Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

Statistics: Basic Data Management and Regression
2020-07-09 10:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Alan Farahani, Assistant Professor in Anthropology, University of Nevada, Las VegasThursday, July 9th 2020 10:00am – 12:00pm (PT)This workshop will cover the basics of contemporary data manipulation using the R statistical programming language as well as provide an introduction to approaches to regression for archaeological applications. Topics covered will include philosophy of regression, model specification, parameterization, and evaluation, as well as the different distribution families used to analyze count (poisson, negative binomial, etc.) and continuous (gaussian) data. Participants should walk away (aka turn off their web cameras) with at least a basic understanding of the issues as well the ability to undertake some of the analyses using the R platform.Register here (Registration is limited to Cotsen affiliates)

Photogrammetry Workshop: Creating 3D Models from Photographs
2020-07-02 10:00 - 12:00
Anthony Caldwell, Assistant Director of the UCLA Digital Research ConsortiumThursday, July 2nd 2020 10:00am – 12:00pm (PT)Photogrammetry, or Structure-from-Motion, is a technique for constructing three dimensional models from a series of photographs. This technique can be utilized by archaeologists to record objects, features, and sites both quickly and relatively inexpensively. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to systematically photograph objects and the steps to processing these photographs into a 3D model with Agisoft’s MetaShape (previously named PhotoScan).Register here (Registration is limited to Cotsen affiliates)

PXRF Analysis Workshop: You've collected your data. Now what?
2020-06-25 10:00 - 12:00
Vanessa Muros, Director of the Experimental and Archaeological Sciences LabThursday, June 25th 2020 10:00am – 12:00pm (PT)Portable x-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy has become a widely used analytical tool in the fields of archaeology and conservation for the non-destructive elemental analysis of cultural heritage materials. But once you’ve collected your data, how do you interpret it? This workshop will provide a general introduction to the three types of pXRF data that can be generated (qualitative, quantitative, and semi-quantitative) and through the use of case studies, illustrate how the data can be interpreted and used to answer research questions about cultural heritage.Register here (Registration is limited to Cotsen affiliates)

Virtual Chauvet Cave: Masterworks of the Paleolithic
2020-05-27 12:00 - 13:00
We are excited to announce that our event Chauvet Cave: Masterworks of the Paleolithic will now be held virtually!In conjunction with the global digital film premiere of The Final Passage, a 28-minute immersive experience of the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc Cave and its paintings, the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology will be hosting a virtual discussion and Q&A session with Jean-Michel Geneste, General Curator of Cultural Heritage for the Ministry of Culture in France and former curator of the Lascaux caves, and the film’s producer, Martin Marquet. Participants are invited to watch the film online prior to the event. Questions can be submitted in advance when registering or during the event. Since its discovery in 1998, the extraordinary rock art of the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc cave in south-central France has been celebrated for its remarkable realism and demonstration of skill never before seen in cave art. Dating back 36,000 years, the myriad paintings of horses heads, mammoths, bears, cave lions, rhinoceroses and more use “the knobs, recesses, and other irregularities of the limestone to impart a sense of dynamism and three-dimensionality to their galloping, leaping creatures,” according to Smithsonian magazine.(only available from May 7 – June 7)Wednesday, May 27, 2020 12:00 – 1:00 PM Space is limited. Please register by May 25.This event is co-sponsored by the UCLA Rock Art Archive. Email Michelle Jacobson at mjacobson@ioa.ucla.edu for more information.

VIRTUAL PIZZA TALK: MY TWO PET PEEVES IN AFRICAN ARTS: FERTILITY GODDESSES AND "DOLLS"
2020-05-20 12:00 - 13:00
SPEAKER:Dr. Herbert ColeUniversity of California, Santa BarbaraProfessor Emeritus, Art HistoryIn writing my latest (and probably last) book: Maternity: Mothers and Children in the Arts of Africa, two stereotypes emerged that I ran into more or less often as I researched the topic, and these ended up as “pet peeves” that I felt the need to address in my text: “fertility goddess” as a descriptor of Africn images of mothers with children, especially those shown suckling, and the word “doll” as applied to images of children used by many potential mother to help them conceive, or if pregnant, to make sure the pregnancy goes well and a healthy, handsome child is born. I will explore both of these stereotypes and show that both are ultimately racist words when applied to maternity and child images.Suggested reading for the talk available here.Register for this Cotsen Virtual Pizza Talk here! You will receive instructions on viewing the talk after registering.

