ABSTRACT:  We are in the middle of a boom of innovations in archaeological science – including ancient DNA, isotopic analyses, paleoenvironmental reconstructions, geospatial techniques, and Bayesian chronological modeling – which are providing previously unmatched insights into the lives of people and cultural dynamics in the past. Anthropological archaeology is poised to take advantage of these innovations through the development of new models of transformative change that prioritize human agency within larger systems, do not rely on prime movers, and avoid previously rejected concepts of unilineal social evolution. In this talk, I draw upon the theoretical concept of shatter zones to better understand the conditions, causes, and consequences of transformative changes that resulted in the establishment of permanent social hierarchies with inequality in Bronze Age Europe (2700-1300 BCE). I center my work in Transylvania – the land past the forest – which with its rich copper, gold, tin, and salt deposits was one of the most important resource procurement zones in Europe. I argue that changes that resulted in the establishment of permanent social hierarchies with inequality were made

possible by the convergence of integrative institutions and large disruptive events, including waves of large-scale migrations, climate change, warfare, and new innovations that created the opportunity for people to transform economic networks and infrastructures. People in Transylvania’s mining regions used their landscape to navigate this complex social world as new systems of hierarchy rose and fell and rose again around them. Ultimately this is a story of disruption, and what comes next.

BIO: Colin Quinn is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University at Buffalo. His research interests center on emergent inequality, human-environment interaction in mining landscapes, and social transformations.

ABSTRACT: Three UCLA Nubian Studies doctoral students and I traveled to Boston in August to research Kushite royal iconography as evidenced in the extensive Nubian collection at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. These objects were shipped from Sudan to the MFA in the early twentieth century under a system called partage in which excavators took half of the finds back to their home institutions. George Andrew Reisner was a complicated figure. We will unpack Reisner's legacy while describing some fascinating Nubian antiquities in the Boston collection.

BIOS: Wanda Harris is a PhD student in Art History at UCLA whose research bridges seventeenth-century colonial Puerto Rican portraiture and ancient art of the seventh century BCE, with a focus on the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Nubia.

Malkia Okech is a second year graduate student pursuing a doctoral degree in Near Eastern Languages & Cultures in the subdiscipline of Egyptology and Nubiology. They are interested in Nubian art, religion, archaeology, and cultural memory.

Charles Rhodes is a 4th year PhD student in Near Eastern Languages & Cultures.. His subdisciplines are Egyptology and Nubian Studies focusing on Kushite Kingship ideology and religion.

Solange Ashby is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures. Dr. Ashby’s expertise in sacred ancient languages including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Coptic, Ethiopic, Biblical Greek and Biblical Hebrew underpins her research into the history of religious transformation in Northeast Africa and the Middle East.

ABSTRACT: This talk presents research I have been developing since 2019 on the former House of Detention of São Paulo, commonly known as Carandiru. In 1992, a police operation resulted in the deadliest recorded prison killing in Brazilian history. Days later, the government acknowledged the deaths of 111 incarcerated men. Since then, this number has been contested by survivors and

witnesses, although it has never been formally incorporated into legal proceedings. My research examines how these informal allegations can guide an investigation of the remaining material traces of Carandiru, asking how claims of human rights violations are expressed in material evidence. The project combines methods from forensic anthropology, urban archaeology, and material culture studies. Preliminary findings point to public tolerance of everyday violence, institutional complicity, the lack of control inside the prison, the destruction or concealment of evidence, and multiple problems in the postmortem examination reports. Together, these elements may contribute to questioning the official death count. By strengthening survivor accounts as valid lines of evidence, this work also raises methodological challenges: how can researchers document and analyze material evidence when the State itself participates in its erasure, deploying sophisticated mechanisms of disappearance under the veneer of legality?

BIO: Marília Oliveira Calazans is a staff researcher at the Center for Forensic Anthropology and Archaeology (CAAF–Federal University of São Paulo). She is a PhD candidate in Archaeology at the University of São Paulo, currently completing a Fulbright-supported visiting research period at UCLA. Her work focuses on investigating and producing evidence of State violence. Her research moves across Archaeology, History of Science, Cultural Heritage, Forensic Anthropology, and Human Rights.

ABSTRACT: Conservators have a responsibility to care for and protect cultural heritage materials. When it comes to the illicit trafficking of cultural heritage materials, there are many opinions throughout conservation about what to do in the case of treatment. As will be discussed, there are formal ethical guidelines for the profession of both conservators and museums. In order to fulfill these professional responsibilities, conservators may be tempted to knowingly treat illicitly trafficked cultural heritage property as a preventative measure. This is done with a genuine hope that one day this cultural heritage will be recovered, and by treating it now, the object has a better chance of surviving to that point. This is also grounded, in part, by the history of unethically but legally acquired cultural heritage in museums that conservators are responsible for caring for. In comparing these ethics with the legal framework within the United States, this talk will explore what, if any, are conservators’ ethical obligations to stolen artifacts and, in practice, what are the legal risks associated with treating a potentially stolen object.

BIO: Paige Hilman received her BA in Art History with a minor in Arts Administration from the University of Arizona and certificate in Field Archaeology from Pima Community College. Prior to starting her MA, she worked with the National Park Service as a Conservation Assistant, serving the Intermountain Region. Her research interests include archaeological ceramics from the American Southwest, provenance research, and conservation ethics.