Past Events
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Open House for K-12 students
Visit the labs, participate in a variety of activities including dig boxes, pottery-making, rock art, photobooth, and more!
Contact Victoria Newhall
Email outreach@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone
ABSTRACT: For the dead, and for the wretched who lived to give testimony to the Armenian Genocide, the Jazira region of northeastern Syria was hell on earth, its arid expanse and biblical rivers bloated with bodies and bones—the victims of Ottoman deportations and massacres. But for archaeology, which Laurent Olivier has dubbed the “consummate once-upon-a-time discipline”, the Jazira has been more akin to an Eden, brimming with vestiges of the deep past. This talk explores the practice of archaeology in this necrogeography. I disclose and diagnose how, for nearly a century, archaeology has remained virtually silent on the mass graves of the Jazira. Analysis centers on the mound of Tell Fekheriye, where several teams have uncovered and disregarded skeletal remains from the 1915-1916 massacres ever since the University of Chicago launched excavations in 1940. Among the world’s first mass grave exhumations, the Chicago project produced a collection of photographs, long buried in the archive. As archaeologists ignored the dark record of modernity in northern Syria, there emerged a parallel engagement with traces that I call survivor archaeology, a vernacular practice undertaken by genocide survivors and descendants to reckon with the memory of atrocity through the excavation, collecting, memorialization, and circulation of bones.
BIO: Trained as an archaeologist, Dr. Katchadourian's research spans the fields of archaeology, social anthropology, and critical heritage studies, with a particular focus on Armenia, the South Caucasus, and neighboring regions. Her work explore problems of empire, materiality, the archaeology of modernity, Soviet socialism and its aftermath, and the politics of heritage. Her research and teaching are temporally expansive, extending from the deep past to the present, and attentive to the ways in which the materiality of the past shapes contemporary politics, economics, and ethics. She pursue these concerns using the methods of archaeology, ethnography, spatial analysis, and archival research.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Phone
The Andean Working Group presents "Beyond the Horizon: Pericentric Complexity in the Chavín Phenomenon at Atalla, Peru" by Dr. Michelle Young, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University.
Registration is required for in-person and virtual participation.
Register at tinyurl.com/AWGYoung
This event is co-sponsored by the UCLA Latin American Institute and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.
Contact Gabriel Silva Collins
Email gsilvacollins@g.ucla.edu
Phone
Andean Working Group is pleased to announce Dr. Vladimir Gil Ramón's talk titled "Andean Environmental Conflicts, Risks, Disaster, and Development in the Anthropocene." Dr. Gil Ramón is a faculty member in the Department of Social Sciences and Environmental Development Master's Program at PUCP (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú). His research explores relationships between mining industries, the nation-state, and environmental risk, with publications including the 2020 book Fighting for Andean Resources. This AWG talk is an event rescheduled from its original Spring 2024 date.
If you would like to attend this event, please register at the following link: https://tinyurl.com/yc85rb6w
Contact Gabriel Silva Collins
Email gsilvacollins@g.ucla.edu
Phone
Archaeologies of Forced Migration:
Approaches, Case Studies, and Prospects
Cotsen Advanced Seminar, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA
October 24–26, 2024
Organized by
Aaron A. Burke, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
Li Min, Anthropology/East Asian Languages and Cultures
The symposium will be held over three days from the evening of Oct. 24th through Oct. 26th. Attendees are encouraged, though not required, to register for the event if they would attend any part of it, in order that we can maintain a record of attendees and communicate promptly in the event of any program changes. Please use the QR code or this link to do so.
The program has been made possible with generous support from UCLA’s Dean of Humanities, the Global Antiquity initiative, the Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies, and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.
Cotsen Advanced Seminar - Forced Migration (2024-10).pdf
Contact
Phone
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED.
Please check back later for more information.
Please join us for the 10th biannual Cotsen Institute of Archaeology GSAA Graduate Archaeology Research Conference. This year's theme: 'Plural Geographies: exploring Alternative Ecologies and navigating through the Field' will highlight interdisciplinary global research focused on themes of geography, space, and place.
With keynote speakers Dr. Anna Agbe-Davies (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill) and Dr. Menna Agha (Carleton University)
Please register for virtual or in-person attendance here: https://tinyurl.com/UCLApluralgeo
Contact Plural Geographies committee
Email pluralgeographies@gmail.com
Phone
The Andean Working Group presents Making a House: The mutual upbringing (crianza) of architecture and people in Andean highland pastoralism (Susques, Jujuy, Argentina) with Dr. Jorge Tomasi from CONICET - Laboratorio de Arquitecturas Andinas y Construcción con Tierra, National University of Jujuy.
Register at https://tinyurl.com/AWGTomasi
Cosponsored by the UCLA Latin American Institute and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
Contact Rachel Schloss
Email rachelschloss@g.ucla.edu
Phone
A virtual panel discussion organized by Professor Ioanna Kakoulli, Acting Director, UCLA SNF Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture.
