Maya Pyramids & Temples of Yucatan
2024-01-20 - 2024-01-28 | MA
This incredible nine-day holiday provides the best-paced itinerary available to see the sun-drenched Yucatán peninsula’s ancient sites, traditional Maya villages, and colonial architecture. Maya art and architecture abound, with visits to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Chichén Itzá and Uxmal, plus Ek Balam, 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. Dr. Jeff Karl Kowalski is an expert on Maya art and architecture. He is a Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at Northern Illinois University, where he taught from 1982 to 2015, after which he taught selected courses at Temple University. Professor Kowalski has worked for many years in the Maya region, with an emphasis on the majestic site of Uxmal, Yucatán, as well as two seasons spent assisting with work at Copán, Honduras. Uxmal’s impressive Nunnery Quadrangle palace group is the focus of his current research. Professor Kowalski has published extensively on the archaeology, art, and epigraphy of the Maya and their Mesoamerican neighbors

From Fish Skin Bags to Coconut Fiber Armor: Revitalizing Anthropological Collections in an Era of Climate Change
2024-01-20 10:30 - 12:00 (America/New_York) | University of Dayton, 300 College Drive Ave, SC 114, Dayton, OH, 45469, United States
A lecture by Amy Margaris, Oberlin College
Specimen collecting was a cornerstone of 19th century science and anthropology. 150 years later anthropological collections can still be found at many colleges, lingering in closets or forgotten on storeroom shelves. Using cultural heritage items at Oberlin College as my starting point, I’ll explore the question: What use are they today, and for whom?

Peabody Museum Tours Led by Harvard Students
2024-01-20 14:00 - 14:45, 2024-01-21 14:00 - 14:45, 2024-01-26 14:00 - 14:45, 2024-01-27 14:00 - 14:45, 2024-01-28 14:00 - 14:45, 2024-02-02 14:00 - 14:45, 2024-02-03 14:00 - 14:45, 2024-02-04 14:00 - 14:45 (America/New_York) | Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 2:00 pm October 1, 2023–April 21, 2024. See blackout dates.* Regular museum admission rates apply.
*Blackout dates: November 24–26, 2023; December 4, 2023–January 21, 2024; and March 9–17, 2024.
Tours by Harvard students connect visitors with the research, teaching, and Indigenous engagement surrounding the cultural heritage in the museum’s care. How do items come to the museum? Who accesses them and how do items return home?
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 these and other times, student schedules permitting.
Photo: EJSP Visual | Julieta Sarmiento

Peabody Museum Tours Led by Harvard Students
2024-01-21 11:00 - 11:45, 2024-01-28 11:00 - 11:45, 2024-02-04 11:00 - 11:45 (America/New_York) | Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Sundays at 11:00 am October 1, 2023–April 21, 2024. See blackout dates.* Regular museum admission rates apply. Free museum admission for Massachusetts residents every Sunday morning (year-round) from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm. Proof of residency required. Free museum admission is not available to commercial groups.
*Blackout dates: November 24–26, 2023; December 4, 2023–January 21, 2024; and March 9–17, 2024.
Tours by Harvard students connect visitors with the research, teaching, and Indigenous engagement surrounding the cultural heritage in the museum’s care. How do items come to the museum? Who accesses them and how do items return home?
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 these and other times.
Photo: EJSP Visual | Julieta Sarmiento

