Archaeological Institute of America

Why We Repatriate: 15 Years on the Arc of Restorative Justice at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science
2022-02-10 19:00 (America/Chicago) | Missouri

At Home on Board: the Kyrenia Ship and the Goods of its Crew
2022-02-10 | TBA (Dallas-Ft. Worth 1), Dallas, TX, United States
Cesnola Lecture

Across the Ocean Blue: Evidence for Precolumbian Voyages and Contacts
2022-02-08 18:00 (America/New_York) | TBA (Knoxville), Knoxville, TN, United States

The Lost City of Sikyon
2022-02-08 17:00 (America/Phoenix) | Missouri

POSTPONED to March Tallahassee Lecture 2 TBA
2022-02-08 | Missouri
Kershaw Lecture

Migrations, Marginality, and Maritime Landscapes: A New World Paleocoastal Occupation
2022-02-07 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Missouri

“How Humans Negotiated Environments in the Past”
2022-02-06 15:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Florence, Florence, - None -, 9121, India
It’s a new year and a great new slate of lectures! This winter, our lectures will be online using Microsoft Teams. We’re very excited to present Dr. Michelle Cameron, from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Her lecture, “How Humans Negotiated Environments in the Past,” will take place on Sunday, February 6th at 3:00 pm. The lecture is free and open to the the public. Pre-reregistration through this link is required: https://forms.office.com/r/y33WAK0k07. Please mark your calendars; we’ll look forward to seeing you soon!

Traveling Prehistoric Seas: Boats, the Oceans, and Archaeological Evidence for Precolumbian Voyages
2022-02-06 15:00 - 16:30 (America/Chicago) | Missouri
Until recently, the idea that people could have traversed large
expanses of ocean in prehistoric times was considered
pseudoscience. But recent discoveries in places as disparate
as Australia, Labrador, Crete, California, and Chile open
the possibility that oceans were highways, not barriers, and
that earlier than the Spanish Age of Discovery, people
possessed the means and motives to traverse them.
In her talk, Kehoe draws from her 2016 book
Traveling Prehistoric Seas to explain the history of
seafaring boats and evidence for people crossing open
ocean from Middle Paleolithic (colonizing outer Indonesia
and Australia) through Polynesian explorations that
reached the Americas.

The Human Remains from the First Dynasty Subsidiary Burials at Abydos
2022-02-06 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Missouri
The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California Chapter, and the Near Eastern Studies Department, University of California, Berkeley, invite you to attend a virtual lecture by Dr. Roselyn A. Campbell, Getty Research Institute:
The Human Remains from the First Dynasty Subsidiary Burials at Abydos
When: Sunday, February 6, 2022, 3 PM Pacific Time
Zoom Lecture. 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. Attendance is limited, so non-members, please send any registration requests no later than Friday, February 4.
Glenn Meyer
ARCE-NC ePublicity
About the Lecture:
The subsidiary burials surrounding the royal funerary complexes of the First Dynasty rulers at Abydos have piqued scholarly and public interest for well over a century. These subsidiary burials, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, contained the remains of men and women who seem to have been associated with the royal court. The quality of the grave goods within some of these graves, as well as statements by early excavators that most of the individuals interred were relatively young and seemed healthy, have sparked debate among scholars. Were the individuals in these subsidiary graves killed in a sacrificial ritual to accompany their deceased ruler into the afterlife, or were they simply interred around the royal burial as they died naturally over time? This talk will explore new data gathered from a study of the human remains that have been preserved from some of these subsidiary burials, shedding new light on the lives and deaths of these individuals at the birth of the Egyptian state.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Roselyn A. Campbell is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. She is a bioarchaeologist and Egyptologist, and has worked at archaeological sites throughout Egypt as well as in Peru, Ethiopia, Spain, and the western United States. Her research focuses on evidence for violence and trauma in the past, as well as the history of cancer in antiquity, and how these topics are relevant to the modern world.

Archaeology of Tattoos and Skin Art
2022-02-05 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Chicago) | Missouri
Zoom lecture by Dr. Aaron Deter-Wolf, Tennessee Division of Archaeology.

