Archaeological Institute of America

Digging through Walls: Enslaved Africans and the Building of Stratford Hall
2022-02-15 19:00 (America/Chicago) | WEBINAR (Valparaiso 2), Valparaiso, IN

Artifacts and Archaeological Processes: The Lives and Afterlives of Objects in Pompeii
2022-02-15 18:15 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | Penn Museum, 3260 South St, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Lecture by Catherine Baker, Bryn Mawr College
From the chipped corners of an ancient die to the mortar on a reused inscription, artifacts tell stories. Archaeologists reconstruct these object biographies, tracing the lives of ancient artifacts from their creation to their final deposition. In this talk, I explore the stories of some of the artifacts excavated by the Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia (University of Cincinnati), including dice and gaming pieces, statuettes, tools of potters, and even nails. These object biographies shed light not only on the way people first used these objects, but on their afterlives – the ways in which objects were discarded, recycled, and reused. These lives and afterlives of objects, in turn, shape the archaeology of a site, allowing us to trace the complex patterns of use, reuse, and discard which characterized the history of one neighborhood in the Roman city of Pompeii.
Hybrid Event. Register at Penn Museum for entry. Proof of vaccination with ID and mask required
https://446.blackbaudhosting.com/446/Artifacts-and-Archaeological-Processes-The-Lives-and-Afterlives-of-Objects-in-Pompeii?_ga=2.51919401.105441994.1643922754-977817837.1643922754.

Benin Bronzes in Context (Free Virtual Lecture)
2022-02-15 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Sarah Anita Clunis, Director of Academic Partnerships and Curator of African Collections, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University
In conversation with Diana DiPaolo Loren, Senior Curator, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University
The kingdom of Benin, a highly centralized state founded in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries in southwestern Nigeria, dominated trade with Europeans on the Nigerian coast from the late 1400s until the end of the 1900s. Ruled by a divine king, or Oba, the Benin kingdom relied on specialized guilds who created elaborate court regalia that adorned the palace of the Oba. Bronze plaques, ivory statuettes, and delicate coral-beaded items were used to establish status and validate the Oba’s power. In 1897 a British expeditionary force invaded Benin, plundered the palace, and burned it to the ground. Items linked to this expedition were then sent to museums around the world, including both the Harvard Art Museums and Harvard’s Peabody Museum, and are housed in their collections. In this program, Sarah Clunis will look at objects currently in the care of Harvard and discuss the way that these objects represent an iconographic and contextual story of trade, contact, and crossroads between cultures. Diana Loren will moderate a discussion after the presentation.
The bronze, ivory, and wooden artworks broadly known as the “Benin Bronzes” were taken from Benin City as part of the British Punitive Expedition of 1897 and dispersed to private collections and museums around the world. The Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology and Harvard Art Museums acknowledge the violence and trauma of the Expedition and understand that the presence of this cultural material in Western museums is experienced as continued injustice by descendent communities.
Presented by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology and the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture in collaboration with the Harvard Art Museums

Sex in the Ancient City
2022-02-13 15:00 - 16:30 (America/Chicago)
With the recent reboot of HBO’s classic, Sex and the City, some may be asking themselves, “I couldn’t help but wonder…(as Carrie often says in Sex and the City) what were attitudes about sex in the ancient Greek and Roman city?” Were there any Carries, Mirandas, Samanthas, or Charlottes of the ancient world? Join Dr. Dylan Rogers, a Classical Archaeologist from the University of Virginia to take a look at relationships, seduction, and flirtation, including sexual behaviors of men and women at Greek drinking parties, life in a brothel in Pompeii, the qualities that made a Roman emperor ‘naughty’, and more. Our discussion will be just in time for the feast of Saint Valentine, the patron saint of lovers.
What doesn’t go better with a talk about sex for Valentine’s Day than chocolate! Courtesy of Araya Chocolatiers, all attendees of the Zoom event will receive a digital coupon for 10% off the cost of their intensely-flavored handcrafted artisan chocolates. These may be shipped nationwide or picked up in person at their Houston location.