VIRTUAL PIZZA TALK: WEALTH, WOMEN'S LABOR, AND FORMS OF VALUE: THINKING FROM THE STUDY OF ANCESTRAL CENTRAL AMERICA
2020-05-13 12:00 - 13:00
SPEAKER:Rosemary A. JoyceProfessor and Chair of AnthropologyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThis talk builds on feminist scholarship criticizing a tacit distinction between household labor (as intimate, domestic, and ruled only by naturalized relations of sex and age) and extra-domestic labor to help advance understanding of gender and labor in societies of ancient Central America. Household production, the role of specific products of women’s labor as standards of value and media of exchange, and the role of indigenous ontologies in which material animacy and animating spirits occupied central places in exchanges we might otherwise think of as economic will be considered.Full abstract:As renewed interest in inequality sparks a turn to the archaeologically documented past as a source of data for generalizing models explaining the roots of the contemporary economic reality, it is worth pausing to question how pasts that were shaped under far different social conditions can be treated as equivalent to the contemporary world of nation states and global economies. In this paper, I examine three sources of incommensurability that should be taken into account in any attempt to think from the past of economic relations to the present. The first of these examines how labor is conceived of, counted, and understood in these different situations. As feminist scholars of the contemporary economy have long noted, large areas of economic activity by women are routinely excluded in modern analyses. Such household maintenance work rests on a tacit distinction between household labor (as intimate, domestic, and ruled only by naturalized relations of sex and age) and extra-domestic labor. For the societies of ancient Central America, such a division simply did not exist. Not only did a large part of the organization of agricultural labor build on household relations; women’s specialist craft production, in particular, was critical to economic relations. This leads to the second aspect of incommensurability that I consider: the identification and mobilization of standards of value and exchange. In these societies, cloth produced by women working in domestic spaces was one of the enduring standards of value, specifically important in tribute payments that established and perpetuated political hierarchies. Cloth’s use in this fashion cannot be disentangled from the social relations in which it was embedded. Nor can the social relations which gave value to other key media used to measure value in economic exchanges be equated, even when the same social agents, women, have key roles in production, for example, in the cultivation of cacao, a second standard of value. By considering these two media, and the way that they relate to women’s economic activities extending from domestic space to cosmopolitan marketplaces, I identify a third contradiction to conceptualizing the ancestral Central American economy in terms drawn from the current situation: the important of ideologies of material animacy and the role of animating spirits in exchanges we might otherwise think of as economic.Register for this Cotsen Virtual Pizza Talk here! You will receive instructions on viewing the talk after registering.

VIRTUAL PIZZA TALK: ICONOGRAPHY AND SYMBOLISM OF THE CELESTIAL DOMAIN AND THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE IN THE EUROPEAN BRONZE AGE
2020-05-06 12:00 - 13:00
SPEAKER:Alessandro VanzettiUniversity of Rome “La Sapienza”, ItalyAssociate Professor in Pre- & ProtohistoryShort-term Visiting ScholarThe lecture will present the main evidence for the symbolic representation of the celestial domain in the European Bronze Age, with some extension to the former Late Neolithic (also named Copper Age) and to the ensuing Iron Age. An iconographic analysis is necessary in order to decode (or try to) the representations.In order to do it, we should consider the way in which 3-dimensional space is represented, for the production of symbolic images.The discussion involves both phenomenological, conceptual, cognitive and religious aspects, often difficult to disentangle.A simple grammar of the representations, of their rules and occurrences, can help, but it is still only a starting point for further insightsRegister for this Cotsen Virtual Pizza Talk here! You will receive instructions on viewing the talk after registering.

VIRTUAL PIZZA TALK: Lord of the Rings: Archaeology in Shire, Ethiopia
2020-04-22 12:00 - 13:00
SPEAKER:Dr. Willeke WendrichProfessor, Dept. of Near Eastern Language and CulturesDirector, Cotsen Institute of ArchaeologyUCLA After five years of work in Ethiopia the UCLA Shire Archaeological Project has established close collaborations with four Ethiopian universities, national, regional and local offices and the population living around the site of Mai Adrasha. In December 2019 this culminated in a workshop to discuss the future of the archaeological site of Mai Adrasha. I will discuss the results of the excavations and survey in the tension field of different ideas and interests in both the past and the future.Register for this Cotsen Virtual Pizza Talk here! You will recieve instructions on viewing the talk after registering.

