Friday Seminar: “The Past, Present, and Future of Space Archaeology”

Speaker: Dr. Justin Walsh, Associate Professor, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Chapman UniversityThe archaeology of human activity in space has been conceptualized since the 1990’s. Early work included definition of the parameters of the field, identification of subject material and sites, development of methodologies, and integration of common terrestrial archaeology activities such as cultural […]

Pizza Talk: “Burning Rings of Fire: Prehispanic Maya Lime Production and Environmental Resource Management”

Speaker: Dr. Kenneth Seligson, Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, USCBurnt lime was one of the most significant materials in the daily lives of the Prehispanic Maya, and yet archaeologists have uncovered relatively little evidence of production methods or locales prior to the Spanish Conquest. This talk presents the investigation of a series of pit-kilns in and around […]

Pizza Talk: “Worked Animal Objects in Iron Age Greece”

Speaker: Adam DiBattista, PhD Candidate, The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLAThe early Iron Age was a time of profound social change in Greece in which new ideas about materials like bone and ivory develop. At the same time, textual and iconographic evidence speaks to the importance of animals and animal sacrifice in the Greek world. […]

Friday Seminar: “Khok Thlok, Cosmology, and Angkor as a Hydraulic City”

Speaker: Dr. Miriam Stark, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai'iThe Mekong Basin that Angkorian Khmers inhabited was a watery world. Annual monsoon rains dictated their farming and shaped their mobility, and short-term droughts that followed each year’s rainy season drove Khmers to dig household ponds and temple reservoirs. Chinese, Khmer and Cham histories include a […]

Pizza Talk: “Moving Agriculture onto the Roof of the World”

Speaker: Dr. Jade d'Alpoim Guedes, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, UC San DiegoResearch on agriculture's spread in East Asia has followed an underlying assumption: that farming produced equally reliable returns across the vast expanse of territories into which it spread and always placed farmers at a demographic advantage. Significant ecological barriers to growing crops on […]

Pizza Talk: “The Ancient Methone Archaeological Project: 2014-2017”

Speaker: Dr. John Papadopoulos, Professor, Department of Classics, UCLAThe final season of fieldwork on the Ancient Methone Archaeological Project—a collaboration of Greek Ministry of Culture and UCLA under the auspices of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens—was concluded in the summer of 2017. This presentation is an overview of our fieldwork at the […]

Friday Seminar: “Island Kingdoms of Ancient Hawai’i”

Speaker: Dr. Mark McCoy, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist UniversityThe archaic form of state society evolved independently at least six times in prehistory – in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, the Indus Valley, Mesoamerica, and coastal Peru – and marks a turning point that was fundamental to the creation of modern society. New research suggests […]

Archaeology & Anthropology Film Festival

Please see the flyer below for the upcoming UCLA Archaeology & Anthropology Film Festival. This will take place on Tuesday, March 13 from 4:00—7:30pm in the UCLA CNSI Auditorium.Please RSVP here no later thanTuesday, March 6 at 12pm. 

Pizza Talk: “Performance and Politics in Hittite Anatolia”

Speaker: Michael Moore, PhD Candidate, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLAVirtually all studies of Hittite festivals have focused on philological issues and the cultural and religious background of the festivals (Hattic, Hittite, Luwian, Hurrian, or Mesopotamian). Studies of the roles of the participants, the political ramifications of festivals, the sensorial experience of participants, […]