Speaker: Jared Diamond, UCLA Department of GeographyPart of the Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture (BEC) Speaker Series

Willeke Wendrich, Director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, cordially invites Friends of Archaeology members to a special dinner on October 25, 2016 with Professor Janine Gasco, Cal. State Dominguez Hills. The reception will begin at 6:00pm and be followed by dinner at 6:45pm. Beginning with the earliest known evidence for cacao consumption almost […]

Speaker: Alessia Amenta, Vatican MuseumsThe Vatican Coffin Project gathers an international team of scholars who are divided into three groups with three different areas of expertise: Egyptology, Diagnostic and Conservation. The project has three objectives: the study of the construction and painting techniques of coffins, the identification of workshop patterns and the understanding of the […]

Speaker: Dr. Mark Aldenderfer, UC MercedFrom where and when did people first move into and live permanently the High Himalayas? What role did climate change have in the early peopling of the High Himalayas and in subsequent population movements? These questions are explored in three regions of Nepal: Upper Mustang, the Khumbu, and the Rasuwa […]

Speaker: Dr. Mary Louise Hart, Getty MuseumThe last several years have seen extensive research and conservation of the Getty Villa’s collection of Romano-Egyptian panel paintings, which contain a good collection of mummy portraits dating from around AD 50 to about AD 220, the in situ portrait of a red-shroud mummy, and a “group” of Isis […]

Speaker: Dr. Laurie Wilkie, UC BerkeleyWhile the black regulars (otherwise known as Buffalo Soldiers) have been a compelling subject in popular culture, scholarly study into the lives of the African American men who chose to serve in the frontier military has been comparatively sporadic and unsustained. This is particularly true in the field of archaeology, […]

Speaker: Dr. Barbara Horejs, Director of the Institute for Oriental and European Archaeology, Austrian Academy of SciencesThe excavations of Çukuriçi Höyük at the Aegean coast of Turkey revealed intensive metallurgical activities dating to the Early Bronze Age I period in early 3rd millennium BC. Beyond a high number of metal artefacts, the complete chaîne opératoire […]

Speaker: Dr. David Scott, Cotsen Institute of ArchaeologyDue to unforeseen circumstances, this Pizza Talk has been cancelled. We will work to reschedule it in the new year.

Speaker: Dr. Pierre Lemmonier, Centre National de Rechereche ScientifiqueTechnologie culturelle designates the strain in the anthropology of objects and techniques first developed in France in the early 1970s. This approach gives a prominent place to the physical actions of people making and doing things, to the way things are made and physically used, and to […]

Speaker: Dr. Richard Lesure, Cotsen Institute of ArchaeologyLesure will report on the work of a team of archaeologists from the UCLA Anthropology Department and Cotsen Institute of Archaeology who are trying to understand the demographic impact of the transition to agriculture at a continental scale. The area of interest is Greater Middle America, roughly from southern Utah (USA) […]