Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

Pizza Talk: "The Ancient Site of Zita in Southern Tunisia"
2016-03-30 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Speaker: Dr. Ali Drine, Archaeological Researcher and Director of Archaeological Mapping, Institut National du Patrimoine in TunisiaThe site of Zita was a political and economic hub situated on the Zarzis Peninsula in the region of Tripolitania, southern Tunisia. Historical sources make reference to the site, including the Itinerarium Antonini and the Tabula Peutingeriana. A Carthaginian foundation, the urban area was incorporated into the Roman Empire with monuments such as a forum, capitol, and likely also a basilica and bath complex. The Carthaginian population persisted in its adherence to Punic identity and religion well into the Roman occupation. A Punic sacrificial precinct (tophet) has yielded over 600 stelae hewed from the limestone on which Zita sits, dozens of urns, and diverse iconographic representations. Neo-Punic graffiti and inscriptions to the goddess Tanit (Calaestis) further indicate the Carthaginian ancestry of the population, which thrived primarily on the production and export of olive oil. Most of the archaeological features are still buried under olive and almond orchards. Since 2012 research is ongoing through a collaboration between the Institut National du Patrimoine (Tunis, Tunisia), UCLA and Brown University.This lecture is co-sponsored by the Silsbee Chair in African Cultural Archaeology.

Berekian Family Manuscripts Donation to the Armenian Archives at UCLA
2016-03-11 19:00 - 21:00
Join us on Friday, March 11 at 7PM, as we celebrate the donation of the Berekian Family archive to the Chitjian Research Archives and the Armenian Research Program in Archaeology and Ethnography at UCLA.See the flyer below for details.Reception to follow.Please RSVP at kristineolsh@ucla.edu by March 9th, 2016.

Friday Seminar: "Stories from the Skeleton: Masculinity, Old Age, & Disability in Ancient Bahrain"
2016-03-11 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker:Alexis Boutin, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Sonoma State UniversitySince 2008, the Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project has been studying and publishing the materials from Peter B. Cornwall’s 1940-41 expedition to Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia, which now reside in the Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. This multi-disciplinary team is adding to anthropologists’ understanding of how life was experienced and death commemorated in ancient Dilmun (ca. 2050-1800 BCE). In this talk, Dr. Boutin will explore how human skeletal remains and associated grave goods can reveal transformations in identity (e.g., gender, age, and physical ability) across the life course. She will also explain how experimenting with alternative modes of interpretation can improve bioarchaeological praxis and communicate effectively and accessibly with diverse audiences.

[CANCELLED] Pizza Talk: "Settlement Patterns and LiDAR in Central Yucatan: Evaluating the Potential of Remote Sensing in Conditions of Comples Canopy"
2016-03-09 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker:Travis Stanton, Associate Professor, UC RiversideNote: this Pizza Talk has been cancelled.

[CANCELLED] Friday Seminar: TBA
2016-03-04 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Ian Morris, Stanford UniversityNote: this Friday Seminar has been cancelled.

Pizza Talk: "Modeling Strategies of Risk-Reduction in the Kuril Islands"
2016-03-02 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker:Erik Gjesfjeld, Postdoctoral Fellow, UCLAHuman populations in the past and present have shown a remarkable ability to inhabit diverse and unpredictable environments. This research explores how archaeological remains can examine the use of risk-reducing strategies, such as social networking and technological innovation, in the remote Kuril Islands of Northeast Asia. Results from this research suggest that social safety nets may be an important mechanism for mitigating the effects of environmental unpredictability and that populations tend to become more technologically conservative in unpredictable landscapes. These findings help to highlight some of the misconceptions surrounding the concept of risk and support the future analysis of risk-reducing adaptations using material culture.

