PIZZA TALK: Decoding Andean Formative Iconography: Didactic Images, Esoteric Knowledge, and the Emergence of Complexity on the North Coast of Peru
2018-10-31 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Dr. Cathy Lynne Costin, Professor, Department of Anthropology, CSU NorthridgeRevisiting North Coast Formative Period Ceramic Iconography: the Case for Foundational Ritual PowerIn my current research, I am building an argument that a larger proportion of North Coast Formative ceramic iconography reflects the consumption of therapeutic and psychoactive substances than is generally acknowledged in recent scholarship and that both the content and mode of these images inform us about the processes through which emerging elites began to consolidate their power. First, I propose that far more of the three dimensional forms reference psychoactive substances than current interpretations enumerate and that many images allude to mental and bodily experiences associated with altered states of consciousness. Then, I suggest that two dimensional motifs rendered in faint, postfire incisions discernable only to those in close proximity to the vessels record tightly-controlled esoteric knowledge concerning the preparation and ingestion of psychoactive substances and/or the interpretation of visionary experiences. All told, I demonstrate how ritual specialists controlled and deployed sacred imagery and ritual knowledge during the time in which social complexity first developed in the Andean region.

FRIDAY SEMINAR: Conservation Actions and Reactions: Matter of Fact or Perception?
2018-11-02 16:00 - 18:00
AbstractEvolution in conservation practice generally reflects wider contextual developments. These, whether scientific or societal, can however overshadow other developments within conservation which could inform scholarly studies of the objects and improve effective management of heritage assets. Awareness of these influences is nevertheless critical since any conservation action, regardless how small and seemingly unimportant can potentially affect how objects are perceived and interpreted. This talk will focus on research aimed at understanding object perceptions and professional cognitive dissonances and biases. Starting from the alteration and deterioration of surfaces as a natural process and cleaning as a professional reaction to this, I will discuss how small, often unaccounted for activities result in changes at both micro and macro levels which can dramatically alter an object.Damien Hirst’s The Miraculous Journey made of fourteen silicon bronze statues projecting the development of a foetus from conception to birth located in Doha, Qatar will be used as an example of how to monitor change in a highly polluted coastal environment. This involves monitoring of corrosion, particulates and pollutants as well as humidity and temperature to understand how these processes affect perception and appreciation of the artwork. The second part of the talk will focus on professional decisions in conservation with particular a focus on cleaning. Cleaning can influence both professional and public perception of objects. The results of the research project Coming Clean which investigated factors affecting decision making in relation to cleaning will be presented. This includes research on public perception of dirt and cleanliness at two National Trust properties and two exhibition galleries at the British Museum, analysis of literature surveys and review of treatment records. The research findings are revealing in relation to professional justification of cleaning and the way public values the museum experience. Statistical analysis of the data and innovative methods including machine learning data mining methods will be presented. Recognising and raising awareness of our biases within conservation is important to change attitudes, and can have a direct impact on other scholarly fields.Short bioStavroula Golfomitsou (BA, PhD, FIIC) is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Conservation, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Prior to this she was a lecturer in conservation studies at UCL Qatar where she set up and coordinated the MSc in Conservation Studies, an innovative, student-led, inquiry- and research-based degree. She has over twenty years of international working experience in Europe, Middle East and Latin America. Her research interests focus on corrosion and conservation of metals and the broader implications of conservation on the perception and valorisation of heritage. She is coordinator of the Coming Clean research project which investigates decision-making processes in cleaning of cultural heritage and the factors affecting them. She was also PI in the Materiality and Preservation in Islamic Contexts project (2015-2017). Stavroula holds a PhD in Conservation of Metals from University College London (UCL) and is a Fellow of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC) and a Trustee and member of the IIC Council.

PIZZA TALK: Digging Ancient Egyptian Jewelry Mines
2018-11-07 12:00 - 13:00
Bio:Dr. Kate Liszka is Assistant Professor with the Department of History at California State University, San Bernardino, and holds her degrees from the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D.), and from 2012 to 2015 was a Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer with Princeton University. Her areas of specialization are 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.

