Noteworthy
Mellon Opportunity alumna CHEYENNE CARRAWAY receives inaugural Getty internship
“We are excited to share that Cheyenne Carraway, a participant in the 2018 summer workshop of the Mellon Opportunity for Diversity in Conservation Program, has been accepted as one of four inaugural Getty Foundation Post-Baccalaureate Conservation interns beginning in September, 2020,” announced Ellen Pearlstein, professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and the UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials, who is the director of the Mellon Opportunity for Diversity in Conservation Program. This program supports outreach to undergraduate students and recent graduates who are presently underrepresented in conservation, as well as workshops and internships at museum, library, and archaeological conservation laboratories. Carraway is Choctaw and Chickasaw from southern Oklahoma. Read more about Carraway and her experiences in the Mellon program here.
Cotsen Prize winner JANE BUIKSTRA presents webinar on ancient Athens
View the webinar here and read more about Jane Buikstra being awarded the Cotsen Prize.
EMILIE LIU honored with the 2020 Donald F. McCallum Memorial Scholarship for Outstanding Senior Award
Emilie Liu has been named the recipient of the 2020 Donald F. McCallum Memorial Scholarship for Outstanding Senior Award from the UCLA Art History Department. Liu worked with Prof. Stella Nair in the Andean Lab on an undergraduate research project and, prior to COVID-19, had been chosen by the Department of Art History to give the lecture during the Undergraduate Research Week . Read more about her project here.
ROBYN PRICE presents virtual lecture on “Egyptian Smells.”
Robyn Price, PhD candidate at the Cotsen Institute, presented a virtual lecture on how sensory experience contributed to the overall organization of ancient society during a virtual lecture on April 10. She shared some of the research she’s done for her thesis covering the cultural importance of smelling in the daily lives of the ancient Egyptians and how smell tied to narratives of power and poverty. The lecture was presented by The Institute for Art and Olfaction, a non-profit devoted to creative experimentation with a focus on scent. Details on the event are available at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/online-egyptian-smells-with-robyn-price-tickets-101551128158#.
JOHN PAPADOPOULOS elected academic trustee of the AIA
JOHN PAPADOPOULOS has been elected an academic trustee of the governing board of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA). The AIA is one of the largest and oldest nonprofit organizations in North America dedicated to archaeology. Its goal is to advance awareness, education, fieldwork, preservation, publication, and research of archaeological sites and cultural heritage throughout the world. Papadopoulos is professor of Classics and core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute. Monica Smith, professor of Anthropology and core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute, previously served as an academic trustee of the AIA.
SONIA ZARRILLO presented “New Approaches to Tracing Cacao’s Dispersal from the Amazon Basin”
SONIA ZARRILLO, postdoctoral fellow at the Cotsen Institute, presented “New Approaches to Tracing Cacao’s Dispersal from the Amazon Basin” on January 23 at the first gathering of the year, and decade, of the Andean Working Group. Her presentation was co-authored with Michael Blake from the University of British Columbia, Canada. Throughout her informative presentation Zarrillo shed light on the origins and many characteristics of cacao, resulting from her years of investigation in Ecuador. While it was known that cacao trees grow within the cacao belt—about 20° on either side of the equator—more varieties of cacao appear endemic to South America than previously known. Zarrillo demonstrated that cacao likely came from the Amazonian Basin and was domesticated in present-day Equator. Only after it had been brought to Mesoamerica, however, what we now know as chocolate was invented. The Andean Working Group of the Cotsen Institute draws scholars from across Southern California to UCLA campus for meetings focused on current research in Andean archaeology, art history, anthropology, and history.
Figure 1. Graduate student Georgi Kyorlenski introduces the speaker.
Figure 2. Postdoctoral fellow Sonia Zarrillo prepares for her presentation on the dispersal of cacao.
Figure 3. Members and visitors of the Andean Working Group enjoy refreshments served before the beginning of the presentation.
ANTHONY MEYER published report with Society of Architectural Historians
ANTHONY MEYER, PhD candidate in art history and the coordinator of the Architecture Laboratory at the Cotsen Institute, published a report on the website of the Society of Architectural Historians. Meyer discusses the everyday and extraordinary dynamics of religious specialists of the Nahua, a large indigenous group in Mexico and El Salvador. His research is based on studies of Nahua religious rituals and was supported by the Edilia and François-Auguste de Montêquin Junior Scholar Fellowship.
CANCELLED: STELLA NAIR to talk at Princeton University's Heritage Structures Program Seminar Series
STELLA NAIR will speak as part of Princeton University’s Heritage Structures Program Seminar Series on
March 25, 2020. Her presentation is titled “In the Aftermath of Violence: Andean Stones and the Heroics
of Small Construction Details.” Nair is Associate Professor, Department of Art History, and a core faculty
member of the Cotsen Institute.
JO ANNE VAN TILBURG study featured in UCLA Newsroom
Findings described in “New excavations in Easter Island’s statue quarry: Soil fertility, site formation and chronology” published in the November issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, are detailed in a recent UCLA Newsroom article. Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Rock Art Archive at the Cotsen Institute and principal investigator of the Easter Island Statue Project, is one of the co-authors, together with Sarah C. Sherwood and others. The Journal of Archaeological Science is a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers “the development and application of scientific techniques and methods to all areas of archaeology.” As covered by Science News, the new study suggests that “Easter Island’s Polynesian society cultivated crops in soil made especially fertile by the quarrying of the rock for the massive, humanlike statues” known as moai.
“Our excavations show that the quarrying process in Rano Raraku (the statue quarry on Easter Island) followed deforestation. Erosion moved soil downslope, but the lapilli tuff that makes up the quarry also broke down to produce new, enriched soil” explained Van Tilburg. “The result was a productive garden for sweet potato, banana, and taro but also paper mulberry (used to make clothing needed for the Polynesian lifestyle),” she added. “In a way, quarrying actually accomplished the spiritual goal that Rapanui belief assigned to the statues: to create agricultural fertility and provide food.”
GAZMEND ELEZI presents "Never Let Go: Repaired Ceramic Vessels from the Neolithic Balkans" at the AIAs
GAZMEND ELEZI discussed “Never Let Go: Repaired Ceramic Vessels from the Neolithic Balkans” during Open Session 4D, “Regions, Households & Objects: New Research in Southeastern European Prehistory,” was held January 4, 2020 at the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Washington, DC. Elezi is a PhD candidate at the Cotsen Institute.
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