The Scent of Status: Prestige and Perfume at the Bronze Age Palace at Pylos, Greece
2022-02-01 18:00 (America/New_York) | University of South Florida Tampa Campus, CPR 115 (Cooper Hall), Cooper Hall, Tampa, 33620
Howland Lecture

Sensing the Past: Sensory Experiences in Ancient Mesopotamia (a 4-D Presentation)
2022-01-30 11:00 (America/New_York) | Missouri
Manton Lecture

Climate Change to Culture Change? The Case Study of the Copper to Early Bronze Age Transition in Iberia presented by Katina Lillios, PhD, University of Iowa
2022-01-29 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Denver) | Missouri
Abstract:
How can we trace the relationship between climate change and culture change in the ancient past? A collaborative and interdisciplinary project coordinated by Katina Lillios, with Antonio Blanco-González, Brandon Lee Drake, and Jose Antonio López-Sáez, offered insights into this question through the lens of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE of Iberia. This project was the first to comprehensively examine of one of the major episodes of cultural change in later prehistoric Iberia from a comparative regional perspective and assess its relationship to the 4.2 ky BP climate event. In this talk, I summarize the available cultural, demographic and paleoenvironmental evidence for Iberia, and explore the diverse ways that the 4.2 ky BP event seems to have played out in different regions.
Professor Lillios is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Iowa. She received her BA in Archaeology and Art History from Boston University, and her PhD in Anthropology from Yale University. Her research has centered on the histories of the people who lived in Portugal and Spain from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age (4000-1000 BC), a dynamic period characterized by episodes of political centralization, devolution, and climate change. In this research, she brings together a concern for memory and object biographies to understand the ways that people of the past used objects and monuments of their own past, such as heirlooms and ancestral burials, to shape their futures. She recently authored the book The Archaeology of the Iberian Peninsula: From the Paleolithic to the Bronze Age (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
Please visit aiadenver.org to register

Maya Pyramids & Temples of Yucatan
2022-01-29 | Missouri
This tour is in the planning stages for January 2022. If you are interested in traveling to this region in the future and would like to be contacted when a tour becomes available, please call 800-748-6262 or email aia@studytours.org.
This exciting, nine-day holiday provides the best-paced itinerary available to see the sun-drenched Yucatan peninsula’s ancient sites, traditional Maya villages, and colonial architecture. Maya art and architecture abound, with visits to Chichén Itzá, Ek Balam, Uxmal, 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. Enjoy two luxurious nights at the Mayaland Hotel (next to Chichén Itzá) and three at the Hacienda Uxmal (next to Uxmal). Maximum of just 12 guests.

SASA Mini Reading Group: An Introduction to Ancient Near-Eastern Music ‘Theory’: Understanding Musical Inscriptions
2022-01-27 15:00 - 16:00, 2022-01-20 15:00 - 16:00, 2022-01-13 15:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | Missouri
Previous participation and previous knowledge not required.
For those new to this subject, the field of “Archaeo-Musicology” is engaged in the study of ancient music informed by archaeological finds. In the ancient Near-Eastern (Mesopotamia) the musical information is primarily deduced or retrieved from instruments, instrumental inlays, wall reliefs, and iconography. On occasion one will find information on cuneiform tablets that discuss some aspect of music and this Reading Group/Master Class will focus on some of these music ‘theoretical’ tablets.
In the following weeks we will be looking at the 3 ‘major’ (most cited) cuneiform tablets that inform scholars about ancient Near-Eastern music theory.
3-Week Text-In-Translation Reading Group
Thursdays @ 3 pm EST
Jan. 13th
Jan. 20th
Jan. 27th
Participants only need to register for each Reading Group once, you will receive links to our Live Syllabus where readings and discussions are posted in the confirmation email.
By RSVPing, you are agreeing that a recording of the event can be shared with others who RSVPed.

SASA Mini Reading Group: Harem Politics: Princesses with Power in the Ancient Middle East
2022-01-27 13:30 - 14:30, 2022-01-20 13:30 - 14:30, 2022-01-13 13:30 - 14:30 (America/New_York) | Missouri
Previous participation and previous knowledge not required.
The reading group will explore how royal women participated in politics and court intrigue, focusing particularly on the city of Mari in ancient Syria (the wives and daughters of King Zimri-Lim) and the Achaemenid Persian empire. Readings would center on personal letters written to/by royal women as well as excerpts from the works of Greek historians like Herodotus and Ctesias. Topics for discussion include the use and role of women in diplomacy, competition and struggles for power between royal women (including palace conspiracies and murder plots), and what people in foreign lands such as the Greek city-states thought of royal women in the ancient Near East.
3-Week Text-In-Translation Reading Group
Thursdays @ 1:30pm EST
Jan. 13th
Jan. 20th
Jan. 27th
Participants only need to register for each Reading Group once, you will receive links to our Live Syllabus where readings and discussions are posted in the confirmation email.
By RSVPing, you are agreeing that a recording of the event can be shared with others who RSVPed.

