Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

Embodied Knowledges within Cultural Collections
2021-12-10 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sven HaakansonPh.D., Curator, Burke MuseumAssociate Professor in Anthropology at the University of WashingtonRegister hereOver the past three decades, in collaboration with my community from Kodiak, Alaska, I have researched museum collections from around the world to learn about and return the embodied knowledge of our cultural history. From masks, clothing, baskets to boats we have systematically taken knowledge that was taken out and brought it back to our communities to use once again. The angyaaq (open boat) from our region was set aside in the 1800’s after contact with Europeans, but thanks to collections we were able to learn about this vessel and reverse engineer the models in order to build a full size angyaaq at the Akhiok Kids Camp in 2016.Sven Haakanson is Sugpiaq from Old Harbor, Alaska. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (2007), the Museums Alaska Award for Excellence (2008), the ATALM Guardians of Culture and Lifeways Leadership Award (2012), and his work on the Angyaaq led it to be inducted into the Alaska Innovators Hall of Fame (2020). He joined the University of Washington in 2013. He engages communities in cultural revitalization using material reconstruction as a form of scholarship and teaching. His projects have included the reconstruction of full-sized angyaaq boats from archaeological models, as well as halibut hooks, masks, paddles, and traditional processing of bear gut into waterproof material for clothing. He has and continues to collaborate with the community of Akhiok at their Akhiok Kids camp since 2000.

Fun with Pots
2022-01-18 18:00 - 19:00
Over ZoomMentor-led workshop on a particular method (Carly Pope on ceramic analysis)

Regional Distinctions of Traditional Palestinian Embroidered Dress, 1850-1948
2022-01-21 11:00 - 12:00
Wafa GhnaimRegister hereEmbroidery in the Holy Land has existed for centuries, showcased in the decorated garments created and worn by Palestinian women for generations, as well as documented by the many international visitors who travelled to Palestine for pilgrimage or tourism. By the mid-nineteenth century, each region of historic Palestine had developed their own distinct styles, through variation of fabric, thread color, motif, and ensemble. Some cities, such as Bethlehem, Ramallah, Yaffa and Gaza, became famous for their unique ensembles, however there are dozens of villager and bedouin styles that exist across historic Palestine. Each style and regional variation speak a language of their own, transformed by the political, economic and social events that occurred at the turn of the century and continue to be cherished by Palestinians today.Wafa Ghnaim is a Palestinian-American artist, researcher, writer, educator, and businesswoman who began learning Palestinian embroidery from her mother, award-winning artist Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim, when she was two years old. Her first book, “Tatreez & Tea: Embroidery and Storytelling in the Palestinian Diaspora” (2018), documents the traditional patterns passed to her by her mother. Wafa has since become a leading educator in the field as the first-ever Palestinian embroidery instructor at the Smithsonian Museum, and an artist-in-residence at the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington, D.C. In addition to her extensive scholarship, Wafa continues her mother’s educational legacy through Tatreez & Tea, a global arts education initiative she began in 2016. Wafa has been featured in major media outlets, most recently in Vogue Magazine, naming her and her mother “the world’s leading guardians of tatreez”. Wafa currently resides in Washington, D.C. To learn more about the Tatreez & Tea project, go to www.tatreezandtea.com or follow on Instagram @tatreezandtea.Photograph/Headshot Credit: Carlos Khalil Guzman, 2020

Making and Selling Drinks and Other Ways to Study Marginalized Ethnic Groups in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Cuzco
2022-01-24 13:00
Leo GarofaloDepartment of History, Connecticut CollegeA discussion of how to study the social history of ethnic groups viewed as marginal in the colonial Andean cities of the 16th and 17th centuries. Studies cases of: indigenous migrants to cities like Lima and Cuzco, including those from Central America and Chile; African and African descendants, including Afro-Iberians, in both cities and present in rural areas production; and people arriving to Peru from in early trans-Pacific diaspora. These constitute three challenging cases for historical study, requiring extra work to detect their traces in the archives and other period sources.Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/AWGTalkSponsors: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and UCLA Latin American Institute

Símbolos, Rituales y Paisaje Durante el Formativo en los Andes Centrales
2022-01-31 13:00
Miguel Guzmán JuárezDepartment of Architecture and Urbanism, Universidad Ricardo de PalmaRegistration Link: http://tinyurl.com/AndArchTalkMGNote: This talk will be delivered in Spanish.Sponsors: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and UCLA Latin American Institute