Creating an Archaeology Boot Camp at Your Site: The University of Pennsylvania Example
2022-02-13 14:00 - 15:30 (America/New_York) | Rye Free Reading Room, 1061 Boston Post Road, Rye, NY, 10580, United States
Cultural and educational institutions are still learning how best to overcome the limitations placed on our activities by the Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, archaeology has been drastically impacted by restrictions on international travel, and has had to find new ways to bring researchers, students, objects, and landscapes together in the study of the ancient world. Beyond the on-the-ground training that students receive by participating in international fieldwork, they have also missed out on important co-curricular learning: traveling on their own, working on a diverse team, navigating novel cultural experiences, and finding out if the ‘life’ of an archaeologist is for them.
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has a long history of both international fieldwork and excavation and student education. When confronted with another summer with no fieldwork opportunities, a team of conservators, faculty, and museum administrators developed a rigorous, on-site “Archaeological Bootcamp” that would provide Penn undergraduates with the skills that they would need in future ‘real’ fieldwork seasons. Using the collections, laboratories, and even the courtyard garden beds of the Penn Museum, the Bootcamp simulated fieldwork training in archaeobotany, field survey, ceramic analysis, digital archaeology, and field conservation, and brought in veteran archaeologists to talk about what it’s like to do fieldwork around the world. With aching backs, new friendships, and practical archaeological skills, these students will be ready to move into the field when the world reopens.
Tiballi devised the Archaeology Bootcamp program in summer 2021. She will discuss the potentials and limitations of the program for college, youth, and adult audiences. What resources (material, environmental, and human) are needed to ensure the success of such a program? What kinds of needs does it address, and will these needs change as we move into the 21st century?
Dr. Anne Tiballi is the Director of Academic Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. After completing her undergraduate degree in anthropology at Vassar College, she began graduate study at Binghamton University and performed her dissertation research on the archaeological materials from the Cemetery of the Sacrificed Women, Pachacamac, Peru, at the Penn Museum. Anne specializes in the analysis and interpretation of ancient textile materials, with a particular interest in the social dimensions of technology. Her field course on the analysis, reproduction, and field conservation of textiles from the prehistoric Andes has been held in Arequipa, Peru and at Bryn Mawr College. As Director of Academic Engagement, Anne works collaboratively with museum staff and university faculty to devise novel and effective ways to incorporate the Museum’s collections into the curriculum. She oversees student research fellowships, internships, work study, co-curricular programming, professionalization, and engagement initiatives. Anne is serving as Head of Collections, Research and Teaching at the History of Science Museum at Oxford University in 2022.

The Lost British Forts of Long Island
2022-02-13 | Hofstra University, Breslin Hall, 1000 Hempstead Turnpike (Hofstra University 105), Hempstead, NY, 11549, United States
David M. Griffin, independent researcher and author with a Degree in Architecture from Carleton University, Ottawa, will speak about his work on the research techniques and findings from forts and battles of Fort Slongo and Lloyds Neck.

Across the Ocean Blue: Evidence for Precolumbian Voyages and Contacts
2022-02-11 20:00 (America/New_York) | TBA (South Florida), Wellington, FL, United States

An Introduction to the Archaeology of Childhood
2022-02-11 19:00 (America/New_York) | TBA (Orlando 2), Orlando, FL, United States

Tracing Ancient Tunes: Reconstructing the Lost Melodies of Greek Tragedy
2022-02-10 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
Lecturer: Anna Conser (Whitman College)
This talk will introduce what is known about ancient music and the music of Greek tragedy in particular. It calls attention to the fact that the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were originally musicals, which featured spectacular song-and-dance sequences composed by the poets themselves. Unfortunately, no sheet music or choreographic records have been preserved for these tragedies, which survive only as texts. Professor Conser’s research seeks to reconstruct the lost song-and-dance sequences of these plays using a wide variety of ancient evidence, as well as new digital text-processing techniques. As a case study for this new approach, Professor Conser will discuss her reconstruction of the musical design of Euripides’ Medea. This spring, this research will be put into practice, with a production of Medea at Whitman College that will feature original musical settings of the Greek text.
This event will be hosted remotely over Zoom. To register in advance, please use the link provided below.