Friday Seminar: "Epistemological Issues Raised by Theories of Entanglement"
2016-02-26 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker:Dr. Ian Hodder, Stanford University

Pizza Talk: "Excavations at the Sanctuary of Poseidon in Boeotian Onchestos (Greece): Report on the First Two Campaigns"
2016-02-24 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Ioannis Mylonopoulos, Associate Professor, Columbia UniversitySince 2014, Columbia University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology has conducted excavations and geophysical survey at the sanctuary of Poseidon in Onchestos, the seat of the Boeotian Confederacy and a major sacred site of Central Greece, under the auspices of the Athens Archaeological Society. Excavation focuses on two large areas between Thebes and Haliartos, where geomagnetic survey also provided much information on subsurface architectural remains. The excavation has already yielded a rich array of finds: vases and vase-fragments (several bearing graffiti), numerous bronze objects (including several strigils), bronze and silver coins, weapons (among them a fully preserved sword), objects associated with horse- and chariot races, and many architectural elements (including several architectural terracotas bearing floral and abstract decoration in black, white, and red color on a beige background).

Friday Seminar: "Long-distance Networks in Neolithic Europe"
2016-02-19 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker:Dr. Caroline von Nicolai, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich

Pizza Talk: "Transport Amphoras, Symposia, and Early Iron Age Economies"
2016-02-17 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Mark Lawall, University of Manitoba

Pizza Talk: "Bone Weary: Labor in the South American Tiwanaku State (AD 500-1100) from a Bioarchaeological Perspective"
2016-02-10 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Sara Becker, Assistant Professor, UC RiversideThere are a number of approaches in understanding how human civilizations evolved into complex, state-level societies. Labor organization as part of resource management is one way to distinguish these changes and bioarchaeology provides a unique opportunity to study the remains of the actual people who worked within these communities. This research addresses labor organization and distribution within Tiwanaku (AD 500-1100), one of the earliest Andean states in South America. This study examines the impact that state formation had on patterns of human labor observable on the bones of people who lived during the Tiwanaku state. State structure and social organization were evaluated through temporal and spatial labor changes associated with the activity of individuals, in order to provide a comparative framework of specic skeletal evidence to the extant archaeological record. Also, by examining the age and sex of these laborers, peoples’ gender roles or status dierences within this emerging state can be discussed. This investigation answers questions about what tasks people were doing within Tiwanaku, how the state was organized, as well as highlights the importance of reciprocal communal labor networks in order for a complex Andean society to function successfully.

Keynote Address, 6th Annual UCLA Interdisciplinary Archaeology Research Conference
2016-02-05 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker:Michelle Hegmon, Arizona State UniversityThe Archaeology of the Human Experience (AHE) is a new initiative concerned with understanding what it was actually like to live in the past that archaeologists study (Hegmon 2013, 2016). I will begin the talk by explaining the origins and goals of AHE. Then, I will describe, in some depth, several examples of AHEresearch. One explores how people in the ancient US Southwest were able recreate their society, moving from difficult and violent times to a more prosperous and peaceful way of life. Another considers how people’s labor changed as they became incorporated into the Inka Empire. And a third draws on studies of Nazi labor camps to ask whether and how we can know the suffering of others. The talk concludes with future directions of AHE, including ideas for experiential archaeology and historical/comparative perspectives.

Pizza Talk: "Tunneling with Technology: Recent Investigations at the Classic Maya Site of El Zotz, Guatemala"
2016-02-03 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker:Thomas Garrison, Assistant Professor, USC

Friday Seminar: "Comanche Visual Culture and the Theater of War"
2016-01-29 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker:Severin Fowles, Barnard College, ColumbiaThe colonial history of the American Southwest looks quite a bit dierent today than it did only a decade ago. We used to know who the empires were: the Spanish imperial project began in the sixteenth century, held back the advance of the French imperial project for the better part of a century, before both succumbed to the American imperial project. We used to know who the barbarians were as well: as the Germanic hordes were to Rome, so the bellicose equestrian tribes of the Plains were to European and Euro-American civilizations. But now these story lines come undone. Now we are told that, for much of the colonial era, some of the most ambitious imperial actors were Native American—and that the Comanche in particular were involved in a strange form of reversed colonialism, startling the European colonizers by beginning to colonize them in return. Are there archaeological remains that speak to the new, more complicated colonial dynamics recently identied by revisionist historians?