UCLA/Getty Program’s Distinguished Speaker Series featuring Sarah Sutton: Cultural Heritage and Climate Change
2022-02-04 11:00 - 12:00
Click to RSVPSpeaker: Sarah SuttonDate: February 4, 2022. 11:00amTitle: Cultural Heritage and Climate Change: D(d)iplomacy for Neighbors and NationsCultural heritage has been undervalued as a community and national resource in addressing climate change. Historic landscapes are critical waterline buffers and biodiversity habitats. Structures are refuges and examples of resilient construction. Human-made objects and art hold our identities and the collective knowledge we depend upon for well-being. And our traditions have lessons for sustainability and resilience. These are valuable resources for neighbor-to-neighbor and nation-to-nation relationships that underlay the cooperative action necessary for creating a world where everyone and everything may some day thrive.Presenter Sarah Sutton will share how those who care about cultural heritage have been taking important steps to protect it and to embed it in climate change response as a core component, not an add on. Historic structures and retrofitted modern buildings are increasingly efficient, low-carbon solutions that double as safe spaces for community resilience planning in stable times, and refuges in disturbed times – if left standing. The Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative is a coalition protecting astonishing amounts of land as habitat and a buffer against riverine flooding. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will now include cultural heritage in its reports to the UN. And when President Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement, he named cultural institutions as valuable partners in tackling climate change. Across the US and now as part of United Nations-level discussions, cultural heritage is critical to domestic and national practices and agreements that create shared solutions.Bio:Sarah Sutton is CEO of Environment & Culture Partners (ECP), a non-profit accelerating cultural institutions’ leadership in climate action. ECP manages the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative, a grant program supporting museums’ energy efficiency and clean energy projects, and an IMLS National Leadership Grant creating energy efficiency tools for museums. Sutton is the Cultural Sector Lead for America is All In supporting the Paris Agreement. She is co-author of The Green Museum and author of Environmental Sustainability at Historic Sites & Museums.Sutton is a Steering Committee member and Climate Change co-chair, for Held in Trust, a special program of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Institute for Conservation that is shaping the future of the preventive conservation profession. Sutton is a member of the American Psychological Association’s Climate Change Task Force, and was a selected participant in the International Co-Sponsored Meeting on Climate Change with the IPCC, UNESCO, and International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). Please submit your questions in advance of the webinar via email to:hnadworny@support.ucla.edu by Wednesday, February 2 at 12:00 p.m.

ReVisioning the Future of Archaeology - Graduate Archaeology Research Conference
2022-02-04 16:00 - 2022-02-05 16:00
The UCLA Graduate Student Association of Archaeology, an affiliate of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, invites you to attend our 9th UCLA Graduate Archaeology Research Conference. This two day virtual event will take place February 4th (4-5pm PST), and February 5th (9am-4pm PST) 2022.Titled “ReVisioning the Future of Archaeology,” we ask: who is archaeology for, and what tools will we use to (re)design its future? The keynote speaker and graduate presenters will explore topics that consider various questions about archaeology’s role in the present. Topics that bring new ideas, new resources, and new approaches together into an interdisciplinary dialogue.“ReVisioning the Future of Archaeology” seeks to engage with the greater community, and take into consideration artistic visions, collective and community memory, and diverse points of view in order to produce more inclusive practices and an equitable discipline.On the first day, Friday February 4, we will have our keynote speaker, Dr. Uzma Rizvi speak. On Saturday, we will hear from our graduate student presenters., who will present for 20 minutes each, followed by a Q&A and discussion.View the conference website here. Schedule of EventsFriday, February 4th: 4-5pm PSTKeynote address, “The Future Was ___________: A time outside this time” by Dr. Uzma Z. Rizvi, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Urban Studies at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY; and Visiting Faculty in the Department of Archaeology, Shah Abdul Latif University, Khairpur, PakistanWith nearly two decades of work on decolonizing methodologies, intersectional and feminist strategies, and transdisciplinary approaches, Rizvi’s work has intentionally pushed disciplinary limits, and demanded ethical decolonial praxis at all levels of engagement, from teaching to research.Saturday, February 5th: 9am-4pm PST9:00am -10:45am, Session 1: “Multivocal Perspectives on Heritage and Belonging”11:00am -12:45pm Session 2: “Technological Futures in Archaeology”2:00-3:45 pm Session 3: “Performing Archaeology: Re-Engaging with Materials and Their Stories”Register for the conference here.

