Archaeological Institute of America

The Treaty of Ramesses II with Hattusili III: Peace-making in the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean
2024-10-12 15:30 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Penn Museum, 3260 South Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
In-person lecture
Saturday, October 12, 3:30 pm EST
Penn Museum, Classroom 2
Speaker: Dr. Camilla Di-Biase-Dyson
Title: The Treaty of Ramesses II with Hattusili III: Peace-making in the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean
Abstract:
This paper gives background to the first attested peace treaty in world history, between Ramses II of Egypt and Hattusili III of Hatti (now Türkiye). This treaty survives in several copies, in two languages (Ancient Egyptian and Akkadian) and in two countries (Egypt and Turkey). This paper will explain some of the provisions of the treaty and also examine some of the treaty’s more unusual aspects, for instance, that its formation was not a direct consequence of conflict, and that not all of its articles are bilateral. It will also make some suggestions about under what conditions and in what location the treaty might have been forged.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Camilla Di Biase-Dyson is a Sydneysider with a passion for Ancient Egypt since childhood. After graduating with BA(Hons) and PhD degrees in Ancient History from Macquarie University (2000–2008) she moved to Berlin to conduct postdoctoral research in Egyptology and linguistics, first as a Fellow of the Excellence Cluster ‘Topoi: The Formation and Transformation of Space and Knowledge in Ancient Civilizations’ (2009–2010) and then with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2010–2012). Following this, she was Junior Professor for Egyptology at the Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany (2012–2019), then a Research Fellow at the University of Vienna (2019–2020). In April 2020 she moved back to Sydney to take up a Lectureship in Egyptology at Macquarie University.
Dr. Di-Biase Dyson is passionate about exploring how ancient texts and languages help us access ancient ways of thinking. Her current research focuses on metaphor in Ancient Egyptian language, as well as ancient medicine and manuscript studies and takes in object studies and body ontologies. Her approaches range from linguistics and cognitive science to literary analysis and anthropology and she is committed to utilising and expanding the tools of digital corpus analysis for ancient languages. Her case studies mainly focus on texts and materials from the Ramesside Period of Egyptian history, in the Late Bronze Age.
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Registration is NOT required. Lectures are FREE to ARCE Members, $7 for University of Pennsylvania Museum Members and UPenn Staff and Faculty, $5 for Students with ID, and $10 for the general public.
Light refreshments served starting at 3pm.
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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.

A Field of Their Own: Putting the Women of Egyptology in Their Place
2024-10-13 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Indiana
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 Dr. Kathleen Sheppard, Missouri University of Science and Technology:
A Field of Their Own: Putting the Women of Egyptology in Their Place
Sunday October 13, 2024, 3 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Room 56 Social Sciences Building, UC Berkeley
About the Lecture:
Book Talk – Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250284358/womeninthevalleyofthekings
A woman, to paraphrase Virginia Woolf, must have money and a site of her own if she is to do archaeology. Woolf was talking about writing fiction, but the point remains: women must be free from domestic cares, even just for a little while, if they would be professionally productive. The women who worked in archaeology around the turn of the twentieth century understood this situation keenly, and some were able to live out their freedom in a variety of ways. In this talk, the lecturer will (re)introduce several women in the history of Egyptology who carved out spaces of their own through excavation, patronage, and publication and who shaped the discipline with their expertise.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Kathleen Sheppard is a Professor in the History and Political Science department at Missouri S&T in Rolla, Missouri. She earned her MA in Egyptian Archaeology at University College London in 2002, and her PhD in History of Science from the University of Oklahoma in 2010. Her first book was a scientific biography of Margaret Alice Murray (2013) that focused on Murray’s life and career, both in and out of Egyptology. She has spent her whole career telling the stories of women in Egyptology. Her latest book, Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age (St. Martin’s Press, 2024) is a grand retelling of the history of Egyptology through the work that women did.
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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://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.