Pizza Talk: "In the Eye of the Storm: The Resilience of the Urkesh Project in the midst of the Syrian War"
2016-01-27 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker:Giorgio Buccellati, Professor Emeritus, UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

Pizza Talk: "Uncovering a Lost City of the Qarakhanid Empire: Alpine Urbanism in Medieval Uzbekistan"
2016-01-20 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker:Michael Frachetti, Associate Professor, Washington University in St. Louis

Friday Seminar: "Plant-based Subsistence Strategies and Development of Complex Societies in Neolithic Northeast China: Evidence from Grinding Stones"
2016-01-15 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker:Li Liu, Stanford UniversityIn China, grinding stones first appeared during the Upper Paleolithic period, and were one of the dominant tool types in many early Neolithic sites. Grinding stones were primarily used for processing plant foods and other materials. They gradually disappear in the archaeological record after 5000 BC in the Yellow River region at the time when millet-based agriculture may have intensified. However, grinding stones were continuously used by people throughout the entire Neolithic period in the Liao River region of Northeast China. The different trajectories in food processing methods (with or without grinding stones) in the two regions are likely related to diverse types of plants exploited; and we need to understand what plants were involved. By employing residue (starch and phytoliths) and usewear analyses, this study investigates the functions of grinding stones recovered at several sites in the Liao River region, dating to ca. 5800-3000 BC. The results suggest that the people utilized a broad-spectrum subsistence strategy throughout the entire Neolithic, using various wild, cultivated, and domesticated plants, including tubers/roots, cereals, beans, and nuts. The earliest domesticates in the Xinglongwa period include millets and Job’s tears. Rice may have been introduced to the region for the first time during the Hongshan period, coinciding with the rise of regional elite and intensified interactions with other Neolithic cultures in the south. This study sheds new light on the plant-use strategies of the grinding-stone users who developed complex societies in the Neolithic Liao River region.

Pizza Talk: "Q&A with Lord and Lady Renfrew"
2016-01-13 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Colin Renfrew, Senior Fellow, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

Indo-European Origins Revisited: New Data, New Problems
2016-01-11 19:00 - 21:00
Professor Colin Renfrew, Senior Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research University of Cambridge The image of mounted nomad warriors from the steppe lands of Russia bringing the Proto-Indo-European language to Europe has been displaced in recent years by new models; the early spread of farming from Anatolia became a preferred explanation for language replacement. Recent work on ancient DNA has, however, brought the steppe theory back into prominence. The Indo-European question remains controversial and will be reviewed – but perhaps not resolved! The lecture is free to the public. Parking at Lot #4 (Sunset and Westwood) is $12 for 24 hours, hourly parking available.

Pizza Talk: "The Ancient Methone Archaeological Project: The First Two Years"
2015-12-02 12:00 - 13:00
Speakers: John Papadopoulos, Professor, Department of Classics, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLASarah Morris, Professor, Department of Classics, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA

Friday Seminar: "Historical Counterfactuals in Archaeological Reasoning"
2015-11-20 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Dr. Derek Turner, Connecticut CollegeOver the last fifteen years or so, philosophers of science have made a lot of progress toward understanding how researchers in fields such as paleontology, geology, and archaeology re-construct the past. One neglected issue, however, is counter-factual reasoning. An historical counterfactual claim has the form: “If condition C had been different at some time in the past, then the downstream outcome O would have been differ-ent.” Counterfactual claims are closely related to the idea that history is contingent—an idea that Stephen Jay Gould made popular in paleontology with his famous thought experiment of replaying the tape of history. However, counterfactual rea-soning remains controversial among historians, some of whom see no value in speculating (for example) about how things would be different if Al Gore had won the presidential election in 2000. One major challenge is explaining what would count as evidence for or against counterfactuals. In this talk, the speaker will (1) provide an overview of some of the relevant philosophical work on the epistemology of historical counter-factuals, and (2) argue that counterfactual reasoning does have a legitimate, if limited role to play in archaeologists’ efforts to reconstruct the past.