Archaeology of Ancient Israel Lecture Series: “Israel and the Samaria Highlands: A Nomad Settlement Wave or Urban Expansion during the Early Iron Age?”
2018-11-13 14:00 - 15:00
“Israel and the Samaria Highlands: A Nomad Settlement Wave or Urban Expansion during the Early Iron Age?”Dr. Yuval Gadot, Director of the Institute of ArchaeologyTel Aviv University Tuesday, November 13 at 2 PMKaplan (formerly Humanities) A51 Archaeology of Ancient Israel Lecture SeriesCo-sponsored by the UCLA NELC Department, Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology The Iron I period witnessed a wave of settlements in the highlands of Israel, mostly in Samaria and to some extent in the Upper Galilee and Judah. This wave is usually associated with the genesis of Ancient Israel and is interpreted in light of the collapse of Canaanite urban centers at the end of the 12th century BCE. This lecture reconsiders the reasons behind this wave of settlement throughout the Samaria Highlands during the Iron I (1200-1000 BCE) in light of new understanding of the social and economic reality on the coastal plain, the Jezreel, Jordan, and Hula Valleys, and the regions surrounding the Samaria Highlands.Please email Aaron Burke (aaburke@ucla.edu) to RSVP.

PIZZA TALK: Politics in Ancient Maya
2018-11-14 12:00 - 13:00
Bio:Professor Tsukamoto is an anthropological archaeologist who received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 2014. His research centers on the interplay between social relations and embodied practices that are reflected in the spatial and material settings of early complex societies. He seeks to refine different theoretical and methodological approaches in order to better understand the nature of power and ideology; the intersection of social change and theatrical performance; and the materiality of social inequality. Methodological interests include spatial analysis, material analyses through petrographic microscopy and particle-induces X-ray emission (PIXE), and epigraphic studies. He currently conducts fieldwork in the Maya lowlands of southern Mexico where he has directed the El Palmar Archaeological Project since 2007. This project examines the urbanization processes resulting from the mutual entanglement between public and private practices in El Palmar during the Classic period (ca. A.D. 250-950).

CONSERVATION FACULTY CANDIDATE SPECIAL LECTURE: The Application of Field Data to the Preventive Conservation of Archaeological Collections
2018-11-14 17:30 - 19:00
There will be a Special Lecture Wednesday, November 14th at 5:30 PM in Dodd 275 by Conservation Faculty Candidate Dr. Alice Paterakis, Director of Conservation Kamen-Kalehoyuk, Yassihoyuk, and Buklukale Excavations, Japanese Institute of Anatolian Archaeology.

PIZZA TALK: Restoration of Dazu Rock Carvings: An Ecological Perspective
2018-11-28 12:00 - 13:00
Bio:Dr. Sonya Lee is Associate Professor of Chinese Art and Visual Cultures at the University of Southern California, where she holds a joint appointment in the Departments of Art History, East Asian Languages and Cultures, and Religion. A specialist in religious art and architecture of pre-modern China, Dr. Lee has published widely on the material culture of Chinese Buddhism. Her reserach interests also include material culture of the ancient Silk Road, art and ecology, Asian art collecting, and heritage conservation. Abstract:The recent restoration of the Thousand-Armed Avalokiteshvara at Baodingshan in Dazu has generated a lively debate about the state of heritage conservation in modern China. This talk discusses this project from an ecological perspective that highlights the restorers’ sensitivity to the local climatic conditions and geological properties in preserving monumental cliff-side rock carvings. It also contextualizes the project as part of a long history of restoration in the region in which past restorers likewise pursued eco-compatibility in the materials and methods needed to repair cave temples for present and future visitors.