VIRTUAL PIZZA TALK: Methone - The Movie
2020-04-15 12:00 - 13:00
In 354 B.C., the ancient city of Methone, a close ally of Athens, was besieged by Philip II, the father of Alexander the Great. In the course of the siege, Philip not only destroyed the city, but he famously lost his right eye, struck by an arrow or bolt from Asteros of Methone. Excavations at the site by the Ephoria of Pieria since 2003, and as a collaboration between the Ephoria and UCLA under the auspices of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens since 2014, have uncovered a thriving settlement, continuously occupied since the Late Neolithic period. Methone: the Movie, shot during the last season of fieldwork in 2017, tells the story of Methone and its excavation.Register for the first Cotsen Virtual Pizza Talk here! You will recieve instructions on viewing the talk after registering.

CANCELLED PIZZA TALK: Hostile Terrain 94: A Global Exhibition on Migrant Death
2020-03-11 12:00 - 13:00
Due to the evolving public health situation surrounding COVID-19 this event has been cancelled. The well-being of our Cotsen community and all attendees at our events is of the highest importance to us.SPEAKERS:Dr. Jason De LeónProfessorUCLA Department of AnthropologyAustin ShipmanProgram Manager for the Undocumented Migration ProjectGabe Canter and Nicole SmithExhibition Coordinators for Hostile Terrain 94ABSTRACT: In 1994 the U.S. Border Patrol launched the immigration enforcement strategy known as “Prevention Through Deterrence.” This was a policy designed to discourage undocumented migrants from attempting to cross the border near urban ports-of-entry. With traditional crossing points closed off, it was expected that people would attempt to cross the border in more remote and depopulated regions where the natural environment would act as a deterrent to movement. It was anticipated that the difficulties people experienced while hiking dozens of miles across what the Border Patrol deemed the “hostile terrain” of places like the Sonoran Desert of Arizona would discourage migrants from attempting the journey. This strategy failed to deter border crossers. Instead, more than six million people have attempted to migrate through the Sonoran desert of Southern Arizona since 2000 and at least 3,199 people have died enroute. In the fall of 2020, the pop-up installation “Hostile Terrain 94” (HT94), designed by the Undocumented Migration Project, will be realized simultaneously in 150 locations around the globe. These installations are 25 foot long maps of the Arizona/Mexico border with ~3200 hand written toe tags representing the recovered bodies of people who have died between 2000 and 2020. In this talk we outline the development of this global exhibition, highlight our model for public facing anthropological work, and discuss the political and cultural implications of trying to visualize this type of archaeological and forensic data for a global audience.

PIZZA TALK: The fabric of the sea – sail manufacture in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean
2020-03-04 12:00 - 13:00
SPEAKER: Dr. Caroline SauvageAssociate ProfessorLoyola Marymount UniversityBellarmine College of Liberal ArtsABSTRACT:Sails were one of the most important fitting of Late Bronze Age ships, and yet, they are understudied because of the lack of archaeological remains. Although iconography has been largely scrutinized to gain knowledge concerning the shape of sails, their use and their riggings, sail manufacture has not yet been investigated properly. Tools for the production of textiles attest to their diverse forms and places of production, as well as to the types and dimensions of fabrics being produced, and the types of fibers being used. This talk proposes to address the question of sail manufacture throughout the eastern Mediterranean by studying textile tools within their archaeological coastal contexts, by exploring the necessary resources, skills and labor time, as well as by looking at ancient texts from the Aegean, the Levant and Egypt. We will include data from experimental archaeology used in maritime archaeology and in textile research in order to assess the logistics of sail production in the Late Bronze Mediterranean.

Taking To The Water: New Evidence And New Debates About The Earliest Seafaring In The World
2020-03-01 14:00 - 16:00
SPEAKER:John Cherry Professor of Archaeology and ClassicsJoukowsky Institute, Brown UniversityABSTRACT:Until quite recently, archaeologists have supposed that the seas and oceans represented a barrier to human dispersal, and that islands were among the last places on earth to be colonized by people, only fairly recently, as part of the worldwide spread of modern humans. But is that picture still correct? Startling new data have come to light just in the last few years, in parts of the Mediterranean and in island Southeast Asia, that have been claimed as evidence for a far longer antiquity for seafaring, reaching back hundreds of thousands, and perhaps as much as a million years. Naturally, these claims have attracted widespread attention and much discussion — and not only among archaeologists. This lecture outlines what we know, with reasonable certainty, about patterns of global maritime dispersal in the past few tens of thousands of years, before turning to present the new evidence and its strengths and weaknesses. In trying to understand it, we will need to consider information (amongst other things) from ethnographic analogy, experimental seafaring, and our current knowledge of the relative configurations of land and sea over the course of the Pleistocene era. Some of the bold assertions made in the past few years require more supporting data before they can be accepted. That cautious conclusion does not detract from the excitement and importance of this fast-moving field of research in archaeology. Contact Aaron A. Burke (aaburke@ucla.edu) for more information.