Lecture: The Archaeology of Prostitution and Clandestine Pursuits
2024-10-15 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Denver) | Pecos Trail Café, 2239 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, NM, 87505, United States
Lecture. Donna Seifert (Former president Society for Historical Archaeology). Case studies from various nineteenth-century sites where material culture reveals evidence of prostitution, including a brothel in Five Points—New York City’s most notorious neighborhood—and parlor houses a few blocks from the White House and Capitol Hill. Also Brothels in the American West are also looked at—in urban Los Angeles and in frontier sites and mining camps in Sandpoint, Idaho; Prescott, Arizona; and Fargo, North Dakota. The artifact assemblages found at these sites often contradict written records, allowing archaeologists to construct a more realistic and complicated picture of daily life for working-class women involved in commercial sex.

AIA Archaeology Hour with Solange Ashby: Ancient African Queens
2024-10-16 20:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Indiana
Join us at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific as the AIA-Pittsburgh Society hosts the second installment of the 2024-2025 AIA Archaeology Hour series!
Register or join now!

Archaeology Fair
2024-10-19 11:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | Marquette Regional History Center, 145 W Spring St, Marquette, MI, 49855, United States
This October the Marquette Regional History Center is joining hundreds of organizations around the world to celebrate International Archaeology Day. For the 12th year, our fair will provide a look at archaeology in our region and world-wide. Hands-on learning for all ages. Multiple booths both indoors and outdoors feature various displays and activities.
This year, we have a special presentation during the fair, at 11:30:
“Cosa: Excavations of a ‘Typical’ Latin Colony in Italy”
Archaeologist Melissa Ludke will present on the excavation of a Roman bath house. As an archaeological park and small town in Italy, Cosa has endured a long history of occupation from 273 BCE under the Romans to a small settlement during the Medieval period, and beyond. Join us at 11:30 to learn about the historical development of a colony that has been excavated since 1948. Ludke’s talk will touch on the history of the site, the archaeological exploration of various areas in the town, and ongoing excavations of a Roman bath by Florida State University. Working at this site since 2016, Ludke is currently participating in new investigations of a house and potential marketplace. She will present on exciting objects discovered at the site, including ancient coinage, which is one of her research specialties.
Register your booth to participate in our fair, up until October 11th! https://www.marquettehistory.org/archaeology-booth-reg.html

Archaeology and History of Spain
2024-10-19 18:30 - 19:30 (Europe/Madrid) | Viking Jupiter (open only to 700 booked guests), Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Lecture on the Viking Jupiter cruise ship while in harbor in Barcelona, Spain. Discussion of the archaeology and history of Spain from the Stone Age through the modern age. Lecture by the Secretary of the St. Louis Society of the AIA.

Virtual Symposium: Archaeology & Science
2024-10-20 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Chicago) | Zoom, Virtual, FL, 33155, United States
Join us for a free virtual talk on Sunday, October 20, at 10 AM Central. This Virtual Symposium is free and open to the public.
Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_GwcLqYTgTc-3mWwwipI9yg#/registration
ABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM:
In honor of International Archaeology Day, hear about the intersection of science, archaeology, and anthropolog

The Making of Pompeii: A behind-the-scenes look at the excavations of a Pompeian sub-elite neighborhood
2024-10-22 16:30 - 17:30 (America/New_York) | Higley Auditorium (Room 105), West College Street 100, Granville, Ohio, 43023, United States
Dr. Steven Ellis from the University of Cincinnati will be discussing his research into the archaeology of everyday life in ancient Pompeii.

Lecture: Communal Water, Invisible Labor: Modeling the Social Impact of Pompeii’s Street Fountains
2024-10-23 18:30 - 19:30 (America/Chicago) | Joseph Merrick Jones Hall 108, Tulane University, Freret Street, New Orleans, LA, 70118, United States
A lecture by Professor Matthew Notarian (Hiram College, OH)
Abstract: The remarkable preservation of the Roman city of Pompeii provides unprecedented insight into an aqueduct-fed urban water system. Visitors often marvel at the city’s network of public street fountains, but few consider the practical consequences of the tedious but essential labor required to transport water into living spaces. Fountains served as neighborhood hubs, channeling movement through streets and facilitating social interactions. Their distribution also influenced water accessibility, with severe implications for public health and socioeconomic status. The burden of water collection fell heaviest on those at the margins of Roman society – sub-elite women, children, and, especially, the enslaved – classes which are virtually invisible in the textual and visual record. This talk will present the results of a complex digital spatial model that sheds light on these issues at a household-level scale, as well as an ongoing project of 3D analysis that aims to quantify use-wear on public fountain basins. Together, they represent a significant first step toward repopulating Pompeii’s streets with indispensable but often forgotten laborers.

