Archaeological Institute of America

“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.

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

“When Informants Become Knowledge Producers: Rethinking Great Zimbabwe”
2024-10-30 12:30 - 13:30 (America/New_York)
Lecture by Prof. Shadreck Chirikure, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford: Using the lenses of insurgent scholarship, this paper addresses itself to a contradiction that characterised southern African archaeology from the 1980s and has residuals in the present. Archaeology in Africa’ southern third, like elsewhere, was introduced as a tool of empire. The first westerners (antiquarians) to encounter Great Zimbabwe speculated that it was exotic in origin because Africans lacked capacity to make such a unique achievement. Professional archaeologists such as Gertrude Caton-Thompson overturned this exotic origins speculation. Interestingly, both antiquarians and professional archaeologists relied on local informants to explain features and identify material culture at Great Zimbabwe and related sites. Both groups collected ethnographies and oral traditions from African informants who were never mentioned by name in publications. The first cohort of homegrown archaeologists emerged in the 1980s when Zimbabwe achieved independence. Inevitably, some of the interpretations by established western archaeologists came under challenge. In defence, some professional archaeologists insinuated that indigenous archaeologists did not know features they were excavating. Ironically, they provided information used by western archaeologists to interpret the same features! What new meanings emerge when experiential knowledge is combined with scientific approaches to reignite a homegrown understanding of Great Zimbabwe? We use the results of new excavations and scientific work performed at Great Zimbabwe over the past ten years, to develop new interpretations of everyday life, urbanism and economic connections at various scales.

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

Of Cities and Landscapes: Results from the Polatlı (Türkiye) Landscape Archaeology and Survey Project (PLAS)
2024-10-29 18:30 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Penn Museum, 3260 South St, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Presented by Asst. Prof. Müge Durusu-Tanriover, Temple University
Polatlı Landscape Archaeology and Survey Project (PLAS) is a regional survey covering the district of Polatlı in Ankara (the capital of Türkiye), primarily known for its first millennium BCE archaeological heritage featuring the Phrygian capital, Gordion. Since its inception in 2019, PLAS has aimed to shed light on the relatively under-studied Bronze Age in this region, with a particular focus on investigating the Hittite Empire’s imperial strategies along its western border. In this talk, I will present the results of four seasons of fieldwork conducted between 2019 and 2023.

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.

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.

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.

Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East Tours Led by Harvard Students
2024-10-27 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York) | Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, 6 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Available during the Harvard academic year Sundays at 1:00 pm, October 6, 2024–April 27, 2025. See blackout dates.*
*Blackout dates: December 1, 2024–January 26, 2025; and March 16–23, 2025.
This free tour, led by Harvard students, explores the Mediterranean Marketplaces: Connecting the Ancient World exhibition and how the movement of goods, peoples, and ideas around the ancient Mediterranean transformed the lives and livelihoods of people at all levels of society. Touch replicas and smell “ancient” scents as the students bring the past alive.
Visitors may drop in at the scheduled times. No reservation is required. Tours meet in the lobby and last approximately 45 minutes.
Tours for groups of ten or more may be scheduled at other times. Tours may be available by advance request in these languages: Hindi, Bengali, and Mandarin.

International Archaeology Day Double-Header ("Merchants and Mercenaries: Greeks in Egypt in the Late Period")
2024-10-26 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Denny Hall, Room 112, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Please join us for a double-header of talks presented by Prof. Camille Reiko Acosta in celebration of International Archaeology Day! In this second talk, Prof. Acosta will be speaking on “Merchants and Mercenaries: Greeks in Egypt in the Late Period” on Saturday October 26th at 2:00 pm (Denny 112 and on zoom). These talks are sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America, the Puget Sound Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, and the Department of Classics at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Merchants and mercenaries: Greeks in Egypt in the Late Period
2024-10-26 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | University of Washington, Denny Hall 112, Spokane Ln, Seattle, WA, 98105, United States

