Speaker: Kristine Martirosyan-Olshansky, Ph.D. Candidate, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLAThis talk is a summary of field research conducted by Cotsen/UCLA doctoral student Kristine Martirosyan-Olshansky at Masis Blur, Armenia, over the course of three seasons from 2012-2014. Excavations at Masis Blur have unearthed Neolithic habitation layers (ca. 6200 – 5400 cal.BC) belonging to the Shulaveri-Shomutepe culture, […]

June 20 - July 1, 2017On this trip, Director's Council members saw behind the scenes of the Museo Egizio in Turin, Itlay—the second largest collection of Egyptian antiquities (after Cairo)—and explored Rome with the experts!Download the brochure here.   

Willeke Wendrich, Director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, cordially invites Friends of Archaeology members to a special dinner and lecture on October 3, 2017 with Alan Farahani, Post Doctoral Scholar, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA. The reception will begin at 6:00pm and be followed by dinner at 6:45pm. This event is restricted to Friends […]

Speaker: Debby Sneed, PhD Candidate, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLAIn this talk, Debby will use literary and archaeological evidence to argue that ancient Greeks notonly tolerated the birth of deformed and disabled infants, but also expressed optimism about their futures and actively attempted to accommodate their needs. Modern studies tend to resolve this issue quickly, relying heavily […]

Speaker: Dr. Di Luo, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Global Asia, New York University ShanghaiBuddhist architecture in China since the 11th century has often featured miniature pagodas and pavilions in the interior. These downsized "buildings," appearing in ceiling domes and murals and sometimes functioning as altars, bookcases, and reliquaries, assumed the role of the "holy of holies" of the […]

Speaker: Dr. Norman Yoffee, University of MichiganOld Assyrian texts from Mesopotamia, ca. 1950-1750 BCE, shed light on merchants and markets in Mesopotamia and the relationship between merchants and the Old Assyrian state. In this lecture, I review recent research on Old Assyrian trade and the implications for understanding trade in other times and places in […]

Software Carpentry aims to help researchers get their work done in less time and with less pain by teaching them basic research computing skills. This hands-on workshop will cover basic concepts and tools, including program design, version control, data management, and task automation. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they […]

Speaker: Dr. Matthew Robb, Chief Curator, Fowler Museum, UCLAIn 1963, the chance discovery at the Teotihuacan compound known today as La Ventilla of a four-part composite sculpture marked with interlaced-scrolls more typically associated with sites like El Tajín firmly established connections between ancient Teotihuacan and its contemporaries on the Gulf Coast. The discovery of a smaller, intact object […]

Since 2015 Jason De León has been involved in an analog photoethnographic project focused on documenting the daily lives of Honduran smugglers who profit from transporting undocumented migrants across Mexico. In this talk, he will discuss the relationship between transnational gangs and the human smuggling industry and outline the complicated role that photography plays as a field […]

Speaker: Dr. Christopher Witmore, Texas Tech UniversityThis talk attempts to formulate a different theory of time. Whereas time is often honored with an astounding primacy by history and archaeology, actual things cannot be reduced to the aftereffects of time. Rather, the rapports, exchanges, and mergers between actual entities – Bronze-Age bridges and nineteenth-century cart roads, […]