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

TBA (Stanford)
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

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.

On Metals, Grasses, and Mollusks: A Local History of Ecology, Economy, and Empire in Roman Iberia
2026-02-09 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | TBA (Fresno), Fresno, CA
Time TBA

“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/)

Replacing Empires. The Archaeology of Political Transformation and Spatial Dynamics in 1st Millennium BCE Mesopotamia
2026-02-13 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Columbus), Columbus, OH, United States
Kershaw Lectures in Near East Archaeology Time TBA

From Farmers to Kings: The Emergence of Social Hierarchy in Prehistoric Europe 2
2026-02-17 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Lynchburg 1), Lynchburg, VA, United States
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lectureship Time TBA

Punitive Labor and Enslavement in the Roman Bakery
2026-02-17 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:
In 2023, excavators in Pompeii found a bakery in the Casa di Rustio Vero that was separated from the house—and the rest of the world—by metal bars. The excavators interpreted the bars as an indication of incarceration and the use of convicts as labor. This lecture explores the evidence for convict labor in bakeries and argues that the material consequences of enslavement and incarceration are probably indistinguishable in the setting of commerical activity. Deploying both textual and material evidence, Benton will show the various ways that punitive labor grafted onto different systems and scales of production.
About the speaker:
Dr. Jared Benton, associate professor of art at Old Dominion University, is co-director of the Saïss Plain and Zerhoun Massif archaeology project, a survey of the plain SE of Volubilis in Morocco. He has previously excavated workshops in Volubilis and was a field supervisor for the American Excavations at Morgantina from 2013-2020. His book, The Bread Makers, explores Roman commercial baking, with a focus on how production would differ not only between communities but also between operators with different investment tolerances. With a number of co-authors, he recently published an article on the structure and archaeobotany of a bakery at Volubilis in Mouseion.

Egyptian Blue, humanity’s first inorganic pigment
2026-02-19 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W 1st Ave, Spokane, WA, 99201, United States
Join us for a lecture by Professor John McCloy, Washington State University, who will present results of an investigation into the materials science and processing parameters to fabricate Egyptian blue faience.
Recently, our group at Washington State University, with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute, recreated Egyptian blue to uncover the science behind its color, ranging from gray or green to deep blue. We produced 12 versions of Egyptian blue and compared them with artifacts, using advanced X-ray techniques, spectroscopy, and quantitative color measurements. We found Egyptian blue is a complex mixture of phases, with hue controlled by particle size, glass content, and cuprorivaite–silica ratios. Even small changes in materials or heating could dramatically shift its color.
These findings reveal ancient craftspeople as skilled materials scientists. Beyond cultural insights and conservation, Egyptian blue’s infrared glow continues to inspire modern technologies, linking past creativity with future innovation.

Digging in Circles: Miami's Prehistoric Legacy
2026-02-21 15:00 - 16:30 (America/New_York) | Palm Beach Museum of Natural History, the Mall at Wellington Green, 10300 Forest Hill Blvd., Wellington, FL, 33414, United States

The Origins of the Alphabet and How It Spread Across the World
2026-02-22 14:00 - 15:30 (America/New_York) | Knight Auditorium, The Spurlock Museum(UIUC), 600 S.Gregory Street, Urbana, IL 61801, Illinois, 61801, United States
Public Lecture by Professor Wayne T. Pitard
Abstract:
Essentially all of the alphabetic scripts in the world descend from a single script invented probably during the 20th century BCE by a Canaanite in the southern Levant. This lecture will provide a tour of the extraordinary development of the alphabet from its beginnings to its eventual spread across the Mediterranean and the world. We will examine the script’s origin and how the signs were conceptualized by their creator(s). We will look at the alphabet’s extension, first across the eastern Mediterranean where it developed into the distinctive Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, and Aramaic scripts, and then moved southward into the Arabian Peninsula, where it evolved into the Arabic system. Then we will examine how the early alphabet, which only expressed consonants, was revolutionized by the Greeks, who began using some of the letters as vowels. We will follow the development of the Greek alphabet into both the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabets that exist throughout Europe and much of northern Asia. Finally, we will touch upon the spread of the Arabic alphabet across northern Africa and eastward into India, and the Latin alphabet’s movement to the Americas and parts of southern Africa during the European colonial period of the 15th-20th centuries. All of this has made the alphabetic writing system the most widespread method of writing in the world.