Recent Work at Memphis and the Fayum: An Overview of Methodologies and Results
2024-01-21 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MA
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 Raghda (Didi) El-Behaedi, University of Chicago:
“Recent Work at Memphis and the Fayum: An Overview of Methodologies and Results”
Sunday, January 21, 2024, 3 PM Pacific Time
Zoom Lecture. This meeting will not be recorded. 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. Non-members, please send any registration requests no later than Friday, January 19. Registrations are limited to 100, so the sooner you register, the better.
About the Lecture:
This lecture will present an overview of two cases studies, Memphis and the Fayum, to illustrate different methodologies of site exploration in Egypt. Memphis, the first capital of unified Egypt and one of the ancient world’s most recognizable cities, continues to be an enigma in the present day. Located at the confluence of Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt, Memphis’ strategic placement evoked the symbolic and geographic union of a once fragmented country. Despite its profound historical significance over more than 3,000 years, very little is known about the city itself. This is especially true for the area of Kom el-Fakhry, which houses the oldest in-situ remains found at Memphis so far. A preview of the results from the 2023 excavation season conducted at Kom el-Fakhry will be presented.
The Fayum, a natural depression located 100 km southwest of Cairo, is bounded by the Sahara Desert except for in the east, where a branch of the Nile River once fed its massive freshwater lake, Lake Moeris. For thousands of years, anthropic activity in the form of settlements, religious centers, harbors, and quarry sites continued in the Fayum, along the very shores of Lake Moeris. However, starting in the Holocene epoch, changing environmental and climatic conditions caused fluctuations of floodwaters from the Nile, which in turn caused drastic instabilities in the lake’s water level. The present work attempts to understand how the ancient Egyptians adapted to the shrinking lake from the Neolithic to Ptolemaic period, using cutting-edge satellite remote sensing, GIS, and geophysical techniques.
About the Speaker:
Didi El-Behaedi is an Egyptian Archaeology PhD candidate at the University of Chicago and a National Geographic Explorer. Her research interests include understanding ancient Egyptian settlement patterns and ancient landscapes through the lens of remote sensing, GIS, and 3D modeling. Didi is the co-director of the Memphis-Kom el-Fakhry Archaeological Project (MKAP) and has conducted archaeological fieldwork at several other sites in Egypt, including Tell Edfu, Deir el-Bahri, Asasif, and Hermopolis. She has also previously served as a research consultant at NASA Langley Research Center and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
About ARCE-NC:
For more information, please visit https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE/, http://www.arce-nc.org, 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.

Kelly Goldberg, “Connecting the Diaspora: Archaeology, Memory, and Transnationalism in the 19th Century Transatlantic World”
2024-01-23 19:30 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Davidson College, 315 North Main Street, Semans Auditorium, Belk Visual Arts Center, Davidson, NC, 28036, United States
Kelly Goldberg, University of South Carolina
“Connecting the Diaspora: Archaeology, Memory, and Transnationalism in the 19th Century Transatlantic World”
This event is FREE and open to the public.
January 23, 2023
7:30 p.m. ET
Belk Visual Arts Center 117
Davidson College
Davidson, NC
About the lecture:
The nineteenth century transatlantic slave trade had significant social, political, and economic ramifications for coastal West African environments, and caused reverberations throughout the Atlantic world. As Britain pressured European and American imperial powers to join in anti-slave trading endeavors in the early portion of the nineteenth century, the slave trade was directed to more secluded areas such as the Rio Pongo in coastal Guinea, where imperial and national powers were scarce, and both legal and contraband trade could continue to succeed. In these situations, a newly established class of transnational trading families, with ties to global connections on both sides of the Atlantic, directed the evolution of local social and political landscapes. This talk engages interdisciplinary research to investigate 19th and 20th century sites throughout the Atlantic world, looking at the ways in which material culture, architectural remains, documentary records, and oral historical accounts are used to interpret the complex social dynamics and multiregional origins of a globally oriented African Diaspora.
About the speaker:
Dr. Goldberg, an Instructor for the Honors College at the University of South Carolina, is a historical archaeologist with research specialties in the African Diaspora in both West
Africa and the eastern US, public archaeology and stakeholder relations, and museum studies and management. She has worked on James Island and in Guinea, where she excavated slave trading ports in rural villages of coastal Guinea tried in order to understand how the newly emerging transnational network of nineteenth century trading families manipulated perceptions of identity to maintain power and status during evolution of the abolition of the slave trade, and such manipulations of identity affect contemporary notions of memorialization and heritage. https://goldberg.uofsccreate.org/
This event is FREE and open to the public. Please also support the Archaeological Institute of America, Central Carolinas Society 333, by joining us as a member. https://www.archaeological.org/join/ Thank you for your interest and involvement! See less
Davidson, North Carolina

Archaeology-Hour Livestream: Jeff Altschul. "Cultural Resource Management: What Most Archaeologists Do For A Living"
2024-01-24 17:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Whitman College, Olin Hall 129, 920 E Isaacs, Walla Walla, WA, 99362, United States
Today, there are about 12,000 archaeologists working in the US with less than 10 percent of them employed by universities. While university anthropology and archaeology departments are shrinking, the applied sector, known as cultural resource management (CRM) is growing. This lecture explores what accounts for these opposing trends and what, if anything, can we do about it.
Please join us for this livestream presentation.