Archaeology in the Popular Black Press: African History in Ebony Magazine
2022-02-08 18:00
Dr. Justin Dunnavant, Assistant Professor, UCLA Department of AnthropologyDarartu Mulugeta, Undergraduate, UCLARegister hereAs increasing calls for science communication encourage archaeologists to convey their research to diverse public audiences, we found it necessary to explore how such research was disseminated in the past. Delving into the archives of Ebony Magazine and the Johnson Publishing Company, we examine the manner in which archaeological research was communicated in the Black popular press from the 1950s into the present. The articles, authors, and subjects provide unique insight into the topics of interest to Black America and speak to the power of the Black press at educating and exciting the public about ground-breaking archaeological research. Engaging Ebony Magazine as a historical archive, we uncover little-known figures and moments in the history of African and African diaspora archaeology and offer suggestions for future directions in science communication research.View the recording here!Dr. Justin DunnavantDr. Justin Dunnavant is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at UCLA. His current research in the US Virgin Islands investigates the relationship between ecology and enslavement in the former Danish West Indies. In addition to his archaeological research, Justin is co-founder of the Society of Black Archaeologists and an AAUS Scientific SCUBA Diver. In 2021, he was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and inducted into The Explorers Club as one of “Fifty People Changing the World that You Need to Know About.” He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. His research has been featured on Netflix’s “Explained,” Hulu’s “Your Attention Please” and in print in American Archaeology and Science Magazine.Darartu MulugetaDarartu Mulugeta is a Political Science and Psychology student at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is specializing in methods and computing with the primary goal of studying African communities and history. She is currently part of the African Diaspora Archaeology Lab as a Bunche Research Fellow. Outside of school, she volunteers at the Oromo Legacy Leadership and Advocacy Association as an Oromo language teaching assistant. Download the flyer here

Mucho más que un puente terrestre
2022-02-17 08:00 - 09:00
A book release seminar sponsored by STRI, Panama and the Panamanian ministry of culture. This new book, written in Spanish, presents recent archaeological research in Panama. The book is the first tome devoted to Panamanian archaeology published in Spanish in Panama.

How to Build a Career and Life in Archaeology: Tips from the Hired and Hirers for BIPOC Archaeologists
2022-02-17 12:00 - 14:00
Willeke Wendrich, MODERATORDirector, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology & Professor, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, University of California Los AngelesAngela McArdleSenior Historic Preservation Specialist, Department of Veterans AffairsAlbert Gonzalez Associate Professor of Anthropology & Director of the C.E. Smith Museum of Anthropology, California State University, East BayKristina DouglassAssistant Professor of Anthropology, Penn State UniversityStephen AcabadoAssociate Professor of Anthropology & Director, UCLA Center for Southeast Asian StudiesSarah HerrPresident, Desert Archaeology Inc. Julie SteinExecutive Director of the Burke Museum & Professor of Anthropology, University of WashingtonRegister here

All about Field Schools
2022-02-17 17:00 - 18:00
Over ZoomGoogle slides linked

Preserving the Wreck of an Intact 17th-century warship – the Challenging and Rewarding Conservation Work at the Vasa Museum
2022-02-18 11:00 - 12:00
Malin SahlstedtConservator, Vasa Museum, Swedish National Maritime and Transport MuseumsRegister hereSince the raising of 17th-century warship Vasa in 1961 after333 years on the seabed of Stockholm harbour, two generations of preservation staff have had the task to safeguard this mighty piece of maritime cultural heritage for the future, a task perhaps as monumental as the ship itself. Contrary to what was thought when the Vasa Museum opened in 1990, namely that the conservation project was finalised and there would be little further need for lab facilities and specialised staff, the gradual development of acidic precipitates on the surface of the ship over the coming decade signalled on-going degradation processes,which called for action and wide expertise. Through a number of interdisciplinary research projects, new knowledge has been built and implemented in museum practice. I will present some of the experiences made and lessons learned over the years, where the securing and maintaining of broad preservation competence have become increasingly important and likewise challening.Malin Sahlstedt studied Conservation of Cultural Property at Gothenburg University and has aMSc in Archaeological Science from Stockholm University (2000). After working in archaeological conservation with the focus on the treatment of waterlogged wood and a research projecton alum-treated archaeological wood at the Swedish National Heritage Board (2002-2009),she is currently conservator at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, Sweden (2009-present). Here, in the continuous effort to improve the long-term preservation conditions for 17th-centurywarship Vasa and associated wooden artefacts, her work is concentrated on testing methods and implementing research results in the museum context. She also worked as a conservator in the research project Saving Oseberg at the Cultural History Museum in Oslo, Norway (2017-2018), investigating the preservation status of and re-treatment options for the alum-treated wooden objects of the Viking Ship Museum collection.

