Archaeological Institute of America

In the Shadow of Egypt’s Last Pyramid: Uncovering the Ahmose Cemetery and Its Historical Implications
2024-09-15 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 Emily Smith-Sangster, Princeton University:
In the Shadow of Egypt’s Last Pyramid:
Uncovering the Ahmose Cemetery and Its Historical Implications
Sunday September 15, 2024, 3 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Room 175 Social Sciences Building, UC Berkeley
This in-person lecture will be recorded for later publication on YouTube.
About the Lecture:
In early 2023, the Abydos South Project (ASP) began its inaugural season working on a plot of land to the local north of the Ahmose Pyramid. The goal of the season was to explore this area of the concession in the hopes of better understanding its use history. This area, previously unexcavated save for shallow test trenching in 1966 by the EAO, and surface collection in 1993 by the Ahmose and Tetisheri Project, had been identified as the possible location of the Ahmose Pyramid Town.
ASP’s excavations, however, discovered that this area was, in fact, a large elite necropolis used for an exceedingly brief period of time. While analysis is still in progress, it is clear that this discovery offers significant data that will help us develop our understanding of expressions of elite agency and identity in the cemeteries of Abydos, while also allowing us to further contextualize elite activity at this site within the wider history of the early New Kingdom.
This lecture will discuss these excavations and resulting discoveries, while also highlighting the impact this discovery will have on our understanding of the Ahmose period at Abydos and beyond.
About the Speaker:
Emily Smith-Sangster is a Ph.D. Candidate in Egyptian Art and Archaeology at Princeton University and Associate Director of the Abydos South Project. Her dissertation investigates the construction and expression of post-mortem identity during the early New Kingdom at Abydos, with a particular focus on the Ahmose Cemetery. Her work interacts with themes of landscape, sensorialism, gender, and embodiment.
————-
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.

Reports from the Field
2024-09-16 17:30 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Doe Library 308 A, UC Berkeley Campus, Berkeley, California, United States
We are pleased to begin our programming this year by hearing from UC Berkeley graduate students who have spent part of the past year working on archaeological projects at various sites around the world. Leah Packard-Grams will discuss her work in Egypt over the winter at the site of Amheida, a Roman town in the remote Dakhla Oasis in the Western Desert, and specifically will focus on her work with ceramics, translation of ostraca, and a larger interest in writing in the town. Tanya Bertone will discuss the 2024 field season of the Clear Lake Archaeological Project (CLAP), a low-cost summer field school in Clearlake, California. Sandra Oseguera will discuss her 2024 archaeological field season in San Juan Luvina, Oaxaca, focusing particularly on three of the project’s objectives: strengthening ties with the Indigenous community, establishing a collaborative methodology for a long-term archaeological project, and collecting soil samples.

The Galisteo Basin as a Multicultural Landscape
2024-09-17 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Denver) | Pecos Trail Café, 2239 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, NM, 87505, United States
Lecture. Eric Blinman (former director Museum of New Mexico, Office of Archaeological Studies). Puebloan peoples are stereotyped under a single label, which is a profound injustice to their rich cultural diversity. This diversity also implies the existence of distinct histories, and the unique setting of the Galisteo Basin provides an opportunity to explore these histories. The uniqueness of the Galisteo Basin is largely due to its susceptibility to climate change and the interaction of the environment with human economies. Tiwa, Tewa, Tano, Towa, and Keres cultural groups were well established in north central New Mexico at the beginning of the twelfth century, enjoying a stable climate pattern that supported a cultural florescence in the Four Corners region. Drought and a change in the monsoon rainfall pattern in the mid-to-late 12th century disrupted the stable cultural geography, and the Galisteo Basin was opened to agricultural homesteading. By the mid-twelfth century, more than five generations before the Mesa Verde abandonment, immigrants began colonizing the Basin. More than 200 years of conflicts-of-interest and conflict ensued, resulting in the 15th century formation of the Galisteo Basin Pueblos, and giving form to the cultural diversity encountered during European colonization.