FRIDAY SEMINAR: "No es lo mismo llamar al diablo que verlo venir”: Climate Change, Changing Weather and Archaeological Heritage as Seen from Puerto Rico
2018-11-30 16:00 - 18:00
BIO:Isabel Rivera-Collazo is Assistant Professor on Biological, Ecological and Human Adaptations to Climate Change at the Department of Anthropology and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. Dr. Rivera-Collazo is an environmental archaeologist specializing on geoarchaeology, archaeomalacology, coastal and marine processes, maritime culture and climate change, with regional interests in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean Basin and the Neotropics (Pan Caribbean region); Israel and the eastern Mediterranean. Her research focuses on the effect that human activity has over island ecosystems through time, as well as how have people responded to climatic and environmental change in the past. Dr. Rivera-Collazo’s work focuses on resilience and adaptation, investigating what decisions enhance or reduce adaptive success. Taking an applied approach, Dr. Rivera-Collazo also works with local communities in the quest for understanding the current and expected impacts of climate change, including threats to coastal heritage. Dr. Isabel Rivera-Collazo has a MSc degree on Palaeoecology of Human Societies and a PhD on Environmental Archaeology both from the Institute of Archaeology,University College London. She is also Research Fellow of the Center of Tropical Ecology and Conservation (CATEC) and the Laboratory of Environmental Archaeology at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus.ABSTRACT:A popular proverb in Puerto Rico warns that “it is not the same thing to call the devil than to see him come”. For many years, scientists have been warning about the potential impacts of climate change. In the last five to ten years archaeologists have been linking those impacts to heritage. These past two years, 2017 and 2018, have demonstrated the real-life meaning of changing weather – which eventually will add up to changed climate – and it is not the same to see the devil come. In the context of rapidly changing weather, heritage is a tool for adaptation, for recovery of lost knowledge, and for communication of locally relevant climate science. But at the same time, this reality puts heritage professionals at the front of a social, physical and cultural disaster that is simply overwhelming. This presentation will share the experiences of working with archaeological heritage and climate change research in Puerto Rico before, during and after a record-breaking catastrophic year of hurricanes and winter storms, and will contextualize the work of archaeology in the practicality of equity and justice from within the communities themselves.

FRIDAY SEMINAR: Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Why the Repatriation Wars Matter
2018-12-07 16:00 - 18:00
Dr. Chip ColwellSenior Curator of Anthropology, Denver Museum of Natural ScienceAbstract:Five decades ago, Native American leaders launched a crusade against museums to reclaim their sacred objects and to rebury their kin. This controversy has exploded in recent years as hundreds of tribes have used a landmark federal law to recover their heritage from more than one thousand museums across America. Many still question how to balance the religious freedoms of Native Americans with the academic freedoms of American scientists, and the arguments continue on about whether the emptying of museum shelves elevates human rights or destroys humanity’s common heritage. This talk presents Dr. Colwell’s new book and winner of a 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Book Title Award, Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Re claim Native America’s Culture, a personal journey that illuminates how repatriation has transformed both American museums and Native communities. This story reveals why repatriation law has become an imperfect but necessary tool to resolve the collision of worldviews between scientists and Native Americans—to decide the nature of the sacred and the destiny of souls.

PIZZA TALK: The Challenges of Studying the Agricultural Landscapes of Petra
2019-01-09 12:00 - 13:00
Felipe Rojas SilvaAssistant Professor of Archaeology and the Ancient World and Egyptology and AssyriologyBrown University

PIZZA TALK:Early globalization? Isotopic evidence of food practices in Prehistoric Italy
2019-01-16 12:00 - 13:00
Early globalization? Isotopic evidence of food practices in Prehistoric Italy Mary Anne TafuriDepartment of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of RomeThe cultural and social importance of food goes far beyond the mere necessity of nutrition, yet archaeologists have been slow to tackle issues of the sociality of food in prehistory. This is a great loss particularly as the economic transformations, which structured human diet took place in prehistory. One reason for lack of attention to this question has been limited methodologies for investigating not only what foods were produced but also exactly what foods people consumed.The increasing application of biomolecular investigations of skeletal tissues offers an exceptionally valuable approach for directly assessing aspects of an individual’s life, including their diet, geographical origin as well as the climate they inhabited.In the Central Mediterranean a number of important economic questions can be addressed through isotopic investigations: we can explore the balance between plant and animal sources of food in the diet of prehistoric people and how this change between the onset of the Neolithic (ca. 6000 BC) and the end of the Bronze Age (ca. 900 BC). We can assess the relative contribution of marine resources to diet the Central Mediterranean and, further, we can identify mode and tempo for the use of new foods.This talk will present new isotopic data on a large set of sites from prehistoric Italy that span from the earliest phases of the Neolithic to the later Bronze Age. A pattern of great complexity emerges, showing profound differences between the northern and southern regions of the Peninsula, which can be associated with environmental aspects but mostly should be interpreted as different cultural practices across space and time.

