Hear eight of the world’s leading Egyptologists, who will appear together for the first time to share their expertise on life in Ancient Egypt. These experts are all editors of the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology (UEE), a prestigious resource of in-depth articles on Ancient Egypt that has been a decade in the making. Accessible by the public, these articles cover language, religion, history, art, and a wide variety of other important topics on this critical civilization.

Please join us for this special event which will emphasize the role of women and how they helped shape Ancient Egypt as we know it.

Reserve tickets now or view the full program here.

The Art and Archaeology of Ritual and Economy in East Asia: Workshop and Symposium in Honor of Lothar von Falkenhausen

東亞古代禮制和經濟的藝術與考古研究：羅泰教授還曆慶賀學術研討會
June 5-6, 2019, YRL Main Conference Room, UCLA

Speaker:

Dr. Linda Reynard
Research Associate 
Department of Human and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University

Abstract:

Over the last 20-30 years, the analysis of stable isotope ratios from bones and teeth has contributed tremendously to the understanding of paleodiets, paleoenvironments, and migration. However, hydrogen and oxygen isotope ratios in collagen are understudied compared to the well-known use of carbon, nitrogen, and strontium isotope ratios. Given that hydrogen and oxygen show geospatial patterns of isotopic variation as tracers of the global hydrological cycle, further investigation of the utility of these tracers for archaeological studies is warranted. I will outline results of our study using the Mediterranean basin as a test case, involving Late Bronze and Iron Age humans and fauna from five sites spanning 3500 km east-west across the Mediterranean basin. This rich data set shows highly variable faunal isotope ratios; in contrast, humans have tight population mean isotopic ratios. Diet type, digestive physiology, and human manipulations of foodstuffs likely play a role in causing these patterns. In addition,environmental variability between the sites is noted in the collagen isotope ratios. These results demonstrate that hydrogen and oxygen isotope ratios in bone are valuable tracers, but equally that much further work is needed to elucidate the mechanisms responsible for the patterns seen.

Bio:

Dr. Reynard is a research associate and lecturer at the Department of Human and Evolutionary Biology,
Harvard University. Her research includes the application of state of the art of Hydrogen and Oxygen
isotope geochemistry for paleodiet and paleoenvironment research in archaeology. Dr. Reynard finished her D.Phil, and her M.Sc. in archaeological science at University of Oxford.

Speaker:

Dr. Justin Dunnavant
UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow
University of California, Santa Cruz

Bio:

Dr. Justin Dunnavant is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow
at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He holds a BA in
History and Anthropology from Howard University and an
MA and Ph.D. from the University of Florida. While his
former research interrogated the history and representation of minority groups in southern Ethiopia, his current work in the US Virgin Islands investigates the relationship between ecology and enslavement in the former Danish West Indies.Justin has conducted archaeological research in US VirginIslands, Belize, Jamaica, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mozambique, andThe Gambia. 

Abstract:

The transatlantic slave trade era – marked by chattel slavery, racial capitalism, and exploitative plantation economies – radically transformed societies and environments in the Americas. In this talk, I attempt to craft a historical ecology of the African Diaspora through an analysis of slavery in the Danish West Indies. Drawing from an array of archaeological, historical and environmental data, I argue that the development of plantation slavery elicited lasting ecological changes as colonial planters developed exploitative monocrop agricultural systems and enslaved Africans made a life in the Caribbean. Theoretically, I use a Black Geographic lens to interrogate the relationship between African diasporic communities and their Atlantic environments. Finally, I posit the need to engage questions of sustainability as a form of redress in contemporary archaeological praxis.