AIA Archaeology Hour with Jeff Altschul
2024-01-24 20:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | MA
Join the AIA for a fascinating evening as Jeff Altschul presents Cultural Resource Management: What Most Archaeologists Do For A Living.
This presentation will be given at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central/6pm Mountain/5pm Pacific.
Today, there are about 12,000 archaeologists working in the US with less than 10 percent of them employed by universities. While university anthropology and archaeology departments are shrinking, the applied sector, known as cultural resource management (CRM) is growing. What accounts for these opposing trends and what, if anything, can we do about it.

Everything but a Bath?: The Small Bath at Antiochia ad Cragum
2024-01-25 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Phoenix) | Zoom, 4985 SW 74th Court, Miami, FL, 33155, United States
“Everything but a Bath?: The Small Bath at Antiochia ad Cragum” with Dr. Leticia R. Rodriguez, UC Berkeley, Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Excavations at the Small Bath at Antiochia ad Cragum began in 2018. With now five seasons completed, our efforts have not only provided insight into the general structure and use of this particular bath type (a Hall Bath); we have also uncovered a wealth of information about the complex after it was retired as a bath. More precisely, each season has presented us with a series of questions with regard to the ways in which the various rooms of the bath were adapted to meet industrial needs, if and how the installations and finds from distinct rooms relate to each other, and their respective chronologies. This lecture will present findings to date, current and evolving hypotheses about the function(s) of the complex in its post-bath phases, and also consider the discovery of several sets of human remains in non-burial contexts.

Everything but a Bath?: The Small Bath at Antiochia ad Cragum with Dr. Leticia R. Rodriguez
2024-01-25 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Phoenix) | MA
Everything but a Bath?: The Small Bath at Antiochia ad Cragum
Leticia R. Rodriguez, PhD
Visiting Scholar
University of California, Berkeley
Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Excavations at the Small Bath at Antiochia ad Cragum began in 2018. With now five seasons completed, our efforts have not only provided insight into the general structure and use of this particular bath type (a Hall Bath); we have also uncovered a wealth of information about the complex after it was retired as a bath. More precisely, each season has presented us with a series of questions with regard to the ways in which the various rooms of the bath were adapted to meet industrial needs, if and how the installations and finds from distinct rooms relate to each other, and their respective chronologies. This lecture will present findings to date, current and evolving hypotheses about the function(s) of the complex in its post-bath phases, and also consider the discovery of several sets of human remains in non-burial contexts.

Disrupting the Market in Antiquities, Saving Archaeological Heritage for the Future
2024-01-25 20:00 (America/New_York) | Dodd Hall Auditorium (DHA 103), Florida State University, 282 Champions Way, Tallahassee, FL, 32306, United States
Norton lecture

Sketching the Marbles
2024-01-26 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Chicago) | The Parthenon, 2500 West End Ave, Nashville, TN, 37203, United States
Sketching the Marbles
For centuries, artists have drawn the Parthenon’s pediment sculptures. Join us for special art sessions to create your own classical masterpiece. Sketching the Marbles is held on the final Friday afternoon of each month (except Metro Nashville holidays).
–Recommended for ages 12 and older.
–This program takes place in the Treasury.
–All supplies are included— but you are welcome to bring your own.
–Participation is free for Centennial Park Conservancy members, or included with museum admission.
–The most updated times and dates are listed on the Calendar.
Love to draw, but not able to make it to museum soon? Try your hand at creating Parthenon art— from home! Browse our Parthenon Create video playlist on our YouTube channel.
THANK YOU TO JERRY’S ARTARAMA FOR PROVIDING ART SUPPLIES!

