Can we write an archaeology of "race" in the Roman period? This paper considers the question through the lens of images of and artefacts related to Aethiopians (that is, Sub-Saharan Africans). After providing a brief overview of the corpus of objects and their imagery and the critical axioms of their study, the paper will propose […]
Funded by the AIA's Elizabeth Bartman Museum Internship fund, da Silva has been working with the collection of ancient Egyptian art in the Arts of Africa department of the Art Institute of Chicago. In this talk, she will give a preliminary update on her progress investigating fragments of funerary objects in the collection and what […]
Fortification and Institutionalized Inequality in Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico In this talk, Christopher Hernandez of Loyola University's Department of Anthropology argues that the ancient inhabitants of the Mensabak region of Chiapas, Mexico, incorporated various aspects of their environment to create layer upon layer of defense that in turn promoted social inequality. Within a heavily guarded settlement, […]
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 […]
Come enjoy a beautiful fall day with an informal tour of Chicago's oldest chartered rural garden cemetery- Oak Woods. Dr. Jane Baxter will provide some insights to the cemetery, and show us not only the final resting places of some of Chicago's (and America's) past luminaries, but also how using tools of archaeology to examine […]
Andrew Lawler will introduce us to his new book, UNDER JERUSALEM: The Buried History of the World’s Most Contested City. Sacred to three faiths and revered by more than half the people on the planet, Jerusalem conjures up powerful images of the celestial. Yet beneath its narrow alleys and holy places, the ancient city conceals […]
The current OI Museum exhibition, Making Sense of Marbles: Roman Sculpture at the OI (through March 12, 2023), presents to the public for the first time the OI’s full collection of Roman sculpture. Assembled in the 1950s—through acquisitions from both the OI’s excavations at Ptolemais in Libya and the international art market, this group exemplifies […]
Since 2015, Justin Walsh and Alice Gorman have been leading the first archaeological study of a human habitation site in space, the International Space Station. In that time, they have studied crew-created visual displays, processes for handling cargo returned to Earth, population distributions in the various ISS modules, the use of simple technologies as "gravity […]
Dr. Nick Winters presents the AIA Chicago Society Annual Webster Lecture Mechanically simple and mathematically sophisticated, the sundial was a triumph of ancient astronomy and technology. In this lecture and workshop, we will explore the diverse forms and functions of ancient sundials, as well as their social uses and political meanings. From rudimentary wall-dials to […]
This walking tour will take participants to some essential sites in Chicago while posing and attempting to answer the following questions: what are some of the past and present sites of significance in the newly recognized Bronzeville/Black Metropolis National Heritage Area? How do we understand the landscape as formed by erased and extant structures and […]