Archaeology of the Oyo Empire (West Africa): Chivalry, Colonies, and Household Politics in the Early Modern Period
2024-10-24 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Phoenix) | Zoom, Virtual, FL, 33155, United States
Between ca. 1650 and 2800, the Oyo Empire was the largest political formation in West Africa, south of the River Niger. Over the past twenty years, Akin Ogundiran has conducted archaeological research in the capital, colonies, and provinces of the empire to understand the strategies of Oyo expansion and the everyday lives of different segments of its population. In this talk, Ogundiran juxtaposes the materialities of military conquest, colonization strategies, and household politics to tell an intimate story of one of the most important imperial formations in Africa during the Early Modern Period. Here, the regional and multi-sided scope and the residential contexts of the archaeological research allow for a fine-scale understanding of how domesticity, gender, class, labor, technology, mobility, and the landscape were manipulated to fashion the Oyo Empire. In the process, ideas about personhood, family, and sexuality were also transformed. The archaeology of the Oyo Empire contributes to a truly global understanding of the Early Modern Period.

AIA Talk by Dr. Kathleen Sheppard: How Winning a Woman of Study Can Be in Early American Egyptology
2024-10-28 17:30 - 19:00 (America/Chicago) | Swallow Hall 101, University of Missouri, 101 Swallow Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 65211, United States
As Amelia Edwards and Kate Bradbury finished their lecture tour of the United States in 1891, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote: “Miss Edwards’ visit will do a great deal of good in teaching the men of America how learned and how winning a woman of study can be and in teaching the women of America what an authority in art, archaeology and history one of their sex can become” (March 19, 1891). Over the next few decades, two American women in particular seemed to take this to heart: Emma Andrews and Caroline Ransom Williams. Arguably influenced by the work of Edwards and Bradbury, both Andrews and Ransom Williams built and managed collections of artifacts that tens of millions of museum-goers have visited over the last 125 years. This talk will detail their lives and demonstrate the impact of women’s work in American Egyptology.

Gods, Warriors, and Stars: A Close Relationship in Chichén Itzá
2024-10-28 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
María Teresa Uriarte Castañeda, Researcher, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
Chichén Itzá—a World Heritage Site—is the most important archaeological record of the fusion between Maya and the so-called Toltec civilizations in the Yucatan Peninsula. The site’s monuments, dating to the 10th–15th centuries, showcase both Maya and foreign architectural elements, and have been the subject of multiple investigations and interpretations. In this lecture, María Teresa Uriarte Castañeda will discuss the columns and bas-relief sculptures from the Temple of Warriors, depicting deities, warriors, feathered serpents and other serpents, interacting with celestial bodies, such as the Sun, the Moon, and Venus. Uriarte’s analysis will highlight how this iconography reflects the political, social, and religious unrest of the Late Classic period in Mesoamerica (600–900 AD), and the new worldviews that developed during this period.
Free admission. Free event parking at the 52 Oxford Street Garage. Presented by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology and the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture in collaboration with the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and the Moses Mesoamerican Archive, Harvard University.

Radical Sovereignty: Documenting Indigenous Autonomy Across Indian Country During the Boarding School Era
2024-10-29 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Chicago) | Thurman J. White Forum Building, 1704 Asp Ave, Norman, OK, 73072, United States
Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the U.S. federal government engaged in a systematic project of conquest through civilization. A key facet of this imperial endeavor by the imposition of Western forms of architecture onto Indigenous landscapes, including day and boarding schools. These concrete structures were accompanied by assimilationist policies that imposed the English language, Christianity, sedentism, agriculture, nuclear households, and “civilized dress” onto Indigenous people. While day and boarding schools were part of an oppressive colonial system, these institutions also existed within a broader set of everyday place-making practices informed by Indigenous cultural values and goals.
Collectively, Native place-making practices represent what Laura Harjo calls “radical sovereignty”; spatial expressions of Indigenous worldviews that ensured community futurity. Drawing on archival evidence from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Jesse
H. Bratley collections at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and object-based interviews conducted with tribal members, I document acts of radical sovereignty on the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota and the Cheyenne and Arapaho reserve in Oklahoma. This comparative approach points to the central role of mobility and kinship networks in facilitating Lakota, Cheynne, and Arapaho autonomy and the collective survival of these communities.

