Dr. Christine Lee,  Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, California State Los Angeles
Wednesday, October 28th, 12:00pm - 1:00pm PT

Four archaeological sites along the western frontier of China and Mongolia were analyzed for cranial trauma patterns. These patterns were then used to determine levels of violence, who were the participants, and if certain individuals were singled out as specific targets. In ancient times all of these sites were connected by the Silk Road. The sample from Yingpan (206 BC-420 AD), Yanghai (475 BC-220AD), Nileke (550-221 BC), and Chandman (700-400BC) totaled 275 individuals. Yingpan and Yanghai were agricultural oasis states in the Tarim Basin. Nileke and Chandman were nomadic pastoralists located along the Altai mountains. Trauma was recorded for location on the skull, type (blunt force, sharp force, or high velocity), and cause (interpersonal, warfare, or other). The total population percentages for trauma were Yingpan 27%, Yanghai 23%, Chandman 15%, and Nileke 20%. However, this does not give an accurate picture of the level of daily violence experienced. The likelihood of an individual experiencing a violent episode causing death or disability was highest at Chandman and the lowest at Yingpan. So how a population and it’s individuals were the perpetrators or victims of aggression needs closer examination. One site has an unusual pattern where men, women and children have broken noses. Two sites have evidence of trephination or surgery after devastating sword blows or high velocity projectiles. There is one incidence of scalping. Finally several individual had their noses cut off. This intentional mutilation of the face was a capital punishment at the time. This talk will explore what were the social and cultural factors which could have caused these specific patterns.

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Sanchita Balachandran, Senior Lecturer in Near Eastern Studies & Associate Director, Johns Hopkins University & Museum
Wednesday, October 14th, 12:00pm - 1:00pm PT

What can we know about the lived experiences of the ancient artisans who were making the now-iconic red and black ceramics in Athens between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE? Given that the potters and painters of Athens comprised a diverse group of practitioners that included Athenian citizens, immigrants and migrant workers, women and children, freed people and enslaved people, can the pots they made tell us about the conditions of their lives? Interdisciplinary approaches incorporating experimental archaeology, sensory experience, conservation documentation and digital imaging techniques may offer us new ways to “excavate” the surfaces of extant ceramics in museums, most of which were collected without archaeological context. This talk looks at how examining ancient ceramics from the perspective of production—from “preparatory” drawings on the surfaces, to the painted images, to the fired colors of the vessels—allows us to approach ancient people at work, in the moment of production, and raises questions about who they really were.

Register for this Cotsen Virtual Pizza Talk here! You will receive instructions on viewing the talk after registering. 

Kristine Martirosyan-Olshansky, Postdoctoral Scholar, CIoA, UCLA
Alan Farahani, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, UNLV
September 16, 2020, 1:00pm - 2:00pm PST
Virtual Pizza Talk Series

This talk is a summary of research conducted at the archaeological site of Masis Blur, an early farming community located in the Ararat plain of Armenia and occupied continuously for nearly a millennium from ca. 6200 cal. BC – 5200 cal. BC. While much is known about how communities in west Asia adopted a farming way of life, much less is known about the Caucasus. The Masis Blur Archaeological Project explores the rhythms of everyday life at the Neolithic village in this understudied region using high resolution techniques to recover, record, and analyse the material remains of day-to-day activities. The talk highlights recent fieldwork and preliminary results from Masis Blur with specific focus on enhanced photographic techniques (photogrammetry), archaeological plant remains , animal husbandry, obsidian procurement, and a few key discoveries such as calcified basket remains, evidence of thatched roofs, and pigment processing workshops  which, to date, are singular for the region.

Kristine Martirosyan-Olshansky is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology where she is directing the Research Program for Armenian Archaeology and Ethnography. She earned her PhD in Archaeology from UCLA in 2018 and she has been directing the Masis Blur Archaeological Research Project since 2012. As an anthropological archaeologist she uses geochemical characterization of materials to study past human behavior. In particular, she looks at how early farming communities of the Southern Caucasus made use of the available natural resources and how these behaviors influenced the spread of technological innovation and social change.

Alan Farahani is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.  He is an anthropological archaeologist whose research focuses on how ancient agriculture was embedded in and influenced the social, political, and cultural practices of people in the past. His methodological expertise is paleoethnobotany, or the analysis of archaeological plant remains, as well as in the use of contemporary computational tools such as Python and R to effectively manage archaeological data. He has conducted fieldwork throughout the world, and has been working on the Masis Blur project since 2018.

Register for this Cotsen Virtual Pizza Talk here! You will receive instructions on viewing the talk after registering.

Caroline Arbuckle MacCleod, Ph.D. Fellow, University of British Columbia
Wednesday July 22, 2020 – 1:00pm

In ancient Egypt, the wooden coffin was considered one of the fundamental elements of a burial for wealthier individuals. It was a magical vessel that protected the deceased, and ensured that the owner could be transformed into a divine being in the afterlife. Due to the importance of these objects, potent magical talismans and symbols were placed around and in the coffin, and were often included in the decoration. Magical spells and rituals were also performed throughout the burial ceremony. In this talk, a new layer of ritual and magic is considered, hidden within the invisible joints of wooden coffins. In these areas, secret spells and magical red paint were added during construction. This may suggest the presence of educated carpenter priests, trained in the rituals needed to prepare the wood, as the first step in the creation of these potent vessels for the dead.

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Please note, the talks will start at 1:00pm PT during the summer.