Archaeological Institute of America

COZA/COSANO/COZANO: Socio-Economuc Interactions among Middle Republican Cities in Central Italy
2026-02-12 17:30 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | Kirkhof Center, room 2270, Grand Valley State University, Allendale campus, Allendale, MI, 49401, United States
Join us for discussion of innovative new approaches to the study of ancient coins! Dr. Melissa Ludke will discuss her numismatic work at early Roman Cosa and beyond. Dr. Ludke serves as Numismatic Specialist at the the Cosa (Terme) Excavations. She has published several papers on numismatics and is working on a book about Cosa during the Middle Republic.
The Latin colony of Cosa has long experienced archaeological investigation and, more recently, re-analysis, but Cosa’s earliest history remains elusive. However, new numismatic evidence from Cosa is raising interesting questions. Who was minting these coins, why do they appear at certain regional centers and nowhere else, and do these small objects represent larger processes of network connectivity? Dr. Ludke addresses these questions and more, using a geospatial network-based approach through QGIS, and a Least-Cost Path analysis to track potential socio-economic interactions between Cosa and contemporaneous regional centers.

Josef Wegner - Digging into Egypt’s Late Middle Kingdom, Recent Discoveries at the Anubis-Mountain Royal Necropolis, Abydos
2026-02-11 17:30 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | Johns Hopkins University, Homewood campus Gilman Hall Room 50, Johns Hopkins University, Homewood campus, BALTIMORE, MD, 21206, United States
Wednesday Feb. 11, 5:30 – 6:30, Gilman Hall Room 50
Johns Hopkins University, Homewood campus
Dorothy Kent Hill Lecture
Josef Wegner, University of Pennsylvania
Digging into Egypt’s Late Middle Kingdom, Recent Discoveries at the Anubis-Mountain Royal Necropolis, Abydos

The Ecstasy and the Agony:Excavations at La Venta, Mexico, an Olmec Capital
2026-02-11 17:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | University of Florida, Smathers Library Room 100, 1508 Union Rd, Gainesville, FL, 32611, United States
Lecturer: Dr. Susan Gillespie
Professor of Anthropology, University of Florida
In 1942 and 1943, excavations revealed fabulous buried deposits of jade and other precious items in a very unexpected place: La Venta on Mexico’s southern Gulf coast, an area of swamps and tropical forest. These finds produced an “ecstatic” reaction in the world of archaeology and shed light on the Olmecs, a mysterious early civilization in Mesoamerica (c. 1150-400 BC). Subsequent fieldwork in 1955 revealed even more astonishing discoveries: tons of jade and other greenstone objects recovered at an “agonizing” cost. The archaeologists encountered tremendous problems excavating La Venta. The site was already suffering damage by development, and subsequent looting destroyed much of what was left. The story of the ecstasy and agony of La Venta’s excavations is reconstructed through archival archaeology, analyzing the field records, maps, and photographs.

Daniel Healey, Provenance Researcher, Worcester Art Museum: "Orphaned Antiquities & Cold Case Files: Investigating Provenance in the New Era of Museum Restitution"
2026-02-09 18:30 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | MA
The Clarence and Anne Dillon Dunwalke Lecture
Provenance refers to an artwork’s history of ownership, from the time of its creation or archaeological discovery to the present. Provenance researchers track down a wide range of sources—scholarship, auction catalogs, financial records, inventories, correspondence, photographs, markings on artworks themselves, and more—to reconstruct an object’s past and retrace its path to the museum. This work has been compared to that of an investigator, and provenance researchers routinely described as “art detectives.” Over the past decade, these metaphors have become increasingly relevant as law-enforcement agencies across the U.S. have arrested dealers, seized antiquities from the nation’s leading museums, and made hundreds of repatriations to countries around the world—all to great fanfare and press coverage. The collision between the worlds of law enforcement and museums has revolutionized the field of provenance research and redefined the standards of ethical and legal collecting in this country. As a former Antiquities Trafficking Analyst for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and now the Provenance Research Specialist at the Worcester Art Museum, I will share stories from the frontlines of provenance research—stories of looting, forgery, and repatriation—that explain why museums need “art detectives” now more than ever.

