Archaeological Institute of America

Ancient Houston
2021-10-23 | Tony Marron Park, 808 N York St, Houston, TX, 77003, United States
Does Houston have ancient history? You bet!
Discover what life was like along the bayous of the Gulf Coast area of Texas, long before Houston became a major city.
This free hands-on event for children takes place at KBR Kids Day from 10 am – 4 pm at Tony Marron Park, 808 N. York St., Houston TX 77003

21st Century Tools for Studying Ice Age Art
2021-10-22 20:00 (America/New_York) | WEBINAR (South Florida 1), Wellington, FL
Matson Lecture

Migrations, Marginality, and Maritime Landscapes: A New World Paleocoastal Occupation
2021-10-22 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | WEBINAR (Puget Sound 1), Seattle, WA

The Ancient City: Lessons for a Modern Age
2021-10-22 15:30 (America/New_York) | WEBINAR (Albany 1), Albany, NY
Graham Lecture

Drink Your Hot Chocolate Like a Maya Ruler! Make Your Own Maya Drinking Cup (in English, until October 31st)
2021-10-22 09:00, 2021-10-19 09:00 (America/New_York) | AZ
Have fun learning about Maya ceramics for International Archaeology Day! This activity is a digital kit you can do any time on your own to explore the art and function of ancient Maya painted ceramics. Using various digital resources (including an online video tutorial) you will learn about some of the forms, designs, and functions of Maya ceramic vessels, with special attention to the Maya drinking cup. Complete our Maya drinking cup art activity to enjoy your favorite hot beverage!
Download our digital kit here: https://bit.ly/3oi390T
For an added bonus, if you email a photo of your completed drinking cup to mesoamericacenter@gmail.com by Sunday October 31, 2021 you will be eligible to win a gift box of Guatemalan hot drinking chocolate, ceramic drinking cup, and other small Guatemalan artisan crafts. Three winners will be selected from the submitted photo entries.

Celebrating Belizean Archaeology
2021-10-22 | AZ
The Belize Institute of Archaeology celebrates International Archaeology Day hosting multiple trivia Fridays (October 8, 15, and 22) on social media (IA Facebook page) whereby trivia pertaining to Belizean archaeology will be posted throughout the day. Also, we will be hosting an interactive competition aimed at bringing awareness to Belize’s archaeological sites. Participants will be tasked to create replicas of iconic Belizean archaeological site buildings using only recycled materials and posting images of their creations on the IA Facebook page.

The Shock of the New? Writing and the Propagation of Religious Ideology in early Islam
2021-10-21 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | WEBINAR (Salem 1), Salem, OR
Forsyth Lecture

Beyond the Gospels: Creating a Visual Identity for the Virgin Mary in Late Antique Egypt
2021-10-21 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Vancouver) | 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Dr. Sabrina Higgins (Simon Fraser University, B.C.)
The Virgin Mary is an enigmatic Biblical figure, one who rises from relative unimportance in the canonical gospels to become one of the most prominent figures in Christianity. The theological discourse that culminated with the declaration of Mary as Theotokos (‘God bearer’) at the Council of Ephesus in 431, is mirrored by a similar fragmented development in Marian iconography. Prior to the Council of Ephesus, Mary is scarcely depicted in early Christian art, appearing only in renderings of the Biblical events at which she is present (i.e. The Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes), but as her role within the developing Christology is expounded in the 5th century, there is a greater interest in rendering the Virgin within Christianity’s visual culture. This concern is mitigated, however, by Mary’s limited role within the canonical gospels, ultimately urging artists to turn to apocryphal gospels and long-standing traditions of mother goddesses for visual inspiration. This paper explores the intersection of these materials in the early development of the visual culture of the cult of Mary. It uses Egypt as a case study to highlight the role of the apocrypha within the Marian iconography that develops after the fifth century, ultimately highlighting the artists’ use of these extra-biblical texts to fill-in the perceived bibliographical gaps related to her life within the canonical gospels.

Artifacts and Archaeological Processes: The Lives and Afterlives of Objects at Pompeii
2021-10-21 18:00 (America/New_York) | WEBINAR (Kentucky 1), Louisville, KY

Surviving the Maya collapse at Actuncan, Belize
2021-10-21 18:00 (America/New_York) | WEBINAR (East Tennessee 1), Knoxville, TN

Tracing the Origins of Art
2021-10-21 17:30 (America/New_York) | WEBINAR (Charlottesville 1), Charlottesville, VA
Joukowsky Lecture

Andromeda, Alexander, and Ascalos: founders and foundation myths in the Roman Near East
2021-10-21 16:30 (America/New_York) | WEBINAR (Pittsburgh 1), Pittsburgh, PA
Kershaw Lecture