Radical Sovereignty: Documenting Indigenous Autonomy Across Indian Country During the Boarding School Era
2024-10-29 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Chicago) | Indiana
Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the U.S. federal government engaged in a systematic project of conquest through civilization. A key facet of this imperial endeavor by the imposition of Western forms of architecture onto Indigenous landscapes, including day and boarding schools. These concrete structures were accompanied by assimilationist policies that imposed the English language, Christianity, sedentism, agriculture, nuclear households, and “civilized dress” onto Indigenous people. While day and boarding schools were part of an oppressive colonial system, these institutions also existed within a broader set of everyday place-making practices informed by Indigenous cultural values and goals.
Collectively, Native place-making practices represent what Laura Harjo calls “radical sovereignty”; spatial expressions of Indigenous worldviews that ensured community futurity. Drawing on archival evidence from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Jesse
H. Bratley collections at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and object-based interviews conducted with tribal members, I document acts of radical sovereignty on the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota and the Cheyenne and Arapaho reserve in Oklahoma. This comparative approach points to the central role of mobility and kinship networks in facilitating Lakota, Cheynne, and Arapaho autonomy and the collective survival of these communities.
Register online here: https://oklahoma.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUocOiupzMjGtSuPmwzxcxJQzs7cwZRFMfA

The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks and World Heritage
2024-10-30 19:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | Siegal Lifelong Learning Auditorium, Landmark Centre, 25700 Science Park Dr #100, Beachwood, 44122, United States
Ohio’s Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks are enormous earthen enclosures, many in precise geometric shapes, that were built 2,000 years ago by Native Americans known today as the Hopewell. Their creators designed the earthworks as places of ceremony, connecting them to the cosmos by aligning them with carefully observed movements of the moon and sun, including those of an 18.6-year lunar cycle. Dr. Brad Lepper (Ohio History Connection) and Chief Glenna Wallace (Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma) will discuss the history, function, astonishing complexity, and contemporary Indigenous views of the earthworks on the occasion of their recent designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site—the first in Ohio and 25th in the United States. Wallace and Lepper both participated in preparing the UNESCO nomination, the result of a multi-year effort by a broad group of partners.
THIS PROGRAM IS MADE POSSIBLE IN PART BY OHIO HUMANITIES, A STATE AFFILIATE OF THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES

“Hercules and Holy Water” (Professor Ann Glennie)
2024-10-31 19:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | College of the Holy Cross, Smith Labs 154 (Fauci Integrated Science Complex), College Street, Worcester, Massachusetts, 01610, United States
While in the common imagination, Hercules might be most well known for his heroic deeds and feats of strength, across the ancient Mediterranean he was also a deity closely associated with fresh water. In one of his canonical labors in Greece, he dug canals to redirect the Alpheus and Peneus rivers to clean out the notoriously filthy stables of Augeus. In yet another Greek labor, he cleared the deadly birds from the banks of the Stymphalian Lake to make this body of water and the surrounding countryside safe to its inhabitants once more. During his exploits in Italy, he was responsible for the creation of several freshwater springs across the peninsula. And even the story of his defeat of the monster Cacus in the area which would become Rome’s Forum Boarium, or cattle market, reveals his long term connection with the economically important Tiber River. At the colony of Cosa, founded by the Romans in southern Tuscany in 273 BCE, Hercules was also a crucial figure. This settlement had no natural source of water and therefore utilized rainwater harvesting to provide this vital resource to the colony. The colony’s chief temple, which had its own water cistern, appears to have been dedicated to Hercules, in part because of his freshwater associations, if not also for his association with salubrity via water.

