Speakers: Dr. Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati, Visiting Professor, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology; Giorgio Buccellati, Professor Emeritus, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA

"These forty years now I've been speaking in prose without knowing it!" Unlike Moliere 's Monsieur Jourdain, we knew we were "speaking prose" ... Our "prose" was community archaeology, which we undertook to implement since the beginning of our excavation projects in Syria. Having embarked on an effort that relied on a common sense type of approach, very much down to earth as it befits an archaeological endeavor, we have come to reflect more and more on its theoretical implications. And the current war in Syria has put to a severe test our presuppositions . We will first review the main aspects of our specific case of "community archaeology" at Tell Mozan, ancient Urkesh, and we will then share our reflections on its theoretical import. This is particularly meaningful now, at a moment when the concept is beginning to gain traction on the one hand, while on the other we find ourselves physically separated from our "community."

Speaker: Dr. Annelou van Gijn, Professor of Archaeological Material Culture and Artefact Studies, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University

Speaker: Dr. Manfred Bietak, Professor Emeritus, University of Vienna Institute of Egyptology

Avaris, capital of the Hyksos, was inhabited, as we may presume, mainly by a western Asiatic population, which migrated to Egypt from the late Middle Kingdom onwards. We may call them for convenience sake Amorites as the little onomastic evidence we have, shows that they had mainly Western-Semitic personal names. We don’t know yet, if this population was homogenous. Most probably they were not, as their osteological remains show a sexual dimorphism. This phenomenon is known when wives are taken from a different gen-pool than the men. This result was attested some time ago by the physical anthropologist Eike M. Winkler from the University of Vienna. Most probably, immigrants from the Levant seem to have married local women who also did not match the Egyptian population type. Therefor they may have originated from an older substratum of immigration from different origin. We are lacking, however, the osteological material of the Egyptians who lived in the oldest settlements of the 12th Dynasty at Tell el-Dab‘a at ‘Ezbet Rushdi. These people were not buried within the town as the Canaanites, but according to the Egyptian mortuary tradition in a separate but still undisclosed cemetery, outside the town. We have various indications that they continued to live within Avaris untill the end of the Hyksos Period. Within the oldest part of the town of Avaris, at the quarter where we have evidence of a planned settlement and a temple of the 12th Dynasty, there are no intramural burials, also not from the Second Intermediate Period. The same applies to a quarter directly south of this Middle Kingdom settlement, where even during the Hyksos Period the usual burials in houses or courtyards – which are ethnical markers - are missing. What is missing in this district are finds of toggle-pins which held together the typical Western Asiatic garment at the left shoulder. Such finds were, however, collected within the immediately adjoining quarters, where obviously the Amorites lived.

Besides Egyptians and people from Western Asia from dierent periods of immigration, Avaris proves more and more to have been a multi-ethnical town. Ceramic remains from dierent parts of Nubia can be taken as evidence that also various ethnicities of Nubians lived here. As their pottery has open forms, not suitable as containers of imports, and as the roughly produced cooking pots are not attractive as imports it is likely that Nubians lived in Avaris over a long period. Some of the cooking pots even seem to have been produced of local clays. This would speak indeed for the physical presence of Nubians.

Besides the above mentioned ethnicities there is even some small evidence that Cypriots may have been
present in Avaris shortly before the Hyksos Period as Cypriot pottery was produced locally in Cypriot handmade technique.

Speaker: Dr. Sarah Herr, President, Desert Archaeology Inc.

The cultural affiliation of the pre-contact residents of central Arizona defies easy categorization. These residents of small settlements construct their houses in array of styles, form undecorated ceramic vessels, specialize in projectile point production, and trade other goods rarely but widely, and are not easily encompassed into Hohokam or Puebloan histories. The State Route 260—Payson to Heber project, a cultural
resource management investigation conducted for the Arizona Department of Transportation in advance of highway realignment, provided the opportunity to examine the lifeways of these people who live beyond many boundaries. Trying to understand their experiences provides a starting point for considering the larger issues of how Southwest archaeologists conduct research in areas outside demographic cores.