, Asasif, and Hermopolis. She has also previously served as a research consultant at NASA Langley Research Center and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
About ARCE-NC:
For more information, please visit https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE/, http://www.arce-nc.org, https://twitter.com/ARCENCPostings, and https://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://arce.org/join-arce/ and select “Berkeley, CA” as your chapter when you sign up.

Archaeology-Hour Livestream: Jeff Altschul. "Cultural Resource Management: What Most Archaeologists Do For A Living"
2024-01-24 17:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Whitman College, Olin Hall 129, 920 E Isaacs, Walla Walla, WA, 99362, United States
Today, there are about 12,000 archaeologists working in the US with less than 10 percent of them employed by universities. While university anthropology and archaeology departments are shrinking, the applied sector, known as cultural resource management (CRM) is growing. This lecture explores what accounts for these opposing trends and what, if anything, can we do about it.
Please join us for this livestream presentation.

AIA Archaeology Hour with Jeff Altschul
2024-01-24 20:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York)
Join the AIA for a fascinating evening as Jeff Altschul presents Cultural Resource Management: What Most Archaeologists Do For A Living.
This presentation will be given at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central/6pm Mountain/5pm Pacific.
Today, there are about 12,000 archaeologists working in the US with less than 10 percent of them employed by universities. While university anthropology and archaeology departments are shrinking, the applied sector, known as cultural resource management (CRM) is growing. What accounts for these opposing trends and what, if anything, can we do about it.

Everything but a Bath?: The Small Bath at Antiochia ad Cragum
2024-01-25 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Phoenix) | Zoom, Virtual, FL, 33155, United States
“Everything but a Bath?: The Small Bath at Antiochia ad Cragum” with Dr. Leticia R. Rodriguez, UC Berkeley, Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Excavations at the Small Bath at Antiochia ad Cragum began in 2018. With now five seasons completed, our efforts have not only provided insight into the general structure and use of this particular bath type (a Hall Bath); we have also uncovered a wealth of information about the complex after it was retired as a bath. More precisely, each season has presented us with a series of questions with regard to the ways in which the various rooms of the bath were adapted to meet industrial needs, if and how the installations and finds from distinct rooms relate to each other, and their respective chronologies. This lecture will present findings to date, current and evolving hypotheses about the function(s) of the complex in its post-bath phases, and also consider the discovery of several sets of human remains in non-burial contexts.

Everything but a Bath?: The Small Bath at Antiochia ad Cragum with Dr. Leticia R. Rodriguez
2024-01-25 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Phoenix)
Everything but a Bath?: The Small Bath at Antiochia ad Cragum
Leticia R. Rodriguez, PhD
Visiting Scholar
University of California, Berkeley
Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Excavations at the Small Bath at Antiochia ad Cragum began in 2018. With now five seasons completed, our efforts have not only provided insight into the general structure and use of this particular bath type (a Hall Bath); we have also uncovered a wealth of information about the complex after it was retired as a bath. More precisely, each season has presented us with a series of questions with regard to the ways in which the various rooms of the bath were adapted to meet industrial needs, if and how the installations and finds from distinct rooms relate to each other, and their respective chronologies. This lecture will present findings to date, current and evolving hypotheses about the function(s) of the complex in its post-bath phases, and also consider the discovery of several sets of human remains in non-burial contexts.

Disrupting the Market in Antiquities, Saving Archaeological Heritage for the Future
2024-01-25 20:00 (America/New_York) | Dodd Hall Auditorium (DHA 103), Florida State University, 282 Champions Way, Tallahassee, FL, 32306, United States
Norton lecture

"Cahokia Mounds - new research" by Dr. Mary Vermilion
2024-01-27 14:00 (America/Chicago) | St. Louis University, Morrissey Hall Rm 0400, 3700 Lindell Blvd, St. Louis, MO, 63108, United States
20 January 2024, Saturday at 2 PM (Central Standard Time Zone). ” Cahokia Mounds – new research” by Dr. Mary Vermilion, Associate Professor of Anthropology at St. Louis University. Lecture location to be arranged on SLU campus.

Self-Fashioning in a Roman Province: Gender, Dress, and Difference in the Isiac Funerary Reliefs from Athens
2024-01-29 17:00 (America/New_York) | WEBINAR (New Haven), New Haven, CT
Tsakirgis lecture

Dignity and Social Control Through Burial Practices in Ancient Rome
2024-02-01 17:30 (America/Chicago) | Holden Hall 104, 2500 Broadway, Lubbock, TX, 79409, United States