On Metals, Grasses, and Mollusks: A Local History of Ecology, Economy, and Empire in Roman Iberia
2026-02-09 18:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Kremen School of Education Building ED170, CSU Fresno, 5005 N Maple Ave MS ED1, Fresno, CA, 93740, United States

“What Do We Owe to Already-Looted Objects?”
2026-02-09 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Jepson Hall, Room 118, Richmond Way 221, Richmond, VA, 23226, United States
Lecture by Elizabeth Marlowe, Professor of Art History and Chair of the Art department at Colgate University
(https://www.archaeological.org/lecturer/elizabeth-marlowe/)

The Unknown Ottawa Project – working with colonial and indigenous assemblages from the Ottawa region
2026-02-08 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | 303 Paterson Hall, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Speaker: Laura Banducci – Carleton University
This project involves the re-studying and digitization of artefacts from several assemblages from Lake Leamy Park, at the confluence of the Ottawa and Gatineau Rivers. This was a central meeting place from the earliest days of human occupation of the region, yet the materials are not well-published or easily accessible. National Capital Commission archaeologists and members of Carleton University are working together to bring decades of archaeological investigation in the park to light for the general public and for scholars. Site 18, a beachfront stretch along the Ottawa, contains thousands of fragments of stone tool debris and pottery attesting to its frequent use 2000 years ago. Site 24, along the Gatineau River, reveals the remains of the earliest settlers in the region, who travelled North from the US to Hull Township at the turn of the 19th century. This lecture discusses the beginning of work on these assemblages and highlights some of the stories about Ottawa’s past we’ve learned so far.

Provenance Research in the Fight Against Looting
2026-02-07 08:00 - 17:00 (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 Zoom lecture by Sara Aly, Griffith Institute:
“Provenance Research in the Fight Against Looting”
Sunday, February 22 2026, 3 PM PST
Register in advance for this lecture:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/MvauTi1wT0OHniyDLJXJHw
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the lecture.
There are a few things you should know before you join the lecture:
* Advance registration is required. When you click on the link to “Register in advance for this lecture” you will receive instructions by email on how and when to join, along with a link on which you will click to join the meeting. Save the email, as you will need the link it contains to join the meeting. Please register now. Please do not share the join link with anyone, it is unique to your email address. Try to join at least 10 minutes before the meeting. When you do join the meeting, be prepared to be put in the waiting room until the lecture starts at 3 pm. This is a security measure.
* If you haven’t already installed Zoom, you should download and install the Zoom program (app) well before you try to join the meeting. There IS an option to use your web browser to join the meeting instead of the Zoom program, but the browser interface is limited and depends greatly on what browser and what operating system you’re using.
* For tutorials on how to use Zoom, go to https://learn-zoom.us/show-me. In particular, “Joining a Zoom Meeting” should show you what you need to do to join our lecture.
* All meeting attendees can communicate with everyone, or with individual participants, using the chat window, which can be opened by clicking on the chat button and which you can probably find at the bottom middle of your Zoom viewing screen. Participants will be encouraged to hold their questions for the speaker until after the lecture, and will also be encouraged to address their questions for the speaker to everyone, not just to the speaker, so that all can see them. “Everyone” is the default chat option.
If you have any questions, please email glenn@glennmeyer.net or arcencZoom@gmail.com.
About the Lecture:
Since the days when the pharaohs ruled over Egypt, funerary materials have been affected by the greed of people. An enormous amount of wealth was invested in preparations for the afterlife, but often this richness represented by gold and precious minerals in the funerary equipment became the booty of many, rather than the resting place for one. Unfortunately, the scale of destruction due to the ongoing looting is greater today than ever and several illegally sourced artefacts from Egypt constantly appear on the art market. Authorities consistently work to detect these objects by tracing the activity of dealers and galleries, but a lot still needs to be done. Source countries require tougher laws and international legislation needs to become stricter. Moreover, the knowledge of specialists must be employed in a systematic way to assist in the rescue of these objects. Museum curators should implement due diligence, learn about the art market, and understand how to conduct provenance research. This practice helps with the identification of looted artefacts by analysing an object and comparing it with published examples of the same kind, allowing its origins to be identified and some lost archaeological context to be recovered.
About the Speaker:
Sara Aly’s research focuses on the circulation of illicitly sourced Egyptian artefacts on the art market, following a collaboration that started 6 years ago with the Circulating Artefacts project at the British Museum. Her MA dissertation at the University of Manchester (2023) examined upper coffin fragments appearing on the art market. Since 2023, she has been a member of the Franco-Egyptian Archaeological Mission of Western Thebes, working at the Ramesseum, where she analyses coffin and cartonnage fragments. From 2023 to 2025 she worked as an Art Market Expert at the British Museum helping to identify and recover missing items from the museum’s collection. Now based at the Griffith Institute, Sara is studying the archival material of J.J. Clère related to his documentation of Egyptian objects in the possession of antiquities dealers and collectors between the 1930s and the 1980s.
About Northern California ARCE:
For more information, please visit https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://www.facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://arce-nc.org, https://bsky.app/profile/khentiamentiu.bsky.social, and https://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://arce.org/membership/ and select “Berkeley, CA” as your chapter when you sign up.