Her Excellency Ambassador Maria Theofili from Greece celebrates International Archaeology Day
2022-01-25 18:30 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | The National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Parks S., New York, NY, 10003, United States
The Archaeology Committee is honoured to present The Permanent Representative of Greece to the United Nations. Her Excellency Ambassador Maria Theofili will address the audience at The National Arts Club in celebration of International Archaeology Day, begun by the Archaeological Institute of America. The focus of her unique presentation is the sacred island of Delos, the mythological birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. Located in the Aegean Sea, this wondrous UNESCO World Heritage site has been renowned since antiquity for its overwhelming beauty, cosmopolitan character, and inspiring culture.

SASA Mini Reading Group: Politics Past and Present: The (non)Differences
2022-01-24 14:00 - 15:00, 2022-01-17 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | Missouri
Previous participation and previous knowledge not required.
Reading will focus around the Historians Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, and Tacitus, with appearances from Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca. Sessions will be structured roughly chronologically (5th century. Roman Republic, The Pricipate), examining change and continuity in political theory and analysis, considering the parallels with our own times.
Participants will receive an overview of the analytic approaches of ancient historians and political theorists to events and above all, the value of comparative study of the ancient world to illuminate just how relevant it really is for our lives, times, and therefore education.
3-Week Text-In-Translation Reading Group
Mondays @ 2pm EST
Jan. 10th
Jan. 17th
Jan. 24th
Participants only need to register for each Reading Group once, you will receive links to our Live Syllabus where readings and discussions are posted in the confirmation email.
By RSVPing, you are agreeing that a recording of the event can be shared with others who RSVPed.

VIRTUAL: AIA Annual Faculty Lecture: “Mixed multitudes”: Displacement and belonging in ancient Sicily, with Prof. Randall Souza (Seattle University)
2022-01-22 19:30 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Missouri
The inhabitants of the ancient Mediterranean were mobile, and many of them lived in or passed through the large island of Sicily, which sits between the eastern and western Mediterranean basins and nearly unites the continents of Europe and Africa. Some moved more voluntarily, others less so, and still others were relocated with no choice in the matter, expelled as refugees or enslaved and sold. These displacements stretched, reorganized, and dissolved existing communities, but also created new ones; moving people change the social and political landscape around them. Given the extent of human mobility in Sicily, urban centers on the island can be viewed less as static entities where stable communities automatically persisted, and more as contingent sites in which inherently fragile communities were continually re-imagined. In this talk Prof. Souza examines several key episodes of dislocation in order to illuminate gradual developments affecting citizenship and belonging in the context of high mobility. He will suggest that one of the principal effects of movement across territorial boundaries and the resulting interaction across social boundaries was to erode the island’s internal divisions. This process in turn left Sicily itself to assume greater relevance over time as a source of belonging.
Prof. Randall Souza is an Assistant Professor of History at Seattle University.
Please use this link to register and receive the Zoom invitation: https://washington.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJItd-Cuqj0vG927x1OnABEcst-g6PXloCnd

The Maritime Maya and the Proyecto Costa Escondida
2022-01-22 12:00 (America/New_York) | Building 51 (Social Sciences), University of North Florida, 1 UNF Drive, Jacksonville, FL, 32224, United States

Archaeology Abridged with Dr. Kate Liszka "Operation Amethyst: How Egyptian Kings and Queens got their Bling 4,000 years ago"
2022-01-20 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York) | Florence, Florence, - None -, 9121, India
Some of the most stunning jewelry from Ancient Egypt is made of amethyst. Its craftsmanship, opulence, and design epitomize quality in the ancient world. Yet the skill in making this jewelry started long before the cutting and buffing of the raw stone. Procuring amethyst in the Eastern Desert is fraught with many more perils and problems than Nile Valley craftsmen experienced. As the Director of the Wadi el-Hudi Expedition to the Eastern Desert, Liszka leads a team that has studied the remains of these ancient desert expeditions and a team who has firsthand experience of many of the perils that the ancient explorers would have fought as well. This talk examines the extremes and dangers that thousands of Ancient Egyptians went to in order to acquire these beautiful purple stones for the Pharaoh’s jewels. By investigating the archaeology, art, and inscriptions from Wadi el-Hudi in the Egyptian Eastern Desert, we navigate through the whole process of amethyst acquisition: from finding, to mining, and surviving in the dangers of the desert.
This lecture will also be available in American Sign Language. ASL interpretation will be provided by Trail Blazing Interpreters. Due to Zoom limitations on mobile devices and tablets, participants interested in accessing ASL interpretation should log in using the desktop version of Zoom.
Dr. Kate Liszka is the Benson and Pamela Harer Fellow in Egyptology and Associate Professor of History at California State University San Bernardino. She earned her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania and from 2012 to 2015 was a Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer at Princeton University. Her areas of specialization include Nubians in Egypt, the Medjay, ethnicity and identity in Antiquity, multicultural Interactions in frontier regions, the Pangrave Archaeological Culture, and large-scale mining expeditions in Antiquity. Dr. Liszka is the Director of the Wadi el-Hudi Expedition in the Egyptian Eastern Desert.

