Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

Archaeology & Anthropology Film Festival
2018-03-13 16:00 - 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
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.

Friday Seminar: "Island Kingdoms of Ancient Hawai'i"
2018-03-09 15:00 - 17:00
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 another, much more recent, example of the formation of archaic states occurred in the Hawaiian Islands. Located in the North Pacific, the archipelago of islands that make up the Hawaiian chain are so naturally isolated that they remained undiscovered by people until Polynesian voyagers established a new settlement there around AD 1000. By the time of first contact with Europeans, 800 years later, it was home to hundreds of thousands of people governed by independent kingdoms. How did this occur, and what does it tell us about the moment in history when chiefs became kings? In this lecture, I will draw upon nearly twenty years of field research in Hawai‘i and outline what we currently know about the creation of these island kingdoms through archaeology and local oral histories, with the goal of explaining why society transformed and what these changes tell us about the larger course of human prehistory.

Pizza Talk: "The Ancient Methone Archaeological Project: 2014-2017"
2018-03-07 12:00 - 13:00
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 site during the 2014-2017 seasons, and incorporates earlier fieldwork by our Greek colleagues beginning in 2003.

Pizza Talk: "Moving Agriculture onto the Roof of the World"
2018-02-28 12:00 - 13:00
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 the Tibetan Plateau meant that the opposite was true. Using ecological niche modeling to illuminate how foragers and farmers interacted in environments marginal to crop cultivation, this paper demonstrates that the higher elevation reaches of the “third pole” constituted a barrier for expanding millet farmers. In these areas foragers maintained a competitive advantage. Following the end of the climatic optimum, decreasing temperatures effectively ended millet farmer’s expansion. It was only following the introduction of a suite of new crops and animals that the Tibetan economy as we know it today was able to flourish, but also that pastoralists and farmers finally began to truly encroach on forager territory.

Celebrations of Life: Gedenkschrift Symposium in Memory of Lloyd Cotsen
2018-02-25 09:00 - 20:00

Friday Seminar: "Khok Thlok, Cosmology, and Angkor as a Hydraulic City"
2018-02-23 15:00 - 17:00
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 Khmer origin story in which a foreign ruler conquers and marries a local serpent princess, and the bride’s father drains the local waters to create farmland for his daughter’s new dynasty. Environmental studies suggest that increasingly severe floods challenged Angkor’s urban engineers, and the decades-long droughts that followed pushed farmers on the Angkor Plain to their limits. Angkorian life revolved around water, and so did the life of its capital, but not simply in response to climate. Water has been intrinsic to Angkorian cosmology since the beginning of Khmer recorded history: simultaneously salubrious, secular and sacred. Water frames my presentation on Angkorian archaeology, which begins with the Khok Thlok origin story, examines the cosmology of water in Angkorian Cambodia, and problematizes Angkor, which BP Groslier described as his “hydraulic city”: from the household level to the urban scale. Archaeological and environmental research offer rich, and occasionally, competing perspectives on how water shaped 9th-15th century Khmers.

Pizza Talk: "Worked Animal Objects in Iron Age Greece"
2018-02-21 12:00 - 13:00
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. As the remnants of living animals, objects made from tooth or bone carry special potential for the creation and negotiation of meaning. Beginning in the Early Iron Age, these objects are frequently deposited in votive contexts where they function as a novel form of social behavior and organization based around sanctuary sites. Analysis of the technical aspects of worked animal object production helps reveal the attitudes of producers towards the materials. Additionally, contextual studies of worked animal objects reveal patterns of use and deposition of these objects.

Pizza Talk: "Burning Rings of Fire: Prehispanic Maya Lime Production and Environmental Resource Management"
2018-02-14 12:00 - 13:00
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 the Prehispanic site of Kiuic in the Puuc Region of the northern Maya Lowlands and highlights the multiple lines of evidence that identify these structures as lime production features. This sub-regional pit-kiln technology has implications for understanding resource management practices and the socio-economic organization of a significant Prehispanic Maya industry.