Archaeology, Design and Markets in Elena Izcue's Works
2022-02-28 13:00
Jorge CoronadoDepartment of Spanish & Portuguese, Northwestern UniversityRegister hereSponsors: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and UCLA Latin American Institute

Paso de la Amada: An Early Mesoamerican Ceremonial Center
2022-03-01 18:00
Richard LesureProfessor, UCLA Department of AnthropologyInaugural Lecture in the new Author Spotlight seriesRegister herePaso de la Amada, on the coast of Chiapas, Mexico, was among the earliest settled villages in Mesoamerica. Excavations at the site have revealed extraordinary earthen constructions, including the earliest known Mesoamerican ballcourt. Professor Lesure will reflect on the 30 years of work that lie behind the book Paso de la Amada: An Early Mesoamerican Ceremonial Center, recently published by the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. Work by Lesure and numerous collaborators (including UCLA colleagues and students) has led to surprising insights into the emergence of social inequality and the relation between agriculture and settled village life in early Mesoamerica.

Patricia McCarron McGinn Lecture by Professor Glenn Wharton
2022-03-07 16:00 - 17:00
Join the UCLA Art History Department for the annual Patricia McCarron McGinn Lecture featuring Professor Glenn Wharton with his lecture Why Conserve Cultural Heritage? Reframing a Discipline.This year’s lecture will take place virtually on Monday, March 7 from 4 to 5:30 pm. Please RSVP in advance to receive a Zoom link.Please CLICK HERE TO RSVP About Dr. WhartonGlenn Wharton is Professor of Art History and Professor of the Conservation of Material Culture, as well as Chair of the UCLA/Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage. Professor Wharton most recently taught at New York University as Clinical Professor in Museum Studies; in addition to his academic positions, Wharton is an experienced art conservator with an extensive background in archaeological, sculpture, and time-based media conservation, who has worked and consulted at such museums as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Wharton received his Ph.D. in Conservation and Archaeology from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London in 2005. He has received, amongst others, a Digital Pedagogy Grant from New York University (2018), a Getty Conservation Institute Guest Scholar Fellowship (2017), a College Art Association (CAA) / Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation (2015), and the Historic Hawai’i Foundation Preservation Media Award for The Painted King: Art, Activism, & Authenticity in Hawai’i (2012). His research areas of interest include archaeological conservation, illicit trade, cultural heritage management, contemporary art conservation with specialization in time-based media, and addressing social justice, inclusion, and climate change in conservation.About the Patricia McCarron McGinn LectureshipThe annual Patricia McCarron McGinn Lectureship was inaugurated in 1992 to showcase the scholarship of a faculty member in the Department. It was established in honor of Patricia McCarron McGinn (1927 – 1991), who was an outstanding student in the UCLA Department of Art History. Her enthusiasm, depth of commitment, and dedication to the challenges of graduate study as a returning student enlivened and expanded the scholarly perspective of the program. To honor her memory, her family, with the generous support of many friends, established the Patricia McCarron McGinn Fund to aid students engaged in the study of art history at UCLA and to sponsor the McGinn Lectureship.

Conservation and Restoration Approaches at the Musical Instrument Museum
2022-03-18 11:00 - 12:00
Rodrigo Correa-SalasConservatorRegister hereThe structure, materials and acoustic properties of musical instruments are diverse and delicate. These characteristics will determine whether the instrument can be played (on special occasions) or just be displayed in the gallery.The basic knowledge of the different materials (and their combinations) with which they were built, how they were made, how they were played and on what occasions they were played offers us a good basis and help to evaluate each instrument and know how to proceed to maintain, stabilize, adjust, restore, or fix these sound machines.Born in Santiago, Chile, Rodrigo Correa Salas comes from a family of artists.Prior to MIM, Correa worked as a luthier and instrument conservator for nearly two decades in the United States, Caribbean,Panama, and Chile. He was the official luthier of the annual Casals Festival in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and custodian of Maestro Casals’s violoncello in the Pablo Casals Museum.Correa graduated from Puerto Rico’s Conservatory of Music, with a bachelor’s degree in music education and a minor in violoncello. He later obtained an associate of science degree in string instrument technology from Indiana University, while doing parallel studies in cello. He has played in various baroque, classical, and popular music groups in the United States and the Caribbean.Correa’s role as conservator is to examine, document, restore,repair, and maintain musical instruments and other objects in MIM’s collection, while coordinating closely with the curatorial teamand collaborates in installing gallery exhibitions.

