Archaeological Institute of America

Cantilevered Walkways—A Remarkable feat of Ancient Chinese Engineering
2025-11-02 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | WI
Dr. Lothar von Falkenhausen
Distinguished Professor of Chinese Archaeology and Art History
UCLA
To this day, the Qinling mountains in Shaanxi province, which separate the basin of the Yellow River from that of the Yangzi River, constitute a formidable geographical obstacle to communication on account of their almost unimaginably vertical cliffs. To facilitate inter-regional trade across the Qinling, cantilevered walkways (zhandao 棧道) were constructed since shortly after the middle of the first millennium BC. They were maintained more or less continuously throughout historical times, until the 20th century. Similar thoroughfares were also constructed in mountainous regions elsewhere in China. Recently their archaeological remains have become the subject of major survey projects. This paper presents some of what is currently known about these extraordinary feats of ancient Chinese engineering.

AIA-Nashville Society Book Club: The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson
2025-11-03 18:00 - 19:00 (America/Chicago) | The Parthenon, 2500 West End Ave, Nashville, TN, 37203, United States
Welcome to the Parthenon/AIA-Nashville Society Book Club! In partnership with the Archaeological Institute of America-Nashville Society, the Parthenon hosts free book club gatherings quarterly. Join us for a friendly discussion on The Feather Thief, by Kirk Wallace Johnson. Read about one of the most bizarre museum heists of the century. The informal discussion will be held inside the Parthenon, in the Treasury on Level 2.
This free book club is open to all— all are welcome!
RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/parthenon-book-club-the-feather-thief-tickets-1261474346729?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

Founding the City: Carved Orthostats and Architectural Experimentation in Anatolia
2025-11-03 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Chicago) | Blegen 308, University of Cincinnati, 2602 McMicken Circle, Cincinnati, OH, 45221, United States
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship

A Dealer, an Insurance Salesman, Seven University Museums, Eighty-Eight Investors, and Three Hundred Classical Antiquities: a Cautionary Tale – a Nancy Wilkie Lectureship in Archaeological Heritage
2025-11-05 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | https://www.archaeological.org/event/a-dealer-an-insurance-salesman-seven-university-museums-eighty-eight-investors-and-three-hundred-classical-antiquities-a-cautionary-tale-a-nancy-wilkie-lectureship-in-archaeological-her/
This virtual talk will recount a recently-uncovered story of an unusual, complex, decades-long antiquities investment scheme orchestrated by Royal-Athena Galleries, a prominent Manhattan-based antiquities dealer, that did not end well for most stakeholders. It will also examine the larger ethical implications of the story, raising questions about the relationship of museums to the art market. It also asks, is financial investing in art ever a good idea? This talk is sponsored by the Nancy Wilkie Lectureship in Archaeological Heritage.

Diving the Pyramids: Underwater Tombs and Excavation at the Royal Cemetery of Nuri, Sudan
2025-11-05 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Knoxville), Knoxville, TN, United States
The Frederick R. and Margaret B. Matson Lectureship for Near Eastern Archaeology and Archaeological Technology

Nomads of the Desert and the Sea: Evidence from Prehistoric Burial Mounds in Qatar
2025-11-06 16:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Tory Breezeway-1, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Harald Ingholt Lecture in Middle Eastern Archaeology
Lecturer: Dr. Richard Fletcher
Abstract: Prehistoric burial cairns have been a subject of archaeological investigation in Qatar since national development began in the 1950s. The study of various aspects of the burial mounds has yielded substantial evidence, with over 2,000 burials identified. Recent survey projects estimate a density of up to 10 mounds per km2 for the peninsula as a whole. A Qatar Museums project, in collaboration with Sidra Medicine, is testing this estimate through remote sensing to map the burial cairns, using aerial photography, satellite imagery, and LiDAR, and ground truthing results through field survey. Results for an area of 30,000 km2 in northern Qatar indicate 10,782 burials, with a clear pattern of preference in the north-west opposite the island of Bahrain.T he results of the project support the hypothesis that nomads in the desert of northern Qatar were moving between Bahrain and Qatar, probably on a seasonal basis.