"Late Victorian Race Science and its Legacies in Aegean Archaeology"
2026-02-06 17:00 - 19:30 (America/Chicago) | Swallow Hall, Room 101, 507 South 9th Street, Columbia, MO, 65201, United States
Interested in receptions of antiquity, discoveries in prehistory, and ideas about race during the late 19th and early 20th centuries? The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA)’s Central Missouri Chapter as well as the Classics, Archaeology, and Religion (CAR) Department welcome Dr. Anne Duray for her lecture “Late Victorian Race Science and its Legacies in Aegean Archaeology” on Friday, February 6th, at 5:30 p.m. in Swallow Hall, Room 101.
There will be a reception beforehand at 5 p.m.

Making the Ice Age Virtual and Accessible: Using VR and Underwater Robotics to Teach Archaeology
2026-02-06 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | TBA (Stanford 1), Stanford, CA, United States
The Frederick R. and Margaret B. Matson Lectureship for Near Eastern Archaeology and Archaeological Technology Time TBA

Landscapes of Time and Memory: Foragers in the Mojave Desert 2
2026-02-05 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Paulus Lecture Hall, Willamette Law School, 245 Winter St SE, Salem, OR, 97301, USA
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lectureship

Reflections on Ancient Greek Mirrors
2026-02-05 17:30 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | S150 Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia, 270 River Road, Athens, GA, 30602, USA
The Barbara Tsakirgis Memorial Lecture

A Deep Dive into Deep Time: Archaeology, Underwater
2026-02-05 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | TBA (San Francisco), San Francisco, CA
The Frederick R. and Margaret B. Matson Lectureship for Near Eastern Archaeology and Archaeological Technology

Archaeology-Hour Screening: NAGPRA as a Path to Healing and Reciprocity
2026-02-05 17:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Whitman College Maxey Hall 207, 173 Stanton St., Walla Walla, WA, 99362, United States
Please join us for an in-person screening and informal discussion of the Archaeology Hour talk by Danyelle Means (Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, Santa Fe).
Have you noticed empty exhibit cases at museums over the past two years as museums move to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)? Means’ presentation reframes NAGPRA not as a legal obligation but as a vital opportunity for healing, reciprocity, and relationship-building between archaeologists, museums, and Indigenous communities. Drawing from Indigenous perspectives, the talk explores how NAGPRA challenges institutions to move beyond compliance and toward practices rooted in respect, sovereignty, and shared stewardship. By centering Native voices and experiences, this session invites the audience to consider how honoring ancestors and returning cultural items can transform the field into one of accountability, trust, and long-term collaboration.
This event is free and open to the public.

Founding the City: Carved Orthostats and Architectural Experimentation in Anatolia
2026-02-03 18:30 - 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Reed College, Performing Arts Building (PAB) 320, 3017 SE Woodstock Blvd., Portland, OR, 97202, United States
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship

From Farmers to Kings: The Emergence of Social Hierarchy in Prehistoric Europe
2026-02-02 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Chicago) | TBA (Iowa City 1), Iowa City, IA, United States

Dr. Stephen Humphreys zoom lecture about the Camden Revolutionary War battlefield.
2026-01-31 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Chicago)
Dr. Stephen Humphreys is the CEO of American Veterans Archaeological Recovery program. One of his projects involves the Camden Revolutionary War battlefield.

The Impact of Roman Military Presence on the Arid Landscapes of Southern Jordan and Israel
2026-01-29 17:30 - 19:30 (America/Denver) | Remote (Bozeman), Bozeman, MT, United States

AIA Archaeology Hour January 2026: NAGPRA as a Path to Healing and Reciprocity
2026-01-28 20:00 (America/New_York) | MA
Join the AIA for the first AIA Archaeology Hour talk of the new year as new AIA President Brian I. Daniels hosts Danyelle Means for “NAGPRA as a Path to Healing and Reciprocity.”
This presentation will be given at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central/6pm Mountain/5pm Pacific.
Have you noticed empty exhibit cases at museums over the past two years as museums move to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)?
Means’ presentation reframes NAGPRA not as a legal obligation but as a vital opportunity for healing, reciprocity, and relationship-building between archaeologists, museums, and Indigenous communities. Drawing from Indigenous perspectives, the talk explores how NAGPRA challenges institutions to move beyond compliance and toward practices rooted in respect, sovereignty, and shared stewardship. By centering Native voices and experiences, this session invites the audience to consider how honoring ancestors and returning cultural items can transform the field into one of accountability, trust, and long-term collaboration.
Register here!