Why We Repatriate: 15 Years on the Arc of Restorative Justice at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science
2022-02-10 19:00 (America/Chicago)

At Home on Board: the Kyrenia Ship and the Goods of its Crew
2022-02-10 | TBA (Dallas-Ft. Worth 1), Dallas, TX, United States
Cesnola Lecture

Across the Ocean Blue: Evidence for Precolumbian Voyages and Contacts
2022-02-08 18:00 (America/New_York) | TBA (Knoxville), Knoxville, TN, United States

The Lost City of Sikyon
2022-02-08 17:00 (America/Phoenix)

POSTPONED to March Tallahassee Lecture 2 TBA
2022-02-08
Kershaw Lecture

Migrations, Marginality, and Maritime Landscapes: A New World Paleocoastal Occupation
2022-02-07 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles)

“How Humans Negotiated Environments in the Past”
2022-02-06 15:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Lisbon, Lisbon, 1000004, Portugal
It’s a new year and a great new slate of lectures! This winter, our lectures will be online using Microsoft Teams. We’re very excited to present Dr. Michelle Cameron, from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Her lecture, “How Humans Negotiated Environments in the Past,” will take place on Sunday, February 6th at 3:00 pm. The lecture is free and open to the the public. Pre-reregistration through this link is required: https://forms.office.com/r/y33WAK0k07. Please mark your calendars; we’ll look forward to seeing you soon!

Traveling Prehistoric Seas: Boats, the Oceans, and Archaeological Evidence for Precolumbian Voyages
2022-02-06 15:00 - 16:30 (America/Chicago)
Until recently, the idea that people could have traversed large
expanses of ocean in prehistoric times was considered
pseudoscience. But recent discoveries in places as disparate
as Australia, Labrador, Crete, California, and Chile open
the possibility that oceans were highways, not barriers, and
that earlier than the Spanish Age of Discovery, people
possessed the means and motives to traverse them.
In her talk, Kehoe draws from her 2016 book
Traveling Prehistoric Seas to explain the history of
seafaring boats and evidence for people crossing open
ocean from Middle Paleolithic (colonizing outer Indonesia
and Australia) through Polynesian explorations that
reached the Americas.

The Human Remains from the First Dynasty Subsidiary Burials at Abydos
2022-02-06 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California Chapter, and the Near Eastern Studies Department, University of California, Berkeley, invite you to attend a virtual lecture by Dr. Roselyn A. Campbell, Getty Research Institute:
The Human Remains from the First Dynasty Subsidiary Burials at Abydos
When: Sunday, February 6, 2022, 3 PM Pacific Time
Zoom Lecture. 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. Attendance is limited, so non-members, please send any registration requests no later than Friday, February 4.
Glenn Meyer
ARCE-NC ePublicity
About the Lecture:
The subsidiary burials surrounding the royal funerary complexes of the First Dynasty rulers at Abydos have piqued scholarly and public interest for well over a century. These subsidiary burials, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, contained the remains of men and women who seem to have been associated with the royal court. The quality of the grave goods within some of these graves, as well as statements by early excavators that most of the individuals interred were relatively young and seemed healthy, have sparked debate among scholars. Were the individuals in these subsidiary graves killed in a sacrificial ritual to accompany their deceased ruler into the afterlife, or were they simply interred around the royal burial as they died naturally over time? This talk will explore new data gathered from a study of the human remains that have been preserved from some of these subsidiary burials, shedding new light on the lives and deaths of these individuals at the birth of the Egyptian state.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Roselyn A. Campbell is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. She is a bioarchaeologist and Egyptologist, and has worked at archaeological sites throughout Egypt as well as in Peru, Ethiopia, Spain, and the western United States. Her research focuses on evidence for violence and trauma in the past, as well as the history of cancer in antiquity, and how these topics are relevant to the modern world.

Archaeology of Tattoos and Skin Art
2022-02-05 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Chicago)
Zoom lecture by Dr. Aaron Deter-Wolf, Tennessee Division of Archaeology.