PIZZA TALK: Epigraphy in the Block Yard at Tell Edfu: Problems and Result
2019-01-23 12:00 - 13:00
Jonathan WinnermanLecturer, UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures ABSTRACT:Begun in 2012, the goal of the Block Yard Project at Tell Edfu is to organize, conserve, and document the wealth of epigraphic material discovered in the settlement site to the west of the well-known Ptolemaic temple. Prior to the present study, many of the objects were simply abandoned at the base of the site, deemed unworthy for inclusion in a museum by early excavators. Yet, these objects reveal a great deal about Egyptian religious practices, especially in the community outside of the temple itself. This talk first discusses epigraphic methodology and the options available for the documentation of this or other, similar material. It next provides an overview of some of the most interesting results, focusing specifically on the remains of a distinctive structure of unknown design and purpose.

PIZZA TALK:Climate Change, Cultural Heritage and Human Social Trajectories: An Archaeological Perspective from Holocene Central Sahara
2019-01-30 12:00 - 13:00
Savino di LerniaDirector, The Archaeological Mission in the SaharaDirector, The Archaeological Mission in the Kenyan Rift ValleySapienza University of Rome, ItalyAbstractClimate changes are a serious threat to cultural and natural heritage. Although many contexts are today seriously endangered, recent studies highlight how “archaeology and cultural heritage threatened by anthropogenic climate change are not just victims but part of the solution” (Hambrecht & Rockman, 2017. American Antiquity). Long-term archaeological projects could provide evidence to better understand the nature of the relations between climatically driven environmental changes and social trajectories. Aim of this talk is to present a synthesis of the main Holocene climate and environmental variations from a privileged geographical context – the central Sahara, where the magnitude of these changes was huge –, with a special focus on the Tadrart Acacus and Messak region (SW Libya). Here, cultural and social trajectories go together with resilient mechanisms of adaptations. Archaeological evidence reveals that social strategies were pivotal in coping with environmental changes. Although it is certainly true that climate changes are in fact central elements in cultural trajectories, in the past as today, this is even truer for marginal ecosystems such as the changing landscapes of the Holocene central Sahara. However, the continuity of many cultural practices until historical times and even later shows how the Saharan tradition is indeed an extraordinary way of life that deserves specific attention.

PIZZA TALK: Long-term Settlement Histories and Early Village Formation in the Northern Southwest
2019-02-06 12:00 - 13:00
Gregson Schachner & Reuven SinenskyAbstract:Ancestral Pueblo communities in the American Southwest underwent dramatic transformations in the mid-1st millennium AD, including rapid population growth and the widespread adoption of social structures that remained in place over the next millennium. We explore to two key moments in this process: the widespread adoption of sedentary agriculture in the mid-6th century and the founding of the earliest aggregated villages during the 8th century. While the former transition is marked by abrupt changes in architecture, storage facilities, and technological traditions region-wide, the latter displays remarkable diversity. Drawing on recent excavations and high quality chronometric and paleoclimate data, we suggest that a severe climatic downturn brought about by a series of massive volcanic eruptions is in part responsible for the abrupt changes associated with the onset of the Neolithic Demographic Transition in the northern Southwest during the mid-AD 500s, while a myriad of entangled economic and social factors contributed to the formation of early population aggregates a little over a century later.

A Painted Landscape: Myth and Ritual in Lower Pecos Rock Art
2019-02-12 18:00 - 20:30
The Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and Coahuila, Mexico house some of the most spectacularly complex rock art of the ancient world. Approximately 4000 years ago, hunter-gatherers began transforming this region into a painted landscape. Perhaps the greatest of these masterpieces is the White Shaman mural, an intricate Pecos River style painting that spans twenty-six feet in length and thirteen feet in height. Drawing on twenty-five years of archaeological research, as well as insight from ethnohistory and art history, Carolyn Boyd identifies patterns in the art that relate, in stunning detail, to the mythologies of Uto-Aztecan speaking peoples, including the Aztec and the contemporary Huichol. Analysis of these patterns led to the identification of the White Shaman mural as an ancient visual narrative relating a story of the birth of the sun and the beginning of time.California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA570 Westwood Plaza Building 114Los Angeles, CA 90095Reception on Tuesday, February 12, 2019 at 6:00pm with the program at 7:00pm RSVP here Carolyn E. Boyd, Ph.D.Founder of Shumla Archaeological Research & Education CenterResearch Professor at Texas State