The reception of ancient Egypt in the medieval Muslim world
2024-09-17 19:30 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Davidson College, 315 North Main Street, Semans Auditorium, Belk Visual Arts Center, Davidson, NC, 28036, United States
The Ann Santen Endowed Lecture
Okasha El Daly, “The reception of ancient Egypt in the medieval Muslim world”
Tuesday, September 17
7:30 – 9:00 PM
Davidson College
Visual Arts Center VAC-117 Semans Lecture Hall
These lectures are sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America, with funding from the Davidson College Public Lectures Committee and the departments of Art, Classics, Educational Studies, and History.
About the lecture:
Contrary to the prevailing view that the conversion of Egyptians first to Christianity and then Islam ended interest in their own heritage, they continued to study their own past with great pride. Many medieval Arab scholars visited Egypt to study its heritage and ancient scripts. This interest in ancient Egyptian scripts led to many scholarly attempts to decipher them. Here is a brief study of the motivations behind their interest and the degrees of their success in the decipherment and understanding of ancient Egypt. Nearly all the writers interested in Egyptian hieroglyphs were alchemists; many were also called Sufis or Mystics (for example, Jabir, Dhu Al-Nun, and Ibn Waḥshiyah). The fame of Egypt as the land of science, wisdom, and mysticism created a welcoming environment for the reception of ancient Egyptian thought and arts among medieval Muslim scholars and the general public. This medieval Muslim reception fills a gap of about a thousand years in the history of Egyptology.
About the speaker:
Dr. Okasha El Daly specializes in the history, art, religion, and languages of Egypt from the birth of its civilization to its contemporary history and current affairs. He has served as Inspector of Antiquities in the Giza Pyramids Area, worked as a guide and lecturer in Egypt, and lectured on the AIA’s national lecture circuit. He has directed several international projects, including the Foundation for Science, Technology, and Civilisation in the UK and the recent Qatar-Sudan Archaeological Project. His book, Egyptology: The Missing Millennium (2005), shows that medieval scholars in Egypt and beyond were as keen as we are to explore ancient Egyptian sciences and arts.
These lectures are sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America, with funding from the Davidson College Public Lectures Committee and the departments of Art, Classics, Educational Studies, and History.
Individuals can support us by joining the Archaeological Institute of America for $55 (students $30), which includes a subscription to Archaeology magazine. Be sure to join Society 333!
If you would like to make a cash contribution to our local society, please contact the treasurer.
Society 333 Board Members
President:
Susan Walker, susan.walker.books@gmail.com
Vice President
Joey Noto, joey_mets@yahoo.com
Secretary:
Gypsy Price, gypsycpriceufl@gmail.com
Treasurer:
Annie Truetzel, antruetzel@davidson.edu
Program Coordinator:
Peter Krentz, pekrentz@davidson.edu
Board Member At-Large:
Janet Levy, jelevy@charlotte.edu

King Richard III: The Resolution of a 500 Year-Old Cold Case
2024-09-19 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84120684037?pwd=[REDACTED]
Dr. Turi King will share the Grey Friars project, aimed at finding and validating the remains of Richard III.

