Noteworthy

THOMAS WAKE spoke at the 19th Annual Mayer Center Symposium

THOMAS WAKE was a speaker at the 19th Annual Mayer Center Symposium--November 8 and 9-- at the Denver Art Museum. Wake, who is assistant adjunct professor in the Department of Anthropology and director of the Zooarchaeology Lab (Bone Lab) in the Cotsen Institute, discussed “A Pre-European Archaeology of Greater Bocas del Toro, Southwestern Caribbean.” The two-day symposium focuses on the ancient American communities that resided around the Caribbean Sea.

KARA COONEY furthers study of royal coffins at Cairo Museum

The coffins of Seqenenre Tao and Thutmose III were the focus of examination by Kara Cooney, chair and associate professor, department of Near Eastern Languages & Culture, and Egyptology PhD student Nicholas Brown during the 2019 season at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The work was part of the UCLA Coffins Project at the museum, begun in 2016 as a collaborative effort between Egyptologists from UCLA and colleagues at the museum, who work together to reexamine the unique collection of royal coffins from sites at both Deir el-Bahari and the Valley of the Kings.  The research objectives of the project include in-person examination, documentation (photographic and written), analysis, and study of the group of objects from the Royal Caches of TT320 and KV35 in order to identify and examine evidence of reuse of the royal coffins during the 21st Dynasty, a period of political, social, and economic instability for the ancient Egyptians. Cooney and Brown looked at the mummified remains of Seqenenre Tao, which were found within his original coffin, and who appeared to have died in battle based on the amount of ax wounds through his body. They found Thutmose III’s coffin to be a prime example of the theft and reuse of royal funerary equipment, as the royal elite found it necessary to systematically dismantle the burials of their predecessors, including famous pharaohs like Ramses the Great. All of this was done under the guise of “protecting” the remains of these former rulers and their families, Brown explained. He is currently based in Cairo for research and field work.

VANESSA MUROS visits Field Museum’s Elemental Analysis Facility to study ritual use of red ochre pigments

Vanessa Muros, Director of the Cotsen's Experimental and Archaeological Sciences Lab (EASL), recently spent a week in Chicago at the Field Museum's Elemental Analysis Facility (EAF) where she worked with research scientist Dr. Laure Dussubieux to analyze red ochre pigments from the middle Chincha Valley of Peru.  This analysis is part of a larger project Muros has been working on with Dr. Jacob Bongers (Senior Research Associate, University of East Anglia and recent UCLA doctoral recipient) and Colleen O'Shea (Assistant Objects Conservator, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco). They are studying the ritual use of red pigments within chullpas (above-ground and subterranean mausolea) that date to the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000 – 1400) and from the Late Horizon (AD 1400 – 1532) to the Early-Middle Colonial Period (AD 1532 – 1825). Muros and Dr. Dussubieux used laser ablation-inductively coupled mass spectrometry (LA-ICPMS) to look at trace elements in the ochre samples, as well as those in geological samples, to investigate procurement practices of this mineral pigment within the middle Chincha Valley. The project was in part funded by NSF Grant #1628026 to the EAF at the Field Museum.

Field school developed by HANS BARNARD & CAROLINE ARBUCKLE featured in La Stampa Torino

As HANS BARNARD & CAROLINE ARBUCKLE wrap up the summer session for their field school focusing on the preservation, study, and presentation of museum objects, the newspaper La Stampa highlighted their work with the students and the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy.

DAVID A. SCOTT organizing conference on Philosophy and Art Conservation

Distinguished Professor Emeritus David A. Scott is organizing an international conference on Philosophy and Art Conservation to be held in 2020 in Hastings, UK, where he recently taught a research course on "Metellography and Microstructure of Ancient and Historic Metals" at East Sussex Coast College.

SONIA ZARRILLO presented at Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Symposium & joint American Anthropological Association/Canadian Anthropological Society annual meeting

SONIA ZARRILLO presented a paper on "Tracing the movement of ancient cacao in the Americas: New Approaches" at the 2019 Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Symposium held October 11-12 in Washington, D.C. These annual meetings provide a forum for the presentation of advanced research and the exchange of ideas on the art and archaeology of the ancient Americas. The paper is co-written by Michael Blake, University of British Columbia. She is also co-author of a paper to be presented at the joint American Anthropological Association/Canadian Anthropological Society annual meeting to be held in November in Vancouver.


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