Past Events
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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
Contact Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
Email nreast@humnet.ucla.edu
Phone
Speaker:
Dr. Carla Hernández Garavito
Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Anthropology, UC Riverside
Abstract:
The Inka expansion on the Central Andes brought into the Empire several polities with different histories, traditions, and identities. The increasing pressure to manage diversity and territorial expansion led the 
Inka to build upon familiarity with their subjects whenever possible. In this presentation, I explore once such familiar space: ritual spaces. Inka plazas are well known to archaeological research as places for feasting, displays of Inka power, and affirmation of social solidarities. However, in many cases, Inka plazas were attached to other sacred built and natural places that rather than affirmed imperial control, embodied the identities of the subjects. I will discuss the history of such a sacred place or w’aka in Huarochirí before and after the Inka. I contend that the plazas fully adapted to the embodiment of community identity already at play in the w’aka. Consequently, the closeness between this w’aka and Inka plazas reinforced the notion of local communities appropriating and retelling their history of subjugation by the Inka as one of alliance and broadening of community ties. Finally, I look at how the experience of this local community with Inka imperialism informed how they engaged with Spanish colonialism and evangelization. Overall, my work aims to recognize the importance of experience and reinvention among Andean communities in the face of political imposition
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
Speaker:
Marina Gallinaro
Cotsen visiting scholar
Abstract:
Rock art is one of the most fascinating cultural manifestations of humankind. The integration of rock art studies within the archaeological and anthropological domain faces crucial challenges. The complexity of documentation and publication and lack of reliable dating have hampered its immense potential as an archaeological source. This is particularly true for the Sahara, where outstanding paintings and engravings are now inaccessible for security reasons and at risk of destruction due to social and political turmoil.
This talk will present aims, first results, and future perspectives of the project entitled Ancient Saharan Art – Decoding Art through Theoretically-sounded Archive (ASArt-DATA). This project focuses on Saharan rock art, proposing a new theoretical and methodological approach aimed at an integrated reading of the artworks, combining Archaeology, Anthropology, Visual Studies, and Digital Humanities. This work aspires to strengthen the connection between archaeological and anthropological studies, and between academy and society, thanks to the deployment of the underdeveloped potential of Rock Art.
The ASArt-DATA Project - funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 795744 - is carried out by the Sapienza University of Rome and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.
Bio:
Marina Gallinaro is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Researcher at the Department of Ancient World Studies, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy and Visiting Researcher at The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.
She received her PhD in African Studies at the University of Naples, L’Orientale, with a project on the settlement patterns in mid-Holocene sites in the Egyptian Western Desert. Since then she has carried out projects in the Sahara region, both in Egypt and Libya and in East Africa, Central Sudan, southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya.
Her research focuses on the interplay between human and environment in arid zones, and to the strategies that humans adopted to cope with the climatic changes. In particular, her interest addresses: the emergence of pastoralism in Africa, through the analysis of the archaeological landscape and the connections between geomorphological features and different sets of archaeological data; ii. African rock art study characterized by a landscape and contextual approach; and iii. Cultural Heritage Management and sustainable development projects, with a specific focus on cultural landscapes and rock art sites in Sahara and East Africa.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
Speaker:
Elena Sesma
UC Berkeley, Postdoctoral Fellow
Bio:
Elena Sesma received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2019 and is currently a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley. Elena specializes in historical archaeology, community based methods and engaged anthropology, Black Feminist Theory, and memory studies. Her most recent research focused on an early 19th century cotton plantation site in Eleuthera, Bahamas and the descendant community who has lived on the property for the past 150 years, drawing connections between land, memory, and political action. Her current research examines the shared histories of late 18th-century Loyalist migration and slavery in the Bahamas and Atlantic Canada. She has been involved in archaeological projects in Massachusetts, Maryland, Nevis, the Bahamas, and northern Israel.