Friday Seminar: "The Past, Present, and Future of Space Archaeology"
2018-02-09 15:00 - 17:00
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 resource management and heritage protection into space archaeology. More rarely, but no less significantly, there have been research projects carried out by academic archaeologists as part of efforts to push the envelope of “the possible” in archaeological practice.This lecture will begin by outlining the history of space archaeology to date and contextualizing it within developments in the field of contemporary archaeology more generally. The author will then describe how they are undertaking the first archaeological investigation of a permanent habitation site in space: the International Space Station. The ISS Archaeological Project (ISSAP; https://issarchaeology.org) is applying the latest technological tools, including machine learning and crowd sourcing techniques, to classifying data from millions of images depicting life on board the space station during the last 17 years. This information will be used to map patterns of astronaut presence and absence in various locations, and the associations between crew, objects, and spaces on ISS. The results will enable a better understanding of how a society and culture forms on a spacecraft, and improve life during long-duration missions.

Pizza Talk: "The Manufacture and Use of Metallurgical Ceramics at Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico"
2018-02-07 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Dr. Jennifer Meanwell, Lecturer, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, MITCopper and copper alloy artifacts were valued commodities at the Postclassic period (AD 1150-1500) Maya capital of Mayapán, and are found as a variety of luxury items, most commonly small ornamental bells. Due to the lack of ore deposits near Mayapán, metal must have been imported from elsewhere in Mesoamerica, entering as a raw material for shaping into desired objects or as already finished goods. As at other Maya sites, the assemblage of metal objects at Mayapán favors common commodities such as bells, tweezers, rings, and miniature axes, but the high frequency of casting errors and the unusual preference for miniaturized bells suggest local production of desired objects using re-cast metals. The past two decades of excavation at the site has unearthed a small but growing assemblage of ceramic fragments that seem to have served as remelting crucibles and as metallurgical molds for casting.Our ongoing analysis of an exported sample of metallurgical ceramics investigates the raw materials used in manufacture, the modes of production, and the parameters of their use. We investigate the metallurgical ceramics using a variety of analytical tools, specifically ceramic petrography, electron microscopy, and chemical analyses, to demonstrate that these ceramics were used in metallurgical activities and to gain insight into their production and functionality. These highly specialized ceramic materials seem to have been produced using specific raw materials and pastes required by the intense heat and reducing atmosphere required of metallurgical production. This investigation provides insight into the localized pyrotechnical solutions developed by Mayapán’s metallurgical specialists to meet the demands of high-temperature crafting activity.

UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Graduate Student Conference
2018-02-02 16:00 - 2018-02-03 18:00

Pizza Talk: "Interpreting the Idiom of Urban Display in Architectural Relief Sculpture at the late Roman Villa of Chiragan (Haute-Garonne, France)"
2018-01-31 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Dr. Sarah Beckmann, Visiting Lecturer, Department of Classics, UCLAOver the last generation, scholarly attention towards the production of sculpture in the late antique period (ca. 250 – 550 CE) has rekindled interest in the villa of Chiragan (Haute-Garonne, Aquitaine). Since its excavation in the 19th century, Chiragan has been heralded for its statuary collection, which remains the largest extant assemblage of marble sculptures securely associated with a private context. Among the finds are a number of late antique sculptures that were ostensibly made in eastern workshops: several portraits, small scale mythological statuettes, and multiple relief series. My paper focuses on this latter genre and suggests that these under-synthesized reliefs have much to add to our understanding both of the villa of Chiragan and the marble statuary habit of late Roman villas in southern Aquitaine.

Friday Seminar: "Data Games: Cognitive Mapping in Ancient Pompeii"
2018-01-26 15:00 - 17:00
Speaker: Dr. David Fredrick, Associate Professor, Department of Classical Studies, University of Arkansas3:00pm — Panel Discussion on Critical Archaeological Gaming with Chris Johanson, Demetri Terzopoulos, Eddo Stern, and Lisa Snyder4:00pm — Reception5:00pm — David Fredrick Lecture: Data Games: Cognitive Mapping in Ancient Pompeii