Archive Archaeology at Karanis: Recontextualizing the Michigan Documentation in Three Dimensions
2025-11-06 17:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Ellis Library Auditorium, 520 S 9th St, Columbia, MO, 65201, United States
The Archaelogical Institute of America (AIA) Central Missouri Society is co-sponsoring with the Classics, Archaeology, and Religion (CAR) Department a guest lecture by Dr. Tyler Johnson on November 6th at 5:30 pm with a reception beforehand at 5pm in the Ellis Library auditorium. Dr. Johnson will be presenting “Archive Archaeology at Karanis: Recontextualizing the Mighigan Documentation in Three Dimensions”, and he will be exploring the challenges and possibilities of conducting “archive archaeology” at Karansis, creating new tools for exploring, cross-referencing, and reinterpreting this essential legacy dataset.
Although far from modern standards, the University of Michigan excavations at Karanis (1924–1935) employed advanced recording techniques for their time. Documenting the site’s evolution through a system of “levels,” the excavators left behind a dense archival record of photographs, tables, notes, drawings, plans, artifact inventories, and survey results. Housed at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, this documentation has been consulted for a century but never systematically analyzed or disseminated. The most authoritative source remains an unfinished manuscript by Enoch Peterson (professor at Michigan from 1924–1962), never published or made publicly available.
Today, a revival of interest in Karanis has created a demand for better curation and accessibility of these records. In response, researchers at the Kelsey Museum are leading a digital initiative with two objectives. First, drawing upon legacy survey data and new radiocarbon results, we are using the game engine Unity to reconstruct and reinterpret the site’s chronological evolution in three dimensions. Second, we are transforming Peterson’s manuscript and related materials into an interactive, open-access resource. These collaborative efforts between Kelsey researchers, staff, graduate, and undergraduate students go beyond digitization, requiring the restructuring and reassessment of excavation data within an updated framework.
As we integrate new insights and methodologies, our work sometimes calls the Michigan excavators’ original interpretations into question. This raises the need to balance faithful preservation of archival materials with that of reassessing the excavation results through contemporary archaeological lenses. This paper explores the challenges and possibilities of conducting “archive archaeology” at Karanis, creating new tools for exploring, cross-referencing, and reinterpreting this essential legacy dataset.

Landscapes of Time and Memory: Foragers in the Mojave Desert
2025-11-06 17:30 - 19:00 (America/Chicago) | TBA (Lubbock), Lubbock, TX, United States
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lectureship

New Approaches to Roman Urbanism: The Excavations of the Falerii Novi Project (Lazio, Italy)
2025-11-06 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | Kelsey Museum, 434 State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States

TBA (New Brunswick)
2025-11-07 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Halifax) | TBA (New Brunswick), Fredericton, New Brunswick
Time TBA

Sparta and Totalitarianism
2025-11-09 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | 303 Paterson Hall, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Speaker: Susan Downie – Carleton University
The ancient Greek city-state of Sparta has never really left the imagination of western civilization. From political philosophers like Plato and Aristotle to modern political parties such as Greece’s Χρυσή Αυγή “Golden Dawn”, the Spartan state and its citizens have represented an ideal for which to strive. What elements of the ancient Spartan state and society have made it the poster-child for modern Totalitarianism? Given the significant problems with our sources about ancient Sparta, can we ever understand exactly how the state and its citizens functioned, or must we forever deal with the “Spartan mirage”?
There will also be an initial talk by Christos Zigoumis on Mani and Cephalonia: Survey and Excavation.