Society Sunday 2024 Public Lecture
2024-02-04 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
Watch recorded lecture on YouTube
“Be(com)ing Assyrian”: Navigating Imperial Power from the Bottom-Up
Join us as the AIA Societies Committee presents a virtual presentation and Q&A with Petra Creamer. This presentation will also be available in American Sign Language.
At its height, the Assyrian Empire (c. 1350-600 BCE) stretched from modern-day Iran in the east to Egypt in the west, controlling more territory than any entity the world had yet seen. This talk will delve into the profound impact of the Assyrian Empire and its administrative structures on the lives of individuals under its hegemony. Drawing from archaeological and historical evidence, the discussion explores the intricate web of socio-economic, cultural, and political transformations experienced by the non-elite populace under Assyrian rule, focusing on the core area of the empire (the Assyrian “Heartland”) along the Tigris River. Insights from ongoing research illuminate how the empire’s administrative policies influenced Assyria’s subjects – from those residing in urban centers to rural communities. Petra will particularly dive into the implementation of massive infrastructural projects across the landscape, the establishment of centralized governance systems, and the navigation of personal identities that shaped the idea of “be(com)ing Assyrian”.
Petra Creamer is an archaeologist of the Ancient Near Eastern world researching the genesis and growth of empires and the impact of these empires on the non-elite populations under their hegemony. She is director of the excavation and remote sensing project Rural Landscapes of Iron Age Imperial Mesopotamia (RLIIM) in Iraqi Kurdistan, where her ongoing fieldwork addresses long-term settlement patterns and lifeways in the ancient Assyrian imperial core (c. 1350-600 BCE). She is an Assistant Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Emory University.
The lecture will also be available in American Sign Language and we will also enable auto captioning on Zoom. Due to Zoom limitations on mobile devices and tablets, participants interested in accessing ASL interpretation should log in using the desktop version of Zoom.

Hannibal’s Secret Weapon
2024-02-05 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | California State University, Fresno (ED170), 5241 N Maple Ave, Fresno, 93740, United States

Robert L. Scranton Lecture
2024-02-09 17:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York)
Please join the AIA Baltimore Society for the 2024 Robert L. Scranton Lecture. Dr. Maggie Popkin (Case Western Reserve University) will speak on “Imagining the Roman Empire Through Its Souvenirs.” This talk will be held on Zoom, and can be accessed with the following link: https://towson-edu.zoom.us/j/98825554469?pwd=[REDACTED]

How the Egyptian state formation impacted and transformed the socio-spatial landscape of the First Nile Cataract region between the 4th and the 3rd millennia BCE
2024-02-10 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York) | Zoom, Virtual, FL, 33155, United States
Virtual Lecture on Zoom
Saturday, February 10 at 1:oopm EST
FREE event, but registration is required: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0kcemprjoiGNEokVuvL42ACyOqXzkyhoWn#/registration
Speaker: Dr. Maria Gatto, Assistant Professor, Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures Polish Academy of Sciences
Lecture Topic: The BORDERSCAPE Project – How the Egyptian state formation impacted and transformed the socio-spatial landscape of the First Nile Cataract region between the 4th and the 3rd millennia BCE
Abstract:
The ancient Egyptian state, traditionally known as the earliest territorial polity of human history, developed in the Lower Nile region at the end of the 4th millennium BCE. Alongside the political transformations, the complex process of state formation instigated far-reaching and profound changes in the socio-economic structure of its territory. With the example of our modern nation-states and geopolitical borders in mind, we expect such changes to have especially marked its newly established borders. However, current scholarship has determined that the ancient Egyptian state did not function as our modern states do, and this, of course, has consequences on the nature of its borders. While many studies have discussed the ancient Egyptian borders in dynastic times, none has focused on understanding how they came into being. The BORDERSCAPE Project at the Polish Academy of Sciences has taken up the challenge by focusing on the ancient Egyptian southern border with Nubia, geographically corresponding to the First Nile Cataract region. The talk discusses the preliminary results of the project investigation of the time and nature of discontinuities in settlement patterns, land use and community structuring between the 4th and the 3rd millennia BCE.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Gatto is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures Polish Academy of Sciences, where she directs the BORDERSCAPE Project and the Division of Ancient Egyptian Borderlands. Previously she held research and teaching positions in Egyptology and Archaeology at the University of Leicester, University of Birmingham, Yale University and at the British Museum. In recent years, Maria has been a Visiting Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, a Visiting Professor of Archaeology at the University of Bologna, and a Guest Lecturer in Prehistory at the Sapienza University of Rome. Since 2017, she is an Honorary Visiting Fellow at the School of Archaeology and Ancient History of the University of Leicester. Since 2005 she is the PI and co-director of the Aswan-Kom Ombo Archaeological Project.

"Rewriting Human Origins" by Dr. Shara Bailey
2024-02-10 14:00 (America/Chicago) | Missouri History Museum, Lee Auditorium, 5700 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO, 63112, United States
11 February 2024, Sunday at 2 PM (Central Standard Time Zone). Lecture: “Rewriting Human Origins” by Dr. Shara Bailey, Professor of Biological Anthropology at New ork University. Lecture location – Missouri History Museum, AT & T room. Join us in the museum cafe for lunch (dutch treat) at noon to chat with the speaker.