Exploring garbage: A Garbology Journey at Stadsmissionens Second Hand in Kalmar, Sweden
2024-10-26 13:00 - 15:00 (Europe/Stockholm) | Stadsmissionens Second Hand, Amerikavägen 1, Kalmar, Kalmar, Sweden
Garbonomix’s garbologists are studying and analyzing the garbage bags produced by the café and kitchen at Stadsmissionens Second Hand in Kalmar City, Sweden. Stadsmissionens Second Hand is a charity focused on a circular economy, offering secondhand items for sale and food for visitors. The kitchen also provides meals for the staff. Kalmar, located in southeastern Sweden, ranks first in the country for per capita waste production, particularly food waste. During the visit, visitors will have the opportunity to observe the process of documenting and studying waste by the garbologists and learn sustainable practical strategies for reducing food waste.

Salem Chapel Guided Tour
2024-10-26 13:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | Salem Chapel, 92 Geneva St., St Catharines, Ontario, L2R 4N2, Canada
Our chapter is organizing an IAD event at the Salem Chapel in St Catharines, Ontario. The Salem Chapel was an important centre of abolitionist and civil rights activity, and was the cornerstone of a growing community of African-American refugees from the United States. The most famous and celebrated member of the church was Harriet Tubman, who lived in the area from 1851 to 1858, and led many fugitives to freedom via the Underground Railroad (UGGR) to St. Catharines, Ontario.
Salem Chapel was designated a National Historic Site in 1999, and is marked outside by several historical markers and a bust of Tubman. The heritage value of this church resides in its exceptional associations with the anti-slavery movement and the early black community to which it bears witness, as illustrated by the church with its auditory-hall form, typical of early African Canadian churches. A provincial historical plaque to Tubman was joined by a civic heritage marker concerning the building. Since then, the national Historic Sites and Monuments Board has erected two federal plaques: one to the chapel as a national historic site, the other to Tubman as a national historic person. Come join us to to appreciate this important historic monument.

Unearthing St. Mary's 1634 Fort
2024-10-26 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York) | Johns Hopkins University, GilmanHall50, Baltimore, MD, 21206, United States
St. Mary’s Fort, the first fortification built by Maryland colonists upon arrival in 1634
Discovered in 2018 after a nearly century-long search
Archaeological work has revealed intriguing new information about Maryland’s
earliest settlement.

Salem Chapel Tour
2024-10-26 12:30 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | Salem Chapel, 92 Geneva St., St Catharines, Ontario, L2R 4N2, Canada
Our society will be hosted by the Salem Chapel in St. Catharines for International Archaeology Day. During this tour (90 minutes in duration), guests will gain insight into local history and about individuals of African descent that settled around the St. Catharines region in c. 1788. Guests will also learn about Harriet Tubman, a well-known individual, who was a conductor of the Underground Railroad and was a member of the Salem Chapel. The tour will begin at 1:00PM (EST) and guests are asked to arrive a few minutes prior. For more information about the tour, the site, and other historical content, please visit their website at http://salemchapelbmechurch.ca/index.html
To register for the event, please visit our website https://brocku.ca/humanities/classics/outreach/aia-niagara/

International Archaeology Day Fair
2024-10-26 12:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | University of Massachusetts Amherst, Bromery Arts Center Plaza, Amherst, MA, United States
In honor of International Archaeology Day, please join us for an archaeology fair on Saturday, October 26, 12:00-3:00 pm. Visit activity tables to learn about the past: write your name in ancient scripts, make a curse tablet, hold replicas of ancient vases and coins, and more! Don’t forget to browse the book sale of donated Classics and archaeology books.