Book talk & Signing - Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife
2025-11-09 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | ARCE Egyptology Lectures Room 254 Social Sciences Building, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, California, 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 book talk and signing by Dr. Rune Nyord, Emory University:
“Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife”
Sunday November 9, 2025, 3 PM Pacific Standard Time
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.
About the Lecture:
The overall model for understanding the ancient Egyptian afterlife in scholarship and popular culture alike is well known: The ancient Egyptians believed in a post-mortem judgement that would determine their fate in the afterlife, being either rewarded with an eternal life of bliss or punished with painful annihilation. However, in my new book Yearning for Immortality, I argue that for the most part these ideas were in place well before the decipherment of hieroglyphs and thus draw more on Greek and especially Christian frameworks for life after death than on ancient Egyptian ones, meaning that our model for understanding the Egyptian afterlife is due for a fundamental rethinking. This lecture covers some of the main results presented in Yearning for Immortality before turning to the question, raised only briefly in the last chapter of the book, of what such a rethinking might look like. If we cannot read texts like the “Book of the Dead” as straightforward descriptions of the Egyptian afterlife, then what sources can we draw on to get a sense of ancient Egyptian ideas of life and death? And correspondingly, what strategies for reading and viewing funerary texts and art can we use to approximate an indigenous understanding as opposed to one projecting Western models of postmortem existence?
About the Speaker:
Dr. Rune Nyord is Associate Professor of Ancient Egyptian Art and Archaeology at Emory University, where he is also Chair of the Art History Department. His research focuses on conceptions and experiences of representation, ontology, and personhood in ancient Egypt, especially as evidenced in funerary culture, and drawing on a combination of archaeological and textual sources. He is also interested in the history of the discipline of Egyptology and ways in which it continues to influence contemporary practices and interpretations. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of several books, the most recent being the monograph Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife (Chicago 2025) and a co-edited special issue of Interdisciplinary Egyptology titled Egyptology in Dialogue (Vienna, 2025).
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Parking is available in UC lots all day on weekends, for a fee. Ticket dispensing machines accept debit or credit cards. Parking is available in lots around the Social Sciences Building, and in lots along Bancroft. A map of the campus is available online at http://www.berkeley.edu/map/ .
About Northern California ARCE:
For more information, please visit https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://www.facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE, 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.

Arkhaios Cultural Heritage and Archaeology Film Festival
2025-11-10 08:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | WI
The multi-day Arkhaios Cultural Heritage and Archaeology Film Festival is an annual juried competition, part of Archaeology Month celebration. It is free, open to the public, and is an educational event showcasing the discovery of past cultures gained from ethnological or archaeological research, and illustrated through documentary films.
The Virtual Edition is an international online screening of all the Official Selection films. During the week of the Festival, there are several in-person Arkhaios Festivals in the US, showing the best films from the Arkhaios Official Selections.

Urban Regeneration and Sustainability (URS) - 6th Edition
2025-11-11 09:00 - 2025-11-13 17:00 (America/New_York) | Italy, Rome, Italy, Rome, Italy, AK, 00123, India
The “Urban Regeneration and Sustainability” conference holds huge importance in today’s world. As cities face numerous challenges, such as quick urbanization, environmental degradation, and social inequality, it is crucial to address these issues through sustainable urban regeneration practices. That is why IEREK is hosting the sixth edition of the conference offering attendees a platform to learn, collaborate, highlight their projects, access resources, and enhance their reputation. By participating in this conference, attendees can gain valuable knowledge, make partnerships, and accelerate their efforts toward creating sustainable urban spaces.

The Shipwreck at Gnalić – Gagliana Grossa (1569-1583)
2025-11-11 18:30 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | Math & Science Center, W201, 400 Dowman Dr NE, Atlanta, 30322, United States
The George F. Bass Lectures

TBA (Charlottesville)
2025-11-12 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Charlottesville), Charlottesville, VA, United States
The George F. Bass Lectures Time TBA

C. Brian Rose - Troy and Gordion: An Excavator’s Perspective on Two Legendary Sites in Anatolia
2025-11-12 17:30 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus, Baltimore, Maryland, 21210, United States
Wednesday Nov. 12, 5:30 – 6:30, Johns Hopkins Homewood campus, Room TBA
C. Brian Rose
James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology, University of Pennsylvania
Curator-in-Charge, Mediterranean Section, University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Troy and Gordion: An Excavator’s Perspective on Two Legendary Sites in Anatolia
Heinrich Schliemann began excavations at Troy in the 1870s, and claimed that he had found evidence there of the battles between the Homeric heroes. Gordion was the capital city of King Midas, famous for his Golden Touch, and the site of the Gordian Knot that was severed by Alexander the Great. In this talk Brian Rose will highlight the positive and negative aspects of working at both projects, focusing on the extent to which regional, national, and global developments have shaped the research agendas there. He will also reflect on the discipline of archaeology in Turkey and the Near East in the early 21st century.

Decoding the Pyramid Statues of King Menkaure
2025-11-12 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Florence Dunn Friedman, Visiting Scholar, Department of Egyptology and Assyriology, Brown University
King Menkaure’s Fourth Dynasty pyramid temples at Giza were once filled with statues. The surviving statues represent some of the finest in ancient Egyptian sculpture. Crafted for eternity, these statues served as “bodies” through which the king could function in this life and the next. The iconography, inscriptions, figural groupings, stances, gestures, and even the damage of these statues have stories to tell. While these stories rarely involved ordinary Egyptians, certain statue details hint at far-reaching economic ties that did. This talk dives into the mysteries behind Menkaure’s sculptures—exploring their symbolism, damage, and relocation—and reveals how much they still have to say, even after thousands of years.
Advance registration recommended for online and in-person attendance.
Free admission. Free event parking at the 52 Oxford Street Garage starting at 4:00 pm. Presented by the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East and the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture.