Abstract:
This talk addresses a community-based archaeology project focused on the history of a 19th century Bahamian cotton plantation and the present-day communities who live on and around the former plantation acreage. The Millars Plantation on Eleuthera, Bahamas was established in 1803 as a cotton plantation and remained in operation through the 1830s. The last plantation owner left the 2000-acre property to the descendants of her former slaves and servants at the time of her death in 1871. Many local residents today trace their lineage to the families named in the Millar will, and continue to uphold their rights to the land in the face of a series of legal challenges by Bahamian and foreign investors who would seek to develop new tourism-based economies in the area. In the process of documenting the historical landscape of the Millars plantation estate through oral histories and landscape survey, the research revealed ways that residents today have materialized memory – piecing together object, story, and space – on a living landscape that has more often been framed as empty or relegated to the past. This research demonstrates how these contemporary Bahamian communities mobilize historical objects and memory as tools for community-building and activism, illustrating the transformative power of a contemporary archaeology of historic spaces.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
Speaker:
Megan Perry
East Carolina University
Associate Professor of Biological Anthropology
Abstract:
The mysterious Nabataeans, builders of the magnificent city of Petra, have long fascinated scholars and the public. Scant archaeological research and minimal textual sources have not clarified the shift from a primarily nomadic encampment in the late 4th century BC into a major capital city by the 1st century BC. Our understanding of Petra’s urban life recently has been transformed with the excavation of tombs within the ancient city. The human skeletal remains from these tombs have illuminated the origins of the city’s residents, their disease profiles, and what foods they relied on in this desert environment. This lecture demonstrates how Petra’s dead can inform what life was like in this ancient city.
Contact Aaron A. Burke (aaburke@ucla.edu) for more information.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
Speaker:
Karime Castillo
UCLA Archaeology Ph.D. Student
Bio:
Karime Castillo is originally from Mexico City. She received her B.A. in Archaeology from Universidad de las Américas Puebla and her M.A. in Artefact Studies from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. She is primarily interested in Mexican historical archaeology and colonial material culture. Her master’s thesis proposes a typology of pharmaceutical glass from London. As a historical archaeologist, she has done research on Colonial Mexican majolica and the Hacienda San Miguel Acocotla, Puebla, Mexico. She has worked for archaeological projects in different parts of Mexico, including Sonora, Mexico City, and Puebla, and has collaborated with the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City and London Archaeological Archive and Resource Center in London. At University of California Los Angeles she will study glass production in Colonial Mexico.
Abstract:
difficulties as they established their crafts in the New World. Glassmakers in particular, struggled finding the resources they needed in an unfamiliar land where glass had not been artificially made before. Nevertheless, colonial glassmakers found ways to adapt to the local resources and the industry
flourished in New Spain, predominantly in Mexico City and Puebla. By bringing together archaeology, history, ethnography, and materials science principles and methods, it is possible to explore the processes of technological transfer, adaptation and development of glass production technology in Colonial Mexico. This talk presents some results of the analysis of glass from the two main glass production centers in New Spain. The chemical composition of archaeological glass from Mexico City and Puebla reveals the various ways in which colonial artisans adapted the technology to the resources available in a different and. Historical documents bring to the fore the social aspects of the technology and help to contextualize colonial glass production within the broader scope of Spanish colonialism.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Phone 310-825-4169
Speaker:
Dr. James Brady
Professor
Dept. of Anthropology
Cal State Los Angeles
Bio:
Dr. James Brady is best known for pioneering the archaeological investigation of Maya caves. Between 1981 and 1989 he directed excavations at Naj Tunich (National Geographic, August 1981, Archaeology Nov/Dec 1986) and from 1990 to 1993 he directed the Petexbatun Regional Cave Survey (National Geographic, February 1993). Moving to Honduras, Brady headed a three year archaeological investigation of the Talgua region (Cave of the Glowing Skulls, Archaeology May/June 1995). Since 2001, he has led a Cal State L.A. field school to Peten, Guatemala. More recently, he has co-directed a project studying Ulama, a modern survival of the ancient Aztec ballgame Ullamaliztli (Archaeology Sept/Oct 2003; Smithsonian Magazine, April 2006). From 2008-2010 he directed the investigation of Midnight Terror Cave in Belize and currently he is working with the Programme for Belize.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
Hear eight of the world’s leading Egyptologists, who will appear together for the first time to share their expertise on life in Ancient Egypt. These experts are all editors of the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology (UEE), a prestigious resource of in-depth articles on Ancient Egypt that has been a decade in the making. Accessible by the public, these articles cover language, religion, history, art, and a wide variety of other important topics on this critical civilization.
Please join us for this special event which will emphasize the role of women and how they helped shape Ancient Egypt as we know it.
Reserve tickets now or view the full program here.
