Chocolate Conquers the World

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 […]

Pizza Talk: “The Vatican Coffin Project: An International team Project”

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 […]

Friday Seminar: “Bunking with the 24th Infantry: The Material Lives of Black Soldiers at Fort Davis, Texas, 1867-1878”

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, […]

Pizza Talk: “An Early Bronze Age Metallurgical Center at the Central Aegean Coast of Anatolia: New Results from Çukuriçi Höyük, Turkey

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 […]

Friday Seminar: “About-Faces in the Anthropology of Material Culture: Implementing Mauss’ Program At Last”

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 […]

Pizza Talk: “Early Farming Expansions in Mesoamerica and beyond: Macroregional Analysis and Continental Synthesis”

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) […]