PIZZA TALK: All the Small Things: Artifacts in Urban Context
2019-02-13 12:00 - 13:00
Dr. Leigh LiebermanDepartment of HistoryClaremont McKenna College AbstractIn recent years, the study of ancient artifacts has moved beyond straightforward typologies, descriptions, and quantifications. New approaches to the analysis of material culture – including methods of geospatial referencing, artifact agency, object biography, and statistical analysis of large datasets – have drawn attention to the myriad ways in which objects could be used and reused, deposited and redeposited in the ancient world. These new approaches have consequently given new life to materials that have been long overlooked in busy storerooms, from iron nails to loom weights, from ceramic wasters to unidentifiable coins. However, no matter the classification method, scholars still by and large fail to situate all the artifacts from a site fully within their archaeological contexts, a term that is frequently discussed in published reports but often thoroughly misunderstood. In both excavation publications and museum displays, the intended use of an object is almost always prioritized when in fact a contextual approach to the study and presentation of artifacts and assemblages can better illustrate the multiple, varied roles that objects served in the ancient world.As the Manager of Data and Information Resources for the University of Cincinnati’s Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia (PARP:PS), the Data Supervisor for the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (AEM:CAP), and the Head of Materials for the University of Cincinnati’s Tharros Archaeological Research Project (TARP), I have facilitated the development of a robust data organizational scheme that guides our innovative approach to material culture. I argue that by prioritizing context in the analysis of artifacts and assemblages, we can come to a more nuanced interpretation of how everyday objects were used, discarded, and recycled in urban spaces in antiquity. In my presentation, I’ll be highlighting some of the important lessons that I have learned along the way.

FRIDAY SEMINAR: The Tyranny of Ethnonyms in Multiethnic Worlds
2019-02-15 16:00 - 18:00
Dr. Stacie KingAssociate Professor of AnthropologyAssociate Faculty for the Center forLatin American and Caribbean StudiesIndiana University BloomingtonAbstract:This talk explores the challenges that ethnonyms create when trying to reconstructhistories of multiethnic landscapes in the ancient world. My larger project in the Nejaparegion of Oaxaca, Mexico addresses various aspects of conquest and colonialism alonginteregional trade routes, including identifying fortresses in mountain landscapes, themeaning of unoccupied land, the relationships entailed by trade and exchange, andreconciling archival documents, oral history, and archaeology. In this talk, I use my workto demonstrate how ethnonyms have pervaded interpretations of the past, archaeologicalreconstructions, and Colonial period registers, such that it remains difficult to envision adifferent kind of thriving, multiethnic world. Taken together, archaeological data, archivalinformation, and oral history from rural multiethnic Nejapa, Oaxaca show us thatdifferent indigenous communities across this landscape experienced Aztec, Zapotec, andSpanish conquests and colonialisms differently between the years A.D. 1350 and 1650, andthat these differences do not fit well with traditional reconstructions of Nejapa’sindigenous ethnic groups (Mixe, Chontal, and Zapotec). Instead, the data complicateentrenched notions of ethnicity and challenge their basic formulation. The long-standingmultiethnic past of ancient Nejapa set the stage for a different form of indigeneity thatNejapa’s resident experience in the present.

PIZZA TALK: LA MINA A LOOTED MOCHE TOMB
2019-02-20 12:00 - 13:00
Christopher Donnan, Ph.D.UCLA Professor EmeritusAbstract:This talk focuses on an extraordinarily rich Moche tomb that was looted on the north coast of Peru, the efforts that were made to record the objects that came from it, and how it was possible to learn about its location, construction, and embellishment.