The Eastern Mediterranean, a cradle of ancient civilizations, stands at the precipice of an unprecedented challenge. Coastal areas, including the island of Cyprus and Greece, like other regions in the Mediterranean are witnessing the relentless advance of the sea due to climate change. Rising sea levels, heightened temperatures, extreme weather events, and marine erosion are endangering archaeological sites, Byzantine relics, and other critical historic landmarks. With climate data projecting a rise of 90 cm in sea level by 2100 in the Mediterranean, the risk to our global heritage is immediate and undeniable.
This panel aims to address/initiate discussion on two critical aspects:
- Highlighting the Threat: An in-depth look at how rising sea levels, temperature extremes, and other climate phenomena threaten cultural landmarks, particularly in low-lying coastal zones of Cyprus and Greece
- Bridging the Awareness Gap: A pressing need to use climate data in decision-making for the cultural heritage sector and enhancing awareness on the imminent risks
Speakers:
Demetrios Athanasoulis, Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades, Greece
Nikolas Bakirtzis, Cyprus Institute, Cyprus
Alessandra Bonazza, University of Bologna, Italy
Rohit Jigyasu, ICCROM, Rome, Italy
Anthi Kaldeli, Department of Antiquities, Cyprus
Athanasios Vafeidis, Kiel University, Germany
Nikolaos Zacharias, University of Peloponnese, Greece
Register for this Zoom event here
View additional details and a full schedule here.
This event is being held under the auspices of the Deputy Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Cyprus, the Embassy of Greece in the United States, the Embassy of the Republic of Cyprus in the United States, the Consulate General of Greece in Los Angeles and the Honorary Consulate of the Republic of Cyprus in Los Angeles. This program is co-sponsored by UCLA's Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and Global Antiquity Institute and is made possible thanks to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
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Recent studies in comparative-historical linguistics and genetics have provided valuable insights into the origins and flourishing of the Sino-Tibetan language family, one of the largest in the world. Evidence suggests that this linguistic group emerged and thrived approximately 8000-5000 years ago in the Yellow River valley, north China. Notably, the divergence of proto-Sino Tibetan languages occurred around 5900 years ago. These significant linguistic shifts coincided with archaeological findings that point to the development of the Yangshao culture and its expansion towards the Tibetan Plateau, in both westward and southwestward directions. The Yangshao culture, renowned for its centripetal settlement layouts, large public buildings, highly developed painted pottery, and the use of amphorae for producing and consuming alcoholic beverages, fostered a culture of communal ritual feasts. These communal feasting activities played a crucial role in establishing diverse social relations and reinforcing cultural identity through the production, processing, and sharing of food and alcoholic beverages. This practice emphasized collaboration and connections among related groups during the expansion of proto Sino-Tibetan populations into new territories, occurring amidst a period of climatic fluctuations.
Li Liu is the Sir Robert Ho Tung Professor in Chinese Archaeology Stanford University. She joined the Stanford faculty in 2010. Previously, she taught archaeology at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia for 14 years and was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Humanities in Australia. She has a BA in History (Archaeology Major) from Northwest University in China, an MA in Anthropology from Temple University in Philadelphia, and a PhD in Anthropology from Harvard University. Her research interests include the archaeology of early China (Neolithic and Bronze Age), ritual practice in ancient China, cultural interaction between China and other parts of the Old World, domestication of plants and animals in China, development of complex societies and state formation, settlement archaeology, and urbanism.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the UCLA Waystation Initiative, Cyrus Tang Foundation, UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, and the UCLA Richard C. Rudolph East Asian Library.
Contact Lyssa Stapleton
Email waystation@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone
ABSTRACT: During the Cold War the Central Intelligence Agency, with the help of ROC government in Taiwan and ROC Air Force, flew U-2 spy planes missions over Mainland China between 1957 and 1968. A good portion of China was covered. After the films were declassified by the CIA and by the ROCAF, Lin has been doing researches, collecting and indexing these images in the past 15 years. He has been working with the National Archives and Academia Sinica, and providing help and images to researchers in the area of remote sensing archeology, military history and architectural history.
The CIA took these photos right at the dawn of rapid population growth and large scale urbanization of modern China. With these images you are able to peek into China’s past. In this presentation Lin will give a brief history of the spy missions, aerial photograph equipment used, and a good number of image samples over China and some other portions of the world.
BIO: Lin XU is an independent researcher specializing in curating and georeferencing declassified images collected by U.S. military and intelligence agencies using aerial and space-based platforms. In collaboration with U.S. National Archives and Academia Sinica, Lin has put together a large collection of legacy remote sensing images over China to support academic institutions engaged in research on archeology, architectural history, and historical geography. He lives in Boston and works as a computer engineer for an IT company he co-founded.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
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