Critical Archaeological Gaming Workshop
2018-01-25 09:00 - 2018-01-26 18:00
This workshop focuses on the design of archaeological games that entice users to engage with archaeological skills, methods, questions and results. What are possible goals of such games, and how can these be reached through narratives, interactive mechanics and visual, aural and motive stimulants.Beyond providing exercises in archaeological approaches, can emergent gameplay have a significant heuristic function? If so, what are the requirements for availability and quality of data, player choice and player skill development?View the workshop program for details on the talks and activities. Guests are invited to join in-person or remotely view and participate in the workshop on Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/631730989Image credit: Screenshot from “Deadfall” https://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/06/its-a-global-archeological-adventure-i…PROGRAMThursday, January 2510.00-10.15 Willeke Wendrich — Welcome and purpose of the workshop10.15-11.00 Tara Copplestone — Rethinking Archaeology Through Game Design11.00-11.15 coffee break11.15-12.00 Erik Champion — The Sin of Completeness versus the Lure of Fantasy in Contested Possibility-Spaces12.00 – 1.00 Lunch Break1.00-1.45 Willeke Wendrich — Walking through Empty Buildings, Everybody Wears the Same Shoes1.45-2.30 Hannah Scates Kettler — Jumping into the Animus: Revisiting old video games to create new ones2.30-3.15 David Fredrick — Secrets in the Garden: Modeling Vulnerability and Information Exchange in the House of Octavius Quartio3.15-3.30 Coffee break4.15-5.00 Rosa Tamborrino — The sense of Time in Videogames: Fragments and Lack of Dynamics in Historical Environment ReconstructionsFriday, January 2610.00 – 12.00 Demonstrations in the Digital Archaeology Lab (Fowler A163)12.00 – 1.00 lunch break1.00- 3.00 Discussion: setting the agenda and follow up (Fowler A222)3.00 pm Friday Seminar: Panel Discussion on Critical Archaeological Gaming: Chris Johanson, Demetri Terzopoulos, Eddo Stern, Lisa Snyder4.00 pm Reception5.00 pm Public Lecture by David Fredrick Data Games: Cognitive Mapping in Ancient Pompeii

Pizza Talk: "Achaemenid Stone Towers and Recent Excavations at Pasargadae, Iran"
2018-01-24 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Dr. Ali Mousavi, Lecturer, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLAThe World Heritage site of Pasargadae, in southern Iran, is the first dynastic center of the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century B.C. Pasargadae’s palaces, gardens and the mausoleum of Cyrus the Great are outstanding examples of the first phase of royal Achaemenid art and architecture. The ruins of a solitary stone tower, known by the local name of Zendan-e Suleiman (prison of Solomon), dominates the Palace area at Pasargadae. The function of this tower and its counterpart at Naqsh-e Rustam, near Persepolis, has been the object of various studies. The towers, however, defy any convincing interpretation. The results of recent excavations at Pasargadae seem to shed some light on the function of these towers.

Friday Seminar: January 19, 2018
2018-01-19 15:00 - 17:00
This will be a series of two 30-minute lectures”Perception in Palatial Architecture: The Example of the Tupkish Palace at Tell Mozan” by Dr. Federico BuccellatiSpace, as an expression of the architectural volumes expressed in Mesopotamian palatial architecture, can seem an abstract, distant concept, visible but not understood, and lacking interaction. These volumes, however, carry a deeper meaning: they conditioned and were affected by the daily life of the individuals who used these spaces. The aim is to go beyond the factuality of the data, important though that is, and to recover, through arguable and documentable procedures, the human perception. This perceptual impact encompasses not only the sense of sight, but also sound, smell and touch. The archaeological record gives only partial evidence, as is always the case, but this is often enough to draw meaningful conclusions.”Architecture Between Bricks, Images and Words” by Dr. Maria Gabriella MicaleThe centrality of architecture in the Mesopotamian worldview is reflected in both myth and reality. The presented research is a study of form and function of architectural representation and description. It analyzes the representation of Assyrian architecture by means of an innovative theoretical approach, which identifies features and functions of the occurrence of architecture in both images and texts, also in the light of the broader Mesopotamian culture. Contrary to the traditional scientific approach to images, which considers them mere reproductions of the physical built space, the project aims at defining the role of the textual description of architecture in the construction of visual imagery, the relationship among the different traditions (architectural, iconographic, and textual), and the paths of their reciprocal influences.