Boxes, Banks, Bags, and Bones: Carrying and Storing Money in Ancient Rome
2026-01-27 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | Semans Auditorium (Room 117), Belk Visual Arts Center, 315 N. Main St., Davidson, NC, 28036, United States
About the lecture:
How did the Romans carry, store, and save their money? This talk surveys the archaeological evidence for the wallets, purses, bags, boxes, and chests in which the ancient Romans placed their coined money at home and on the go. From reused cooking pots to bronze arm purses and ceramic “piggybanks,” we will explore what the methods and means of containing coined money reveal about Roman daily life, religious practice, and the social and cultural norms around the function of physical currency in the ancient world.
About the speaker:
Dr. Robyn Le Blanc, Assistant Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Archaeology at UNC Greensboro, specializes in the archaeology and coinage of the Roman provinces. Her current research explores how Roman colonies used their coinages to negotiate a local identity. She is also developing a project on Roman money boxes. In 2021-2022 Dr. Le Blanc was the Kershaw Lecturer in Near East Archaeology for the Archaeological Institute of America, and she has recently given invited talks for the American Numismatic Society and the Oxford Numismatic Society. She has participated in excavations in Israel, England, and Montenegro, and she is co-director of WIRE: Women in the Roman East (see more at wireproject.org).

“She is the Son of Bastet”: Gender in Papyrus Louvre 32308
2026-01-25 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 Rachel Barnas, UC Berkeley:
“She is the Son of Bastet”: Gender in Papyrus Louvre 32308
Sunday, January 25, 2026, 3 PM PST
MELC Lounge, Room 254 Social Sciences Building, UC Berkeley
Because of nearby construction, please allow extra time to park your vehicle.
This is an in-person lecture and is not virtual. No registration is required.
The lecture will be recorded for later publication on the chapter’s YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernCaliforniaARCE
About the Lecture:
Magic was a tool for dealing with a host of everyday problems in ancient Egypt, from headaches and snakebites to bad luck and nightmares, and employed a wide variety of strategies accordingly. Underlying many of these different strategies was a shared reliance on the power of analogy, which was used to impose a desirable mythological template on immediate, everyday reality. To accomplish this superposition, tools, problems, and even the speaker or subject of a spell could all be assigned mythic identities, ensuring that success was already predestined.
What happened, though, when there was a mismatch between the divine identity needed and some aspect of the subject’s everyday self? This situation presents itself in the case of one amuletic papyrus, Papyrus Louvre 32308, in which a female patient is cast as multiple male deities. Such casting raises a number of questions: Was this gender conflict seen as a problem? How does the text navigate this apparent conflict? Why not just pick some female deities and avoid the problem altogether? Exploring the answers to these questions through close reading of the Louvre papyrus and comparison to similar spells can help us refine our notions of when the bounds of gender could or could not be pushed in ancient Egypt and why, revealing just how much ancient magical texts can tell us about their users.
About the Speaker:
Rachel Barnas is a PhD candidate in the Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures department at UC Berkeley. She received her B.A. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from Yale University in 2013 and her M.A. in Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations from the University of Toronto in 2020, both with a focus in Egyptology. Her dissertation project examines patterns of literary and grammatical device usage in Ramesside non-funerary magical texts, as a means of analyzing the relationship between how the ancient Egyptians used language and how they experienced and understood their world. She has also worked in both curation and epigraphy, including as Terrace Research Associate at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and as a member of the IFAO team documenting the tomb of Padiamenope (TT33).
About Northern California ARCE:
For more information, please visit https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://www.facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://arce-nc.org, https://bsky.app/profile/khentiamentiu.bsky.social, and https://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://arce.org/membership/ and select “Berkeley, CA” as your chapter when you sign up.

The (Beautiful) Men and Women of Jaina Figurines
2026-01-25 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Hybrid
Lifelike Maya figurines from the Island of Jaina have been collected for almost 200 years, with hundreds now known in collections around the world, from Berlin to Brooklyn, and Los Angeles to Mexico City. These figurines also present the largest corpus of female representations of the ancient Americas, comprising roughly one-third of all known examples. Many examples are rattles or whistles, and trace of brilliant pigments remain in place. In this talk, Mary Miller will look at their meaning and their making, all c 700-900 CE.

