Abstract: People have occupied and visited the Pedersen Site (21LN2), an island site in southwestern Minnesota, for at least 12,000 years. The site is rare in Minnesota, containing some of the earliest stone tools and evidence of repeated occupation up to the present day. The Science Museum of Minnesota began investigating the site from 1973-1975, amassing a large collection that remained largely uninventoried for many decades, making it difficult to access or research. In this talk, I will discuss the rehousing of the collection to adhere to modern standards as well as  preliminary findings and some pretty cool artifacts in the assemblage. The second part of the talk will be about the 2021-2022 excavation/survey of the island to explore previously uninvestigated areas, detailing why we were there and the amazing finds we uncovered during the dig.

Bio: Taylor Brehm is a first-year conservation master's graduate student in the UCLA/Getty Conservation Program. She received her BA in archaeology with a minor in anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Before arriving at UCLA, she worked in the conservation and archaeology departments at the Science Museum of Minnesota as well as a private practice conservation firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

ABSTRACT: Migrants are thought to have facilitated the exchange of goods and ideas around the Mediterranean throughout Greek history, yet the lived experiences of these individuals, families, and communities remain relatively under-studied. The cultural identities of migrants are often fixed to their place of origin, perceived by scholars as “others” in the new societies in which they lived. Archaeological approaches to the burials of migrants assume that this “otherness” will be reflected in material culture, with imported grave goods and practices used as the basis for the identification of the grave of a migrant. This talk will challenge these assumptions through the analysis of the burial of a man from Chios in late 5th century BC Athens, not only by comparing the burial practices of Chios and Athens to identify which practices were maintained, abandoned, or altered, but also by contextualizing the burial through the deceased’s age, gender, status, occupation, and possible reasons for leaving home.

BIO: Camille Reiko Acosta is a PhD candidate at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. She received her BA from the University of Edinburgh and her MA from the University of Oxford. Her dissertation project focuses on the burial practices of migrants in Classical Athens, and additionally, she is a member of the British Museum’s Naukratis Project (Egypt) and UCLA’s Ancient Methone Archaeological Project (Greece), studying the Archaic and Classical Greek ceramic assemblages.

Abstract: Tres Zapotes is an important site in the broader discussion of Olmec cultural continuity and formative period political economy with an archaeological record that spans the two millennia between 1000 B.C. and A.D. 1000. It is a key site for understanding the emergence of Classic period civilization from ancient Olmec roots in Mexico’s southern Gulf Coast lowlands. The occupational history and archaeological record at Tres Zapotes challenges the previous notion that Olmec culture and traditions “collapsed” with the decline of La Venta around 400 B.C. and recent work has argued that a shift from a centralized political structure to a more decentralized/collective one can be attributed to the fluorescence of Tres Zapotes when other polities fell. To expand upon this work, I utilize paleoethnobotanical data from Tres Zapotes to examine what patterns in foodways (practices surrounding food production, consumption, storage and disposal) can reveal regarding sociopolitical transformations over Tres Zapotes’ long culture sequence. Comparative analyses across elite and non-elite contexts through time reveals changes in provisioning and processing strategies providing insight into the role of food, especially maize, throughout Tres Zapotes’ continuous occupation and the changes in political-strategies therein.

Bio: Victoria Newhall is a third year archaeology graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at UCLA. Her research explores emergent social inequality and the development of socio-political complexity in Formative Mesoamerica through the lens of foodways utilizing paleoethnobotanical methods. She is also interested in social identity and issues of equity and diversity as they relate to the discipline of archeology. Victoria is a non-traditional student who transferred from Santa Barbara City College to UCSB for her undergraduate degree. She is dedicated to mentoring students who are navigating similar pathways in higher education.

Abstract: For at least 2,000 years before Spanish arrival in 1502, the province of Bocas del Toro, Panama, sustained numerous vibrant cultures. However, little archaeological research has been done in this area. For decades, this area has been considered a ‘cultural backwater’ with only simple, small-scale settlements. Dr. Tom Wake’s excavations at Sitio Abuelitas and Sitio Drago on Isla Colon, the largest island in Bocas del Toro, have altered this picture as burials, house mounds, and artifacts from across Central America have been found. Carly Pope’s research focuses on the ceramics from these sites, including locally-made wares as well as foreign imports, and the potential they hold to elucidate both interregional systems of cultural interaction and community-level organization. From July to December 2022, examinations focused on collecting frequency data, selecting samples, and preparing for future research.

Bio: Carly Pope was born and raised in Atlanta, GA. She earned her BA in art and archaeology from Princeton University in 2016 and her senior thesis focused on the emergence of early pottery in different parts of Latin America. She continued her education at the University College London, where she obtained a MA in archaeology. For her master’s thesis she analyzed pottery used in salt processing by the Maya of coastal Belize. While her research focuses on Central America, Carly has also excavated at a Roman port in Thrace, Greece; a Basketmaker II site in Cortez, Colorado; a Medieval pilgrims’ cemetery in the Basque area of Spain; a Middle Kingdom amethyst mine near Aswan, Egypt; and a Maya town site in Yucatan, Mexico. She has presented at a variety of academic and professional conferences, including the International Congress on the Anthropology of Salt and the Society for American Archaeology annual meeting.