ABSTRACT: This presentation will focus on our technical study of two polychrome ceramic tomb figures of dancers dating to the Han dynasty (206 BCE-8 CE). These figures were temporarily stewarded at the Cotsen Institute as part of the Waystation Initiative and were returned to China in June. The purpose of the study was to identify the pigments used and how they were applied. To answer these questions we combined a series of analytical techniques, such as pXRF spectroscopy, polarized light microscopy, multiband imaging, and hyperspectral imaging, with art historical comparisons to related Han dynasty objects. This talk presents the results of our analysis and highlights the research possibilities that are available to students and faculty here at the Cotsen.

BIOS:Vanessa Muros is an archaeological conservator and director of the Experimental and Archaeological Sciences lab at the Cotsen.  

Moupi Mukhopadhyay joined the Conservation Center at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in August 2025 as the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, Research. She recently completed her Ph.D. in the Conservation of Material Culture at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), with a focus on pigment analysis of the outdoor wall paintings in Kerala, India. Prior to joining LACMA, she lectured at the UCLA/Getty Conservation department (Winter 2025) and also volunteered at the Experimental and Archaeological Sciences Laboratory (EASL) at the Cotsen Institute at UCLA (January-July 2025).

Dani Dsouza graduated from UCLA with a BA in Classical Civilization and has been volunteering in the EASL since January 2024. This fall she’ll be applying to grad school for Conservation and Art History.

ABSTRACT: The Pachacamac Museum is located within the archaeological sanctuary of the same name, south of Lima and near the Pacific coast, in an area now integrated into the urban fabric of the capital. This sanctuary was one of the most important ceremonial centers of pre-Hispanic Peru and represents a heritage space of immense historical, cultural, and symbolic significance.

In a context shaped by cultural diversity and the presence of neighboring communities of varied origins, the museum understands heritage as a common bond that strengthens collective identity and fosters social integration. Guided by the principles of social museology, the institution prioritizes educational initiatives and affective strategies that place the community as a central partner in processes of research, conservation, and dissemination.

Through this approach, the Pachacamac Museum aspires to consolidate its role not only as custodian of a site of universal value but also as a dynamic space for dialogue, inclusion, and the collective construction of memory. In doing so, it contributes to a broader reflection on the social responsibilities of museums in contemporary Peru.

BIO: Denise Pozzi-Escot studied archaeology at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, Peru, and received a postgraduate degree at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She excavated at the Conchopata site in Ayacucho, Peru, and in Chincha. She also excavated on Corsica and at Pincevent in Paris. She is a board member for ICOM Perú. and a visiting professor in the master’s programs on South American archaeology at the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo (Peru) and Université de Rennes 1 (France). She is responsible for several community education and outreach projects, including one that empowers local women to become entrepreneurs and use Pachacamac iconography in their products.

ABSTRACT: The Odeion of Agrippa was among the first major Roman constructions in the city of Athens after years of spoliation. Despite an assemblage of "similar" buildings that the Romans constructed in the city, the Odeion of Agrippa stands out both spatially and architecturally. In 2024, I carried photogrammetric captures of the site to reconstruct how the building fit in the local topography and how it engaged in the surrounding architectural programming of the city. I argue that not only did Romans utilize architectural ornamentation to steer the city in a new direction, but they created a new space that enmeshed their own history with Athens' heroic past.

BIO: Luis Rodriguez-Perez is a 3rd year Ph.D. student at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. His research focuses on identity and architecture in early Roman Athens, applying 3D and other visualization methods.

ABSTRACT: This talk will investigate processes of urban dissolution, a phenomenon herein defined as the loss of the urban scale. In contrast to the robust body of archaeological literature on urban formation and urban maintenance, comparatively few analyses have targeted urban decline, particularly in an Aegean context, where the disappearance of urbanism has been presumed the byproduct of the collapse of the state. Positioned in opposition to these narratives, the talk examines the urban dissolution of Late Bronze Age Knossos. From the mid-18th to mid-15th centuries BCE, Knossos was the largest city in the Aegean, twice the size of the region’s other settlements. About 350 years later, it had lost three quarters of its urban fabric and dwindled to the size of a village. The talk analyzes how and why the loss of urbanism occurred, through study of material evidence recovered by over a century of archaeological exploration in the Knossos valley.

BIO: Alice Crowe is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Getty Research Institute. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Cincinnati and a B.A. from Boston University. Her research focuses on the archaeology of the Late Bronze Age Aegean, and centers especially on the site of Knossos, where she explores issues of memory, urbanism and its loss, and ceramic production and consumption. For this research, she has received support from the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, the Archaeological Institute of America, and the University of Cincinnati University Research Council. Beyond ongoing projects at Knossos, she is publishing Late Bronze Age ceramic assemblages collected from the sites of Galatas and Tell Atchana, and by a regional survey of the Brauron area (ARTEMIS).