The Scent of Status: Prestige and Perfume at the Bronze Age Palace at Pylos, Greece
2022-02-01 18:00 (America/New_York) | University of South Florida Tampa Campus, CPR 115 (Cooper Hall), Cooper Hall, Tampa, 33620
Howland Lecture

Sensing the Past: Sensory Experiences in Ancient Mesopotamia (a 4-D Presentation)
2022-01-30 11:00 (America/New_York)
Manton Lecture

Climate Change to Culture Change? The Case Study of the Copper to Early Bronze Age Transition in Iberia presented by Katina Lillios, PhD, University of Iowa
2022-01-29 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Denver)
Abstract:
How can we trace the relationship between climate change and culture change in the ancient past? A collaborative and interdisciplinary project coordinated by Katina Lillios, with Antonio Blanco-González, Brandon Lee Drake, and Jose Antonio López-Sáez, offered insights into this question through the lens of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE of Iberia. This project was the first to comprehensively examine of one of the major episodes of cultural change in later prehistoric Iberia from a comparative regional perspective and assess its relationship to the 4.2 ky BP climate event. In this talk, I summarize the available cultural, demographic and paleoenvironmental evidence for Iberia, and explore the diverse ways that the 4.2 ky BP event seems to have played out in different regions.
Professor Lillios is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Iowa. She received her BA in Archaeology and Art History from Boston University, and her PhD in Anthropology from Yale University. Her research has centered on the histories of the people who lived in Portugal and Spain from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age (4000-1000 BC), a dynamic period characterized by episodes of political centralization, devolution, and climate change. In this research, she brings together a concern for memory and object biographies to understand the ways that people of the past used objects and monuments of their own past, such as heirlooms and ancestral burials, to shape their futures. She recently authored the book The Archaeology of the Iberian Peninsula: From the Paleolithic to the Bronze Age (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
Please visit aiadenver.org to register

Maya Pyramids & Temples of Yucatan
2022-01-29
This tour is in the planning stages for January 2022. If you are interested in traveling to this region in the future and would like to be contacted when a tour becomes available, please call 800-748-6262 or email aia@studytours.org.
This exciting, nine-day holiday provides the best-paced itinerary available to see the sun-drenched Yucatan peninsula’s ancient sites, traditional Maya villages, and colonial architecture. Maya art and architecture abound, with visits to Chichén Itzá, Ek Balam, Uxmal, Dzibilchaltun, and more: iconic as well as off-the-beaten-path sites with soaring pyramids, distinctive temple complexes, and wonderful sculpture. There is free time to bird watch, shop for crafts, or relax, reflect, and enjoy our excellent accommodations. Enjoy two luxurious nights at the Mayaland Hotel (next to Chichén Itzá) and three at the Hacienda Uxmal (next to Uxmal). Maximum of just 12 guests.

SASA Mini Reading Group: An Introduction to Ancient Near-Eastern Music ‘Theory’: Understanding Musical Inscriptions
2022-01-27 15:00 - 16:00, 2022-01-20 15:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York)
Previous participation and previous knowledge not required.
For those new to this subject, the field of “Archaeo-Musicology” is engaged in the study of ancient music informed by archaeological finds. In the ancient Near-Eastern (Mesopotamia) the musical information is primarily deduced or retrieved from instruments, instrumental inlays, wall reliefs, and iconography. On occasion one will find information on cuneiform tablets that discuss some aspect of music and this Reading Group/Master Class will focus on some of these music ‘theoretical’ tablets.
In the following weeks we will be looking at the 3 ‘major’ (most cited) cuneiform tablets that inform scholars about ancient Near-Eastern music theory.
3-Week Text-In-Translation Reading Group
Thursdays @ 3 pm EST
Jan. 13th
Jan. 20th
Jan. 27th
Participants only need to register for each Reading Group once, you will receive links to our Live Syllabus where readings and discussions are posted in the confirmation email.
By RSVPing, you are agreeing that a recording of the event can be shared with others who RSVPed.

