Past Events
Interested in Cotsen events? Sign up for our mailing list.Speaker: Scott Fitzpatrick, University of Oregon
For many island societies worldwide, the acquisition and exchange of prized resources was fundamental to developing and maintaining social, political, and economic relationships. The patchiness of resources like stone, clay, tempering agents, shell, and animals often led to differential access which then helped to fuel the rise of social complexity. This presentation considers questions of resource acquisition as mediated by oceanographic and wind conditions, comparing results from archaeological projects in the Pacific and the Caribbean
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Contact Matthew Swanson
Email mswanson@ioa.ucla.edu
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Fowler OutSpoken Talk
Tua Pittman on Traditional Sea Voyaging and Navigation
Saturday, April 30, 1:30 pm
Internationally recognized as a traditional voyaging seafarer, Tua Pitman has navigated canoes for over thirty years without the use of modern instruments. He uses a traditional navigation system based on observations of the stars, sun, moon, the ocean swells, the flight patterns of birds and other natural signs.
Contact Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
Email ioaadmin@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-206-8934
Speaker: Dr. Owen Doonan, California State University, Northridge
Ancient Sinop was the crossroads of the ancient Black Sea, which has been itself described by the distinguished historian Georges Bratianu as the "Turntable of Eurasia."
Owen Doonan has led an interdisciplinary archaeological expedition to the Sinop region since the mid-1990s and through that research program has established a basic sequence of settlement, economic and cultural history in the region. The research has significant implications for the understanding of: (1) the entanglement of colonial and indigenous communities (ca. 630-200 BC); (2) the establishment of Roman infrastructure (1st – 3rd centuries AD) in a remote region of Asia Minor (the Roman term for modern Turkey); (3) the impact of the establishment of Constantinople (modern Istanbul) as the seat of a world empire, ca. 330-600 AD; and (4) the mysterious collapse of the flourishing Byzantine rural system ca. 650 AD.
Starting in the summer of 2015 Dr. Doonan's team has initiated a long-term program of excavations at Sinop kale, the heart of the ancient port and colony. He will speak on the new excavations in the context of the systematic survey and broader cultural and economic trends in the region.
Contact Matthew Swanson
Email mswanson@ioa.ucla.edu
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Speaker: Jacob Bongers, PhD Candidate, UCLA
This talk addresses local mortuary practices in the mid-Chincha Valley, Peru dating from the Late Intermediate Period, or LIP (AD 1000 – 1476) to the Late Horizon (AD 1476 – 1532). Ethnohistorical documents state that a complex, centralized state known as the Chincha Kingdom dominated the Chincha Valley from the LIP until the Late Horizon, when the Inca conquered and consolidated the Chincha. Here, we summarize mortuary data from three years of fieldwork (2013-2015) in the mid-Chincha Valley. We demonstrate a mortuary landscape of over 600 well-preserved tombs. We recognize two broad tomb types: above-ground and semi-subterranean chullpas and subterranean cists. We will highlight differences in mortuary architecture and treatment of the dead between these tombs. Notable finds include peculiar evidence of postmortem body manipulation, including human remains with red pigment, cut marks, and reed posts with human vertebrae. Existing radiocarbon dates indicate that at least one cist is pre-Inca and one chullpa is Inca in date, suggesting possible diachronic changes in mortuary practice that coincide with Inca conquest. We will marshal these data in an effort to characterize and explain the nature and variability of local, late prehistoric mortuary practices in the mid-Chincha Valley.
Contact Matthew Swanson
Email mswanson@ioa.ucla.edu
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Speaker: Dr. Heather Miller, University of Toronto
Archaeological interest in technological change focuses on both invention and production by craftspeople, and on social issues related to adoption of new technologies. We recognize that technological change involves both motivations and mechanisms for change, with respect to both the invention and innovation/adoption ends of the spectrum. The possible motivations and mechanisms for the development and spread of the faience materials found across western Eurasia provides an excellent third millennium BCE case study.
A bewildering assortment of materials utilizing siliceous pastes were used to make small objects such as figures, beads and containers, in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, the Mediterranean, and regions beyond and between. From very early beginnings in the sixth millennium BCE or earlier in some regions, the assortment of these materials reached great diversity of production technique and material in the third and second millennia BCE, with much less diversity of appearance. In places where these materials have seen more analytical study, such as Egypt and the Indus Valley, similarities but also striking differences occur in the regional assortments of materials and techniques employed to produce quite similar appearing materials, used to make objects clearly belonging to the local corpus of style and topic. The Indus Valley case will be the special focus of my talk, where we must speak of it as a talc-faience complex due to the entwined nature of these materials in the Indus Civilization corpus.
What was involved in the spread of these materials and their manufacture? Technological change includes both new ideas or products, and the adoption of those new ideas or products, both invention and innovation (sensu Torrence and van der Leeuw 1989). For the example of the Indus case, can we find clues to the social process involved in the innovative development of these materials from analysis of the objects and their production?