Pizza Talk: "Macroscale multimodal imaging and spectroscopy reveals raw material selection and production technology of Fayum Portraits"
2018-01-17 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Dr. Ioanna Kakoulli, Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, UCLAFayum portraits are paintings mainly on wooden support reflecting Greek painting traditions and Egyptian funerary practices. These paintings are naturalistic portraits of the deceased and provide a snapshot of Greek civic life and customs in Egypt during the Ptolemaic and Roman rule. Non-invasive and non-destructive evaluation (NDE) of these portraits from the macro to the molecular length scale using combined imaging and spectroscopic techniques supported label-free fingerprint identification of pigments and binding media revealing raw materials selection, production technology and the operational sequences (chaîne opératoire) of the processes associated with the making of the painting. Results from the analyses integrating hyperspectral cubes in reflectance luminescence and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and forensic imaging investigations combined with fiber-optic reflectance spectroscopy (FORS) and portable XRF, indicated the use of a variety of natural and synthetic organic, inorganic and composite pigments mixed with melted beeswax in ‘encaustic’ [εγκαυστική] painting technique. The significance of this research is twofold: 1) research has been conducted without the need to take any samples and 2) results from the analyses revealed key information on the fashion and practices in Egypt during the Greek and Roman period. For example, the production of the green pigment, a synthetic organic-inorganic complex, giving the green color to the ‘gemstones’ of the necklaces in women’s portraits, is similar to the processes in alchemical manuals of the third century AD, describing a method how to color rock-crystals green, in imitation of precious stones. Similarly, the pigment madder lake used to paint the red-purple garments in the portraits replicates technology employed for the production of mordanted dyes to tint yarns for the textile ‘industry’. These results further illustrate the close affinities and interconnections between the various ‘chemical arts’, such as mining, metallurgy, corrosion and dyeing, to the art of painting and how the cultural and socio-political milieu in Egypt during the Greek and Roman period, with philosophies driving experimentation, influenced material choices and processes involved for the production and use of pigments in art.

Vertical Archaeology, Horizontal Stratigraphy: A Century of LA Graffiti
2018-01-16 18:00 - 20:00
Willeke Wendrich, Director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, cordially invites Friends of Archaeology members to a special dinner and lecture on January 16, 2018 with Susan Parker, Academic Director, Pitzer in Ontario Program Associate Professor of Environmental Analysis Pitzer College, Claremont, CA. The reception will begin at 6:00pm and be followed by dinner at 6:45pm. This event is restricted to Friends of Archaeology. For more information about becoming a Friend, please visit our membership page.

Friday Seminar: "Destroying the Archive: Sex, Racism, Image and Contemporary Archaeology
2018-01-12 15:00 - 17:00
Speaker: Dr. Doug Bailey, Professor, Department of Anthropology, San Francisco State UniversityWhat happens when people attempt to discard and destroy a museum archive that contains many thousands of visual and material objects? In this workshop, we discuss the politics, potential, and violence of archive objects (specifically a cache of over 1200, 35-mm transparencies from the mid-late 20th century. What lives do they live? Are they passive and neutral objects resting peacefully in an institution’s collection? Are they active material things? If the latter, then what affect do they have, what energies and essences do they constitute, what is their present and their future, where should they go, and what should they do?

Friday Seminar: "Snake Queens and Statecraft: Kaanul Women and their Political Legacies at Waka'"
2017-12-08 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Dr. Olivia Navarro-Farr, College of WoosterRecent investigations in Waka’s primary civic-ceremonial structure discovered a royal tomb including the remains of Queen K’abel. These excavations also revealed the name of an earlier, previously unknown Kaanul queen, Ikoom Sak Wayis, likely pertaining to the interment of a royal female excavated at the site’s palace complex in 2004. This discussion focuses on the wide-ranging evidence that underscores the place of these queens in the collective social memory of ancient Wakeños, their diplomatic capabilities, and their political importance. This examination also serves to initiate conversations about increasing theoretical considerations of how women acted deliberately and meaningfully as agents of ancient statecraft.

Pizza Talk: "Bioarchaeological investigations in China and Mongolia: Mongol soldiers, Silk Road merchants, Manichaean infants, and bound feet women"
2017-12-06 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Dr. Christine Lee, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Cal State LAMy research focuses on ethnic identity and how it is expressed in the human skeleton and its burial context. The populations I study were seldom represented in contemporary historical texts. These people included nomadic pastoralists, migrants and merchants, and finally women and children. The first population sample represents the Uighur dynasty in Mongolia. This cemetery dates to the end of the dynasty which was plagued by epidemics and famine before its collapse. Bioarchaeological analysis of Manichaean temple burials show a high mortality rate among infants and periods of high stress among the surviving adults. A second rare archaeological sample dates to Ming-Qing dynasty China. This is the only archaeological site known to have women with bound feet. A complete analysis was done on the occurrence and prevalence of footbinding from the Song –Qing dynasty burials. Next,four archaeological sites from the Western Regions (China and Mongolia) will be discussed regarding trauma patterns along the Silk Road. These are frontier sites from non-Asian Sogdian (Persian) and Pazyryk (Scythian) populations. Finally, current field excavations of several sites which date to the Period of Disunion (Dark Ages), after the collapse of the Han and Xiongnu empires. Little is known about this time other than there was widespread unrest and migration in Mongolia and Northern China. Preliminary findings suggest a change in burial patterns and ethnic identities.

