Pizza Talk: “Towards an Archaeology of Extensive Pastoralism in the Great Artesian Basin in Australia”

Speaker: Dr. Timothy Murray, Charles La Trobe Professor of Archaeology, La Trobe UniversityIn this talk, Dr. Murray will briefly outline the essence of a new interdisciplinary research project exploring the historical archaeology of extensive pastoralism in Australia, with a particular focus on the Western Division of New South Wales. Core elements of the project span conventional ecological history […]

Friday Seminar: “The Quest of Ancient Carthage: Antiquarism, diplomacy, and politics in 19th century Tunisia”

Speaker: Dr. Ridha Moumni, Institut de Recherche sur le Magreb ContemporainIn Tunis, the first collections of antiquities were established in the 18th - 19th centuries. European Consuls, foreign scholars, and international traders acquired most of the archaeological remains then available from the ancient city of Carthage. Whether growing out of their personal taste, commercial considerations, or […]

Pizza Talk: “Alcohol and Drugs in Pre-Modern India”

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 […]

Friday Seminar: “TOPADA and the Land of Tuali: the age of experimentation in the aftermath of the Hittite Empire”

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 […]

Pizza Talk: “In Search of the First Dynasty: Archaeological Landscapes and the Spatialization of History in Early China”

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 […]

The Late Bronze Age Collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean: Paleoenvironmental, Archaeological, and Textual Evidence

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. […]

How Ancient Israel Began: A New Archaeological Perspective

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. […]

Pizza Talk: “Changing Configuration of Porcelain Production in Jingdezhen: Excavation of the Luomaqiao Kiln Site”

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 […]

Friday Seminar: “Developing new digital tools for landscape archaeological research”

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 […]

Pizza Talk: “Longshan Network and Political Landscape of Early Bronze Age China

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, […]