PIZZA TALK: Lord of the Rings: Archaeology in Shire, Ethiopia
2020-02-26 12:00 - 13:00
SPEAKER:Dr. Willeke WendrichProfessorDept. of Near Eastern Language and CulturesUCLAABSTRACT:After five years of work in Ethiopia the UCLA Shire Archaeological Project has established close collaborations with four Ethiopian universities, national, regional and local offices and the population living around the site of Mai Adrasha. In December 2019 this culminated in a workshop to discuss the future of the archaeological site of Mai Adrasha. I will discuss the results of the excavations and survey in the tension field of different ideas and interests in both the past and the future.

PIZZA TALK: Three Thousand Years of the Cultural and Natural Legacy in the Mirador Basin, Guatemala
2020-02-19 00:00 - 13:00
SPEAKER:Dr. Richard HansenAdjunct ProfessorDepartment of AnthropologyUniversity of UtahABSTRACT:Excavations over four decades in the Mirador Basin have revealed perspectives of the origins, dynamics, and demographic collapse of the Preclassic Maya societies that flourished in northern Guatemala and southern Campeche, Mexico. The identifications of the social, political, and economic catalysts that created the cultural complexities in the Maya Lowlands have allowed new explanatory models responsible for the rise of cultural complexity during the Middle and Late Preclassic periods of Maya civilization (1000 BC-A.D. 150). Mapping and excavations in 51 ancient cities of various sizes throughout the entirety of the Basin have also revealed the ideological, logistical and economic dynamics that created a homogeneous society that merged to form one of the earliest state level societies in the Western Hemisphere. Yet, even in light of the economic, political, and ideological complexities of the Preclassic Maya in the Mirador Basin, a series of multicausal factors contributed to the long term demographic collapse of civilization in the area. The synthesis of the entire panorama of cultural process in the Mirador Basin provides new understandings of the saga of humanity found in emergent Maya civilization that is now being revealed for the first time.

Del árbol a la canoa: surcando el mar en Mesoamérica
2020-02-13 12:00 - 14:00
Mariana Favila VázquezArcheological studies regarding pre-Hispanic mechanisms of environment appropriation have been crucial to explain the complexity of Mesoamerican societies. However, an ontological dichotomy of water and land has permeated these investigations for decades. The activities practiced on the mainland, such as agriculture, among many others, are the preferred focus of interest for explaining indigenous social and historical processes. The activities and the role of the aquatic spaces are generally considered subordinate or secondary concerning the former. Through archaeological, iconographic and historicalevidence this paper argues that Mesoamerican cultures, such as the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec, had a perception of the environment in which, although water was of course distinguished from the mainland, it was not seen exclusively as an opposite space, liminal and independent to the political, social, economic and religious dynamics of the indigenous people. Evidence of this is the development of a complex nautical technology that was permeated by the religious and ideological configurations of the societies that produced it. Consequently, navigation was practiced as a landscape connectivity system that integrated the use of waterways, coastal lagoons, wetlands, and estuaries, along with roads and activities in the mainland. This study allows for rethinking the valuation of aquatic spaces and getting closer to the local perception of the environment, in which the aquatic spaces are no longer the limit of the territories inhabited by humans.This talk is part of the El Mar Y Sus Metáforas Series and will be in Spanish. For more information about this talk or series, please contact Jimena Rodriguez.Mariana Favila Vázquez is a Professor of Archeology at the ENAH (National School of Anthropology and History, México) and a research associate in the project “Digging into early colonial Mexico: a large-scale computational analysis of 16th century historical sources” of the University of Lancaster, United Kingdom and the Museo de Templo Mayor in Mexico. Her research has focused on indigenous pre-Hispanic and colonial navigation traditions in the Mesoamerican cultural area.This talk is co-sponsored by the UCLA Latin American Institute, the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

