Past Events
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ABSTRACT: This presentation shares the results of an ongoing, long-term, community-based project in the historic city of Cajamarca, globally known as the site of the encounter, capture, and eventual execution of the Sapa Inca Atahualpa by conquistador Francisco Pizarro. My work focuses on two meaningful sites: Cerro Santa Apolonia, the sacred hill at the heart of the city, which holds over 2,000 years of human history, and the area around the only surviving Inca structure in Cajamarca—the so-called Ransom Room. Excavated for the first time, this space is helping us rethink what the city looked like before and during the conquest. Rooted in local voices and lived memory, the project seeks to challenge colonial narratives and reconnect Cajamarca’s people with their past. Through open excavations, school visits, and shared conversations, archaeology becomes a bridge—linking material remains with identity, memory, and pride. This effort, built through trust and collaboration with local authorities, universities, and private partners, reveals a powerful truth: the past is still alive, and it belongs to the community.
BIO: Solsiré Cusicanqui is a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA since 2024, affiliated with the Center for Early Global Studies and the Fowler Museum as part of the project “Race in the Global Past through Native Lenses.” She is a Peruvian archaeologist with over 20 years of experience leading archaeological and heritage projects across Peru. She earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University and taught as a College Fellow. Her current research focuses on memory, mobility, and territorial transformation during the Spanish conquest, centered in Cajamarca. She directs two urban excavation projects combining archaeology, education, and community-based heritage work. Her interdisciplinary, decolonial approach centers Indigenous perspectives to foster more inclusive narratives of the past.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
ABSTRACT: I became director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology in November of 2023. Since that time, many dramatic things have happened locally, nationally, and globally that have directly impacted our Cotsen community, the discipline of archaeology, and our world at large. During this tumultuous period, I have been engaged in a wide variety of projects related to student research and support, community outreach, and connecting archaeology to contemporary social issues. In addition, I have been actively promoting a book and developing several new projects related to archaeology, migration, displacement, and climate change. In this talk I highlight some of my recent activities as both Director of the Cotsen and the Undocumented Migration Project, a research-arts-education collective aimed at
raising awareness about migration issues globally. I also discuss the importance of public facing social science research, the wonderfulness of education outreach, and the crucial role that archaeology can play in helping us understand our current political-environmental moment.
BIO: Jason De León is Lloyd E. Cotsen Endowed Chair of Archaeology, Professor of Anthropology and Chicana/o Studies, and Director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also Executive Director of the Undocumented Migration Project, a non-profit research, arts, and education collective that seeks to raise awareness about migration issues globally. He is a 2017 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and author of the award-winning book "The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail." De Leon's latest book “Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling” won the 2024 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
ABSTRACT: The Waystation Initiative, officially launched in the winter of 2023, aims to advance approaches to the stewardship of cultural heritage through interdisciplinary research and international collaboration. This presentation will examine the Initiative’s origins, objectives, achievements, and future directions. Professor Li Min will discuss the conceptual foundation and early development of the initiative, while Dr. Lyssa Stapleton will outline its structural framework, current goals, and long-term vision. Zichan Wang will provide insights into her role as the Waystation Graduate Student Researcher, her experiences as a certificate program student, and her work as the primary liaison with China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration. Together, their discussion will highlight the Initiative’s impact and its evolving role in preserving and restituting global cultural heritage.
BIOS: Li Min holds a Ph.D. in Archaeological Anthropology from the University of Michigan and is currently an Associate Professor of East Asian Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. His primary research focuses on archaeology of prehistoric and the Bronze Age China, with particular interests in state formation, ritual performance, sacred landscape, and Bronze Age Eurasian interactions. His research also involves history of archaeological thought, the archaeology of early modern global trade, and the conservation of cultural heritage.
Lyssa C. Stapleton holds an MA and PhD in Archaeology from UCLA. In January 2023, she joined the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology as the Director of the Waystation Initiative and Administrator of the Graduate Certificate Program in Cultural Heritage Research, Stewardship, and Restitution. Dr. Stapleton’s research interests center on the evolution of institutional and private collections in the 20th and 21stcentury, with a particular focus on decolonization, stewardship, collaborative curation, and voluntary returns.
Zichan is a PhD candidate at the Cotsen Institute. She is an archaeologist studying social transformation in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age China. She has worked with the Waystation Initiative since 2023 as a GSR and as the liaison with Waystation's partners in China.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
ABSTRACT: This talk re-examines a Roman-era genre sculpture - the Oplontis-Borghese boy with duck statue type - that has received minimal attention in previous scholarship as a so-called copy of a lost Hellenistic original. In the case of the Oplontis-Borghese boy with duck, curious particularities, like the boy's mannered hairstyle, have been downplayed or disregarded, leaving modern audiences unaware of the ornately coiffed population that this statue would have called to mind among viewers in the Roman home: pueri delicati, a special group of child slaves who were often but not exclusively imported to the peninsula from the Greek-speaking East. A thriving global economy in which children are bought, sold, and trained to function as objects from a very young age, Sarah argues, helps to explain the attraction of this piece among elite enslavers in the 1st c. Italian Peninsula. Content warning: this talk discusses evidence for the sexualization and sexual exploitation of minors, especially enslaved minors.
