ABSTRACT: In recent years, the focus of Egyptological scholarship has slowly moved away from narratives focused solely on royal monuments and texts to interrogate how kings and kingship fit into broader ancient Egyptian society. My current book project seeks to better understand where, when, why, and how non-royal Egyptians in specifically the Middle Kingdom period (ca. 2030 - 1650 BCE) engaged with kingship.

In this talk, I will go over my initial motivation for working on this topic and the ways in which my thinking has evolved, shifting from focusing on binary absence vs. presence of kingship in non-royal lives to more carefully considering the ways in which kingship was engaged with by those outside of the royal court. Rather than impose strict categorizations, my approach instead highlights the variability of engagement with kingship in the non-royal sphere, including for instance encounters hinging on the durability of architecture or the experience of occasion.

BIO: Luiza Osorio G Silva is Assistant Professor of Art History, Archaeology, and Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is currently the Assistant Director of the Mastaba of Akhmerutnisut Documentation Project (MAD-P) in Giza, Egypt. Her research interests include ancient Egyptian kingship, monumentality, and the audiences and contexts for art and architecture.

ABSTRACT: As the second most prolific exporter of cotton in the mid-19th century, Mobile, Alabama was built by enslaved laborers. As such, after the Emancipation Proclamation, there was, necessarily, a dramatic reordering of both economic and social structures. In addition to this new economic landscape, newly emancipated Black people gained geographic autonomy, with the ability to live far from the prying eyes of a former overseer or enslaver. By doing a comparative analysis of the archaeological material found at two free Black sites in what was at the time unincorporated Mobile-I explore the different ways in which 'free' Black life was carried out in the American South directly after Emancipation. The two sites, one in Africatown, Alabama, and the other near Magnolia cemetery highlight opposite ends of the spectrum of Afro-diasporic experiences in America at the time (generational enslavement vs. 5 years of enslavement) allowing for multifaceted representation of Black life. Additionally, as I engage with these two sites through collections already excavated, I discuss the value of collections-based research, especially in the archaeology of marginalized communities.

BIO: Madison Aubey received her BA in Anthropology from Columbia University. This past Spring, she completed her MA in Anthropology at UCLA. Her research has focused on broadening academic understandings of the African Diasporic experience in the United States and her work has taken her across the American South as well as the hinterlands of the Republic of Bénin. She is continuing this same line of research, with a focus on foodways, for her doctoral research.

ABSTRACT: Photogrammetry has become an indispensable recording tool for maritime archaeology over the past decade. Thanks to its accuracy and flexibility, photogrammetry and the digital 3D models it generates are not only used as a recording tool and data source but are also applied in 'Academic Research,' 'Education and Outreach,' and 'Protection of Archaeological Sites.' In this talk, I will explain several case studies conducted in different countries and discuss its advantages and potential problems.

BIO: Kotaro Yamafune received his Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Hosei University in Tokyo in 2006. He entered the Nautical Archaeology Program in the Anthropology Department at Texas A&M University in September 2009 and received his Master of Arts degree in August 2012 and earned his doctorate in May 2016. His research interests include shipbuilding in Medieval Europe and the European Age of Discovery, and ship reconstruction both manually and through the use of digital tools such as 3D modeling software. He also focuses on photogrammetric recording of submerged cultural heritage, including shipwreck sites. He also expands his study interest to museology for nautical and maritime archaeology. In September 2016, he found A.P.P.A.R.A.T.U.S. LLC. and became its president. Also, he teaches a course of maritime archaeology at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology as a lecturer, and he conducts research at Kyushu University as a research associate. Currently he is helping both terrestrial and underwater archaeological projects and providing workshops in many countries using his skills of photogrammetry.

ABSTRACT: The Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) undoubtedly marks a special period ofChinese history for its cultural inclusiveness, marvelous artistic achievements, andunprecedented international influence. This talk will examine a special category of Tangimperial art: the funerary stone sculptures placed in front of the mausolea of emperors andtombs of high-level officials. By looking at the precedents of these finely produced anddeliberately displayed statues, both from Han to Tang, and from East Asia to Inner Asia, Iargue that all the categories of Tang funerary stone sculptures had come into being in aregionalist manner at least since the Southern and Northern Dynasties period (420-589CE), whereas the effort to incorporate these distinct regional traditions reflects this newlyborn empire's ambition of creating a "Culture of Ours."

BIO: Zichao Wang is currently a Ph.D student at the Archaeology InterdepartmentalProgram at UCLA. He graduated from the Chinese University at Hong Kong and McGillUniversity for two masters' degrees. Therefore, he is now a complete historian and a partialarchaeologist. With a focus on the political and cultural history of early China, he has beenwriting broadly on various topics of Chinese history. At UCLA, he attempts to fullyincorporate different sources and approaches to achieve a more comprehensiveunderstanding of Chinese history, which is, inevitably, also a part of world history.