PIZZA TALK: Migrations, Marginality, and Maritime Landscapes A New World Paleocoastal Occupation
2020-02-12 12:00 - 13:00
SPEAKER:Dr. Amy E. GuisickAssociate CuratorNational History Museum of Los Angeles CountyABSTRACT:Methodological advances and innovative research are reshaping how we look for and understand human dispersals and adaptations on maritime landscapes. Refinements in paleoenvironmental reconstructions and search techniques have resulted in discoveries that challenge outdated theories of island and coastal regions as marginal to human migration, settlement, and subsistence. The Northern Channel Islands of California have become a focal point for this maritime research as new discoveries have shown this region to be integral for understanding initial human dispersals and early occupations in the New World. This region has also become a proving ground for methodological advances that are refining how we integrate land- and seabased data into project designs that recognize both the landscape and seascape as a complex maritime space integral to maritime societies. Recent research has focused on the terrestrial and submerged portions of the island landscape that were intact and subaerial during initial human dispersal to the islands and during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene island occupations. By integrating paleoenvironmental reconstructions, archaeology, historical ecology, and terrestrial and marine geology researchers are striving to recreate the paleoenvironment and paleolandscape present during initial island occupations. These data may be critical to clarify early island colonization and adaptions strategies of the first Americans.

The Land of Open Graves: Making Undocumented Migration Visible
2020-02-11 19:00 - 20:30
Since the mid-1990s’, the U.S. federal government has relied on a border enforcement strategy known as “Prevention Through Deterrence.” Using various security infrastructure and techniques of surveillance, this strategy funnels undocumented migrants towards remote and rugged terrain with the hope that mountain ranges, extreme temperatures, and other “natural” obstacles will deter people from unauthorized entry. Thousands of people have perished while undertaking this dangerous activity. Since 2009, the Undocumented Migration Project has used a combination of archaeological, forensic, and ethnographic approaches to understand the various forms of violence that characterize the social process of clandestine migration. In this presentation, De León will discuss how the “archaeology of the contemporary” can help make this process visible and argue that the types of deaths that migrants experience in the desert are both violent and deeply political. The Land of Open Graves will challenge audiences to confront the complexity of international migration and American policy choices. Reservations requested. Click here to RSVP by February 5. For more information call 310-825-4004.Friends of the Cotsen Institute are invited to a private reception with Professor De León at 6pm. To learn more about the Friends visit their page or contact Michelle Jacobson at mjacobson@ioa.ucla.edu.Jason De León, Ph.D.Professor of Anthropology and Chicana/0 Studies University of California, Los Angeles Executive Director, Undocumented Migration ProjectJason De León, 2017 MacArthur Fellow, is Professor of Anthropology and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles with his lab located in the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. His multidisciplinary approach to the study of migration from Latin America to the United States is bringing to light the lives and deaths of clandestine migrants crossing the U.S.–Mexico border into the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. He combines ethnographic analysis of migrant stories, forensic science, and archaeological research in his efforts to understand this process—who makes the journey, the routes, the means of survival and manner of death—and the human consequences of immigration policy.

8th UCLA Archaeology Research Conference
2020-02-07 08:00 - 2020-02-08 17:00
The Graduate Student Association of Archaeology, an affiliate of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, will host the 8th Graduate Archaeology Research Conference. This conference will take place on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, California, on February 7th and 8th, 2020. Accepted applicants will give 20-minute presentations followed by brief question-and-answer sessions. Program with Abstracts – 8th Graduate Archaeology Research Conference.pdfThe talks will cover interdisciplinary approaches to this year’s theme on “Experiencing Destruction and Regeneration in Archaeology.” Speakers will discuss the many contexts in which uncontrolled or deliberate destruction—as well as regeneration, reconstruction, and re-use—plays a part in the archaeological past and present. Destruction lies at the heart of archaeological inquiries, seen in every context from the collapse of civilizations to the deliberate breaking of ceramics in ritual settings. Destruction of archaeological remains also occurs in the present through the neglect or eradication of material heritage for economic, sociopolitical or environmental reasons. Simultaneously, reconstruction and regeneration penetrate every aspect of archaeology—seen in current heritage management practices as well as in the material traces of ancient and modern peoples’ efforts at recovery, rebuilding and re-use.Speakers are encouraged to approach this topic from an experiential perspective, as moments of destruction and reconstruction or regeneration provide communal sensorial experiences, producing and reproducing social memory and shared identities. Archaeology, as a discipline rooted in materiality, can access these senses at their most basic level. Exploring such experiences of destruction and regeneration allows us to better understand the mindsets of past and present peoples alike as they destroyed, rebuilt and remembered.Keynote speaker Dr. Patricia Rubertone, Professor of Anthropology at Brown University, will address instances of destruction and regeneration through the intersecting lenses of archaeology, history and ethnography. She will discuss commemoration and erasure of Native American monuments in New England in the context of colonialism, as well as the implications of documentary genocide and urban renewal for recovering indigenous pasts.Please RSVP by February 3rd here. Email any questions to archaeogradcon@ioa.ucla.edu. The call for papers can be downloaded here.

