FRIDAY SEMINAR: The Tyranny of Ethnonyms in Multiethnic Worlds

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 […]

PIZZA TALK: LA MINA A LOOTED MOCHE TOMB

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

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 […]

PIZZA TALK: Uncertainty and Ethics

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 […]

PIZZA TALK: In the Beginning there was the Carved Lion-man from Swabia: On Histories about the Fuss about the ‘First’

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 […]

FRIDAY SEMINAR:Giving Voices – Without Words – To Prehistoric People

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 […]

PIZZA TALK: Bulgarian Archaeology: A Century in Review

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 […]

FRIDAY SEMINAR: Land Use and Political Economy: Niche Construction in the Gordion Region, Turkey

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 […]

PIZZA TALK: Corral Redondo, Peru: 75 Years Later

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 […]