Pizza Talk: "A Study in Plaster: Archaeology, Conservation, and Late Roman Visual Culture in Egypt's Dakhleh Oasis"
2015-11-18 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Susanna McFadden, Assistant Professor, Fordham University; Getty Museum Scholar

The 2nd Hampartzoum and Ovsanna Chitjian Conference in Armenian Studies
2015-11-14 11:00 - 17:00
Featured Speakers: Dr. Marco Brambilla, Prof. Touraj Daryaee, Ms. Kristine Martirosyan-Olshansky, Prof. Bert Vaux

Friday Seminar: "Power and Exotica: Pre-Columbian Exchange and Social Transformation in Chaco Canyon"
2015-11-13 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Dr. Adam Watson, American Museum of Natural History

Friday Seminar: "Why Land Here? Second-Millennium AD Ports and Harbors in Southeast Tanzania"
2015-11-06 16:00 - 18:00
Speaker: Dr. Edward Pollard, British Institute in East Africa

Pizza Talk: "Interrogating Identities in Achaemenid Egypt"
2015-11-04 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Henry Colburn, Postdoctoral Fellow, Getty Museum; Curatorial Fellow, Harvard Art MuseumsThis study uses identity to examine the experience of Achaemenid Persian rule in Egypt (c. 526-404 BCE). Individuals in Egypt chose the material culture that they believed best suited their identities in the context of votive statues and seals. Some chose traditional Egyptian types, while others drew on a wider array of forms, some of which clearly referred to the Achaemenid royal court. The variation in these choices suggests that contrary to prevailing views there was not a clear divide between subjects and subjugators in Achaemenid Egypt. Rather, different people experienced Achaemenid rule in different ways. The identities examined in this talk attest to a social environment in Egypt in which multiple cultural traditions were valued and employed side by side. Indeed, this finding is consistent with the ecumenical character of Achaemenid ideology, as represented in the sculptural program at Persepolis.

Pizza Talk: "Ecology, Subsistence, and Cultural Admixture: A Bioarchaeological Perspective of Community Health Along Northwest China's Prehistoric Trade Networks"
2015-10-28 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Mauricio Hernandez, Postdoctoral Scholar, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLAThis presentation shows the results of the preliminary analysis of long-term patterns of nutrition and activity as a result of climatic shift, subsistence changes and increased inter-cultural contact along a prehistoric exchange route across arid mountain passes and oasis towns, linking the Central Eurasian Plains with the Yellow River valley 2,000 years before the founding of the Silk Road trading networks. It is during this period that a climate cooling event began to drive Eurasian groups eastward to establish trade networks in order to obtain agricultural products and raw material for metalworking. Northern Chinese communities in turn benefited from Central Eurasian jade, introduction of new western cultigens, grazing animals, and cultural innovation with Inner Asian motifs. The goal is to investigate whether shifts in subsistence practices and perhaps kinship structure as a result of longterm cultural interaction with Eurasian peoples affected the livelihood and health of populations residing in the intermediate zone, covering the region of eastern Xinjiang, Gansu and eastern Qinghai – both as entire communities, as well as along gender lines.

Pizza Talk: "A Huge Beehive of Industry: Native American Work and Life at Mission San Gabriel, California"
2015-10-21 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: John Dietler, Principal Investigator, SWCA Environmental Consultants

Pizza Talk: "Art Restoration and its Contextualization"
2015-10-14 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: David Scott, Professor, Art History, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA

Pizza Talk: "The Birth of Ehecatl and the Origins of Cacao: The Initial Series Group at Chichen Itza, Mexico"
2015-10-07 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Karl Taube, Professor and Department Chair, Anthropology, UC RiversideArchaeological fieldwork performed by the Proyecto Chichen Itza under the direction of Peter Schmidt during 1999 to 2002 uncovered a remarkable series of bas-relief friezes from the upper portions of palace and temple structures. The focus of this study will be buildings featuring avian and floral imagery, including abundant representations of cacao. Many of the friezes contain scenes portraying an avian-headed figure playing music surrounded by floating elements pertaining to music and dance. The relation of music to precious birds is well known for Late Postclassic Central Mexico, however it is becoming increasingly clear that a very similar complex existed among the more ancient Classic Maya, including the wind deity — god of music and closely related to flowers as well as the embodiment of the breath soul. In this study, I argue that the avian figure in the Initial Series at Chichen Itza constitutes an Early Postclassic form of the wind god and as such, can be considered as an ancestral form of Ehecatl. Moreover, the Initial Series Group has the most developed monumental program dedicated to the production of cacao in ancient Mesoamerica, with the immediate topography strongly indicating why.
