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 Historical documents bring to the fore the social aspects of the technology and help to contextualize colonial glass production within the broader scope of Spanish colonialism.

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.

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

Speaker:

Dr. Linda Reynard
Research Associate 
Department of Human and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University

Abstract:

Over the last 20-30 years, the analysis of stable isotope ratios from bones and teeth has contributed tremendously to the understanding of paleodiets, paleoenvironments, and migration. However, hydrogen and oxygen isotope ratios in collagen are understudied compared to the well-known use of carbon, nitrogen, and strontium isotope ratios. Given that hydrogen and oxygen show geospatial patterns of isotopic variation as tracers of the global hydrological cycle, further investigation of the utility of these tracers for archaeological studies is warranted. I will outline results of our study using the Mediterranean basin as a test case, involving Late Bronze and Iron Age humans and fauna from five sites spanning 3500 km east-west across the Mediterranean basin. This rich data set shows highly variable faunal isotope ratios; in contrast, humans have tight population mean isotopic ratios. Diet type, digestive physiology, and human manipulations of foodstuffs likely play a role in causing these patterns. In addition,environmental variability between the sites is noted in the collagen isotope ratios. These results demonstrate that hydrogen and oxygen isotope ratios in bone are valuable tracers, but equally that much further work is needed to elucidate the mechanisms responsible for the patterns seen.

Bio:

Dr. Reynard is a research associate and lecturer at the Department of Human and Evolutionary Biology,
Harvard University. Her research includes the application of state of the art of Hydrogen and Oxygen
isotope geochemistry for paleodiet and paleoenvironment research in archaeology. Dr. Reynard finished her D.Phil, and her M.Sc. in archaeological science at University of Oxford.