Bone by Bone: The Commingled Remains from the Tomb at Tell Abraq, UAE (2200-2000 BC)
2026-02-22 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | TBA (North Coast)
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship Time TBA

Petra's Forgotten Past
2026-02-24 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Vancouver) | TBA (Vancouver), Vancouver, British Columbia

The Elk Ridge Community in the Mimbres Pueblo World
2026-02-25 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Gainesville 1), Gainesville, FL, United States

AIA Archaeology Hour February 2026: Metropolitan Walls of the Ọyọ Empire
2026-02-25 17:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Oklahoma
Join the AIA for a virtual trip to West Africa as Akin Ogundiran delivers the February AIA Archaeology Hour talk “Metropolitan Walls of the Ọyọ Empire.”
This presentation will be given at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central/6pm Mountain/5pm Pacific.

Register here!

The Making of Myth & Marble: Bringing the Torlonia Sculptures to the U.S.
2026-02-26 17:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Whitman College Maxey Hall 207, 173 Stanton St., Walla Walla, WA, 99362, United States

Life, Death, and Disease: Insights form Petra’s Tombs and Cemeteries 3
2026-02-26 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Western Massachusetts), Northampton, MA, United States

New Approaches to Roman Urbanism: The Excavations of the Falerii Novi Project (Lazio, Italy) 2
2026-02-26 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Chicago) | TBA (Central Missouri), MO, United States

Soldier Burials, Landscapes, and Memory in Early Iron Age Greece
2026-02-26 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Denver) | TBA (Central Arizona), Phoenix, AZ, United States

Spectacles of Cultural Heritage Destruction in Global Media
2026-02-28 11:00 - 12:30 (America/Chicago) | TBA (Minneapolis), Minneapolis, MN, United States
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship

New Discoveries at Pompeii and Rome
2026-02-28 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Chicago) | historic Longview Farm House located at 13525 Clayton Road in Town and Counry, MO., 13525 Clayton Road, St. Louis, MO, 63141, United States
. Dr. Marcello Mogetta (Chair of the Dept. of Classics, Archaeology & Religion at the University of Missouri – Columbia) will lecture on “New Discoveries at Pompeii and Rome”. A Roman themed reception will be held afterwards, but 21st century clothing is totally cool.

Mayan writing Workshop: Learning the Mayan Calendar
2026-03-01 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | Oklahoma
Speaker: Paul Caetano
Further details to come

"Across Jordan in the Footsteps of Alois Musil: Archaeology and Discovery" with Sylva Pavlasová
2026-03-03 15:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York)
Join a fascinating online lecture about Alois Musil with Sylva Pavlasová, head of the Mashrek unit of the Middle East Department at the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who recently returned from Jordan, a nation rich with traces from Neolithic, Nabataean, Roman, Early Christian, Byzantine, and Islamic times to the establishment of the modern Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Musil, a theologian, orientalist, and explorer, was nicknamed Sheikh Mousa by local Bedouin tribes. A major Czech scholar of the 19th and 20th Century, fluent in 35 dialects of Arabic, leader of two Bedouin tribes with friends amongst local Arabs — Musil amassed important knowledge related to Jordan´s history. In 1898, he rediscovered the Islamic desert castle of Qusayr ‘Amra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Decorating for Death
2026-03-03 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | TBA (Eugene), Eugene, OR

Petra's Forgotten Past: Uncovering the Iron Age Foundations of Nabataean Society 2
2026-03-05 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Baltimore), Baltimore, MD, United States

TBA (Hawaii (Honolulu))
2026-03-05 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Honolulu), Honolulu, HI

TBA (New Orleans)
2026-03-05 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Chicago) | TBA (New Orleans 1), New Orleans, LA, United States