Contact Michelle Jacobson
Email mjacobson@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone
Resources, Exchange, and Society
UCLA Chinese Archaeology Forum (2019)
第一届洛杉矶中国考古论坛：资源、贸易与社会
9:30-4:30 Friday Aug 23 UCLA Young Research Library Presentation Room
Opening Remarks: 9:30-9:40
First Panel: Resources and Exchanges in Early China (Chair Li Min, UCLA)
第一组：早期中国的资源与交换 (主持人：李旻 加州大学洛杉矶分校)
9:40-10:10 Wu Hao (Shandong University): Settlement and Social Structure on the Jianxin Site during the Middle and the Late Dawenkou Period
武昊（山东大学历史文化学院）：枣庄建新遗址大汶口中晚期聚落与社会结构
10:10-10:40 Gao Jiangtao (CASS): Resources, Trade Routes, and Settlements in theEmergence of Early Civilization in China: Perspective from the Jinnan Basin
高江涛(中国社会科学院考古研究所)：中国早期文明之路视野下的晋南资源聚落
10:40-11:10 Pang Xiaoxia (CASS): The Xiawanggang Site during the Erlitou Period: A Transportation Hub in Cultural Interaction
庞小霞（中国社会科学院考古研究所）：文化互动中的枢纽----二里头时期的淅
川下王岗
11:10-11:20 10 minutes break
11:20-11:50 Li Min (UCLA) The Minshan Pathway in the Prehistoric Interaction of Early China
李旻（加州大学洛杉矶分校）：史前中国互动圈中的岷山通道
Second Panel: Ritual and Society (Chair Zhang Meimei, Occidental College)
第二组：仪式与社会 (主持人：张楣楣 西方学院)
11:50-12:20 Kirie Stromberg (UCLA): Music and State Formation in Early China
益田雾绘(加州大学洛杉矶分校)：早期国家形成视域中的音乐
12:20-1:00 pm Lunch
1:00-1:30 Tian Zhaoyuan (East China Normal University)
Pledge of Allegiance: Reflection on the Early State of System
田兆元（华东师范大学社会发展学院）：盟誓：关于早期国家制度的思考
1:30-2:00 Li Wanmeng (UCLA): Investigation of Daoist Temple in Grotto-Heaven
Landscape Based on the Case Study of Dongxiao Temple Site
李皖蒙(加州大学洛杉矶分校)： 洞天福地中道教宫观考古调查——以临安洞霄
宫遗址为例
Third Panel: Maritime Resources and Networks (Chair Liu Miao, Xiamen Univ.)
第三组：海洋资源与网络 (主持人：刘淼 厦门大学)
2-2:30 Cao Yang (Shandong University): Salt Archaeology Survey at the West Coast of the Bohai Gulf: Results from the 2018 Season
曹洋（山东大学文化遗产研究院）：2018 年渤海湾西岸地区盐业考古调查及研究
2:30-3:00 Liu Miao (Xiamen University): Production and Export of Fujian Ceramics: Survey of Anxi Kiln Sites
刘淼（厦门大学人文学院）：福建古陶瓷生产及外销----安溪县古窑址调查
3-3:30 Zhou Jun (East China Normal University): Genglubu Navigation Manuals
from the Perspective of the Maritime Communities
周俊（华东师范大学社会发展学院）：海洋命运共同体视野下的《更路簿》
Special Presentation: Chinese Archaeology through Camera Lens
特别报告：考古镜像
3:30-4 Du Lin (UCLA) A Modern Man's Way of Viewing the Past: Archaeological
Photography in the Northwestern Provinces of China
杜琳(加州大学洛杉矶分校):摄影之眼的“怀古”与“求真”西北文物考察照片
4-4:30 Commentary 总结评议：
Prof. Lothar Von Falkenhausen 罗泰 教授 (加州大学洛杉矶分校艺术史系)
Sponsored by: 资助机构：
Henry Luce Foundation 露丝基金会
UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology 加州大学洛杉矶分校蔻岑考古研究所
UCLA Center for Chinese Studies 加州大学洛杉矶分校中国研究中心
UCLA East Asian Library 加州大学洛杉矶分校东亚图书馆
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
The Art and Archaeology of Ritual and Economy in East Asia: Workshop and Symposium in Honor of Lothar von Falkenhausen
東亞古代禮制和經濟的藝術與考古研究：羅泰教授還曆慶賀學術研討會
June 5-6, 2019, YRL Main Conference Room, UCLA
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169
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