BIO: Sarah is an Assistant Professor in Classics at UCLA and a faculty member in the Cotsen Institute of archaeology. Her research is broadly focused on domestic archaeology in the Roman period, late Republic to late Empire. Current projects include a monograph on the late Roman villa habit and several articles on the representation of marginalized groups in Roman luxury arts (sculpture; paintings). Her previous work has been published in the AJA and Art Bulletin, among other venues, and her talk today builds on a January 2023 article in the AJA on the enslaved reader in the Villa of the Mysteries Fresco.
Contact
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
ABSTRACT: Plants have much to say about people. Their presence in the archaeological record are testaments to the lives of past human communities who have planted, harvested, used them, and have entwined their imagination with images and stories of them. This talk explores the deep history of Anatolia—modern Turkey—by tracing changes in farming strategies across the region’s shifting socio-cultural and environmental landscapes. While covering a broad chronological scope, the focus will be particularly on the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, a period marked by the rise and fall of Anatolia’s first territorial power, the Hittite Empire, and the new socio-political networks that emerged following its collapse. Drawing on a systemic survey of published scholarship, this talk also offers a critical reflection on the diverse ways paleoethnobotanical data can create historical narratives
BIO: Lorenzo is an archaeologist specializing in the study of human-environment interactions, with a particular focus on ancient agricultural systems. He is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA, where he coordinates the Ancient Agriculture and Paleoethnobotany Laboratory (AAPL). He earned his PhD from the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) in 2022 and subsequently served as a postdoctoral lecturer in archaeology at NYU’s Department of Anthropology. Lorenzo’s research concentrates on the politics and ecology of farming in Western Asia, exploring the intersections between agricultural strategies and political structures, the impact of climatic and environmental change on farming systems, and landscape history.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
ABSTRACT: Religious practice on the Athenian Acropolis in the Archaic period is perhaps best known through the dedications that were buried on the summit after the site was sacked by the Persians in the early 5th century BCE. These dedications include marble statues of young maidens—called korai—as well as inscribed statue bases that record the names of dedicators and, sometimes, their motivations. In this paper, Debby Sneed presents the results of her co-authored study on one religious dedication and discusses what it means for our understanding of religious devotion and disability in Archaic Athens.
BIO: Debby is a UCLA alumna; she graduated with her PhD in Archaeology in 2018. Currently she is an assistant professor of Classics at California State University, Long Beach. She also serves as the Field Supervisor of the Athenian Agora excavations and summer program for the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Her research primarily focuses on disability in ancient Greece. She has published three articles so far on the topic, including one on disability and infanticide in ancient Greece, another on ramps as accessibility features in ancient Greek healing sanctuaries, and one entitled Ancient Greek and Roman Crip Lit. She has an article forthcoming that is co-authored with Mason Shrader, a graduate student at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology in the Ancient World, which argues for the ethics of accessibility on archaeological excavations. In today's talk, she will present an article co-authored with Erin Lawrence-Roseman, a graduate student at Berkeley, that will be published in Art Bulletin later this year, focused on disability and ancient Greek sculpture.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
ABSTRACT: During the final stages of the Late Bronze Age, a shift in habitation towards coastal locations can be observed in several regions within the Aegean. Palaeoclimatic, sedimentological, and palynological data show that this shift includes settlement in or near marshy areas and wetlands. An assessment is made of the living conditions, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of inhabiting watery landscapes, using (bio)archaeological data and references from the Homeric epics. These findings help to shed new light on specific specimens of Late Geometric pottery, which appear to feature examples of wetland iconography.