Archaeological Techniques and Excavating the Indus Civilization
2022-04-09 13:00
Jonathan Mark KenoyerGeorge F. Dales Jr. and Barbara A. Dales Professor of AnthropologyDepartment of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison.Date & time: April 9th, 2022 at 1:00PM PTRegister hereA general overview of the Indus Civilization will be presented along with discussions of how archaeologists find sites, how they excavate them and how they study the artifacts that are discovered from the sites. Special focus will be on some of the traditional as well as innovative new techniques that archaeologists use to discover sites. It will also cover some important analytical approaches that are used to study different types of artifacts to gain unique information about the technologies and social organization of the ancient Indus communities.Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, is the George F. Dales Jr. and Barbara A. Dales Professor of Anthropology, at the Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of numerous books and edited volumes on the archaeology of South Asia and the Indus civilization. He has excavated key ancient cities and elucidated contemporary urban patterns in Pakistan and India. He is a leading figure in South Asian archaeology, history, and ancient civilizations. TFOA_Kenoyer_opt.pdf

Career Panel
2022-04-14 17:00 - 19:00
Over ZoomInvited four speakers from different fields and jobs within archaeology (Meera Munoz-Pandya, a Bilingual Museum Educator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History; Jorge Peralta, a GIS Archaeologist and Staff Archaeologist at PAX environmental; Christian de Brer, the Director of Conservation at UCLA Fowler Museum; Sarah McCully, the Director of Education and Grants at Landmark West) to speak about their educational and career paths, experiences, and advice; followed by Q&A.

Teatime, What Every Conservator Needs to Know About the Complexity of Asian Lacquer
2022-04-22 11:00 - 12:00
Marianne WebbWebb Conservation ServicesRegister hereAsian lacquer is one of those materials that most furniture and object conservators encounter occasionally during their career. Unfortunately, conservation efforts can go dramatically wrong when a sensitive lacquer surface is treated inappropriately. A lustrous black surface can instantaneously turn to a milky brown color. During the active history of an Asian lacquer object this can occur when serving warm sushi or a hot cup of tea. For conservators it can occur during cleaning or consolidation.Fortunately, our understanding of Asian lacquer surfaces has dramatically improved over the last few years. The Getty Conservation Institute is leading the research that demonstrates Asian lacquer is a complex mixture of one or more anacard lacquers with additives such as oil, pigments and resins. Now that we are learning more about the complex nature of the surface, we are beginning to understand how the ingredients affect the behavior.Marianne Webb is an independent conservator and researcher on the west coast of Canada. For 29 years she was the Decorative Arts Conservator at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto where she developed her keen interest inAsian and western lacquer. Currently she is collaborating with the Getty Conservation Institute on their research into the characterization of Asian lacquer and developing cleaning techniques for these complicated surfaces. Marianne earned an honor’s degree in Fine Art from the University of Toronto and a diploma in Art Conservation Techniques from Sir Sanford Fleming College. A founding member of the ICOM-Committee for Conservation -Working Group on Lacquer, she served as its coordinator for 12 years. She received the Samuel H. Kress Publication Fellowship in 1997 from the American Institute for Conservation. The resulting manuscript was published in 2000 as Lacquer: Technology and Conservation.In 2020 she received the Charles Mervin Ruggles Award from the Canadian Association for Conservation of Cultural Property.

Patterns are Good to Think: Inka Abstraction Across Media
2022-04-25 12:00
Carolyn DeanDepartment of History of Art & Visual CultureUniversity of California, Santa CruzMonday, April 25th at 12:00pm PTRegister hereSponsors: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and UCLA Latin American Institute

The Database of Religious History Workshop at the Cotsen Institute
2022-04-26 11:00
Register hereHybrid event – In-person at Digital Archaeology Lab A163 Fowler and Online (Zoom)Reception: 12pm – Outdoor Fowler AmphitheaterThe Database of Religious History (DRH) is an open access digital repository of information about the global history of religion. The data is gathered through expert-created entries that take the form of structured questionnaires or “polls”. The format of the queries ensures that both quantitative and qualitative information is gathered. This enables users to both browse through individual entries in a manner similar to encyclopedia entries, as well as manipulate and visualize the data in order to compare religious beliefs and practices across time and space. In this workshop, DRH staff will provide an introduction to this resource and discuss new pedagogy packages and polls that will be of particular interest to archaeologists and those in the cultural heritage sector. We encourage instructors and graduate students from history, archaeology, and anthropology departments to attend and sign up as experts, as all global regions and time periods are of interest. We value the time and effort of our experts, and provide a $300 (CAD) honorarium for each completed entry. Each entry is also published through the University of British Columbia library and provided with a digital DOI. This is therefore a particularly excellent opportunity for graduate students to add a publication to their resume. During the workshop, interested experts will be able to start their entries and receive guidance from DRH staff. The workshop is hybrid, and interested attendees should register for their preferred method of attendance using the link provided above. A reception will follow at 12pm – which both in-person and online attendees are welcome to attend. Download the flyer here.pdf