PIZZA TALK: Lost Narratives: New Directions in the Post-1850 Historical Archaeology of Southern California
2020-02-05 12:00 - 13:00
SPEAKER:James E. SneadProfessorDepartment of AnthropologyCal State NorthridgeABSTACT: Historical archaeology in the western United States has traditionally focused on either the colonial-era “missions” or 19th century mining sites in remote locations. Recently, however, historical archaeology itself has undergone a major conceptual shift, emphasizing the ways that the study of material culture can shed light on a wide range of historical topics dating to relatively recent times. These often bear on contemporary social issues, including ethnicity, identity, labor, and heritage. The diverse communities of Los Angeles present a remarkable template for such research: this talk will describe current scholarship at CSUN focusing on specific “lost narratives” of the city’s post-1850s inhabitants as examined through archaeology. Particular emphasis will be placed on the dynamics of “community engagement” that are the organizational center of these efforts.

Live Podcast Taping with Jason De León
2020-02-01 18:00 - 20:00
Cotsen faculty Jason De León will be a guest on the podcast “Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard” on February 1, 2020. The UCLA Department of Anthropology is hosting a live taping of the podcast at 6:00pm in Korn Convocation Hall at UCLA.De León will also be speaking on February 11th as part of the Archaeology 50th Anniversary Lecture Series. Dax Shepard BA ’00, Anthropology in conversation with Jason De León Professor UCLA Department of Anthropology UCLA Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies Saturday, February 1, 2020 6:00 p.m.Korn Convocation Hall UCLA Registration required. Seating is first come, first served and is not guaranteed. Self-pay parking available in Structure 4About Armchair Expert: Armchair Expert is a weekly podcast hosted by American actor, director, and writer Dax Shepard and Emmy-nominated Monica Padman. Each podcast features Shepard and Padman interviewing celebrities as well as journalists and academics about “the messiness of being human”. Click here to learn more about Armchair Expert.

Screening of "The Old Kiyyangan Story"
2020-01-31 17:00 - 20:00
The Old Kiyyangan Story, an anthropological film based on oral histories and archaeological excavations at the Old Kiyyangan Village, Ifugao, Philippines, will be presented January 31 at 5pm in the Anthropology Reading Room. In addition to the film screening, there will be a research presentation and Q & A with co-screenwriter and Associate Professor of Anthropology, Dr. Stephen Acabado. Acabado is a core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. The event is free and open to the public. A trailer for the film can be viewed here.

PIZZA TALK: Initial Conditions for Biocultural Evolution in China: Understanding the Relationship Between Genetic Selection and Archaeological Remains
2020-01-29 12:00 - 13:00
SPEAKER:Dr. Ryan NicholsAssociate Professor Dept. of PhilosophyCal State FullertonABSTRACT:The purpose of this paper is to preliminarily explain the initial conditions and key forces from the Paleolithic, Neolithic, and pre-Imperial periods that contributed to distinctive features of subsequent Chinese culture, and to do so in accordance with an explicit model of cultural transmission. The paper opens with discussion of a small suite of genes supporting neurotransmitter function, genes that were selected in Continental East Asians. Second, Paleolithic climate, rainfall, plant domesticates, and physical ecological factors, principally of the Yellow River and North China Plain area, are reviewed with respect to their influence on early settlers and their social ecology. This focus fuels the third section too. In it I discuss the kinship structure, political organization, warfare, and religion of these Neolithic settlers. Fourth, the onset of cultural trends during the Shang and Zhou periods are discussed in terms of the initial conditions described above. By-products of this discussion include the identification of lacunae in a well-known model of cultural transmission, and the provisioning of the cultural evolutionary research community with a template, a draft template, for analytical application of theory to a historical population that explicitly considers Paleolithic and Neolithic genetic selection.