BIO: Jan Paul Crielaard research focuses on the Early Iron Age and Archaic period, often combining written and archaeological information. He has published extensively on such topics as interconnections and culture contacts within the Mediterranean, Greek colonization, elites and elite behaviour, ethnicity, and archaeology and the Homeric epics. He has been involved in fieldwork in Greece, Cyprus, Turkey and Italy, and has been the co-director of the L’Amastuola field project in Puglia, Italy, and since 2010 directs the Plakari Archaeological Project in Karystos, and the Southern Euboia Sea and Land Routes Projects, both on the island of Euboia, Greece.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
ABSTRACT: This presentation investigates urbanism and settlement patterns through multiple lines of remote sensing data in Northern Sudan. The site of Jebel Barkal, located 400 km from Khartoum, near the Nile, is known for its elite palaces, temples, and pyramids. The site served as the royal capital of Kush from the 8th century BCE and remained a major urban and religious center throughout the Meroitic Period. Recently a Meroitic settlement was identified, known as the “East Mound.” Since 2018 the Jebel Barkal Archaeological Project, in collaboration with the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums of Sudan, has been excavating and surveying areas of the East Mound. This talk will present preliminary results of a new project aimed at analyzing LiDAR and thermal imagery data. The LiDAR and the thermal imagery extend beyond the East Mound into the modern dense and lush agricultural fields adjacent to the Nile. The data will allow us to more accurately map the settlement’s spatial extent and situate it within its broader landscape context. Objectives also include identifying any previously undocumented features such as architecture, activity areas, and paleochannels. This work contributes to our understanding of how major Kushite cities grow, evolve, and respond to environmental factors throughout their life histories. Lastly, this project ruminates on the impact of archaeological inquiry in Sudan, which is currently experiencing a civil war after years of political unrest, while centering Sudanese voices and local archaeologists.
BIO: Kate Rose is an anthropological archaeologist, specializing in landscape analysis and ancient urbanism in the Near East and North Africa. Her PhD dissertation at Harvard University is a comparative spatial analysis of Kushite royal cemeteries in Northern Sudan. As a researcher with the ERC DiverseNile Project at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany from 2022 to 2024, she investigated landscape changes during the Bronze Age borderspace of the Attab to Ferka region. She has also held numerous lectureships and teaching positions at Harvard University and Boston University, and is interested in the intersection of pedagogy and fieldwork. She has served in various leadership positions on projects in Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Spain. She is currently the Director of Programs at the Institute for Field Research, and a Fellow with the Center for Ancient Middle Eastern Landscapes at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
ABSTRACT: An imperial document (chrysobull), issued in 1289 by Byzantine Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos, confirms the privileges granted to a monastic foundation known as the Merciful Virgin in Phanari, Karditsa. The monastery was established by the sebastokratorissa Hypomone, a nun of Vlach origin who came from the transhumant nomadic group that moved between the Pindos Mountains and the Thessalian plateau. While only fragments of her monastic foundation survive today, this imperial document, read together with material evidence, offers insights into the overlapping landscapes between lowlands and uplands in the thirteenth century.
BIO: Sofia is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at UCLA. Her dissertation, “The Pindos Mountains: Land, Art, Community (13th-15th centuries),” explores how mountainous communities interacted with land by analyzing settlement and mobility patterns and artistic and social interactions across mountains and surrounding plains. She has received fellowships from the CMRS Center for Early Global Studies, the UCLA Stavros Niarchos Center for Hellenic Studies, Dumbarton Oaks, and the Mellon Foundation. She is the co-editor of the catalogue Weaving Dreams: Kilims from Geraki, Laconia, and has published articles on medieval soundscapes and communities.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
ABSTRACT: In 2023, the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology debuted its new graduate certificate in Cultural Heritage Research, Stewardship, and Restitution as part of the Waystation Initiative, which organizes and facilitates ethical returns of international archaeological and ethnological objects to the nation or community of origin. In this presentation, Lucha Martinez de Luna, Maryan Ragheb, and Mary Anastasi share the results from their first year working with Waystation. By combining provenance and art historical research with material analysis, they were able to compile object histories for various cultural objects from ancient China to reconstruct the life history of these objects. In the future, these and other cultural heritage artifacts will be returned to Shandong University in China, accompanied by provenance information obtained through our work with the Waystation. .
BIOS: Mary Anastasi is a PhD candidate in the Classics department at UCLA. Her research interests include philosophy, rhetoric, Imperial Greek literature, and epistolography, and she regularly teaches courses in Classics and Ancient Greek. Mary completed the Waystation certificate in the spring of 2024.
Lucha Martinez de Luna is an a PhD candidate in archaeology at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology focused on Mesoamerican and Contemporary Archaeology. She has participated in archaeological projects in the Southwestern U.S., the American West, and central and southern Mexico and curator of archaeological and historical museum collections. As the La Providencia Archaeological Project director and a visiting professor at the University of Science and Arts in Chiapas, Mexico, Lucha also leads the Chicano/a/x Murals of Colorado Project.
Maryan Ragheb is a PhD candidate in archaeology at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology who works in ancient Egypt. Her dissertation addresses people’s interactions with their material culture during social change in ancient Egypt, focusing on body ornamentation production and practices. Maryan worked on different archaeological projects in Egypt and Ethiopia. For the Waystation Certificate Program, she worked on jade neolithic objects from China.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
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