“the way we lived was shaped by objects”: Contemporary Reflections on Black Materiality
2024-10-26 11:30 - 12:30 (America/New_York) | PA
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship

IAD: Community Archaeology Day in Providence, RI
2024-10-26 11:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | Rhode Island Hall, 60 George Street, Providence, RI, 02912, United States
To celebrate International Archaeology Day, join the AIA Narragansett Society for a fun Saturday full of archaeological activities!
– In Rhode Island Hall on the Main Green of Brown University, come see ancient coins from Greece and Rome up close! Touch ancient animal bones! Examine and draw Persian and Roman ceramics, prehistoric tools, precious metals, and other artifacts from thousands of years ago – coached by experts! And talk with Brown’s archaeologists about their fieldwork all over the world! Family friendly, free and open to the public.
– On the lawn in front of List Art Building (64 College Street), come be part of an active archaeological excavation! Students from ARCH 1900: The Archaeology of College Hill will be digging the site of a 19th century home and processing artifacts from that household. Stop by any time between 11:00 am and 3:00 pm to see what artifacts students are discovering or even try your hand at digging. Family friendly, free and open to the public.

International Archaeology Day Double-Header ("Living and Dying as an Immigrant in Athens")
2024-10-25 15:30 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Denny Hall, Room 112, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Please join us for a double-header of talks presented by Prof. Camille Reiko Acosta in celebration of International Archaeology Day! In this first talk, Prof. Acosta will be speaking on “Living and Dying as an Immigrant in Athens” on Friday October 25th at 3:30 pm (Denny 112 and on zoom). These talks are sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America, the Puget Sound Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, and the Department of Classics at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Real Archaeology
2024-10-25 10:00 - 2024-10-27 18:00 (America/New_York) | PA
Do you enjoy digital content? Love learning about the past? Discover Real Archaeology! For three days, creators on Spotify, Youtube, and TikTok will be releasing fresh content demystifying the human past. From October 25 to October 27 join David Miano, Kayleigh During, Flint Dibble and many more to uncover the facts on such burning questions as the development of Gobekli Tepe, and Native American Copper use in the Great Lakes. Over 30 channels (and growing), including Peopling the Past, Lady of the Library, and The Prehistory Guys will share #RealArchaeology with a global audience. Join us and learn about the history of Archaeology, current discoveries, and the ever-improving methods archaeologists use to bring the past to the surface.

Far from Home: Diaspora Networks, Religion, and Identity Abroad on the Ancient Indian Ocean
2024-10-24 19:30 - 20:30 (America/Vancouver) | University of British Columbia-Vancouver Campus, Buchanan A 102, Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1, Canada
The George F. Bass Lectures

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
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.

Archaeology of the Ọyọ Empire (West Africa): Chivalry, Colonies, and Household Politics in the Early Modern Period
2024-10-24 18:00 - 19:00 (America/Denver) | PA
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lectureships

Register for Zoom

1177 BC and After: The Collapse and Survival of Civilizations
2024-10-24 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Strickland Auditorium, L.A. Brown Science Center, Transylvania University, 339 North Upper Street, Lexington, KY, 40507, United States
Kershaw Lectures in Near East Archaeology

Dying as a Macedonian in Egypt: Styling Social Identity through Hellenistic Burial Practices
2024-10-24 16:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | PA
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship
Zoom Link – Required Passcode: 111

Normalizing Loot: A Case Study of a Plundered Imperial Shrine
2024-10-24 16:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Collins Cinema at Wellesley College, 106 Central St, Wellesley Hills, MA, 02481
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lectureships

Africans, Europeans, and Finding Castle Cormantine: Archaeology and Cultural Entanglement on the 17th Century Gold Coast
2024-10-23 18:30 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | Smathers Library, Room 100, University of Florida, Union Road, Gainesville, FL, 32611, United States

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.

Neo-Assyrian Conceptions and Manifestations of Borders and Cultural Hegemony in the Iron Age Southern Levant
2024-10-23 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | McClung Museum Auditorium, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1327 Circle Park Drive, Knoxville, TN, 37996, United States

International Archaeology Day
2024-10-23 12:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | University of Florida, 201 Criser Hall, PO Box 114000, Gainesville, FL, 32611-4000, United States
Our executive board will be working with art history, classics, and anthropology departments to plan an outreach event on University of Florida campus. This event will coincide with our national lecture and may also include a “membership drive”.