"Cahokia Mounds - new research" by Dr. Mary Vermilion
2024-01-27 14:00 (America/Chicago) | St. Louis University, Morrissey Hall Rm 0400, 3700 Lindell Blvd, St. Louis, MO, 63108, United States
20 January 2024, Saturday at 2 PM (Central Standard Time Zone). ” Cahokia Mounds – new research” by Dr. Mary Vermilion, Associate Professor of Anthropology at St. Louis University. Lecture location to be arranged on SLU campus.

Self-Fashioning in a Roman Province: Gender, Dress, and Difference in the Isiac Funerary Reliefs from Athens
2024-01-29 17:00 (America/New_York) | WEBINAR (New Haven), New Haven, CT
Tsakirgis lecture

Absolute Egypt
2024-01-30 - 2024-02-16 | MA
This itinerary is carefully crafted to provide discerning travelers with the finest Egypt tour available. Our 18-day program is the most in-depth exploration of ancient Egypt’s greatest sites, combining all the best attributes of a small-group, all-inclusive, well-paced, luxury trip.
•Learn with a distinguished and engaging American scholar plus a wonderful local Egyptologist and an excellent tour manager. This trio has been receiving accolades for many years.
•Travel with a maximum of just 16 guests plus your trio of leaders.
•Enjoy the best accommodations, including 13 nights at luxurious, 5-star hotels in Giza, Cairo, Luxor, and Aswan; and a three-night Nile cruise aboard a comfortable, eight-cabin dahabiya (traditional Nile sail boat).
•Meet with excavators and conservators, including behind-the-scenes visits,when possible.
•Discover the preeminent sites of the pharaohs from Cairo to Luxor, Aswan, and Abu Simbel. If it is open, spend two full days exploring the Grand Egyptian Museum that is scheduled to open in 2023.
– See the amazing Giza pyramids and Sphinx as well as Saqqara’s Step Pyramid of Djoser and recently discovered, closed-to-the-public, Tomb of Wah Ti.
-Explore the astounding temple complex of Karnak as well as Luxor Temple, plus spectacular royal mortuary temples and tombs in the Valleys of the Kings and Queens, such as those of Seti I and Nefertari.
-Visit the remarkable Temple of Hathor at Dendara as well as Abydos, one of the oldest and most important cities in ancient Egypt, where Steve Harvey, your AIA lecturer, has been working since 1993.
-Cruise the Nile from Esna to Aswan aboard an eight-cabin sail boat, away from the convoys of large riverboats, so that we visit remarkable temples without the typical crowds. From the spacious top deck, observe timeless pastoral scenes of feluccas,
farmers, herders, and village life.
-Fly to Abu Simbel to visit the stunning and enormous rock-cut temples of Ramesses II and Nefertari.
An optional, eight-day, post-tour extension to Jordan is available.

Dignity and Social Control Through Burial Practices in Ancient Rome
2024-02-01 17:30 (America/Chicago) | Holden Hall 104, 2500 Broadway, Lubbock, TX, 79409, United States

“Christian Destruction and Desecration of Images and Temples of Classical Antiquity”
2024-02-01 18:30 - 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | MA
Religious iconoclasm has been a recurring phenomenon from the time of Akhenaton’s destruction of images of the gods in 14th century B.C. Egypt to promote a new, monotheistic religion down to the recent Islamic destruction of the antiquities of the Middle East. This paper focuses on Christian destruction and desecration of images and temples of Classical Antiquity in the late antique world (ca. 4th – 7th cent.), a topic that has received in the past relatively little scholarly attention. Also considered are some of the attendant problems in detecting and making sense of this phenomenon. Of the three major monotheistic religions today, Christianity proved to be the most destructive to the polytheistic religions and material culture of the Old as well as the New World, not to mention the untold numbers of non-Christians who were forced to convert, to be enslaved, tortured and/or put to death because of their refusal to convert. With the rise of radical Christian Nationalism in the United States today, this talk also provides evidence of what can happen when intolerant religious dogmatic views are backed by the power of the State. In the late Roman period, the first Christian emperor Constantine not only elevated Christianity as the state religion of the Empire but also initiated the process of eradicating both polytheistic religions and non-orthodox Christian belief systems. The continuing process of Christianizing the polytheistic peoples of the former Roman Empire and the increasing judicial savagery of Christian emperors led to harsher and more intolerant religious-based imperial laws and the growth of religious extremism and fanaticism that fueled the destruction of whatever did not conform to radicalized Christianity’s narrow view of the world.
To register for this virtual event, please use the following link: https://berkeley.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcqdeiuqDkoE9CJrJJIr5Ycj2JTo431fepu#/registration