Vigango, Ancestors, Sacred Objects, and Informed Consent: 15 Years of Restorative Justice at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science
2022-04-28 12:00
Dr. Stephen E. NashDirector of Anthropology and the Avenir Conservation CenterDenver Museum of Nature and ScienceThursday, April 28 at 12:00pm PTRegister here Hybrid event – In-person at A222 Fowler and Online (Zoom)The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology invites you to a special talk presented by the Waystation Program:During the last two decades, increasing awareness of the frequently illicit origin of archaeological objects has resulted in changes to acquisition policies in American museums. In addition, many museums are re-evaluating the ethics of collecting and working with indigenous communities to return or reinterpret sensitive cultural heritage. For more than 15 years, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science has taken a leadership role in repatriation and international returns by going above and beyond the letter of the law(s), using the principles of justice, dialogue, reciprocity, and respect to guide their activities. This talk examines the museum’s success, and occasional failure, through a series of case studies: the return of 30 vigango (ancestral grave posts) to the Mijikenda tribes of coastal Kenya, and shrunken heads to the Shuar-speaking peoples of Ecuador; the reburial of non-Native human remains in Crestone, Colorado; and the repatriation of Native American ancestors to numerous Tribal Nations in the U.S. The new Avenir Conservation Center is focused on inclusive conservation guided by source communities and may one day include a formal program to facilitate international returns and repatriations.Stephen Nash, Director of Anthropology and the Avenir Conservation Centerat the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, is an archaeologist, columnist, historian of science, and stand-up comedian. He is currently studying the Mogollon archaeology of southwestern New Mexico, Indian peace medals in the Museum’s Crane Collection, and the enchanting Russian gem carving sculptures of Vasily Konovalenko. He has written and edited seven books and dozens of peer-reviewed articles and published nearly 40 Curiosities columns for the SAPIENS online magazine. Prior to working at the Denver Museum, he served as head of collections in the Department of Anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago.

The Great Wall of Los Angeles by Judith F. Baca: Looking to the Past and Building the Future
2022-04-29 11:00 - 12:00
Register hereA Conversation with Dr. Judith F. Baca on the creation, impact and conservation of the Great Wall of Los Angeles “Standing at the river’s edge, I saw the concreted arroyos as scars in the land. I dreamed of a “tattoo on the scar where the river once ran,” and an endless narrative that would recover the stories of those who were disappeared along with the river. How could we recover the memory recorded in the land? This began my years of working with more than 400 youth and hundreds of descendants of the original peoples in the Los Angeles River, recovering, through the creation of visual histories, all that had disappeared. Through our ongoing narrative work,The Great Wall of Los Angeles, we are attempting to heal both the river and the people. Currently measuring one half-mile, [and expanding to a full mile] The Great Wall is an evolving chronology of memory from the land recorded with our hands and paint, and now flowing along the river where it all began.”- Judith F. Baca.One of America’s leading visual artists, Dr. Judith F. Baca, has created public art for four decades. Powerful in size and subject matter, Baca’s murals bring art to where people live and work. In 1974, Baca founded the City of Los Angeles’ first mural program, which produced over 400 murals, employed thousands of local participants, and evolved into an arts organization – the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC). She continues to serve as SPARC’s artistic director while also employing digital technology in SPARC’s digital mural lab to promote social justice and participatory public arts projects.Beginning with the awareness that the land has memory, Baca creates art shaped by an interactive relationship of history, people, and place. Her public artworks focus on revealing and reconciling diverse peoples’ struggles for their rights and affirming the community’s connections to place. Together with the people who live there, they co-create monumental public art places that become “sites of public memory.”In 2012, the Los Angeles Unified School District named a school the Judith F. Baca Arts Academy, located in Watts, her birthplace. She is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the United States Artist Rockefeller Fellowship, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant awarded for the expansion of the Great Wall.