New Hampshire Archeological Society Annual Meeting
2024-11-02 10:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | Manchester Community College – Student Union, 1066 Front St, Manchester, NH, 03102, United States
Zoom options available
Speakers will include:
William Griswold, Ph.D., retired National Park Service (NPS) archeologist. Owner of Hadley Woods Archaeological Services, LLC in Nashua, NH.. Reconstructing the Beginning of the second Revolutionary War battle of Saratoga
Mark Doperalski, NH State Archaeologist, Updates from SCRAP Work at Mollidgewock State Park
Kimberly Kulesza, Behavioral & Social Science Program Coordinator, Manchester Community College, Navigating Sacred Spaces: Cosmoeconomics and Religious Hybridization in Viking and Early Medieval Gotland
Bruce Bradley PhD., Principal Investigator, Wallace Ruin Project, Museum of Primitive Technology.Cortez, Colorado, Recent Developments at the Wallace Ruins Site

When Democracies Vote to Overthrow Themselves: Lessons from Classical Athens.
2024-11-07 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Rome) | John Cabot University – Room F.G.4 @ Frohring Campus, Lungotevere Raffaello Sanzio, Roma, Città metropolitana di Roma Capitale, 00153, Italy
Democracy most often ends not with a violent spasm, but with a vote.
Oligarchic challengers leverage their small numbers to coordinate dis-informing campaigns, hoping that enough citizens will withhold their support for democratic rule. Already in the fifth- and fourth-centuries BCE, Greek democracies experimented with strategies to overcome these problems, such as the Solonian law against political neutrality and tyrant-killing legislation.
This talk will demonstrate the continuing relevance of ancient political theory and practice to contemporary democratic politics.
About the speaker:
Prof. Robert Sobak (Bowdoin College, USA) is a Greek historian researching the emergence of collective intelligence among laborers in Democratic Athens.
The AIA has selected this talk as one of the “Alan Boegehold Lectures in Athenian Archaeology and Letters” for the academic year 2024/2025.

No Ordinary Dogs: Canine Behavior in Theban Tombs
2024-11-09 15:30 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Penn Museum, 3260 South Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
In-person lecture
Saturday, November 9, 3:30 pm EST
Penn Museum, Classroom 2
Speaker: Dr. Chelsea Kaufman
Title: No Ordinary Dogs: Canine Behavior in Theban Tombs
Abstract:
The wall scenes of the rock-cut Theban tombs of the New Kingdom are filled with richly painted imagery that captures the lives and beliefs of the people who built them, offering modern viewers a window through which to recognize and relate to a distant past. Depictions of familiar animals abound in tomb scenes, but perhaps no animal is more familiar to a modern viewer than the domestic dog. Scholars have long been drawn to and commented on canine imagery in Egyptian tombs, often remarking on their proficiency as hunting hounds and their status as beloved companions, many of which were endearingly named and shown alongside the tomb owner receiving offerings. But is there more to the icon than a testament to a cherished pet? Past approaches to dogs in Egyptian art have taken an anthropocentric view, focusing on what dogs tell us about the lives of people while ignoring the animal’s unique ethology. As this talk will show, applying an ethological approach to the images of dogs in tomb scenes can offer a nuanced understanding of the dog’s role within the scenes and the scene itself.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Chelsea L. Kaufman recently received her Ph.D in Near Eastern Studies from Johns Hopkins University. Her dissertation research centered on representations of domestic dogs in 18th Dynasty Theban tombs, applying an ethological approach to better understand the role that dogs played both in funerary art and society. Kaufman holds a master’s degree in archaeology from Yale and a bachelor’s degree in art from Moravian University, focusing on studio art, art history, and archaeology. She has 10 years of archaeological survey, excavation, and illustration experience within and outside of Egypt including the Mut Temple Precinct in Karnak, Deir el-Medina, the Outer Hebrides, and various historic and prehistoric sites throughout northeastern Pennsylvania and Alabama. Kaufman’s interests are varied, being involved in an ongoing experimental Egyptian metalworking project both before and during her dissertation research. Kaufman is currently working on publishing her dissertation and expanding on topics within it through a series of upcoming articles.
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Registration is NOT required. Lectures are FREE to ARCE Members, $7 for University of Pennsylvania Museum Members and UPenn Staff and Faculty, $5 for Students with ID, and $10 for the general public.
Light refreshments served starting at 3pm.
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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.