Community Archaeology at Amache, Colorado’s Japanese American Confinement Camp
2022-01-19 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Denver) | Missouri
Prof. Bonnie. J. Clark (University of Denver, Department of Anthropology)
The forced removal and subsequent incarceration of over 120,000 people of American of Japanese descent during World War II is a pivotal incident in world history. The sites of this confinement are significant resources for both research about and re-engagement with this critical, yet shadowed experience. Since 2008, Dr. Bonnie Clark has led collaborative archaeological investigations at the site of Amache, Colorado’s War Relocation Authority confinement facility. In this talk Clark will discuss the ongoing project, highlighting insights about the camp’s cultural landscape and the strategies of a confined people to reknit community and reclaim humanity.
Bio
Bonnie Clark is a Professor in the University of Denver’s Anthropology Department. A professional archaeologist since 1990, Dr. Clark’s work has focused on using the tangible past– artifacts, architecture, settlement patterns–to tell a more inclusive history of western North America. Dr. Clark’s research interests include the relationships between material culture, ethnicity, and gender; cultural landscapes; community-engaged research; and heritage management. She teaches a range of classes for the anthropology department including Historical Archaeology, Cultural Narratives, and Anthropologies of Place. Dr. Clark serves as the Curator for Archaeology of the University of Denver Museum of Anthropology. In the Fall of 2011, Dr. Clark was awarded the University of Denver’s Teacher/Scholar of the Year.

SASA Mini Reading Group: A Brief Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphic Writing
2022-01-19 15:00 (America/New_York) | Missouri
Previous participation and previous knowledge not required.
Are you curious about how Maya hieroglyphs are read and what they say? Maya glyphs are one of the most visually interesting writing systems in the world, and are still being deciphered today. In this reading group, we will learn about the process of decipherment, how to read Maya glyphs, and where you can find more resources to continue learning!
Here is what you will be able to do at the end of the reading group:
Outline the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing from the past through today
Demonstrate basic competency in Maya calendrics and numeric functions
Identify the most common Maya syllabograms and logograms
Interpret captions found in important Maya works of art
3-Week Text-In-Translation Reading Group
Wednesdays @ 3pm EST
Jan. 5th
Jan. 12th
Jan. 19th
Participants only need to register for each Reading Group once, you will receive links to our Live Syllabus where readings and discussions are posted in the confirmation email.
By RSVPing, you are agreeing that a recording of the event can be shared with others who RSVPed.

SASA Mini Reading Group: The Search for the Golden Fleece: Jason and the Argonauts
2022-01-18 14:00 (America/New_York) | Missouri
Previous participation and previous knowledge not required.
In Greek mythology, the Golden Fleece is the fleece of the golden-woolled, winged ram, Chrysomallos, that rescued Phrixus and brought him to Colchis, where Phrixus then sacrificed it to Zeus. Phrixus gave the fleece to King Aeëtes who kept it in a sacred grove, whence Jason and the Argonauts stole it with the help of Aeëtes’ daughter. which was held in Colchis. The fleece is a symbol of authority and kingship. Join us to learn more about how Jason stole the Golden Fleece.
Tuesdays @ 2pm EST
Jan. 4th
Jan. 11th
Jan. 18th
Participants only need to register for each Reading Group once, you will receive links to our Live Syllabus where readings and discussions are posted in the confirmation email.
By RSVPing, you are agreeing that a recording of the event can be shared with others who RSVPed.

Around the Ancient World in 80 potsherds
2022-01-15 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Chicago) | Missouri
Zoom lecture by Nora-Miriam Voss of the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Vienna.