SASA Mini Reading Group: Harem Politics: Princesses with Power in the Ancient Middle East
2022-01-27 13:30 - 14:30 (America/New_York)
Previous participation and previous knowledge not required.
The reading group will explore how royal women participated in politics and court intrigue, focusing particularly on the city of Mari in ancient Syria (the wives and daughters of King Zimri-Lim) and the Achaemenid Persian empire. Readings would center on personal letters written to/by royal women as well as excerpts from the works of Greek historians like Herodotus and Ctesias. Topics for discussion include the use and role of women in diplomacy, competition and struggles for power between royal women (including palace conspiracies and murder plots), and what people in foreign lands such as the Greek city-states thought of royal women in the ancient Near East.
3-Week Text-In-Translation Reading Group
Thursdays @ 1:30pm EST
Jan. 13th
Jan. 20th
Jan. 27th
Participants only need to register for each Reading Group once, you will receive links to our Live Syllabus where readings and discussions are posted in the confirmation email.
By RSVPing, you are agreeing that a recording of the event can be shared with others who RSVPed.

Her Excellency Ambassador Maria Theofili from Greece celebrates International Archaeology Day
2022-01-25 18:30 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | The National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Parks S., New York, NY, 10003, United States
The Archaeology Committee is honoured to present The Permanent Representative of Greece to the United Nations. Her Excellency Ambassador Maria Theofili will address the audience at The National Arts Club in celebration of International Archaeology Day, begun by the Archaeological Institute of America. The focus of her unique presentation is the sacred island of Delos, the mythological birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. Located in the Aegean Sea, this wondrous UNESCO World Heritage site has been renowned since antiquity for its overwhelming beauty, cosmopolitan character, and inspiring culture.

SASA Mini Reading Group: Politics Past and Present: The (non)Differences
2022-01-24 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York)
Previous participation and previous knowledge not required.
Reading will focus around the Historians Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, and Tacitus, with appearances from Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca. Sessions will be structured roughly chronologically (5th century. Roman Republic, The Pricipate), examining change and continuity in political theory and analysis, considering the parallels with our own times.
Participants will receive an overview of the analytic approaches of ancient historians and political theorists to events and above all, the value of comparative study of the ancient world to illuminate just how relevant it really is for our lives, times, and therefore education.
3-Week Text-In-Translation Reading Group
Mondays @ 2pm EST
Jan. 10th
Jan. 17th
Jan. 24th
Participants only need to register for each Reading Group once, you will receive links to our Live Syllabus where readings and discussions are posted in the confirmation email.
By RSVPing, you are agreeing that a recording of the event can be shared with others who RSVPed.

VIRTUAL: AIA Annual Faculty Lecture: “Mixed multitudes”: Displacement and belonging in ancient Sicily, with Prof. Randall Souza (Seattle University)
2022-01-22 19:30 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
The inhabitants of the ancient Mediterranean were mobile, and many of them lived in or passed through the large island of Sicily, which sits between the eastern and western Mediterranean basins and nearly unites the continents of Europe and Africa. Some moved more voluntarily, others less so, and still others were relocated with no choice in the matter, expelled as refugees or enslaved and sold. These displacements stretched, reorganized, and dissolved existing communities, but also created new ones; moving people change the social and political landscape around them. Given the extent of human mobility in Sicily, urban centers on the island can be viewed less as static entities where stable communities automatically persisted, and more as contingent sites in which inherently fragile communities were continually re-imagined. In this talk Prof. Souza examines several key episodes of dislocation in order to illuminate gradual developments affecting citizenship and belonging in the context of high mobility. He will suggest that one of the principal effects of movement across territorial boundaries and the resulting interaction across social boundaries was to erode the island’s internal divisions. This process in turn left Sicily itself to assume greater relevance over time as a source of belonging.
Prof. Randall Souza is an Assistant Professor of History at Seattle University.
Please use this link to register and receive the Zoom invitation: https://washington.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJItd-Cuqj0vG927x1OnABEcst-g6PXloCnd

The Maritime Maya and the Proyecto Costa Escondida
2022-01-22 12:00 (America/New_York) | Building 51 (Social Sciences), University of North Florida, 1 UNF Drive, Jacksonville, FL, 32224, United States