1177 BC and After: The Collapse and Survival of Civilizations
2024-09-21 15:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Penn Museum, 3260 South St, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
In-person lecture
Saturday, September 21 at 3:30 pm EST
Penn Museum, Rainey Auditorium
In collaboration with the Dept. of Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World, UPenn
A short reception will follow the lecture
Speaker: Dr. Eric Cline
Lecture Topic: 1177 BC and After: The Collapse and Survival of Civilizations
Abstract:
For more than three hundred years during the Late Bronze Age, from about 1500 BC to 1200 BC, the Mediterranean region played host to a complex international world in which Egyptians, Mycenaeans, Minoans, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Cypriots, and Canaanites all interacted, creating a cosmopolitan and globalized world-system such as has only rarely been seen before the current day. It may have been this very internationalism that contributed to the apocalyptic disaster that ended the Bronze Age. When the end came, as it did after centuries of cultural and technological evolution, the civilized and international world of the Mediterranean regions came to a dramatic halt in a vast area stretching from Greece and Italy in the west to Egypt, Canaan, and Mesopotamia in the east. Large empires and small kingdoms, that had taken centuries to evolve, collapsed rapidly.
While the centuries following the Late Bronze Age Collapse in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean were a time of catastrophe, they were also a time of rebirth and resilience — it was less of a Dark Age and more of a reboot for many of the societies which were affected. While there are examples of failure to thrive or even to survive in some cases, others managed to adapt and transform. In effect, we have eight case studies of what to do (and what not to do) in the event of a systems collapse, ranging from the Assyrians to the Egyptians to the Mycenaeans and others in between. We will focus on the people and places that emerged from the ashes, highlighting some of the events and developments that took place in Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and the Levant. We will also consider whether there are any relevant lessons to be learned from this dramatic story of resurgence and revival, especially considering what is going on in our world today.
Speaker Bio:
Eric H. Cline is Professor of Classics, History, and Anthropology, the former Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and the current Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at George Washington University, in Washington DC. A National Geographic Explorer, NEH Public Scholar, Getty Scholar, and Fulbright Scholar with degrees from Dartmouth, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania, he is an active field archaeologist with more than 30 seasons of excavation and survey experience in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, Greece, Crete, and the United States, including ten seasons at Megiddo (1994-2014), where he served as co-director before retiring from the project in 2014, and another ten seasons at Tel Kabri, where he currently serves as Co-Director. He is the author or editor of 20 books and nearly 100 articles; translations of his books have appeared in nineteen different languages. Among them are Three Stones Make a Wall: The Story of Archaeology; Digging Deeper: How Archaeology Works; 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed and (with Glynnis Fawkes) 1177 BC: A Graphic History of the Year Civilization Collapsed; and After 1177 BC: The Survival of Civilizations (all Princeton). He is a member of the Washington DC chapter of ARCE.
***************************
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.
****************************
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.

AIA Archaeology Hour with Chip Colwell: On the Origins of Stuff
2024-09-25 20:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | PA
Join us at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific for the first lecture of the 2024-2025 AIA Archaeology Hour series!
Register or join now!

Virtual Symposium: A Bloom of Perpetual Newness: The Colors of Ancient Greek and Roman Sculpture
2024-10-01 18:00 - 19:00 (America/Chicago) | https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_VPhQwc0oTyGdFIy6zd6SIw#/registration
Join us for a virtual symposium on October 1 at 6 PM Central (RSVP required). Giovanni Verri, Conservation Scientist at the Art Institute of Chicago, will present his recent investigations and newest research into color on ancient statues. (This symposium will not be recorded)
REGISTER HERE: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_VPhQwc0oTyGdFIy6zd6SIw#/registration
ABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM:
It is well-established that ancient sculpture was painted, and that adding color was a finishing touch of artistic creation, with an immediate impact on ancient viewers. However, many questions remain about the extent of applied color. We do not fully understand the original appearance of most ancient sculptures. Dr. Verri will share insights into how ancient painters created their masterpieces, revealed by his research using visible-induced luminescence imaging. Dr. Verri’s research makes visible pigments that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye, yielding important new discoveries.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Giovanni Verri is a conservation scientist at the Art Institute of Chicago, and a leading researcher investigating the pigments applied to ancient sculptures. He holds a Ph.D in physics from the University of Ferrara, Italy, and an MA in conservation from the Courtauld Institute on Art in London. In 2007, he developed an imaging technique called visible-induced luminescence imaging. Using this new technique, he has mapped the presence of Egyptian blue, a very common blue pigment in antiquity.

Ballintubber Bonds: Field Schools and Community Archaeology and Education In Ireland
2024-10-03 19:30 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Butler University, Sunset Avenue, Indianapolis, IN, 46208, United States
This presentation discusses the community archaeology aspect of the Castles in Communities Archaeological Field School and Research Project (CIC), in Ballintubber, County Roscommon, Ireland. While the primary site of the excavation is Ballintubber Castle, a 13th century castle, the excavation also conducts archaeological surveys and history projects at the request of the Ballintubber community. In previous years, CIC surveyed and mapped the cemetery, creating a digital map in ArcGIS as well as a database of all burials within the graveyard. In the summer of 2024, CIC undertook the next step in our survey of the 17th century and modern cemeteries in Ballintubber, the planning and creation of two interpretive signs, both of which include a map.
This is part of a larger initiative of CIC to further engage with the Ballintubber community by fostering positive, scholarship based interactions between archaeology professionals/students and the Ballintober community. This presentation will highlight the Ballintubber Graveyard Project, field school education, and community engagement that CIC undertook during the 2024 field season, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the project, and how we plan to continue in the 2025 field season.

