Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

Pizza Talk: "Community Archaeology--1984"
2017-04-12 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Speakers: Dr. Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati, Visiting Professor, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology; Giorgio Buccellati, Professor Emeritus, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA”These forty years now I’ve been speaking in prose without knowing it!” Unlike Moliere ‘s Monsieur Jourdain, we knew we were “speaking prose” … Our “prose” was community archaeology, which we undertook to implement since the beginning of our excavation projects in Syria. Having embarked on an effort that relied on a common sense type of approach, very much down to earth as it befits an archaeological endeavor, we have come to reflect more and more on its theoretical implications. And the current war in Syria has put to a severe test our presuppositions . We will first review the main aspects of our specific case of “community archaeology” at Tell Mozan, ancient Urkesh, and we will then share our reflections on its theoretical import. This is particularly meaningful now, at a moment when the concept is beginning to gain traction on the one hand, while on the other we find ourselves physically separated from our “community.”

3D Scanning and Printing Workshop
2017-04-06 10:00 - 12:00
This workshop will begin with a demonstration of two handheld 3D scanners, the Artec Eva and Space Spider. Andy Greyson will walk through how to set up the environment, capture the data, and process the scans. He will also provide tips to efficiently utilize the variety of tools included in the software.The second half of the workshop will focus on 3D printing during an interactive Q&A with Doug Daniels. You will also see two 3D printers from the UCLA Library Lux Lab in actions: the MakerBot 5th Gen (a fused deposition modeling printer) and Form 2 (stereolithographic printer).Technologists from the Digital Research Consortium will also be available to discuss 3D modeling for research projects.RSVP at http://bit.ly/2nDpPd0 by Monday, April 3, 2017.Header image from the Smithsonian X 3D collection: Lidded ritual ewer (zun) in the form of an elephant with masks and dragonsWritten by Vince RossiChina, possibly Hunan provinceShang dynasty, ca. 1100-1050 BCEBronze, 17.2 x 10.7 x 21.4 cmFreer Gallery of Art, F1936.6a-b

Pizza Talk: The experimental reconstruction of a Stone Age house: a chaîne opératoire approach
2017-04-05 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Dr. Annelou van Gijn, Professor of Archaeological Material Culture and Artefact Studies, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University

Pizza Talk: "Digital Gothic: Reverse Engineering the Lost Monuments of Medieval Paris"
2017-03-15 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Dr. Meredith Cohen, UCLA Art History

Friends of Archaeology Tour to Downtown LA Theater District Spring 2017
2017-03-12 13:00 - 16:00
On March 12, 2017, Anthony Caldwell, manager of the Scholarly Innovation Lab at UCLA, took an FoA group on a tour of architectural treasures in downtown Los Angeles, focusing in particular on the old movie theaters that at one time studded the stretch of Broadway from Third Street to Ninth Street. As the heart of the entertainment capital of the world, Broadway was home to over two dozen picture palaces in various architectural styles: Beaux Arts, Art Deco, Neoclassical, Baroque and Spanish Renaissance—and of course, some that defy labeling. FoA members were treated to a fascinating discourse on the background of each building, with plenty of history and a few colorful details.