Harry’s Bracelet: a Canadian battlefield archaeology case study
2024-11-10 14:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | University of Ottawa Desmarais Bldg., DMS 1110, Laurier Avenue East 55, Ottawa, ON, K1N 6N5, Canada
A bracelet found in a slit trench in Normandy in 2014 led to the identification of Harry Edward Fox, a Canadian Gunner who fought during the Second World War and returned to Canada. Denis Renaud identified this soldier in 2017 and connected with his family. Harry passed away in 2005. This discovery is a case study for Battlefield Archaeology in Canada.

Age of Wolf and Wind: The Viking World and the Norse Settlement of the North Atlantic
2024-11-13 19:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | Siegal Lifelong Learning Auditorium, Landmark Centre, 25700 Science Park Dr #100, Beachwood, 44122, United States
The Vikings continue to fascinate us because their compelling stories connect with universal human desires for exploration and adventure. In Age of Wolf and Wind: Voyages through the Viking World, Dr. Davide Zori (Baylor University) argues that recent advances in excavation and archaeological science, coupled with a re-evaluation of oral traditions and written sources, inspire the telling of new and engaging stories that further our understanding of the Viking Age. Drawing upon his fieldwork experience across the Viking world, he proposes that the best method for weaving together these narratives is a balanced, interdisciplinary approach that integrates history, archaeology, and new scientific techniques. The dialogues he creates between these three separate data sets result in an entanglement of confirmation (texts, archaeology, and science affirming the same story), contradiction (texts, archaeology, and science telling incompatible stories) and complementarity (texts, archaeology, and science contributing mutually enriching stories). This optimistic yet critical treatment of the sources allows for a holistic picture of the Viking Age to emerge. This lecture presents the general arguments of Dr. Zori’s book before offering a case study of this approach from his research on Viking Age Iceland. He examines the Viking experience in Iceland through the discoveries and excavations of the Mosfell Archaeological Project (MAP) in Iceland’s Mosfell Valley. His team’s work brings together the disciplines of archaeology, history, saga studies, osteology, zoology, paleobotany, genetics, isotope studies, place-names studies, environmental science, and historical architecture. The decade-long research of MAP has led to the discovery of an exceptionally well-preserved Viking chieftain’s farmstead, including a longhouse, a pagan cremation site, a conversion-era stave church, and a Christian graveyard. The results of this interdisciplinary work offer a new view into the Viking Age in Iceland.

POSTPONED AIA Archaeology Hour with Alison Futrell: The People's Arena
2024-11-13 20:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York)
Apologies–this event is canceled. We will put information out about rescheduling when available!

“Women and Wine in the Ancient Mediterranean”
2024-11-14 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | Jepson Hall, Room 118, Richmond Way 221, Richmond, VA, 23226, United States
Anita Krause Bader Lecture in Mediterranean Archaeology, by Dr. Nadhira Hill (Assistant Professor of Classics and Director of Archaeological Studies, Randolph-Macon College)

Drawing on History: Creating the Graphic Adaptation of 1177 BC
2024-11-14 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | George Washington University, Funger Hall 103, 2201 G St NW, Washington, 20052, United States
How does a cartoonist adapt a scholarly work of history, specifically Eric H. Cline’s 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed? Prof. Eric H. Cline and award-winning illustrator Glynnis Fawkes describe the process of interpreting Eric’s text in comics. This meant making historical figures (such as Ramses III) speak, as well as imagining characters for whom we have no record offering commentary and opinions. Join the co-authors as they discuss the creation of 1177 B.C.: A Graphic History of the Year Civilization Collapsed (Princeton University Press).