FRIDAY SEMINAR: The ancient town of Edfu from the Old Kingdom to the early New Kingdom: New discoveries of the 2017 and 2018 seasons
2019-02-22 16:00 - 18:00
Nadine Moeller Associate Professor of Egyptian ArchaeologyUniversity of ChicagoAbstract: The ongoing excavations by the Oriental Institute team directed by Nadine Moeller and Gregory Marouard have during the most recent seasons focused on settlement remains dating to the Old Kingdom. Located 20 m to the west of the much later Ptolemaic temple of Horus of Edfu, excavations revealed several phases of domestic installations from the second part of the 6th Dynasty that covered an older administrative complex with several massive mudbrick structures dating to the late 5th Dynasty that had been installed directly onto the natural Nile sand deposits in an area never settled before that date. Based on their size, architectural details and related finds, the two large buildings are of official nature and constitute a newly founded settlement quarter in the ancient town of Behdet (Edfu). Among the finds are more than 220 clay sealings naming king Djedkare-Isesi (late 5th Dynasty, ca. 2434 BC), in addition to official titles that regularly mention a group of specialized workers involved in prospection and mining activities, the so-called sementiu. Additional finds such as numerous pieces of copper ore, important traces of metallurgical activities, Red Sea shells and a significant amount of Nubian ceramics found on the floor levels during the excavation further confirm the link to royal expeditions and mining activities in the Eastern desert areas. The second area that has been the focus of fieldwork since November 2018 provided new evidence for a vast domestic quarter dating to the beginning of 18th Dynasty. Excavations have focused on a large urban villa of about 400 square-meters, which dates from the early Thutmoside period (ca. 1500-1450 BCE). This building is characterized by several rooms with columns. The largest and main room, a 6-columned hall, contained in one of its corners a well-preserved domestic sanctuary dedicated to the cult of the family ancestors. Numerous elements attesting to the cult activity have been found near a small fire place and offering table, including a very rare example of an ancestor bust and a statuette of a seated scribe

PIZZA TALK: Uncertainty and Ethics
2019-02-27 12:00 - 13:00
Dr. Jonathan Ashley-SmithGetty Conservation Guest ScholarAbstract:This presentation will discuss the inevitability of prediction in conservation activities.Routine activities such as condition assessment and risk assessment rely on the ability topredict future environments and future physical and chemical states of objects. Yet for theresults to be useful they have to be presented as positive statements that hide the hugeuncertainties in such predictions. Codes of conservation ethics imply predictions about thefuture behaviours of people and objects. Despite the inherent uncertainties of suchpredictions, such codes have become the bedrock of the conservation profession.

PIZZA TALK: In the Beginning there was the Carved Lion-man from Swabia: On Histories about the Fuss about the ‘First’
2019-03-06 12:00 - 13:00
Dr. Avinoam ShalemDepartment of Art History and ArchaeologyColumbia UniversityAbstract:In this lecture, I would like to challenge the specific art historians’ interest in the question of the earliest and the first-in-sequence work of art. My inquiry does not aim at disregarding this query as a legitimate one or criticizing the art historian’s obsession with this mode of investigation. On the contrary, I would like to ponder on the benefit that art historians gain from locating specific art works as the earliest or the first of their kind. Moreover, I would like to disclose the historical trajectory of this method, namely the first medieval scholarly quests for defining and demarcating the earliest. Thus, my aim is to set this mode of research in its historical context and, hopefully, raise further critical points about our regarding of this approach as scholarly method, for its bad and good reasons alike.

FRIDAY SEMINAR:Giving Voices - Without Words - To Prehistoric People
2019-03-08 16:00 - 18:00
Dr. Ruth TringhamProfessorGraduate School (Anthropology)UC BerkeleyABSTRACT:This presentation describes a path to addressing the discomfort that I and many of my braver colleagues have had when putting words into the mouths and heads of prehistoric actors, knowing that these words say more about us than they do about prehistory. Yet without such speech, how are we archaeologists and the broader public to imagine the intangibles of the deep past (emotions, affect, gender, senses)? Moreover, such words create a misleading certainty that conceals the ambiguities of archaeological data. Are there alternative options to verbal and vocal clarity when creating imagined fictive narratives about the past? With inspiration from composer Györgi Ligeti, from linguists and experimental psychologists, and from ASMR performers, I explore the emotive power of vocal non-verbal interjections and utterances that have more universality and less cultural baggage, using them in three diverse remediations of digital media from three prehistoric archaeological contexts in Europe and Anatolia.