Let’s Talk about Ancient Apocalypse: It’s Inaccurate, Harmful, and the Real Story of Ice Age Peopling of the Americas is Far More Interesting Anyway!
2024-02-11 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Concordia University, Grimm Hall, 1530 Concordia, Irvine, CA, 92612, United States
Joukowsky lecture

Body Ornaments and Communities of Practice in the Egyptian Predynastic
2024-02-11 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | ARCE Egyptology Lectures Room 20 Social Sciences Building, University of California, 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 Maryan Ragheb, UCLA:
Body Ornaments and Communities of Practice in the Egyptian Predynastic
Sunday, February 11, 2024, 3 PM Pacific Time
Room 20, Social Sciences Building, UC Berkeley
This lecture will not be recorded.
About the Lecture:
Our bodies and body images are manufactured through one’s treatment of their body surface: Through clothing, jewelry, hairstyles, makeup, or tattooing, we create and recreate certain images that can be readable to others. These body accessories and modifications are not only to reflect identities, but also to be utilized as tools by the wearers to enact their social roles, which are prescribed and promoted by society. Body ornamentation is thus important for affirming social cohesion and shared ideologies of identities both in life and death. In Predynastic Egypt, body ornamentation of the deceased was practiced to varying degrees. This talk discusses the shared community practices in the making and use of Predynastic body ornaments to adorn the deceased’s body. Through a microscopic study of beaded ornaments, their manufacturing processes, and wear marks, I can reconstruct the technical and social processes that were invested in their making, and by extension, the making of the deceased’s image at the time of the funeral.
About the Speaker:
Maryan Ragheb is a PhD candidate in Archaeology at UCLA, with a special focus on ancient Egyptian archaeology. Her dissertation research is concerned with identity expression pre and post state formation in ancient Egypt, through the study of body ornamentation. Her research interests include identity expressions of different minority groups and the cultural entanglement between different ethnicities within Egypt. In addition to archaeological work in Egypt and Ethiopia, she is interested in community outreach and preservation of cultural heritage initiatives. As such, she is currently involved in the Waystation initiative and the voluntary return of cultural objects to China, while building a skillset in cultural heritage laws in the USA, and in provenance research.
About ARCE-NC:
For more information, please visit https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE/, http://www.arce-nc.org, https://twitter.com/ARCENCPostings, and https://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://arce.org/join-arce/ and select “Berkeley, CA” as your chapter when you sign up.

Socii and Sociability: Shopping for Status in a Roman Shop
2024-02-15 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Vancouver) | Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture (MAC), 2316 West 1st Avenue, Spokane, Washington, 99201, United States
Matson lecture

Rhodora Vennarucci. “Socci and Sociability: Shopping for Status in a Roman Shop”
2024-02-16 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Walla Walla University, Admin Bldg 117, 204 S College Ave, College Place, WA, 99324, United States
Father Edward A. Bader, CSB Lecture in Mediterranean Archaeology
This talk applies a Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) and phenomenological approach to the Felt Shop of Verecundus (IX.7.5-7) from Pompeii. This shop sold fine footwear (socci, or soft-soled felted slippers) and other high-status textile products. We will explore how ancient consumers self-fashioned through public acts of consumption in the shop. An interactive 3D model of the shop in VR — reconstructed using the architectural remains and archival data from the shop’s excavation — facilitates this investigation, and has in turn contributed to the Virtual Roman Retail project.
Socci were a luxury item worn indoors and at dinner parties that only the more affluent in society could actually afford. Shopping for slippers on the street now called the Via dell’Abbondanza (Pompeii’s most heavily trafficked thoroughfare), was therefore a social act that involved the public performance of (aspirational?) power and status. This lecture discusses how shopping behavior conveyed sociocultural meaning in Roman society and highlights the social and communicative functions of a Roman shop-space.

Desert Kites—the Enigmatic Trap from the Air and on the Ground.
2024-02-16 14:00 (America/Chicago) | Spurlock Museum Auditorium, UIUC Campus, 600 South Greogory, Urbana, IL, 61801, United States
Kershaw lecture

Archaeology, Museums, and War in the 21st Century
2024-02-19 18:00 (America/Chicago) | WEBINAR (Minneapolis – St. Paul), Minneapolis, MN
Santen lecture

Dignity and Social Control through Burial Practices in Ancient Rome
2024-02-22 16:30 (America/New_York) | WEBINAR (Pittsburgh), Pittsburgh, PA

Ancient Greek Magic with Dr. Jessica Lamont
2024-02-22 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Phoenix)
Ancient Greek Magic
Jessica L. Lamont, PhD
Assistant Professor of Classics & History
Yale University Department of Classics
This talk explores different types of archaeological and material evidence for the practice of magic in the ancient Greek world, from binding spells to curse tablets to incantations.
Zoom Registrations Link: https://asu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMrcOyhpjIjHdKS0QhImhdu_R_d9QkeH7A7