Friday Seminar: "Tell el-Dab'a/Avaris, the Capital of the Hyksos, a Town of Different Ethnicities"
2017-03-10 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Dr. Manfred Bietak, Professor Emeritus, University of Vienna Institute of EgyptologyAvaris, capital of the Hyksos, was inhabited, as we may presume, mainly by a western Asiatic population, which migrated to Egypt from the late Middle Kingdom onwards. We may call them for convenience sake Amorites as the little onomastic evidence we have, shows that they had mainly Western-Semitic personal names. We don’t know yet, if this population was homogenous. Most probably they were not, as their osteological remains show a sexual dimorphism. This phenomenon is known when wives are taken from a different gen-pool than the men. This result was attested some time ago by the physical anthropologist Eike M. Winkler from the University of Vienna. Most probably, immigrants from the Levant seem to have married local women who also did not match the Egyptian population type. Therefor they may have originated from an older substratum of immigration from different origin. We are lacking, however, the osteological material of the Egyptians who lived in the oldest settlements of the 12th Dynasty at Tell el-Dab‘a at ‘Ezbet Rushdi. These people were not buried within the town as the Canaanites, but according to the Egyptian mortuary tradition in a separate but still undisclosed cemetery, outside the town. We have various indications that they continued to live within Avaris untill the end of the Hyksos Period. Within the oldest part of the town of Avaris, at the quarter where we have evidence of a planned settlement and a temple of the 12th Dynasty, there are no intramural burials, also not from the Second Intermediate Period. The same applies to a quarter directly south of this Middle Kingdom settlement, where even during the Hyksos Period the usual burials in houses or courtyards – which are ethnical markers – are missing. What is missing in this district are finds of toggle-pins which held together the typical Western Asiatic garment at the left shoulder. Such finds were, however, collected within the immediately adjoining quarters, where obviously the Amorites lived.Besides Egyptians and people from Western Asia from dierent periods of immigration, Avaris proves more and more to have been a multi-ethnical town. Ceramic remains from dierent parts of Nubia can be taken as evidence that also various ethnicities of Nubians lived here. As their pottery has open forms, not suitable as containers of imports, and as the roughly produced cooking pots are not attractive as imports it is likely that Nubians lived in Avaris over a long period. Some of the cooking pots even seem to have been produced of local clays. This would speak indeed for the physical presence of Nubians.Besides the above mentioned ethnicities there is even some small evidence that Cypriots may have beenpresent in Avaris shortly before the Hyksos Period as Cypriot pottery was produced locally in Cypriot handmade technique.

Pizza Talk: "Booty to Baubles: The Material Impact of Rome's Conquest of Egypt"
2017-03-08 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Dr. Stephanie Pearson, Institut für Archäologie at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, GermanyIn the later first century BC, Egyptian material sweeps into Roman houses on an unprecedented scale. Its connection to Octavian’s conquest of Egypt has been taken for granted; but what are the actual mechanisms by which a political event could affect material culture? Archaeological and textual evidence in fact sheds light on this process, in part by allowing us to identify precise categories of Egyptian objects that Romans acquired. It also reveals the importance of considering context and artistic adaptations in understanding the variety of meanings for Egyptian material in Roman houses.

Friday Seminar: "Beyond All Edges in Central Arizona"
2017-03-03 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Dr. Sarah Herr, President, Desert Archaeology Inc.The cultural affiliation of the pre-contact residents of central Arizona defies easy categorization. These residents of small settlements construct their houses in array of styles, form undecorated ceramic vessels, specialize in projectile point production, and trade other goods rarely but widely, and are not easily encompassed into Hohokam or Puebloan histories. The State Route 260—Payson to Heber project, a culturalresource management investigation conducted for the Arizona Department of Transportation in advance of highway realignment, provided the opportunity to examine the lifeways of these people who live beyond many boundaries. Trying to understand their experiences provides a starting point for considering the larger issues of how Southwest archaeologists conduct research in areas outside demographic cores.

Screening of The Archaeologist: A Documentary by Kimon Tsakiris
2017-03-02 18:30 - 21:30
Please join us for a screening of the documentary film The Archaeologist by Kimon Tsakiris. The film will be preceded by a panel discussion with Professor John Papadopoulos (UCLA, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology) and Professor Katerina Zacharia (Loyola Marymount University, Classics) and followed by a reception.A synopsis of the film follows:In the final “battle” of her career, a determined archaeologist–who has dedicated all her life to protecting the cultural and natural environment of the land–has two months to salvage as much as possible from an archaeological dig which is planned to be flooded during the construction process of a new dam by the Greek National Power Company.Parking available in UCLA Lot 4, 221 Westwood Plaza at Sunset Blvd. Upon entering Lot 4, turn left into the Pay-By-Space area.Parking is $3/hr, max $12/day.Automated pay stations accept $1 or $5 bills and credit/debit cards.

Pizza Talk: "The Arts of Memory: Anthropology of a Mental Artifact"
2017-03-01 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Dr. Carlo Severi, Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale, EHESS, ParisFor linguists, anthropologists and archaeologists, the emblematic image always and everywhere preceded the appearance of the sign. This myth of a figurative language composed by icons, that form the opposite figure of writing, has deeply influenced Western tradition. In my talk, I show that the logic of Native American Indian mnemonics (pictographs, khipus) cannot be understood from the ethnocentric question of the comparison with writing, but requires a truly comparative anthropology. Rather than trying to know if Native American techniques of memory are true scripts or mere mnemonics, we can explore the formal aspect both have in common, compare the mental processes they call for. We can ask if both systems belong to the same conceptual universe, to a mental language, to use Giambattista Vico’s définition, that would characterize the Native American arts of memory. In this perspective, techniques of memory stop being hybrids or imprecise, and we will better understand their nature and functions as mental artifacts.