AIA Archaeology Hour November 2025: The People's Arena
2025-11-12 20:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/1117571134992/WN_obR16xWNSO6l2B2JHgfShg
Join the AIA for a fascinating evening with Alison Futrell as she gives the International Archaeology Day month AIA Archaeology Hour talk “The People’s Arena.”
This presentation will be given at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central/6pm Mountain/5pm Pacific.

Register here!

The Shipwreck at Gnalić – Gagliana Grossa (1569-1583)
2025-11-13 16:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | Wellesley College, Founders Hall 120, 106 Central St, Wellesley, MA, 02481, United States

Archaeology-Hour Screening: Shipping Stone for Justinian’s Empire(?)
2025-11-13 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 Justin Leidwanger (Stanford University).
The Marzamemi “church wreck” (as it has been labeled) — a 6th-century CE shipwreck found off the southeastern tip of Sicily, has long been interpreted as a symbol of the emperor Justinian’s ‘revival’ of a pan-Mediterranean, ‘re-consolidated’ Roman empire. With a whopping one-hundred-ton cargo of prefabricated marble columns and religious furnishings, the ship’s contents present somewhat of an enigma, in that they represent neither a complete church nor a random assortment of available pieces. In this talk, we will explore how the initial connections between the Marzamemi wreck and assumptions regarding ‘Justinian’s empire’ should be called into question. The Marzamemi wreck points us to a new look at economic, political, religious, and artistic networks, as well as the merchant sailors who tied together the Mediterranean world, amidst the disintegration of a top-down imperial regime.

The Rape of the Sabines: Myth and History in the Urban Development of Republican Rome
2025-11-13 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Hartford 1), Hartford, CT, United States
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lectureship Time TBA

Ceramic Production and Community at Archaic and Classical Eleon in Central Greece
2025-11-13 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Jepson Hall, Room 109, 221 Richmond Way, Richmond, VA, 23173, United States
Joseph Veach Noble Lecture, by Dr. Janelle Sadarananda, Skidmore College

Life, Death, and Disease: Insights form Petra’s Tombs and Cemeteries
2025-11-13 19:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | College of Charleston, Simons 380, 54 St. Philip Street, Charleston, SC, 29401, United States
Kershaw Lectures in Near East Archaeology

Petra's Forgotten Past: Uncovering the Iron Age Foundations of Nabataean Society
2025-11-13 19:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | University of Maryland, Room TBA, College Park, MD, United States

A High Altitude "Big Bang": Late Formative Period Archaeology of the Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia 2
2025-11-13 19:30 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | TBA (Western Carolina), NC, United States
Doris Z. Stone New World Archaeology Lectures

Ancient Egypt In Its African Context and at a Crossroads
2025-11-14 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Architecture School, UVA, CAM 160, 110 Bayly Dr, Charlottesville, VA, 22903, United States
Shomarka Keita, a biological anthropologist affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution and the Institute for Historical Biology, William and Mary, has written extensively on identity and biology in Egypt and Nubia. Egypt is in the northeastern corner of Africa, in essence a 930 mi linear oasis in the eastern Sahara. Due to the history of Egypt’s exploration and reception by the European gaze, it has traditionally been regarded as ‘Western’ or ‘Near Eastern’, divorced from its place of emergence and cultural connections with Africa. This lecture will address the origins of ancient Egyptian culture including aspects of its interconnections with Nubia. Evidence from linguistics, biology and archaeology will be explored.