New Approaches to Tracing Cacao's Dispersal from the Amazon Basin
2020-01-23 17:00 - 18:00
Dr. Sonia Zarrillo will be presenting on “New Approaches to Tracing Cacao’s Dispersal from the Amazon Basin” on January 23rd at 5pm in the Cotsen Seminar Room (A222). This event was sponsored by the Andean Working Group.

PIZZA TALK: Contextualizing Roman Republican Sacrifice
2020-01-22 12:00 - 13:00
SPEAKER:Dr. Claudia MoserAssociate ProfessorDept. of History of Art & ArchitectureUC Santa BarbaraABSTRACT:This talk explores what we can learn about Roman Republican sacrifice through the study of the material remains of sacrifice and the architectural settings in which the ritual occurs. I will argue that by examining the material record of sacrifice –the aniconic altars of the Republican period, their relations to the natural and built landscape, and the accompanying archaeological evidence of the ritual –we can form a comprehensive view of the procedure of sacrificial ritual, detailing aspects of the practice that might be absent from or inconsistent with what is found in images or texts. In this talk, I will integrate various types of evidence (topographic and architectural evidence, zooarchaeological material, and votive crafted goods) to reveal a sacrifice that is intricately linked to the sanctuary in which it is enacted, a sacrifice that is local and site-specific.

Indigenous Los Angeles—The Power of Online Exhibitions
2020-01-15 18:00 - 19:00
Fowler Curator of Archaeology Wendy Giddens Teeter will discuss the importance of the collaborative web-based project Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles and her experiences working with the Tongva and indigenous communities to forefront the multiple historical layers of Los Angeles. She will also speak about national and international repatriation efforts as UCLA’s Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) Coordinator, which has helped Native American tribes regain their ancestors and cultural heritage as well as provide a platform to share their voices in online exhibitions, such as Carrying our Ancestors Home.For more information, please visit: https://www.fowler.ucla.edu/events/lecture-by-wendy-teeter-mapping-indig…

PIZZA TALK: Historical Preservation & Caltrans Archaeology
2020-01-15 12:00 - 13:00
SPEAKER:George D. EversonAdjunct ProfessorDept. of AnthropologyMt. San Jacinto CollegeABSTRACT:Cultural Resource Management (CRM) has become a mainstay in our society for professional archaeologists and architectural historians. The California Department of Transportation (more commonly known as Caltrans) has their own staff of professionals to ensure that highway projects comply with applicable environmental laws. Specifically, Caltrans has professionals on staff to ensure we meet the standards of Section 106 of the national Historic Preservation Act.

The Promise of "Virtual Unwrapping" - Reading the Invisible Library
2020-01-14 19:00 - 20:30
The UCLA/Getty Conservation Program presents “The man who can read the unreadable,” computer scientist and professor W. Brent Seales, the first speaker in the 50th Anniversary Lecture Series. Currently a Getty Conservation Institute Scholar, Seales and his team have been key to revealing texts on papyri that are too fragile to unroll, such as Homers “Iliad” and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The recipient of a $2 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Seales will discuss how technological progress over the past ten years has led to the promise of “virtual unwrapping” for reading the “invisible library” of scrolls found at Herculaneum; papyri that were buried and burned in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 70 CE.
Reservations requested. Click here to RSVP by January 8. For more information call 310-825-4004.
Friends of the Cotsen Institute are invited to a private reception with Dr. Seales at 6pm. To learn more about the Friends visit their page or contact Michelle Jacobson at mjacobson@ioa.ucla.edu.
Seales is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Kentucky. His research applies data science and computer vision to challenges in the digital restoration and visualization of antiquities. In 2012-13, he was a Google Visiting Scientist in Paris, where he continued work on the “virtual unwrapping” of the Herculaneum scrolls. In 2015, Seales and his research team identified the oldest known Hebrew copy of the book of Leviticus (other than the Dead Sea Scrolls), carbon dated to the third century C.E. The reading of the text from within the damaged scroll has been hailed as one of the most significant discoveries in biblical archaeology of the past decade.