LaTeX: Bibliographies and Citations
2017-03-01 10:30 - 12:00
LaTeX is a document preparation system that uses plain rather than formatted text, which encourages users to focus on content rather than formatting. This system is increasingly used for preparation of articles and theses, and has wide application across the sciences and humanities. This workshop will build on the first and focus on preparing bibliographies and citing references with LaTeX.Bring your computer with LaTeX installed for hands-on practice. If you were unable to attend the first workshop or did not get LaTeX installed on your computer please contact dal@ioa.ucla.edu prior to March 1st.

Friday Seminar: "A Discussion on Recent Political Transitions in the U.S. and Implications for Archaeology"
2017-02-24 16:00 - 18:00
Speakers: Society for American Archaeology Executive CommitteeThis Friday the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology will host the members of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) Executive Committee for an informal discussion on the implications of recent political transitions for archaeologists in the United States and around the world. The SAA Executive Committee is comprised of the SAA President, President-elect, Secretary, Secretary-elect, Treasurer, Treasurer elect, and the Executive Director. The committee is tasked with taking prompt action on issues that require an immediate response.The immediate concerns of archaeologists and stakeholders are vast. In academic institutions researchers face potential implications for funding opportunities and relationships with host countries. Both public and private sector cultural resource management institutions are grappling with likely attempts to weaken laws that protect archaeological sites and provide funding for mitigation projects including The National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Antiquities Act.Please join us for this unique opportunity!

Pizza Talk: "Production, Distribution, and Use of the First Pottery from the Tropics of Panama"
2017-02-22 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Dr. Fumie Iizuka, University of ArizonaMonagrillo (ca. 4500-3200 14C BP) is the earliest ceramic of Central America. It is found in Central Panama in shell-bearing middens of the Pacific coast, rockshelters of the Pacific plains, foothills, and the cordilleras, and the Caribbean slopes. People had been farming for thousands of years when they adopted pottery. Population was significantly increasing. However, it had not been clear whether 1) they farmed in the inland during wet seasons and engaged in coastal subsistence activities during dry seasons or 2) they were sedentary by the time pottery emerged, engaging in exchange of local resources.Typological studies of this pottery had been conducted in the past; however, understanding of its production zones, circulation patterns, and possible use had been limited. In my research, I examined this pottery from different environmental zones, adopting visual, petrographic, geochemical, and microstructural analytical methods. I sourced and inferred production and circulation patterns, and assessed manufacturing techniques and firing temperatures. I inferred from the results that sedentary inhabitants of the Pacific foothills and the coast of central Panama produced pottery during the dry season and it circulated to the Pacific plains, the intermediate area, where people engaged in reciprocal social exchange. Pacific foothills vessels, but not coastal wares, were weathering and impact resistant, which suggested intended use in the rugged terrain and for transportation to the perennially wet Caribbean slopes. Pottery was generally made to be suitable for cooking; population pressure may have affected producers and consumers to adopt new cooking techniques.

The Ancient Athenian Naval Bases in the Piraeus – the Backbone of the World’s First Democracy
2017-02-19 15:00 - 17:00
Speaker: Bjorn LovenThe Zea Harbor Project, digging on land and underwater from 2002 to 2012, uncovered extensivearchaeological remains of the Athenian naval facilities. The lecture will show how the archaeologicalfinds inform us about developments from the dawn of Athenian power in the late 6th and early 5thcenturies BC, to the young democracy at the time of the Persian Wars, to the age of empire whenAthens ruled the eastern Mediterranean, and to the waning years of the 4th century BC, when Athensstood in the shadow of Macedonia.