Toward an engaged science of human-environment interactions
2022-05-05 18:00
Kristina Douglass, Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute and Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African StudiesRegister hereResearch on how people interact with the environment has the potential to help us solve some of the most pressing challenges we face as a global society. For example, learning about how communities in the past coped with changes in climate may hold clues for how we can effectively address the climate crisis today. Drawing on examples from SW Madagascar, one of the world’s great biodiversity hotspots and a place where local communities are facing acute impacts of environmental change today, we will explore how environmental science can be made more inclusive and engage community stakeholders. Community-centered approaches to environmental science are crucial for science to have a positive impact on society.Kristina DouglassKristina Douglass is an archaeologist who investigates how people, land-and seascapes co-evolve. She is the Joyce and Doug Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute and Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at Penn State University. Sheis a Penn State Institutes for Energy and the Environment co-funded faculty member and a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences. Douglass is also a Smithsonian Institution Research Associate. Her work is grounded in collaborations with local, Indigenous, and descendant (LID) communities as equal partners in the co-production of science, and the recording, preservation and dissemination of LID knowledge. Douglass and her collaborators aim to contribute long-term perspectiveson human-environment interactions to public debates, planning and policymaking on the issues of climate change, conservation, and sustainability. Since 2011 Douglass has directed the Morombe Archaeological Project (MAP), based in the Velondriake Marine Protected Area. This territory is home to diverse LID communities, including Vezo fishers, Mikea foragers and Masikoro herders. The MAP team is made up of Velondriake LID community members, and an international group of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. The MAP is anchored at Penn State to the Olo Be Taloha Lab (@OBTLab andhttps://obtlab.la.psu.edu) for African Environmental Archaeology, which Douglass also directs. Douglass is a mother, singer, dancer, Capoeirista, SCUBA diver and avid gardener, all of which intersect in essential ways with her work as an archaeologist.

Ghost Landscapes: Recovering & Visualizing Hidden Histories and Landscapes of the Early Colonial Andes (1530s-1700)
2022-05-11 16:00 - 17:30
Jeremy MikeczNeukom Institude Postdoctoral FellowNative American Studies, Darmouth UniversityWednesday May 11th, 2022 at 4pm PTRegister here (Link for both in-person and Zoom attendance)How can patterns embedded in historical texts be made visible? How can we map texts and visualize narratives? How does doing so allow us to confront historical silences and challenge scholarly erasures in new and productive ways?In this presentation, the historian Dr. Jeremy Mikecz will discuss how he answers these questions through the integration of digital mapping and qualitative visualization as well as the close reading of Spanish and Indigenous texts. In doing so, he will show how qualitative, humanistic, and narrative visualization can complement more traditional ethnohistorical approaches to historical recovery. His talk will explore his work on two separate, but related research projects. First, he will describe how he develops or adapts new methods, borrowed from experimental cartography, literary geography, and even data science, to re-imagine the Spanish invasion of the Inka Andes (1530s AD). Drawing from his forthcoming book, Mapping Conquest, Mikecz recovers an alternative history of the so-called “conquest” by rendering the gaps and silences of colonial texts visible, thus showing what colonial authors worked hard to conceal. It then fills in those gaps by tracing and mapping Indigenous activity—as recorded in Indigenous texts—thus re-animating the contributions of Andean actors to the creation of the colonial world. In doing so, it shows how long-term Indigenous histories, politics, and geographies shaped events of the period in ways that Spanish authors could not comprehend.Second, Mikecz will share his preliminary efforts to create a digital “database” of some of the most foundational historical texts written in or about the Andes of the 16th and 17th centuries. Digitizing and encoding these texts using xml will then allow them to be searched and queried in sophisticated ways. The goal is to post this searchable text corpus or “database” online for use by students and scholars in the Americas and beyond.Sponsored by the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and UCLA Latin American Institute

Digital Sketches: Creating Qualitative, Humanistic Maps & Visualizations in Inkscape
2022-05-12 10:00 - 13:00
Jeremy MikeczNeukom Institude Postdoctoral FellowNative American Studies, Darmouth UniversityIn-person, Digital Archaeology Lab, Fowler A163Thursday May 12th, 2022 from 10am-1pm PTRegister here Data visualizations and mapping carry with them some baggage. Graphs lie. Maps hide. Politicians, corporations, and others use them to persuade (at best), or deceive or divide (at worst). However, just as the earliest maps were simply tools intended to help us locate our place in the world, qualitative, humanistic visualization allows us to more systematically interrogate historical narratives, construct alternative narratives, and compare the difference between the two. In this hands-on workshop, Dr. Jeremy Mikecz introduces participants to inspiring examples of visualizations that reveal rather than conceal human stories. He also offers a tutorial demonstrating simple methods for producing similar visualizations in the free, open-source program Inkscape. Participants will have the opportunity to create their own qualitative, humanistic, or narrative visualization by the end of the workshop.Sponsored by the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and UCLA Latin American Institute