PIZZA TALK: Bulgarian Archaeology: A Century in Review
2019-03-13 12:00 - 13:00
Ivan VasilevFounder and CEO Balkan Heritage FoundationABSTRACT:Occupying the eastern part of the Balkans along the Western Black Sea shore, Bulgaria has a rich and diverse archaeological heritage. Within its borders are the remains not only of the early humans and Neolithic farmers, but also of the arguably Europe’s oldest civilization dating to the 5th millennium BCE. A very significant share of the country’s archaeological heritage belongs to the civilizations of the ancient Thracians, Greeks, Macedonians and even Persians as well as Celts, Romans, Byzantines, medieval Bulgarians and Ottomans. The country has more than 150,000 registered archaeological sites, thousands of historic sites and millions of archaeological artifacts kept in around 300 museums and collections, which means Bulgaria ranks with Greece, Italy and France as Europe’s archaeologically richest countries.Bulgaria’s archaeological heritage received the interest of European scholars in the second half of the 19th century, not much before the country received autonomy from the Ottoman Empire in 1878. However, the beginning of the archaeological investigation in the country dates to both decades around the turn of the century (1890s-1900s). It was encouraged and supported backed-up and triggered by the development of relevant research and museum infrastructure across the country. The National Archaeological Museum was established in 1892 and the Bulgarian Archaeological Society (later National Archaeological Institute) was established in 1901.Archaeologists have been unearthing the evidence about the past of these lands for more than a century. The current presentation will review their greatest achievements and discoveries while introducing the country’s rich potential for research. It will start with a review of the finds from Kozarnika Cave – one of the earliest Paleolithic sites in Europe, the “world’s oldest gold” found in Varna and the richest collection of Attic vases outside Athens. Then it will highlight treasures and tombs of Thracian royalty along with important monuments and cities of ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and medieval Bulgarians.

FRIDAY SEMINAR: Land Use and Political Economy: Niche Construction in the Gordion Region, Turkey
2019-03-15 16:00 - 18:00
Dr. Lisa Kealhofer Professor, Anthropology and Environmental Studies and Sciences, Santa Clara UniversityAbstract:Archaeologists have often assumed that agricultural strategies are significant factors in altering environments. Narratives of societal collapse typically point to environmental degradation as an outcome of population increase or political breakdown. We use a version of Niche Construction Theory to interpret the timing and nature of landscape change around Gordion in central Anatolia over the last 5000 years. Recent work in the Gordion region by us and others demonstrates that major environmental change is only weakly connected to standard measures of agricultural intensification. Using detailed stream histories and survey-based settlement data, we show that the largest environmental changes predate significant settlement in small watersheds, while the largest regional-scale changes postdate high intensity settlement and land use. By integrating multiple lines of evidence, we identify and date both environmental perturbations and possible counteractive niche construction strategies associated with political centralization.

PIZZA TALK: Corral Redondo, Peru: 75 Years Later
2019-04-03 12:00 - 13:00
Corral Redondo, Peru: 75 Years LaterDr. Hans Barnard, UCLADr. Danny Zborover, Institute for Field ResearchVanessa Muros, UCLAABSTRACTCorral Redondo is located in southern Peru, where the Chorunga River joins the Ocoña River on its way from the Andes to the Pacific Ocean. In 1943 Corral Redondo briefly shot to fame after local villagers discovered the site and recovered 96 Wari period (ca. 600‒1000 CE) blue-and-yellow feathered panels, stored inside eight large ceramic face-neck jars. Inka period (ca. 1450‒1550 CE) silver and bronze vessels, as well as gold and silver figurines of camelids and humans, dressed in miniature garments, were found elsewhere on the site. The type and number of artifacts found suggests that the site functioned as a ceremonial compound in both Wari and Inka times. However, because the site was looted and the finds dispersed to museums in Peru and elsewhere, all archaeological information associated with them has obviously been lost. In the summer of 2018 a team from the Cotsen Institute, the University of Chicago, the Institute for Field Research,and local archaeologists visited the Ocoña Valley to investigate and record the remains of Corral Redondo and its wider environs. In this presentation, the first results of this ongoing research endeavor will be discussed.