Society Sunday 2024 Public Lecture
2024-02-04 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York) | MA
Watch recorded lecture on YouTube
“Be(com)ing Assyrian”: Navigating Imperial Power from the Bottom-Up
Join us as the AIA Societies Committee presents a virtual presentation and Q&A with Petra Creamer. This presentation will also be available in American Sign Language.
At its height, the Assyrian Empire (c. 1350-600 BCE) stretched from modern-day Iran in the east to Egypt in the west, controlling more territory than any entity the world had yet seen. This talk will delve into the profound impact of the Assyrian Empire and its administrative structures on the lives of individuals under its hegemony. Drawing from archaeological and historical evidence, the discussion explores the intricate web of socio-economic, cultural, and political transformations experienced by the non-elite populace under Assyrian rule, focusing on the core area of the empire (the Assyrian “Heartland”) along the Tigris River. Insights from ongoing research illuminate how the empire’s administrative policies influenced Assyria’s subjects – from those residing in urban centers to rural communities. Petra will particularly dive into the implementation of massive infrastructural projects across the landscape, the establishment of centralized governance systems, and the navigation of personal identities that shaped the idea of “be(com)ing Assyrian”.
Petra Creamer is an archaeologist of the Ancient Near Eastern world researching the genesis and growth of empires and the impact of these empires on the non-elite populations under their hegemony. She is director of the excavation and remote sensing project Rural Landscapes of Iron Age Imperial Mesopotamia (RLIIM) in Iraqi Kurdistan, where her ongoing fieldwork addresses long-term settlement patterns and lifeways in the ancient Assyrian imperial core (c. 1350-600 BCE). She is an Assistant Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Emory University.
The lecture will also be available in American Sign Language and we will also enable auto captioning on Zoom. Due to Zoom limitations on mobile devices and tablets, participants interested in accessing ASL interpretation should log in using the desktop version of Zoom.

King Midas of the Golden Touch in Context: Death, Belief, Behavior, and Society in Ancient Phrygia
2024-02-04 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | 1201 9th St., Manhattan Beach, CA, 90266, United States
Elspeth Dusinberre (University of Colorado Boulder) will present her work on the spectacular burial tumuli at Gordion (Türkiye), the capital of ancient Phrygia and seat of the legendary King Midas of the Golden Touch. This talk will consider material ranging from ca. 850-525 BCE. It will begin with Gordion’s oldest burial tumuli and look at the largest, the so-called Midas Monument, but it will focus ultimately on the last century or so of tumulus construction. The later tombs, which include both inhumations and cremations, display radical changes that reflect Gordion’s complex and shifting society. This talk will use mortuary remains to investigate such issues as power structures and display, gender, burial customs, belief in an afterlife, shifting populations, and developments in society overall in ancient Phrygia.

Hannibal’s Secret Weapon
2024-02-05 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | California State University, Fresno (ED170), 5241 N Maple Ave, Fresno, 93740, United States

Monumentality in early Etruria: recent discoveries at Poggio Civitate
2024-02-08 18:00 (America/New_York) | Jepson Hall, Room 109, 221 Richmond Way, Richmond, VA, 23173, United States
Lecture by Kate Kreindler (University of Virginia). Ferdinando and Sarah Cinelli Lecture in Etruscan and Italic Archaeology. Free and open to the public.