Into the Mani: Death, Burial, and Legend on the Southern Greek Mainland
2026-01-22 16:30 - 17:30 (America/New_York) | Remote (Pittsburgh), Pittsburgh, PA, United States
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship
Register for Zoom: https://pitt.zoom.us/meeting/register/6xRhkuW-ScGmMN4GpWaPKA

The Past Keeps Getting Bigger: Living with the Past in the Present and the Future at Tell Dhiban, Jordan
2026-01-22 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Edmonton) | Business Building 2-09, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
The AIA Helene J. Kantor Memorial Lecture (link: https://www.archaeological.org/endowment/the-helene-j-kantor-memorial-lecture/)
Professor Bruce Routledge (University of Liverpool)
Tell Dhiban is a large mound in central Jordan occupied since 3000 BCE. It is best known as the capital of the biblical kingdom of Moab and the site of a significant Nabataean temple. However, focusing on separate moments in time does not do justice to a site where the past has always formed the ground beneath one’s feet. This talk will consider how for 5,000 years inhabitants of Dhiban have lived with the past, including current residents for whom the past also plays a key role in their futures.

The Annual de Bragança Endowed Lecture: Escape from Pompeii: Tracking Survivors from the Eruption of Vesuvius
2026-01-21 19:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | George Washington University, Funger Hall 108 (2201 G St NW Washington, DC 20052), Funger Hall, Room 108 (2201 G St. NW), Washington, DC, 20052, United States
George Washington University’s Capitol Archaeological Institute and Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Present The Annual de Bragança Endowed Lecture, delivered by Steven L. Tuck, Miami University, Ohio. REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED TO ATTEND BOTH IN PERSON AND VIA ZOOM.
Register to attend in person | Register to attend via Zoom

Seeing the Past Anew: The Digital Epigraphy and Archaeology’s Toolkit for Accessible 3D Heritage
2026-01-21 17:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | University of Florida, Library West, Room 212, 400 SW 13th Street, Gainesville, FL, 32601, United States
Lecturer: Dr. Eleni Bozia
Associate Professor, Department of Classics
Head of the Data-Driven Humanities Research Group
University of Florida
Archaeology, epigraphy, and heritage sites point to and recall the past, and reasonably so. People usually turn to them for Instagram photos or contemplate on them because they are told that “history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” However, in reality, there is still a large disconnect between the past and the present, the value of one for the other, and overall, the purpose of sustaining, supporting, and engaging with these fields and their objects of interest. This talk will traverse the history of digital preservation and dissemination, and digital world heritage through the lens of the Digital Epigraphy and Archaeology project to emphasize that nothing is more urgent for the present than the past, and how technology and AI can bring archaeology and epigraphy to a new, more responsible ecosystem of valued knowledge. Ultimately, this talk advocates for a future in which the digital humanities not only preserve the traces of antiquity but also empower new ways of engaging with them, transforming the past into a living, collaborative resource for global society.

Life, Death, and Disease: Insights form Petra’s Tombs and Cemeteries 2
2026-01-21 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Chicago) | TBA (Nashville), Nasvhille, TN
Kershaw Lectures in Near East Archaeology Time TBA

10,000 years of Oaxaca Cuisines from Mesquite Pods to Mezcal
2026-01-20 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | TBA (Santa Fe), Santa Fe, NM, United States
Doris Z. Stone New World Archaeology Lectures Time TBA

TBA (North Alabama (Huntsville))
2026-01-20 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Chicago) | TBA (North Alabama (Huntsville)), Huntsville, AL, United States

The Southern Mani Archaeological Project: Fieldwork at the End of the World
2026-01-18 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | 303 Paterson Hall, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Speaker: Chelsea A.M. Gardner (Acadia University)
The Mani peninsula is the literal (geographical) and metaphorical “end of the world”, since it occupies the southernmost point of mainland Greece and the mythical entrance to Hades, the ancient Greek underworld. Mani’s occupation history includes being home to the earliest hominid caves in Greece up to modern tower-houses and intergenerational feuding. I have been working in Mani since 2012, and this talk will introduce Mani, its liminality, and its storied past through three separate archaeological initiatives: the Diros Project (2012-2015), the CARTography Project (2018-2022), and the first season of the Southern Mani Archaeological Project, a SSHRC-funded survey that began in May 2025.