The Second Style at Saqqara during the Late Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period: Results of an Investigation and New Observations
2025-11-15 15:30 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Florence, Florence, - None -, 9121, India
Saturday, October 15
3:30 pm EST
Penn Museum, Anthro Classroom 345
In-person; no registration required
Speaker: Dr. Valentina Anselmi, PhD, UPenn
Title: The Second Style at Saqqara during the Late Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period: Results of an Investigation and New Observations
Abstract:
In the late Old Kingdom, an unusual corpus of artistic production, royal and non-royal, appeared on the scene. Funerary statuary and reliefs from that time display atypical proportions when depicting aspects of the human form: limbs appear longer, eyes and heads seem larger. Overall, these changes, which appear to distort traditional canons, exude pervasive dynamism and expressiveness. In the past, art historians and Egyptologists dismissed the phenomenon as “bad art” resulting from political decentralization and cultural decline. Then two scholars in particular, Edna Russmann and Edward Brovarski, reevaluated these artistic productions, assessing them as voluntary innovations. Such manner of representation has been called the “Second Style.” The research for my dissertation set out to review the phenomenon in theoretical terms and determined its existence, assessing and verifying known occurrences of the style in statuary and relief at Saqqara, as well as surveying the archaeological context for unreported occurrences. The finds revealed an early onset of the style with diffused use of its idiosyncratic elements during the Fifth Dynasty, which seemingly emerged in the royal workshops as early as the reign of Raneferef, per Prakash’s previous assessment of the phenomenon in the royal realm. During the Sixth Dynasty, the style found favor with the courtiers, with its employment in private statuary reaching its peak during the reign of Pepy II. The Second Style then continued to exert its influence on the production of statuary and relief of the Middle and Upper Egyptian sites, in particular during the First Intermediate Period and well into the early Middle Kingdom, when the artistic representations of the upcoming Theban dynasty show some of the style characteristics. This lecture will cover the finds of my research, which has further extended to investigating female representation during the same time period, as well as the appearance of nude statues that is also associated with the Late Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Valentina Anselmi is a recent PhD in the Graduate Program in Egyptology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Her dissertation, An Investigation of the So-Called Second Style at Saqqara in the Later Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period, examines shifts in artistic conventions during a critical time in ancient Egyptian history. With an M.Phil. in Egyptology from Penn and a B.A. from the American University in Cairo, she has also received the Felix J. Korsyn Prize in Egyptology. Her teaching experience includes courses on Art and Architecture in Ancient Egypt and Coptic. Her research and public engagement work include fieldwork at Abydos, a recently published article on a Ka-statue at the Glencairn Museum, and ongoing museum experience at the Penn Museum. Her work has also explored the use of 3D imagining to better understand the nature of Egyptian art.
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Lectures are FREE to ARCE Members, $7 for University of Pennsylvania Museum Members and UPenn Staff and Faculty, $5 for Students with ID, and $10 for the general public.
Light refreshments served starting at 3pm.
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The American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) is a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1948 by a consortium of educational and cultural institutions to support research on all aspects of Egyptian history and culture, foster broader knowledge among the general public, and strengthen American-Egyptian cultural ties. The ARCE Pennsylvania Chapter (ARCE-PA) is the local branch of the national institution. We host monthly events including scholarly lectures, Egyptian-themed workshops, social events, and guided tours of the Penn Museum’s Egyptian galleries. For more information or to learn about the perks of membership, please send an e-mail to info@arce-pa.org, or visit our website at www.arce-pa.org.

Pattern-Making Workshop with Artist Zahra Almajidi
2025-11-16 14:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Islamic Center of Greater Worcester, 57 Laurel St, Worcester, 01605, United States
Do you ever wonder how artists design patterns for jewelry, prints, and textiles? This workshop gives audiences a chance to learn about design elements and principles from Detroit-based Middle Eastern artist Zahra Almajidi. Participants will also participate in a hands-on activity, generating their own unique patterns.
Registration required. If you are interested in joining the workshop, please contact Elizabeth Knott at eknott@holycross.edu

Professor Amy Gansell, "The Queens of Nimrud’s Northwest Palace: Beauty, Power, and Presence in the Neo-Assyrian World, c. 865–705 BCE"
2025-11-18 16:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | WI
Nearly three thousand years ago, at the ancient site of Nimrud (near modern Mosul, Iraq), a succession of ten Neo-Assyrian kings reigned in collaboration with their queens from the magnificence of the Northwest Palace, the seat of the empire and center of their world. Too often overshadowed by the well documented legacy of Neo-Assyrian kings, Professor Gansell will shed light on the queens who reigned with them. Piece by piece, and layer by layer, across about 150 years of evidence, Professor Gansell discovers the beauty, power, and presence of Nimrud’s Northwest Palace queens in life, death, and for eternity.