Friday Seminar: "Density, Defense, Agriculture and Access: Lessons from LiDAR in the Maya lowlands"
2017-12-01 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Dr. Thomas Garrison, Ithaca CollegeIn 2016, the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) acquired over 2100 square km of data over the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala, representing the largest single LiDAR acquisition for archaeological research. Sponsored by PACUNAM, a consortium of scholars representing different archaeological projects and nationalities have come together to analyze broad trends across the ten individual polygons covered by the data. Notable among the findings are patterns of settlement density and vacancy, an uneven distribution of intensive agricultural systems, and variations in regional connectivity and disconnectivity. A final aspect of the data, seen prominently around the ancient Maya kingdom of El Zotz, is the presence of elaborate systems of site defense. This talk will highlight some basic findings by members of the PACUNAM LiDAR Initiative (PLI) before focusing on what these data tell us about Maya warfare, defense, and politics. Particular attention will be paid to the discovery of a true Maya fortress, dubbed La Cuernavilla, and the implications this site has for understanding Maya politics in the aftermath of Teotihuacan’s entrada into the lowlands in the 4th century A.D.

Pizza Talk: "Longshan Network and Political Landscape of Early Bronze Age China
2017-11-29 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Tao Shi, PhD Candidate, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLAThe rise of Erlitou not only declares the end of the Longshan Age, but also open a new era of the Luoyang-centric social network. However, how the political landscape was formed and what the knowledge root of Erlitou was have not been discussed. In this paper, I will discuss the Longshan Network as the process of knowledge preparation for the rise of Erlitou. Moreover, I will introduce my survey in the Qinling Mountain Range, and see the Dan River in the Qinling Mountain Range as an expressway of knowledge transmission for the Erlitou state.

Friday Seminar: "Developing new digital tools for landscape archaeological research"
2017-11-17 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Dr. Marcos Llobera, University of WashingtonThis talk centers on the on-going Landscape, Encounters and Identity project (http://leiap.weebly.com/) and various initiatives by members of the DigAR lab (Digital Archaeology Research Lab -www.digarlab.uw.edu/) at the University of Washington surrounding this project. Broadly speaking, the LEIA project is a landscape archaeology study that seeks to understand landscape and societal changes that played out from Pre-(Late Bronze Age) to medieval times in the Son Servera landscape (NE Mallorca, Spain). In addition to representing the first intensive and systematic surface survey in the island of Mallorca, the project has set out to meet several theoretical, methodological and public goals. Amongst the methodological goals, the project is developing new digital and computational tools for collecting, describing and analyzing survey and landscape data.

Pizza Talk: "Changing Configuration of Porcelain Production in Jingdezhen: Excavation of the Luomaqiao Kiln Site"
2017-11-15 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Dr. Yanjun Weng, Assistant Professor, Jingdezhen UniversityDr. Weng will speak about his current archaeological excavation project at the Luomaqiao Kiln site in Jingdezhen, a city with more than 1,000 years of continuous ceramic industry history. This lecture will explore the changing configuration of porcelain production along the long timeline as well as the corresponding distribution of products to royal needs, government divisions, and civilian markets of both domestic China and overseas.Yanjun Weng obtained his PhD in archaeology in 2017 from Peking University and has been active on field works of Chinese ceramic archaeology since 2010. Before that, he received master’s and undergraduate’s degrees in economics and international trade.

How Ancient Israel Began: A New Archaeological Perspective
2017-11-14 16:00 - 17:30
Over the last hundred years or so, a number of theories have been proposed to explain the origins of ancient Israel. All these have been informed to some degree by the biblical text and all have considered the role of New Kingdom Egypt and the collapse of empires throughout the Near East circa 1200-1100 BCE. The lecture will present a radical new proposal: that Egypt itself instigated “Israelite” settlement.