The Vishap: From Fairy Tale to Reality
2022-05-15 14:00 - 18:00
You are cordially invited to The Vishap: From Fairy Tale to Reality (click on link for schedule)Sunday May 15th, 2022 at 2:00 – 6:00pm PDTThe Narekatsi Chair in Armenian Studies presents “The Vishap: From Fairy Tale to Reality,” by Dr. Arsen Bobokhyan. This event is co-sponsored by the Promise Armenian Institute, the Ararat-Eskijian Museum, and the National Association for Armenian Studies & Research with the participation of the Research Program in Armenian Archaeology and Ethnography at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and the Institute for Archaeology and Ethnography of the Armenian Academy of Sciences.2:00 – 3:30 PM Royce Hall 314Illustrated Lecture on documenting and preserving the dragon-stones of Armenia from the 2nd millennium BCE by Dr. Arsen Bobokhyan (PI of this project and Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in Yerevan), followed by a documentary of the dragon-stones and the initial phase of their investigation and restoration.3:30 – 6:00 PM Powell RotundaPresentation of Dr. Bobokhyan’s latest monograph Atrpet’s “Scientific Adventures” and Discovery of the Vishap Stelae (in Armenian), followed by a guided tour of an exhibit of thirty high-resolution images of the dragon-stones by Dr. Bobokhyan and recital by the UCLA Armenian Ensemble. The event will conclude with a Wine and Cheese Reception.The event will livestream on the Ararat-Eskijian Museum’s Facebook and YouTube pages. Arsen Bobokhyan is Directory of the Institute for Archaeology and Ethnography of the Armenian Academy of Sciences. He received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Prehistory at the University of Tuebingen (2008) and has since been an Asst. Professor of History at Yerevan State University and Lecturer at the American University of Armenia. The author of three books and over a hundred articles, he has served as editor of a number of scholarly journals and has been invited as visiting professor at several universities in the German-speaking world. His research interests include the early Archaeology of the Armenian Plateau and the Caucasus, the Near East and Asia Minor, Cultural Relations, Ancient Barter and Weight Systems and Religion and Cult.Vishapakar (Photo: Sonashen via Wikimedia Commons, 2013; cropped. CC BY-SA 3.0)

The conservation and restoration of the church of Kuñotambo by its community
2022-05-20 11:00 - 12:00
Claudio CancinoArchitect, Architectural Conservator | MBA | MS Senior Project Specialist, Building and Sites department, Getty Conservation InstituteRegister hereThe community of Kuñotambo, a small village near Cusco, Peru has been a crucial and significant stakeholder for the conservation of its church of Santiago Apóstol. Thanks to them, their church was seismically retrofitted and is now maintained as a case study for similar sites in the region.The church is one of the four case studies of the Seismic Retrofitting Project, a collaborative project between the Getty Conservation Institute and the Ministry of Culture of Peru. The SRP aims to design, test and model seismic retrofitting techniques suitable to earthen buildings using low-tech materials and local expertise.The construction documents for the seismic retrofitting of the church were developed by the GCI and the Ministry of Culture of Cusco; where the SRP designed retrofitting techniques were implemented. The construction phase started in 2016 and the church was inaugurated in 2019.This contribution will explain the importance of the involvement of local communities for the conservation and maintenance of their heritage. Claudia Cancino is a licensed architect from Peru and manages the Getty Conservation Institute Earthen Architecture Initiative which has three components: The Seismic Retrofitting Project in Peru, the Earthen Architecture Course in Al-Ain, Abu Dhabi and the Terra 2021 Congress in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She also manages the Retrofitting and Repair Component of the Bagan Conservation Project. She earned a certificate in conservation at ICCROM in Rome, followed by graduate diploma in business administration at ESAN in Lima. She practiced preservation architecture and has taught Earthen Conservation at several universities. She earned a Master of Science in Historic Preservation and an advanced certificate in conservation from the University of Pennsylvania.

Kuskalla Abya Yala in the context of Quechua Revitalization
2022-05-24 15:00
Dr. Zoila MendozaDepartment of Native American Studies, UC DavisTuesday May 24th, 3pm PTRegister here

DIVINE CONSUMPTION: SACRIFICE, ALLIANCE BUILDING, AND MAKING ANCESTORS IN WEST AFRICA
2022-05-24 18:00
The Cotsen Institute of Archeology Press invites you to the latest Author Spotlight withStephen DueppenAssociate Professor, Department of AnthropologyUniversity of OregonRegister hereMounded sites (tells) are common throughout West Africa, including in western Burkina Faso where clusters of mounds dating to the past three millennia are common. Extensive fieldwork at the long inhabited and well-preserved site of Kirikongo (ca. 100—1650 AD), has established that the community started as a small farming settlement, grew to a large community centered on the village’s founders, rejected inequalities in an egalitarian revolution, and survived the Black Death pandemic. This talk explores patterns in architecture, material culture and organic remains (animal bones and botanical remains) to argue that the mounds at Kirikongo are not only residential, but also stratified ancestor shrines whose ritual deposits inform on the divine associations of different houses in a ritual landscape.