Baptism in Early Christianity and Baptismal Inscriptions in Asia Minor
2026-03-06 - 2026-03-07 | Orthodox Academy of Crete, Kolymvari, 73006, Greece
Water has been the central element of Christian baptism since the very beginnings of Christianity. Baptism has been part of Christianity from the start, as shown by the many mentions in the Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline epistles. Baptism with water, whether by immersion or sprinkling, has always been the primary initiation ritual for Christians. But where did this ritual come from? And what did it mean? Although the term “baptism” is not today used to describe Jewish rituals(in contrast to New Testament times, when the Greek word βαπτισμός did indicate Jewish ablutions or rites of purification), the purification rites (or ֶוה ְק ִמ / מקווה; mikvah—ritual immersion) in Jewish law and tradition are similar to baptism, and the two have been linked. This e-meeting will focus on the following questions related to baptism in Early Christianity: how did people practice and understand baptism in Early Christian Minor, what kind of connotations did the baptismal use of water evoke in the Asian context, and what significance did baptism gain during the first centuries A.D.? Baptism seems to have been developed in the early years in close contact with the local religious context and the construction of baptisteries in the sixth century A.D. adapted local pagan elements of architecture. The Early Christian baptisteries featured water as the central element of baptism in an architecturally, ritually, and theologically reflected way.
In the study of baptism in Early Christian Asia Minor, we will especially focus on epigraphic evidence, which has been overlooked, whereas there is still a huge amount of material from excavations and museums in Turkey. Our aim is also to analyze the subject with literary sources and archaeological evidence to reconstruct the liturgy and the actions of early Christians, especially in ancient Anatolia. In this e-meeting, we only focus on baptismal inscriptions in Asia Minor between the fourth and sixth centuries A.D. and attempt to set out a comprehensive model for the study of Early Christian baptism in Asia Minor. It is also our intention to create a complete bibliography of previous publications on Early Christian baptism and baptismal inscriptions in Asia Minor.
We warmly invite contributions by scholars and graduate students from a variety of disciplines related to this subject. Intended to bring together scholars of Early Christian theology, Roman history, and Greek epigraphy to discuss a range of issues concerning this ritual’s characteristics, this video conference should be an excellent opportunity to increase our knowledge about this subject. The following theme groups are the main questions of the symposium, which are prescriptive:
-The origins and development of baptism in Asia Minor,
-Relevance and performance of baptism in Early Christian contexts in Asia Minor,
-Early Christian baptismal inscriptions in Asia Minor from archaeological field projects and museums,
-Etymology of Early Christian baptism,
-Ancient Greek and Latin textual sources on Early Christian baptism in Asia Minor,
-Hellenistic and Roman gravestones and other iconographic media depicting Early Christian baptism and baptismal inscriptions in Asia Minor,
-Miscellanea.
On these themes and questions, all approaches and methods susceptible to bringing some progress to our current knowledge are, of course, welcome: theology, ancient history, epigraphy, archaeology, history of art, cultural anthropology, etc. All the readings and discussions in our conference will be in English, and recorded for later viewing as a podcast on YouTube. The proceedings of the symposium will be published in 2028-29.
We would be delighted if you could consider contributing to our symposium and contact us with the required information below before October 1, 2025. Our e-mail addresses are: ztsiami@oac.gr and/or terracottas@deu.edu.tr
For all your queries concerning the symposium, our phone number is: +90.544.938 54 64. The organizers seek to widen participation at this symposium and would like to encourage colleagues from all parts of the world to attend. We kindly request that you alert any interested researchers, colleagues, and students within your research community who would be interested in participating in this conference, either by forwarding our first circular and poster through Academia, Researchgate, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or other similar social media, or by printing them and displaying in your institution. Please share them also on your ListServs. We hope that you will be able to join us at the Orthodox Academy, and we look forward to seeing you!

Next to Turquoise Domes: Archaeological Investigations in the City of Bukhara
2026-03-17 19:30 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Semans Auditorium (Room 117), Belk Visual Arts Center, 315 N. Main St., Davidson, NC, 28036, United States
About the lecture:
Five extensive seasons of archaeological fieldwork have yielded a veritable treasure trove of new information about the long, complex history of the city of Bukhara, which was once a key node along the fabled “Silk Roads.” This presentation will introduce new data derived from finds and observations made at a series of fortifications, various kinds of dwellings, workshops, and burial contexts. They speak to a wide range of historical phenomena and problems, such as the potential existence of a Seleucid military colony in the area of the later city during the 3rd century BCE, the roots and stages of Bukhara’s urban growth as an important node within the Sogdiana trading networks during Late Antiquity (3rd to 8th centuries CE), transcontinental connections during the city’s heyday under the Samanid dynasty during the 10th century, and the health status of the urban populace on the eve of the Mongol invasion (late 12th/early 13th century).
About the speaker:
Dr. Sören Stark, Professor of Central Asian Archaeology at New York University, has close to two decades of experience in conducting and directing archaeological fieldwork in Central Asia. His current research interests are, among others, on Hellenistic and Late Antique/Early Medieval Sogdiana and the archaeology and history of nomadic groups close to oasis territories in Western Central Asia. His publications include a monograph on the archaeology of the 6th-8th century Türks in Inner and Central Asia, an exhibition catalogue on Early Iron Age kurgans from Kazakhstan, and numerous articles and book chapters on the history and archaeology of Sogdiana between the Hellenistic and the Islamic periods.

TBA (Mississippi/Memphis)
2026-03-18 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Chicago) | TBA (Oxford MS/Memphis TN), United States