Afghanistan's Heritage: Target in War and Engine of Peace, Dr. Laura Tedesco
2024-11-14 19:30 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | College of Charleston, Robert Scott Small Building, Room 235, College Way, Charleston, SC, 29401, United States
This presentation will reflect on efforts to preserve and protect Afghanistan’s cultural heritage. Utilzing the tools of diplomacy through the US Department of State and the practical steps involved in restoration of neglected and destroyed heritage, Dr. Laura Tedesco will discuss a little-known aspect of United States’ engagement in Afghanistan from 2001-2021, with insights on what is occurring now to Afghanistan’s cultural patrimony with the Taliban’s renewed authority.
See our society’s website https://aiasouthcarolina.wordpress.com/ for details of parking and accessibility.

Children in Context: How Mortuary Contexts Inform our Understanding of the Past
2024-11-16 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Chicago) | https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3615010853?pwd=[REDACTED]
Lecture by Dr. Erin Bornemann, Director of Information Management for the Colorado Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation. The mortuary record affords archaeologists a unique snapshot in time and space, providing further information surrounding the larger social context of death and burial in archaeological contexts that are often not discernible from other non-burial settings. Studies of such contexts provide material evidence for objects the deceased may have used in life, but more certainly for objects that the living found significant to include with the deceased in their final resting place. This lecture will present archaeological case studies based on the author’s research in Coastal California and Sudan that demonstrate cross-cultural differences in the expression of death and burial, with a specific focus on an underrepresented portion of most burial populations: children. Using lenses of materiality, personhood, and childhood, this lecture will discuss how these two cultural spheres—vastly different in time, space, and material culture—took great care in the burials of children in their communities, and how these burial contexts can inform our knowledge regarding the ascription of personhood in these societies.

Archives in the Crocodile: The Tebtunis Crocodile Papyri As the Missing Link between Ptolemaic and Roman Notarial Practices
2024-11-17 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Indiana
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 Leah Packard-Grams, UC Berkeley:
Archives in the Crocodile: The Tebtunis Crocodile Papyri
As the Missing Link between Ptolemaic and Roman Notarial Practices
Sunday November 17, 2024, 3 PM Pacific Standard Time
Room 56 Social Sciences Building, UC Berkeley
This in-person lecture will not be virtual or recorded.
No registration is required for the lecture.
About the Lecture:
One of the most important finds of Egyptian papyri was discovered entirely by accident. An Egyptian workman (whose name the excavators do not report) broke open a crocodile mummy he had found while digging, and beneath the linen mummy bandages were hidden papyrus archives that reveal the history of the “lost century” of ancient Egypt. The documents found stashed inside the 36 votive crocodile mummies at the site of Tebtunis are everyday papers, but their value and uniqueness is hard to overstate: The texts are from the 1st century BCE, a time when Egypt’s documentary record plummets. In this century, Egypt was in its last decades of native rule under Cleopatra’s father Ptolemy XII, and the Roman Republic was peering at the bounty of Egypt with an eye toward conquest. The archives in the Tebtunis crocodiles show a glimpse of everyday life in this period of uncertainty, offering insights into the economic conditions and state-mandated notary practices of the lost century of Egypt’s history.
These crocodile papyri have never been examined in a holistic way that considers their archaeological assemblage of votive artifacts, the full extent of the subarchives, or the importance of the crocodile temples to the documents themselves. This is precisely what this project proposes to remedy.
About the Speaker:
Leah Packard-Grams an interdisciplinary ancient historian, papyrologist, and archaeologist in UC Berkeley’s interdisciplinary program (AHMA) currently writing her dissertation on the topic of today’s lecture. Her primary interests include Greek and Demotic papyrology, the archaeology of Greco-Roman Egypt, and the materiality of ancient textual artifacts. She is part of two excavations in Egypt (El Hibeh with UC Berkeley + Amheida with NYU). She is passionate about diversifying the field of ancient history to include those accounts of people who have been historically marginalized, and strives to bridge the disciplinary divides that artificially separate archaeology, papyrology, and Egyptology.
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://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.