Contact Matthew Swanson
Email mswanson@ioa.ucla.edu
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Speaker: Marilyn Kelly Buccellati, UCLA
2010 was our last excavating season in the ancient city of Urkesh in the northeastern corner of Syria although we went to the site in December 2011 to meet with the local staff to assure continuing their work on conservation and site presentation. With the impossibility of excavating at Urkesh during the war, and in view of the affinities between the third millennium at Urkesh and the Kura-Araxes culture I decided to actively return to my early interests in the southern Caucasus and join an excavation in the Republic of Georgia. In 2013 I began to participate in the Aradetis Orgora excavations of Ca’ Foscari led by Elena Rova. Elena is excavating the third millennium strata and her Georgian partner, Iulon Gogoshidze continues the Georgian excavations of the Late Hellenistic-Early Imperial period palace on the summit of the mound. The strata from the end of the fourth millennium and the early third millennium consist in a number of dwellings containing the characteristic Kura-Araxes ceramics and hearths. The talk will highlight the contributions being made by this area of Shida Kartli (Inner Georgia) to the concept of the “Outer Fertile Crescent.”
Contact Matthew Swanson
Email mswanson@ioa.ucla.edu
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Speaker: James Brady, Cal State University, Los Angeles
During the last decade of the 19th century, four cave studies of exceptional quality were produced. The best was Eduard Seler’s report on Quen Santo in Huehuetenango, Guatemala because of the exceptional finds still associated with the cave at that time. As a grad student at UCLA, Brady became fascinated with the site after Ted Gutman of the Friends of Archaeology translated the report from German. In 2006 new road construction opened this remote area of the Maya Highlands and permitted a restudy of the caves. Combining 21st century cave archaeology with Seler’s 19th century reporting provides rich portrait of an important Chuj Maya pilgrimage site.
Contact Matthew Swanson
Email mswanson@ioa.ucla.edu
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Speaker: Dr. Emily Lindsey, University of California, Berkeley
For decades a debate has raged over the relative contributions of human activities and environmental change in driving the extinction of most of earth’s large mammals near the end of the last ice age. Recent research by our group in South America draws on archaeological, paleontological, paleoclimatological, quantitative modeling, and geochemical studies in order to investigate how these extinctions progressed through space and time across the continent. These studies reveal complex synergistic interactions between climatic and anthropogenic pressures, and highlight the need for integrating multiple regional-scale analyses in order to understand how large-scale extinction events transpired in the past, and how they are likely to proceed in the context of ongoing climate change and growing human impacts today.
Contact Matthew Swanson
Email mswanson@ioa.ucla.edu
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The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA and the Institute of Field Research present a public lecture:
Medieval Ireland: An Overview of 1,000 Years from the Archaeological and Historical Record
Dr. Stephen Mandel
Vice Chairperson of the Royal Irish Academy Committee for Archaeology
The Medieval Period in Ireland is often defined in terms of specific events, from St Patrick lighting the Pascal fire to bring Christianity in 432 AD to the first Viking Raids on Lambay Island in 795 AD to the Anglo-Norman invasion led by Strongbow in 1169 AD. However, whilst these dates dominate the discourse, in isolation they are a simplistic classification and can take focus from a far more complex story. This presentation will give an overview of the medieval history of Ireland through the archaeological and historical record, demonstrating that this small island nation has always held significance far greater than its size.
Contact Helle Girey
Email hgirey@ucla.edu
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Speaker: Dr. Ali Drine, Archaeological Researcher and Director of Archaeological Mapping, Institut National du Patrimoine in Tunisia
The site of Zita was a political and economic hub situated on the Zarzis Peninsula in the region of Tripolitania, southern Tunisia. Historical sources make reference to the site, including the Itinerarium Antonini and the Tabula Peutingeriana. A Carthaginian foundation, the urban area was incorporated into the Roman Empire with monuments such as a forum, capitol, and likely also a basilica and bath complex. The Carthaginian population persisted in its adherence to Punic identity and religion well into the Roman occupation. A Punic sacrificial precinct (tophet) has yielded over 600 stelae hewed from the limestone on which Zita sits, dozens of urns, and diverse iconographic representations. Neo-Punic graffiti and inscriptions to the goddess Tanit (Calaestis) further indicate the Carthaginian ancestry of the population, which thrived primarily on the production and export of olive oil. Most of the archaeological features are still buried under olive and almond orchards. Since 2012 research is ongoing through a collaboration between the Institut National du Patrimoine (Tunis, Tunisia), UCLA and Brown University.
This lecture is co-sponsored by the Silsbee Chair in African Cultural Archaeology.
Contact Matthew Swanson
Email mswanson@ioa.ucla.edu
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