“Illuminating the Past: An Application of Data Science to Archaeology”
2021-10-20 19:30 - 20:30 (America/Chicago) | Warren County History Museum, 238 S. Sunny Lane, Monmouth, IL, 61462, United States
Michael C. Sostarecz, Professor of Mathematics, Monmouth College (msostarecz@gmail.com)
Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) is an imaging technique used to non-invasively bring out surface details on artifacts. This lecture will share improvements on how the data is collected, an original model to combine the experimental images, and new options for post-processing. The artifacts presented will include Greco-Egyptian pottery from the Ashmolean and British Museums, arrow points from Monmouth College’s Native American Lithic Collection, and Greek coins from the College’s Shields Collection. With a focus on qualitative comparisons to current models for RTI, this presentation will be geared towards a general audience. Planned extensions of the project involve forensic science, dinosaurs, and scuba diving, albeit probably not at the same time.
Wednesday, October 20, 2021, 7:30 pm at the Warren County Historical Museum, 238 S. Sunny Lane, Monmouth, IL 61462
Live and on ZOOM: Meeting ID 605 178 8810 Passcode 3xQBD4

Archaeology and Ale with Dr. James Osborne
2021-10-20 19:00 (America/Chicago) | 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Fieldwork and COVID at Turkey’s ‘Newest’ Iron Age Capital:
Results from Türkmen-Karahöyük (Dr. James Osborne, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago)
In 2019, researchers with the Türkmen-Karahöyük Intensive Survey Project (TISP) identified the site to be one of the very largest Bronze and Iron Age cities in ancient Turkey, despite the fact that it had never been identified before by archaeologists. The chance find of a hieroglyphic inscription authored by a “Great King Hartapu” — one of Archaeology magazine’s Top 10 Discoveries of that year — proved the site must have been a local capital city during the Iron Age, and likely during earlier periods as well. Following a hiatus in 2020 due to COVID, TISP returned to the field in 2021 — only to have COVID remain a logistical and practical hurdle in many ways. This talk will present the background of the site, discuss some of the ways that COVID altered our fieldwork practices, and conclude with showing what we documented despite these challenges: a magnetometry map that shows us what buildings lie just under the surface, ready to be revealed by excavation.
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Gender, Creator Deities, and the Public Image of Sobekneferu
2021-10-20 19:00 (America/New_York) | WEBINAR (Northern New Jersey 1), Montclair, NJ

Royal Purple and Indigo: The Hidden Labor Behind Luxurious Dyes
2021-10-20 18:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Gainesville 1), Gainesville, FL, United States
Zoom ID: 745 130 9473

Putting the stone back in the Stone Age: New research on the end of the Maltese Temple Period, a lecture by Dr Huw S. Groucutt, Max Planck Independent Research Group leader in Jena, Germany
2021-10-20 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Malta) | AZ
Abstract : After existing for over one thousand years, the Maltese Temple Period ended around 4,300 years ago. Understanding why has been a topic of considerable interest and debate. In this talk Dr Huw S. Groucutt will discuss this topic, outlining recent research on themes such as regional climate change and evidence for the arrival of new groups of humans. Chronological modelling studies are presented which indicate a correlation between archaeological activity and regional climate, which indicate a long-term societal decline in the final centuries of the Temple Period. Yet, does climate change alone explain the end of the Temple Period, or was something else involved, such as new groups of humans arriving, perhaps bringing a plague epidemic with them? Against this backdrop Dr Groucutt will outline recent research on the distribution and character of Maltese chert. Chert was the main kind of stone used to make stone tools in Maltese prehistory, and is therefore crucial to understanding ancient Maltese society, yet it has seen relatively little study. New insights on the distribution and character of chert in Malta are discussed. This offers new perspectives on the character of Temple Period material culture, and the extent to which the Maltese islands were isolated or integrated with neighbouring regions such as Sicily.

Matrices of the Mother Goddess: Some Reconsiderations of Kybele in Western Anatolia
2021-10-20 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | WEBINAR (Southern Nevada 1), Las Vegas, NV
Kershaw Lecture
Zoom details:
Meeting ID: 85444244180
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Power plays at Pylos: The past and memory in the tombs and at the palace
2021-10-20 16:00 (America/New_York) | WEBINAR (Western New York 1), Buffalo, NY
Zoom Meeting ID: 921 1429 3029
Passcode: [REDACTED]

A Feminist History of Ancient Medicine
2021-10-19 19:15 (America/Denver) | WEBINAR (Santa Fe 1), Santa Fe, NM

Archaeology of Beer
2021-10-19 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Chicago) | AZ
It’s been found in the Egyptian pyramids, the cities of Mesopotamia, Viking longboats, the palace of Machu Picchu, medieval monasteries, and the world’s earliest farming villages. What is it? Beer! Beer has been used for thousands of years to pay taxes, heal the sick, and accompany the dead into the afterlife. Many religions worshiped gods and goddesses of beer and brewing, and some of the earliest known examples of both poetry and law codes are about beer. Join us for an evening webinar exploring the archaeology of beer with Public Archaeologist Patty Hamrick.