Friday Seminar: "Attack of the Ruderals: Economic and Theoretical Consequences of Fire Farming in the Prehistoric American Southwest"
2017-02-17 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Dr. Alan Sullivan, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of CincinnatiArchaeological investigations of the effects of anthropogenic fire on the livelihoods of small-scale societies, particularly those of the prehispanic northern Southwest, are embryonic in scope and disciplinary impact. When burning is mentioned in the literature, the emphasis is on its effectiveness in clearing or deforesting areas for corn farming. In this presentation, I introduce an alternative model that focuses on how woodland-dwelling agricultural populations could be supported by systematic, lowintensity, understory burning that promoted the growth of ruderals — nutritious plants such as amaranth and chenopodium — that colonize and thrive in anthropogenic fireniches. With paleoeconomic and settlement data from the Upper Basin (northern Arizona), I propose that considerable numbers of people can be supported by firebased ruderal agriculture in areas that are environmentally hostile to corn farming. Consequently, as archaeologists shift their agro-ecological paradigms from obligate to facultative, they will come to appreciate that ruderals, whose remains dominate archaeobotanical and pollen assemblages recovered from a variety of archaeological and sedimentary contexts in the Western Anasazi region, can no longer be considered inadvertent byproducts of corn farming (“weeds”) but were actively cultivated plants. With these understandings, I suggest that the production of ruderals in anthropogenic pyro-landscapes was a sustainable and ecologically-sound practice that both increased food-supply security and insulated economically-autonomous populations from longterm climatic variability and short-term environmental unpredictability.

Art and Science: Bringing Egypt’s Magic to the Museum
2017-02-15 19:00 - 21:00
Speaker: Dr. Christian Greco, Director, Egyptian Museum in Turin, ItalyThe Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy has the second largest collection of Egyptian Antiquities in the world (after the museum in Cairo). In this lecture Dr. Christian Greco highlights connections between its artifacts, through the history of their discovery, the reunification of burial assemblages, and investigating the common characteristics of historical groupings. In his talk, Dr. Christian Greco, Director of the Museo Egizio, discusses how a collaboration of Egyptologists and scientists enables the recreation of archaeological and historical contexts of the stunning objects housed in the collection.Co-presented with the Fowler Museum

Pizza Talk: "Archaeology, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island"
2017-02-15 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Dr. René Vellanoweth, Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, California State University, Los AngelesIn 1835, as part of broader efforts to missionize California Indians, the native people of San Nicolas Island were removed and sent to live on the mainland. This essentially marked the end of a 10,000-year history of native occupation and sealed the fate of all Nicoleño on the island except for one person who lived alone for 18 years. Known as the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island, baptized and named Juana Maria upon her death, and made famous as the young heroine, Karana, in Scott O’Dell’s (1960) classic children’s novel, “Island of the Blue Dolphins,” her story has captured the imaginations of people the world over. But who was Juana Maria? What happen to her family members on the fateful day in 1835? What did she do for 18 years alone on the island? How did she survive physically as well as psychologically? In this presentation I will attempt to answer some of these questions by placing the Lone Woman’s story within its archaeological and historical contexts.

LaTeX: A Document Preparation System Workshop
2017-02-15 10:30 - 12:00
LaTeX is a document preparation system that uses plain rather than formatted text, which encourages users to focus on content rather than formatting. This system is increasingly used for preparation of articles and theses, and has wide application across the sciences and humanities. This workshop will focus on the strengths of the LaTeX system in a) figure and caption creation and adjustment, b) bibliographic entry and formatting, c) support for scientific notation, mathematical symbols, and non-Latin characters as well as non-English accents and symbols, and d) easy management of large documents.This workshop will be limited to 20 participants. Please email dal@ioa.ucla.edu to RSVP by Sunday, February 12th.

UNESCO and the 1960's Nubian Campaign: Initial Phase of a 3D Model of the Nubian Landscape
2017-02-10 16:00 - 18:00
Speakers: Rosa Tamborrino and Paolo Piumatti, Politecnico di TorinoOur visiting scholars from the Politecnico di Torino, will outline the first steps in a new UCLA-Polito collaboration.The first International large scale UNESCO campaign for preserving world cultural heritage was provoked by a looming catastrophe: the loss of the Nubian Temples under the Nile flood due to the High Aswan Dam. Although the monuments were rescued, the context of the cultural heritage was lost. Nubian temples were moved to higher grounds, other regions and abroad, meanwhile the Nile landscape was changing forever.This lecture will introduce the ongoing joint research project developed by POLITO and UCLA with the aim to recreate the historical landscape before the change in the Sixties through the research of sources and the use of digital tools and digital humanities methods. The focus of the visualization project is the change to the landscape and the temples, by highlighting the transfer and the relocation, the dismantling and the re-assembly, and finally the new context of these monuments.The speakers will introduce research themes and purposes, and will show some outcomes of a class on this subject taught to POLITO master students in the past semester.