PIZZA TALK: The Impact of Lidar on Archaeological Research at the Ancient Maya City of Caracol, Belize
2020-01-08 12:00 - 13:00
SPEAKER:Dr. Arlen F. ChaseVisiting ProfessorDept. of AnthropologyPomona CollegeABSTRACT:Perceptions about the ancient Maya have changed significantly in the last decade with the advent of new technologies and as a result of continuous dedicated research that seeks to define their social and political organization. With its ability to penetrate dense tropical canopies, LiDAR has revolutionized the field of Mesoamerican settlement archaeology. Because dense vegetation covers most ancient remains in the Maya area, archaeological documentation of the spatial extent of sites using traditional means was both difficult and usually incomplete. LiDAR was initially applied to the site of Caracol, Belize in April 2009 and yielded a 200 sqkm Digital Elevation Model that, for the first time, provided a complete view of how the archaeological remains from a single Maya site –its monumental architecture, roads, residential settlement, and agricultural terraces –were distributed over the landscape. In May 2013, an additional 1057 sqkm of LiDAR data were recorded in west-central Belize. For the site of Caracol, these LiDAR data may be combined with 35 years of continuous archaeological research and excavation to formulate temporal parameters and guide social and political interpretations. The conjoined information derived from LiDAR and archaeological research is significantly changing our perceptions of ancient Maya civilization by demonstrating the anthropogenic changes made to landscapes, the scale of Maya urban settlements, and the socially complex situations that existed within and between Maya polities.

Cotsen Speaker Series w/ Guest Lecturer, Professor Alison Wylie
2019-12-05 16:00 - 2019-12-06 18:00
The inaugural event in the Cotsen Speaker Series, this is a two-day program consisting of a talk and panel discussion, that will allow scholars from both UCLA and the wider world to showcase a range of intellectual, theoretical, and research perspectives. Click Here to RSVP December 5th, 4pm -6pmWitnessing and Translating: The Indigenous/Science ProjectSpeaker: Alison WylieProfessor, University of British ColumbiaAbstract:The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015) calls on non-Indigenous Canadians to build equitable, respectful and transparent partnerships with Indigenous Peoples as the primary means for advancing reconciliation. In this spirit, a UBC-based research cluster is building partnerships designed to embody a “practice of reconciliation,” focused on projects that bring the tools of archaeological science to bear on Indigenous-led research questions in ways that serve the interests of Indigenous communities. The projects taking shape under the rubric of Indigenous/Science raise pointed questions about how researchers committed to collaborative practice can best to navigate differences in ethical/epistemic commitments and the asymmetries of power and hierarchies of expertise that underpin them: what is required of us when called upon to bear witness to the real-world conflicts and consequences of scientific inquiry?December 6th, 4pm – 6pm(Reception to Follow)Panel on Equity in Archaeology and the Social SciencesAlison Wylie along with Stephen Acabado, Kara Cooney, and Marianna Nikolaidou will engage in a panel on equity in archaeology and the social sciences. This will be a forum for discussion of questions about who has a say in archaeological discourse, and systemic problems of discrimination that still plague the study of the ancient world. Bio:Website: http://alisonwylie.net/Email: alison.wylie@ubc.ca Alison Wylie, is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of the Social and Historical Sciences at the University of British Columbia. Her work is case-based, chiefly concerned with archaeological practice and feminist research in the social sciences. She addresses such questions as: what counts as evidence?; how should we understand ideals of objectivity given the role of values and interests in inquiry?; and how do we make research accountable to the diverse communities it affects? Recent publications include Material Evidence (2015) and Evidential Reasoning in Archaeology (2016), co-edited and co-authored with archaeologist Bob Chapman; articles on “What Knowers Know Well” (Scientiae Studia, 2017), “How Archaeological Evidence Bites Back” (STHV 2017), and her 2012 APA Presidential Address on feminist standpoint theory; and contributions to the Springer Handbook of Model-based Science (2017), Objectivity in Science (2015), How Well do ‘Facts’ Travel? (2010), Agnotology (2008), The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation (2009) and Embedding Ethics (2005).

Pizza Talk:Household Archaeology at Middle Preclassic La Blanca, Guatemala
2019-12-04 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker:Dr. Michael W. LoveProfessorDepartment of AnthropologyCSU NorthridgeAbstract:The Preclassic Period on the Pacific coast of Guatemala and Chiapas was a dynamic time, beginning with the establishment of the first sedentary villages and ending with the large city-states of the Late Preclassic. Although royal tombs and stelae with portraits of rulers capture the headlines, household archaeology offers the best route to understand changes in social relationships and the basis of political power. Excavations at La Blanca, as one of the largest settlements of Middle Preclassic Mesoamerica, have recovered one of the largest samples of Preclassic domestic remains. These data document social differentiation, along with the economic and ritual activities of a cross-section of households dating from 1000-700 BCE.