The Late Bronze Age Collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean: Paleoenvironmental, Archaeological, and Textual Evidence
2017-11-13 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Dafna LanggutCores obtained from the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee were used to reconstruct past climate conditions in the Levantine region during the Bronze and Iron Ages. The records were studied in high resolution for their lithological and palynological patterns. Their chronological framework is based on radiocarbon dating of short-lived organic material. The detailed paleoclimate reconstruction points to a dramatic dry event in the later phase of the Late Bronze Age, around the middle of the 13th century BCE. This pronounced dry phase lasted about 120 to 150 years, and was followed by much wetter climate conditions during the Iron Age I. The increasing humidity enabled the expanding of agricultural activities in the area (e.g., cereals, olive). The Iron Age II was characterized by a slight decrease in humidity. This new high resolution paleoclimate reconstruction helps to better understand the so-called “Crisis Years” in the eastern Mediterranean, as well as quick recovery in the Iron I, including the emergence of new entities in the highlands regions of the Levant. It also shed light on the economic strategies of the region’s ancient settlers (e.g., agriculture, grazing).

Pizza Talk: "In Search of the First Dynasty: Archaeological Landscapes and the Spatialization of History in Early China"
2017-11-08 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Dr. Li Min, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, UCLAIn this lecture Dr. Li Min will discuss the current trends of Chinese archaeology based on his observations of the conference “In Search of Early China through Archaeology: Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of Chinese Archaeology at UCLA” co-sponsored by the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. This review of current state of research is followed by a re-visit to the highly contentious topic of the Xia (ca. 2100-1600 BCE), the first dynasty in Chinese historiography and the fountainhead of many important political institutions in Bronze Age China. Instead of debating on the historicity of this legendary regime and the stages of evolutionary typology, Dr. Li Min will approach this topic from the perspective of political experimentation and social memory by asking these questions: What made the late third millennium BCE an important watershed in sociopolitical history of China as seen through the archeological lens? What were the contributions of the Longshan and Erlitou legacy of the early second millennium BCE to the emergence of the Shang civilization during the late second millennium BCE? How was the social memory of the pre-Shang legacy transmitted to the Zhou society at the end of the second millennium BCE? How did the Zhou narratives about the Xia civilization correlate to the archaeological landscape of the second millennium BCE? Against the backdrop of societal collapse in lowland Neolithic centers and intensified interactions with Eurasian exchange networks among the highland communities, I argue that the emergence of major Longshan centers in highland basins during the late third millennium BCE and the subsequent rise of the first Bronze Age city at Erlitou in the Luoyang Basin during the early second millennium BCE had critical contribution to the formation of the Xia legacy in Zhou storytelling about the past. Far from a myth invented by the Zhou to justify its conquest of Shang, the pre-Shang legacy served as major source of political knowledge for the Zhou state-building enterprise and the Xia corresponded to a culturally constructed constellation of political concepts, institutions, and social memories of different episodes of state building from the Longshan and Erlitou periods.

Friday Seminar: "TOPADA and the Land of Tuali: the age of experimentation in the aftermath of the Hittite Empire"
2017-11-03 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Dr. Lorenzo d’Alfonso, New York UniversityDrawing upon textual and archaeological data, one can reconstruct the formation of a post-Hittite political entity in Cappadocia, the Land of Tuali, during the late 12th century BCE. This entity grew larger and more structured by the late 10th and 9th centuries before being substantially reduced by the late 8th century expansion of the Assyrian empire toward the northwest. Expanding from this central Anatolian case study, this talk will examine the historical processes that characterized the aftermath of the Hittite empire in Anatolia and the northern Levant and connect them to the fragility, collapse, and regeneration of early polities.

Pizza Talk: "Alcohol and Drugs in Pre-Modern India"
2017-11-01 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Professor James McHugh, Associate Professor, School of Religion, USCProfessor James McHugh explores the complex world of drinks and drinking in pre-modern India. From rice wine to palm toddy, a huge variety of drinks were made. In the early centuries of the common era, another drug—betel—joined the mix too, though cannabis and opium appeared much later. How and where were these drinks and drugs consumed? Were they forbidden or permitted? How did medical scholars think they worked? And how are they related to religion and mythology?