Recent Archaeological Discoveries in Yinxu, China
2019-04-04 16:00 - 17:30

Occasional Lectures in Anthropology: The Powers and Pitfalls of Molecular Archaeology
2019-04-09 13:00 - 14:00
Dr. Elizabeth (Lisa) Matisoo-SmithProfessor of Biological Anthropology and ChairDepartment of Anatomy, University of OtagoThe Powers and Pitfalls of Molecular ArchaeologyIn 1989 it was announced in Nature that DNA could successfully be extracted fromarchaeological bone, and thus was born the field of molecular archaeology. The lastdecade has seen the field flourish with the development of Next Generation Sequencing(NGS) technology. While the results of many molecular studies have contributedpositively to our understanding of prehistory, others have not. It must be recognised thatmolecular techniques are just tools, and like all tools, they are only useful if usedproperly. What is most important is that the right questions are asked, the appropriatesamples to answer those questions are collected, and the results interpreted in thecontext of the current knowledge. This paper discusses the past, present and future ofmolecular archaeology, focusing on both the strengths and the weaknesses of theapplication of molecular techniques and the interpretation of molecular data withregards to reconstructing the prehistory of the Pacific.

Archaeology of Ancient Israel Lecture Series: Feeding the Gods in Ancient Israel
2019-04-11 14:00 - 16:00
Dr. Jennie EbelingAssociate ProfessorDepartment of ArchaeologyUniversity of Evansville in IndianaAbstract:Bread and other grain-based foods were not only staples in the ancient Israelite diet; they were also staples in the ritual acts that accompanied the worship of several deities in ancient Israel. In addition to the state god YHWH, who required regular offerings of lechem hapanim (“bread of the presence”) in the Tabernacle and the Jerusalem Temple (Exodus 25:30, 39:36, 40:23; Leviticus 24: 5-9; Numbers 4:7; 1 Kings 7:48), the Queen of Heaven (Jeremiah 7:18, 44:17-25) was worshipped by families in Jerusalem and throughout Judah with cakes that were marked with her image. Although the biblical writers did not record the details of these practices, the remains of ritual activity in a variety of Iron Age (ca. 1200-586 BCE) archaeological contexts are strongly associated with areas where bread and other foods were prepared and consumed. In this presentation, I will discuss the evidence for feeding the gods in Israelite houses, the house of YHWH, and other contexts, and suggest that the ritual importance of bread in ancient Israel began with women’s food offerings to household deities.For more details see: https://www.cjs.ucla.edu/event/feeding-the-gods-in-ancient-israel/

PIZZA TALK: Adventures in Paleoethnobotany: from the short grass plains of North American to the Andes of South America
2019-04-17 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker:Dr. Sonia ZarrilloPostdoctoral FellowCotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLAAbstract:Throughout human history, from our earliest ancestors through to modern societies, plants were of vital significance. They have been essential to diet, used as medicines and in ceremonies, fashioned into a myriad of tools, containers, adornments, and musical instruments, depicted in artwork and used as emblems, and relied on as a source of fuel and building material. Paleoethnobotany, or archaeobotany, is the study of the interrelationships between people and plants in the past. More specifically, paleoethnobotany is the recovery, analyses, and interpretation of plants from archaeological contexts to answer questions of behavior and ecological interactions between past peoples and plants. In this lecture, case studies from past and current research – from the northern Plains of North America to the South American Andes – will be presented to illustrate the range of knowledge to be gained from paleoethnobotanical studies, followed by research and volunteer opportunities for students and the interested public.

PIZZA TALK: Athenian Pottery in the Persian empire
2019-04-24 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker:Dr. Kathleen LynchUniversity of CincinnatiAbstract:Athenian pottery was exported throughout the Mediterranean in the Classical Period. Perhaps surprisingly, it found eager consumers in the Persian Empire, or rather, in territory controlled by the Persians during the Greek Classical period. The presentation will consider what the imported Greek pottery meant in the context of the Achaemenid empire, with a special focus on Gordion in central Turkey. The former Phrygian capital turned Persian outpost is an anomaly with its abundant, high quality Athenian pottery. Typically Athenian pottery tends to be found in coastal settlements of the eastern Mediterranean, but Gordion is 500 km from any coast. What was the appeal of Athenian pottery?