The Archaeology of Tenochtitlan: An Overview
2024-10-04 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Leonardo López Luján, Director, Proyecto Templo Mayor; Senior Research Professor, National Institute of Anthropology and History, Mexico City
The Proyecto Templo Mayor of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) was created in 1978 after the discovery of a huge monolith depicting Coyolxauhqui, the Aztec moon goddess. Since then, other impressive public monuments and religious buildings have been discovered in downtown Mexico City in the area occupied by the sacred precinct of Tenochtitlan. Archaeologists recently uncovered the largest Aztec sculpture ever found—of the earth goddess Tlaltecuhtli. After providing an overview of the history of archaeology in Mexico City, Leonardo López Luján will undertake a formal, iconographic, and symbolic analysis of the Tlaltecuhtli stone to unveil its functions and meanings. He will also describe the exceptionally rich offerings buried under this sculpture as well as the possible presence of a royal tomb at the foot of the Templo Mayor.
Free admission. Free event parking at the 52 Oxford Street Garage. Cosponsored by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, the Moses Mesoamerican Archive, Harvard Divinity School, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, and the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture.

“The Discovery of and Excavations at Eyreville. A 17th century Plantation Site on Virginia’s Eastern Shore”
2024-10-10 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | Jepson Hall, Room 109, 221 Richmond Way, Richmond, VA, 23173, United States
Lecture by Michael Clem (Virginia Department of Historic Resources), in celebration of Virginia Archaeology Month and International Archaeology Day.

Archeology in Pajamas: Virtual Lecture Series
2024-10-10 18:30 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | PA
The Arkansas Archeological Survey and Arkansas Archeological Society are co-hosting a new Virtual Lecture Series, called “Archeology in Pajamas,” from Fall 2024 through Spring 2025. Have you been interested in attending a talk but weren’t wanting to travel far distances, battle inclement weather, or leave the house because you aren’t feeling up to coming to an in-person talk? Then, this virtual Zoom lecture series is for you! We have a wide range of topics presented by speakers from varied parts of the country, so there is sure to be something for everyone. To attend, please register using the QR code on the attached flyer, or by clicking the Zoom registration link. These lectures are free and open to the public; anyone is welcome to (virtually) attend. You will need to individually register for each talk, and more information about each will be released as the dates approach in new announcements.
Our first webinar, on Thursday, October 10th, will feature Dr. “Liz” Ibarrola, who will be presenting “Rising Tides: Climate Change and the Untold Stories of Fort Mose.” Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose was a small, fortified settlement founded in 1738 by the Spanish governor of East Florida and populated by emancipated Africans, many of whom had escaped slavery in the adjacent British colonies. The fort, and its surrounding town and agricultural fields, was a manifestation of the freedom offered to enslaved people in Florida under the Spanish. Today invisible to the untrained eye and tucked away in a small state park, Fort Mose reflects the little known but central role played by freedom-seeking Africans in the early history of Florida. Furthermore, the threats to heritage preservation currently faced at the site highlight the ways in which social marginalization of Afro-diasporans has continuously impacted the site. Fort Mose was vulnerable by design, and while today recognized for its symbolic role in the colonial era, it is threatened not only by rising sea levels and increased storm activity, but also Florida’s history of anti-blackness.
Register with this Link: https://uark.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kBxXcuFeSqGzJ-2hRQPCyg

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 St, 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.
***************************
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.
****************************
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) | PA
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.
———-
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) | PA
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, 4985 SW 74th Court, Miami, 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, 4985 SW 74th Court, Miami, 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) | PA
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.