Pizza Talk: "Herders, Farmers, and Wildlife: Exploring Impacts of Early Food Production in Kenya"
2017-02-08 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Dr. Anneke Janzen, Postdoctoral Scholar, Cotsen Institute of ArchaeologySpecialized pastoralism emerged in Kenya around 3000 years ago and has adapted with changes in the social and ecological landscape to this day. My dissertation work used stable isotope analysis to explore the mobility and herd management strategies of early pastoralists in south-central Kenya 3000 to 1200 years ago, before the appearance of agriculture in the region.Another facet of my work on early herding involves examining the anthropogenic effects on wildlife populations. The emergence and spread of pastoralism in East Africa undoubtedly impacted indigenous species, particularly wildebeest, which are found in archaeological sites far outside their current range today. Pastoral extirpation of wildebeest populations from prime grazing areas is one likely cause of their shifting biogeography over time. Through stable isotope analysis of wildebeest teeth from archaeological sites, a history of their annual migration cycle are elucidated, illuminating patterns of local extinction in the context of pastoral expansion in Kenya.

Pizza Talk: "New Answers from Old Seeds: Two Years of Research into Ancient Agriculture at the Cotsen Institute"
2017-02-01 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Dr. Alan Farahani, Postdoctoral Scholar, Cotsen Institute of ArchaeologyThis talk is a summary of the research conducted by Postdoctoral Scholar Alan Farahani at the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology over the past two years. His research has been focused on the long-term social and environmental consequences of agricultural production throughout the world using the method of paleoethnobotany, which is the study of archaeological plant remains to understand past human cultures. The talk highlights recent fieldwork and preliminary results from Dhiban, Jordan, from Ifugao, the Philippines, and Iraqi Kurdistan, the combination of all of these projects investigating the effects of empire, colonialism, and urbanization on agriculture spanning over six millennia of agricultural practice.

Photogrammetry Workshop
2017-02-01 10:30 - 12:00
Photogrammetry, or Structure-from-Motion, is a technique for constructing three dimensional models from a series of photographs. This technique can be utilized by archaeologists to record objects, features, and sites both quickly and relatively inexpensively. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to systematically photograph objects and the steps to processing these photographs into a 3D model with Agisoft’s PhotoScan.The workshop will be led by Anthony Caldwell, the Scholarly Innovation Lab Manager. Anthony has collaborated with Cotsen faculty on projects digitally reconstructing architectural features and their built environments including a pair of Yoruba house posts and the historic theatres in Downtown Los Angeles.This workshop is open to Cotsen affiliates and their colleagues.

Recycling the Materiality of Death
2017-01-31 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 on January 31, 2017 with Professor Kara Cooney, Egyptian Art and Architecture, UCLA. The reception will begin at 6:00pm and be followed by dinner at 6:45pm. For millennia, wealthy ancient Egyptians relied on materialist productions like coffins to encapsulate their funerary beliefs in the transformation of the dead. But how did Egyptians determined to equip themselves materially for the transformation into the afterlife respond and adapt in a brutal time of political, economic, and social collapse? This lecture will examine the evidence for coffin reuse within the context of the 20th and 21st Dynasties. This event is restricted to Friends of Archaeology. For more information about becoming a Friend, please visit our membership page.

Friday Seminar: "After the Dodo, Archaeology in Colonial Mauritius: Problems and Prospects"
2017-01-27 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Dr. Geoffrey Summers, Research Associate, University of Chicago Oriental InstituteMauritius, a small island nation in the Western Indian Ocean, was uninhabited until the arrival of the Dutch in the 16th century. After the Dutch left it was ruled first by the French and then by the British until independence in 1968. The ethnically and culturally diverse population is descended from slaves, indentured labourers, traders and colonial planters. Archaeology and anthropology are relatively new disciplines. This talk presents an overview of potentials, prospects, and new results of archaeological research in the Key and the Star of the Indian Ocean.

Pizza Talk: "Egyptian Coffins and Sarcophagi in the San Diego Museum of Man: Some Technical Studies"
2017-01-25 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: David Scott, Professor, UCLA Department of Art History and UCLA/Getty Conservation ProgramThe San Diego Museum of Man has a collection of Saite and Ptolemaic coffins and mummies which were the subject of a technical study from 2007-2009. Pigments, binding media, grounds, wood and degradation products were characterized by x-ray diffraction analyses, x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, polarized light microscopy, wood anatomy, gas chromatography mass spectrome try and Elisa, a synopsis of the results of the study will be presented with examples of specific coffins illustrated.

