The Graduate Student Association of Archaeology, an affiliate of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, will host the 8th Graduate Archaeology Research Conference. This conference will take place on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, California, on February 7th and 8th, 2020. Accepted applicants will give 20-minute presentations followed by brief question-and-answer sessions.

Program with Abstracts - 8th Graduate Archaeology Research Conference.pdf

The talks will cover interdisciplinary approaches to this year’s theme on “Experiencing Destruction and Regeneration in Archaeology.” Speakers will discuss the many contexts in which uncontrolled or deliberate destruction—as well as regeneration, reconstruction, and re-use—plays a part in the archaeological past and present. Destruction lies at the heart of archaeological inquiries, seen in every context from the collapse of civilizations to the deliberate breaking of ceramics in ritual settings. Destruction of archaeological remains also occurs in the present through the neglect or eradication of material heritage for economic, sociopolitical or environmental reasons. Simultaneously, reconstruction and regeneration penetrate every aspect of archaeology—seen in current heritage management practices as well as in the material traces of ancient and modern peoples’  efforts at recovery, rebuilding and re-use.

Speakers are encouraged to approach this topic from an experiential perspective, as moments of destruction and reconstruction or regeneration provide communal sensorial experiences, producing and reproducing social memory and shared identities. Archaeology, as a discipline rooted in materiality, can access these senses at their most basic level. Exploring such experiences of destruction and regeneration allows us to better understand the mindsets of past and present peoples alike as they destroyed, rebuilt and remembered.

Keynote speaker Dr. Patricia Rubertone, Professor of Anthropology at Brown University, will address instances of destruction and regeneration through the intersecting lenses of archaeology, history and ethnography. She will discuss commemoration and erasure of Native American monuments in New England in the context of colonialism, as well as the implications of documentary genocide and urban renewal for recovering indigenous pasts.

Please RSVP by February 3rd here.

Email any questions to archaeogradcon@ioa.ucla.edu. The call for papers can be downloaded here.

The Old Kiyyangan Story, an anthropological film based on oral histories and archaeological excavations at the Old Kiyyangan Village, Ifugao, Philippines, will be presented January 31 at 5pm in the Anthropology Reading Room. In addition to the film screening, there will be a research presentation and Q & A with co-screenwriter and Associate Professor of Anthropology, Dr. Stephen Acabado. Acabado is a core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. The event is free and open to the public.

 A trailer for the film can be viewed here.

Fowler Curator of Archaeology Wendy Giddens Teeter will discuss the importance of the collaborative web-based project Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles and her experiences working with the Tongva and indigenous communities to forefront the multiple historical layers of Los Angeles. She will also speak about national and international repatriation efforts as UCLA’s Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) Coordinator, which has helped Native American tribes regain their ancestors and cultural heritage as well as provide a platform to share their voices in online exhibitions, such as Carrying our Ancestors Home.

For more information, please visit: https://www.fowler.ucla.edu/events/lecture-by-wendy-teeter-mapping-indig...

Archaeology of Ancient Israel Lecture Series

Speaker:

Avraham Faust (Bar-Ilan University)

Moderated by:
Dr. Aaron Burke (NELC)

Sponsored by:
Kershaw Chair for Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies

Co-Sponsored by:
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies

The United Monarchy –  the famed kingdom of David and Solomon – is at the center of a heated debate. While until 25 years ago there was a consensus that David and Solomon were historical figures who ruled over fairly large territories, it is now questioned by many who believe either that these kings were either petty chiefs controlling a limited territory around Jerusalem or that they did not even exist. Given these doubts, the archaeological evidence has come to the center of discussion stage. A broad examination of the nature of the Iron I-II transition, however, reveals major changes in practically every aspect of life, from settlement patterns to various aspects of material culture, including pottery form and decoration, and architectural developments. While each change could, in theory, be a result of a number of causes, a broad analysis of all the processes and transformations, and especially their sequencing in time and space, greatly narrows down the possible options. It is therefore the aim of the present lecture to briefly present the sweeping changes that accompanied the Iron I-II transition, to reconstruct (temporally and spatially) the processes of growing social complexity that they reflect, and subsequently to examine the implications of this analysis on the debate over the historicity of the so-called United