Let them Rest in Peace: The Sacred Burials of Frescoes, Pots, and Rooms in the House of the Frescoes at Knossos
2021-10-19 18:00 (America/New_York) | WEBINAR (Greensboro 1), Greensboro, NC
McDonald Lecture

Royal Purple and Indigo: the Hidden Labor Behind Luxurious Dyes
2021-10-19 18:00 (America/New_York) | Carraway Building (CAR), 315, 909 Antarctic Way, Tallahassee, FL, United States

Family, food and health in the Bronze Age Aegean: Novel bioarchaeological insights into Mycenaean and Minoan societies
2021-10-17 15:00 - 16:30 (America/New_York) | Spokane, WA, 99201, United States
Since the famous excavations of Heinrich Schliemann in Mycenae and of Arthur Evans in Knossos, we have been trying to understand the life of the Mycenaean and Minoan societies of the second millennium BCE. Outstanding palaces, literary sources and rich burials have inspired our fascination of the Aegean Bronze Age. However, many basic questions have remained unanswered: How were families structured? What about individual mobility in the Aegean? Did people move from Anatolia to the Aegean or from Mainland Greek to Crete? What about their food and health? Now, a plethora of bioarchaeological approaches from archaeogenetics to the study of food residues in human dental calculus opens up new horizons of knowledge. Within my European Research Council project “FoodTransforms” and at the Max Planck Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean, we have now assembled a bioarchaeological dataset of the Aegean Bronze Age, which enables novel insights into Bronze Age marital rules, biological relationships in collective burials, human mobility, culinary practices, resource management and infectious diseases in the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC Aegean. I will present these datasets and integrate them into our rich archaeological evidence in order to shed a new light on Mycenaean and Minoan societies.

Aridity and adaptation among Arabian Bronze Age communities: Investigating mobility and climate change using isotope analysis
2021-10-17 15:00 (America/Chicago) | WEBINAR (Milwaukee 1), Milwaukee, WI
Braidwood Lecture

Additional Zoom information:
Webinar ID: 951 4313 4365
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Syracuse, Empire in a City: An Archaeology of Magna Graecia’s Unwilling Immigrants
2021-10-17 14:00 - 15:30 (America/New_York) | AZ
Classical Syracuse was a city of immigrants. Some came seeking work and high wages, others as refugees fleeing the Carthaginians’ advance across Sicily. But most arrived by force after being defeated by the Syracusans and dispossessed of their land. Since the late Archaic period, the Syracusans regularly forced the people they conquered to relocate to Syracusan territory as citizens and then gave away the land they left behind to people from outside of Syracusan society. In this talk, we will explore how the Syracusans competed with their rivals in the Classical period by forcing the people they conquered to become unwilling immigrants at Syracuse, a tumultuous history that saw the Syracusans rapidly uproot much of Magna Graecia. We will examine excavation assemblages from the ancient sites of Naxos, Leontinoi, and Syracuse to see what was so distinctive about Syracusan imperialism in the ancient world and what set them apart from their imperial contemporaries at Athens and Rome. Through it all, we will see how the Syracusans were on their way to constructing one of the Mediterranean’s first quasi-planned economies—an empire in a city.

Magellan’s Pacific Crossing: New Discoveries in One of the World’s Greatest Voyages
2021-10-17 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | WEBINAR (Orange County 1), Anaheim, CA

Methods of laboratory processing and documentation of findings in archaeological depositories
2021-10-17 13:00 - 16:00 (Europe/Prague) | Archeological laboratory at Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Olomouc, Na Hradě 245/5, Olomouc, 77900, Czechia
The workshop is organized by Palacký University Olomouc in cooperation with the Archaeological Institute of the Academy of Sciences in Brno and the Regional Museum in Mikulov as part of the World Day of Archeology. The workshop will use the findings from the Pavlov-Horní pole site and the general public will be practically acquainted with the individual conservation and documentation procedures of archaeological material processing (cleaning and completion of artifacts, gluing and plastering of ceramic vessels, drawing, photo documentation, etc.).

"Four Hour Field School" An OKPAN Archaeological Skills Workshop
2021-10-17 12:30 - 16:30 (America/Chicago) | Cleveland County Fairgrounds, 615 E. Robinson St., Norman, OK, 73071, United States
Oklahoma Archaeology Month has arrived, and with it, OKPAN’s October Archaeological Skills Workshop! Please join us Sunday, October 17, from 12:30 to 4:30 PM) to learn four different archaeological skills. This workshop is open to anyone who cares about caring for cultural heritage – no experience required – and it is a perfect opportunity for students and members of the public to sample what archaeologists do in the field. Attendees will learn how to participate in archaeological survey, set up an excavation unit, illustrate soil profiles, and clean and refit artifacts, all in a single afternoon!