Friday Seminar: "Seals and Social Interaction at Kültepe in the Early 2nd Millennium BCE
2017-01-20 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Dr. Agnete Lassen, Associate Curator, Yale University Babylonian CollectionFocusing primarily on seals, this talk will investigate the formations and transformations of social identity in cultural encounters, using the Assyrian merchant colonies in Anatolia as a case. Almost seventy seasons of archaeological excavations at the site of Kültepe in Central Anatolia have revealed the remarkable remains of a thriving city consisting of an acropolis with temples and palatial structures, as well as a surrounding lower town with compact industrial and residential quarters with narrow winding streets, small squares and more than a hundred multi-storied houses; perhaps as many as 25,000 people lived in this multi-cultural metropolis. Life in Kültepe is colorfully evidenced by more than 20,000 cuneiform documents preserved in separate archives found in houses in the city’s lower town. They show that Assyrians, from far-away Assur in present day Northern Iraq, established themselves in merchant colonies to do business with the local elites. Some of these foreigners brought their families or married into the local population, and some even took up local crafts and agriculture. Central to the commercial practices of the time was the use of personal seals to verify economic and legal documents. This talk will focus on seals that were carved in Assur and in Anatolia at the time of the merchant colonies, and investigate how these seal styles interacted with each other, and with the Assyrians and Anatolians who used these seals.

Gold Diggers and the “Keep It” Chant: UCLA in Ethiopia
2017-01-19 18:00 - 20:00
Speaker: Dr. Willeke WendrichUCLA’s Shire Archaeological Project works in the north of Ethiopia, in an area where perhaps Ethiopia’s most ancient town once stood. The site is badly destroyed because of modern gold diggers who pan the soil for tiny flecks of gold. In November and December 2016 our archaeological research went hand-in-hand with community outreach to explain why the ancient remains are important, which resulted in many new friends and a new catchy chant.

Pizza Talk: "Introducing the CIoA Digital Archaeology Lab"
2017-01-18 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Deidre Whitmore, Cotsen Institute of ArchaeologyThe Digital Archaeology Lab (DAL) aims to support the technological needs of the Cotsen faculty, students and staff by providing facilities, advice, and training. This talk will provide an overview of the facilities including the equipment that is available and how to access it (both in-person and remotely), and the consulting services offered by the lab manager. The topics and dates for the first workshops and training sessions will be announced and the audience will have a chance to request additional topics. For more information about the DAL visit www.ioa.ucla.edu/labs/dal.

Sea Peoples and Neo-Hittites in the ‘Land of Palistin’: Recent Discoveries at Tayinat on the Orontes
2017-01-12 16:00 - 17:30
Recent archaeological discoveries have begun to challenge the prevailing view of the Early Iron Age (ca. 1200-900 BCE) as an era of cultural devolution and ethnic strife, or a ‘Dark Age’, in the eastern Mediterranean, as depicted in the Homeric epics and the Hebrew Bible. This illustrated talk will highlight the exciting discoveries of the University of Toronto’s ongoing excavations at ancient Tayinat.TIMOTHY HARRISON(University of Toronto)Cosponsored by theUCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages & CulturesUCLA Cotsen Institute of ArchaeologyPlease send RSVPs to cjsrsvp@humnet.ucla.edu.

Pizza Talk: "Roads of Social Responsibility: The Stone Paths of Yap, Micronesia"
2017-01-11 12:00 - 13:00
Speakers: Dr. James Snead, California State University, Northridge; Austin Ringelstein, National Park ServiceArchaeologists working within they landscape paradigm have increasingly begun directing attention toward the subject of movement. Recent work has underlined the centrality of “motion” to the human experience, creating a body of theoretical and empirical literature that has wide application. This presentation will discuss new fieldwork on Yap, in the Eastern Caroline islands of Micronesia. Famous among anthropologists for “stone money” (or rai), the remarkable built environment of Yap also includes hundreds of kilometers of stone paths. Documentation of these features, including physical mapping as well as the collection of ethnographic information, is being conducted in collaboration with the Historic Preservation Department of Yap State. More than mere routes of convenience, the paths have been called “roads of social responsibility” and are fundamental organizational elements of Yapese society. Their study, supported by the Cotsen Institute, provides a distinctive case study for landscape archaeology.