Lecture: Zuni Region in the Post-Chacoan Era.
2024-11-19 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Denver) | Pecos Trail Café, 2239 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, NM, 87505, United States
Lecture by Keith Kintigh (Arizona State University). The Chaco Era has received a tremendous amount of archaeological consideration over the last 45 years. Far less attention has been paid to understanding the organization of northern Southwestern societies following the collapse of Chaco–a time was once viewed as a dark age, a time of cultural backsliding. However, imposing sites with Chaco-inspired public architecture provide evidence of large communities, dating between A.D. 1200 and 1275, that laid the organizational foundations of well-known Pueblo IV towns. We excavated portions of two such Zuni-area settlements and did extensive systematic survey around those two sites and a third, Spier 81. The Hinkson Site has 32 residential room blocks surrounding a great house complex that includes an unroofed, oversize great kiva, a nazha, and roads. The Hinkson site appears to be the center of a 250 square kilometer community with 70 room blocks and nearly 900 rooms. The Los Gigantes Site in the El Morro Valley has similar expressions of public architecture but many fewer roomblocks in the immediate vicinity. Recognition of these multi-room block communities with public architecture permits a rethinking of post-Chacoan, Ancestral Pueblo social organization south of Chaco and provides a more plausible bridge between the Chacoan and Pueblo IV periods in the Zuni region.

Beyond the stone giants: an isotopic perspective on life and death of the people buried at Mont’e Prama
2024-11-19 19:30 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Davidson College, 315 North Main Street, Semans Auditorium, Belk Visual Arts Center, Davidson, NC, 28036, United States
November 19, 2024
7:30 p.m. ET
Davidson College
Belk Visual Arts Center 117
Free and open to the public
Luca Lai, “Beyond the stone giants: an isotopic perspective on life and death of the people buried at Mont’e Prama”
About the lecture:
The accidental 1974 discovery of tens of fragmentary statues at Mont’e Prama, in central-western Sardinia, led to one of the most unexpected discoveries in recent Mediterranean archaeology: A unique necropolis with thousands of fragments of stone warriors and athletes representing one of the earliest examples of life-sized 3D figures west of the Aegean.
After a brief summary of the monumental aspects and the main interpretations of the site’s meaning, the talk will explore the less-publicized insights into the chronology, burial ritual, health, diet, and mobility as they begin to take shape from mortuary archaeology, osteology, and especially the isotopic analyses of their bones. This will also provide an opportunity to discuss the site’s role in today’s public debates surrounding the archaeology of the Nuragic culture and its special place in shaping modern Sardinian identity.
About the speaker:
Luca Lai, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UNC Charlotte, specializes in stable isotopes, Western Mediterranean prehistory and particularly Sardinia, and human-environment interactions. He has conducted research on paleodiet and paleoclimate in prehistoric Sardinia from the fifth through the first millennium BCE, focusing on long-term continuity and change, and on differential access to resources based on social status and gender. He grew up in Sardinia and has also lived in Ireland, the US, England, and Lesotho. He has worked on favoring the dissemination of archaeology, culture and current events awareness with special attention to the perspectives of minorities.

Serpent Mound - An Icon of Ancient Ohio
2024-11-23 10:30 - 12:00 (America/New_York) | Science Center Auditorium (SC 114) at The University of Dayton., 450 East Stewart St, Dayton, OH, 45409, United States
The second presentation in the Archaeological Institute of America Dayton Society’s 2024-2025 Lecture Series presented by Dr. Brad Lepper, Senior Archaeologist World Heritage Program, Ohio History Connection
Serpent Mound in Adams County, Ohio is one of the largest and most spectacular earthen sculptures in the world. The age of the serpent is a subject of much current debate with some archaeologists arguing that it was built by the Adena culture at around 300 B.C.E. and others favoring the Fort Ancient culture at around 1100 C.E. Although much about Serpent Mound still is shrouded in mystery, ancient cave paintings in Missouri may provide a key to unlocking some of its secrets.
This lecture is scheduled to take place in person in the Science Center Auditorium (SC 114) at The University of Dayton.
For a campus map with building and parking information visit https://udayton.edu/map/
Thanks to the Archaeological Institute of America’s Lecture Program and its Dayton Society members this lecture is free and open to the public.
