* Excavate * Educate * Advocate
Public Lecture Series 2022-23
Come join us for some fascinating lectures on topics from all over the world! We will return to in-person lectures this fall with options for remote viewing (please contact megan.daniels@ubc.ca with any questions). Masks and social distancing are strongly recommended. These lectures are open to the public and those who are not AIA members but are interested in attending can contact Megan Daniels (megan.daniels@ubc.ca) for information.
TUESDAY, April 4, 2023
"Graffiti, goddesses and geometry: using spatial reality capture to record the Temple of Isis at Philae"
Dr. Nicholas Hedley
Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University
Time: 7:30 PM Location: UBC-Vancouver Buchanan A 202
In this talk I will present my ongoing research to develop new digital wall plans of the Mammisi at the Temple of Isis at Philae, in Southern Egypt. During field campaigns in Fall 2021 and Spring 2023, I used a range of spatial reality capture methods, to generate new two- and three-dimensional datasets of this site, its surfaces and the graffiti on them. I will discuss the experiences recording the graffiti and morphology of the Mammisi at Philae, and present a sneak preview of new two- and three-dimensional wall plan data. I will discuss how new forms of three-dimensional data offer opportunities to pursue new types of three- and four-dimensional analysis across multiple scales. I will offer perspective on advancing the way we generate wall plans, and will demonstrate a vision for new ways to experience them, using spatial interface research.
**Monday, January 23, 2023
“In the Footsteps of Roman Soldiers: Excavations at Vindolanda and the Archaeological Landscape of Hadrian’s Wall”
Dr. Elizabeth M. Greene
Department of Classics, Western University
Time: 7:30 PM Location: UBC-Vancouver Buchanan A 202
In the past few decades the Roman fort at Vindolanda has had some of the most extraordinary finds from the northern frontier of the Roman Empire that have truly changed our understanding of life in the Roman army. The site lies near Hadrian’s Wall in a remote countryside in Northumberland, England and was part of the original frontier line in this location in the late first century CE. Decades of excavation at the site have given us an extraordinary view into the lives of soldiers living in this frontier region. Elizabeth Greene has excavated at Vindolanda since 2002, directing trenches in new areas of the site for several years, and will give a presentation focusing on the recent excavations and new hypotheses from this work. Highlights of the presentation concentrate on the extraordinary finds from the site, including Roman shoes, numerous inscriptions and artifacts, as well as the unparalleled corpus of writing tablets (letters and military records), to reveal what life was like on the edge of the Roman empire and how the site has changed many accepted views of life in the Roman army.
TUESDAY, February 7, 2023
“Exploring the Lives of Nonhuman Beings in the Past: Insights on Animal Roles in Practice, Belief, and Sacrifice among the Moche of 1st Millennium CE Peru”
Dr. Aleksa Alaica
Department of Anthropology, UBC
Time: 7:30 PM Location: UBC-Vancouver Buchanan A 202
Archaeology is focused on cultural practices of past groups, with the central focus being on humans. We often forget though that animals are essential agents in our everyday lives, whether they be for food, labour, or companionship. This talk focuses on the Moche (200-900 CE) depiction and use of animals who dominated coastal river valleys of northern Peru. Their vivid and extensive iconographic record often represents animals in their own natural events, as food offerings, sacrifices and even anthropomorphized figures involved in elite activities. In tandem with this visual record, Moche archaeological contexts yield abundant animal bone remains that provides us with insights on their lived experiences and depositional histories. Focusing on the site of Huaca Colorada (600-900 CE), I discuss some of the iconographic and zooarchaeological patterns attesting to the way that people were drawn to specific species for their predatory behaviour, while in other instances cared for animals known to original from non-local regions. I argue that the nuanced experiences in the lives of nonhuman beings were valued and shaped human interactions with them and with each other. Thus, these life histories are powerful proxies for human practices and beliefs that incorporated nonhuman beings in their meals, their ceremonies and as sacrifices.
**Please also join us for a virtual lecture on March 23rd 2023 organized by the Archaeological Institute of America with Dr. David Carballo: "The Collision of Worlds: An Archaeological Perspective on the Spanish Invasion of Aztec Mexico". This lecture will take place online at 7 pm on March 23, 2023. Go to the AIA website to register: https://www.archaeological.org/programs/public/lectures/archaeologyhour/.
Saturday, October 15th, 2022
“Reports from the Field”
Caroline Barnes, UBC | Safia Boutaleb, UBC | Heidi Collie, UBC | Goran Sanev, SFU | Christopher Young, UBC
Time: 1:30 PM Location: ONLINE - CLICK HERE
Celebrate International Archaeology Day on October 15th by hearing tales from students in the trenches this past summer. Graduate and undergraduate students from UBC and SFU who worked in Italy, Cyprus, Israel, and Macedonia this past summer will gather to tell us what life is like "in the field". For those of you interested in what it's like to dig, or who are simply yearning to hear tales from far-flung places, please join us on Zoom (Register here) to learn what Indiana Jones could never teach you.
TUESDAY, September 13, 2022
“The Appropriation of Ancestors and the Post-Mycenaean Tholos Tombs of Thessaly”
Dr. Gino Canlas
Database of Religious History, UBC
Time: 7:30 PM Location: UBC-Vancouver Buchanan A 202
*Please note that our Annual General Meeting will be held at 7:00pm in the same location
Although in most of the Greek world, tholos tombs ceased to be constructed after the Mycenaean period, they continued to be built in Thessaly until the 5th century BC. This lecture will discuss two separate traditions in post-Mycenaean tholos tombs in Thessaly. The first will deal with tholos tombs from the Early Iron Age, during which Thessaly had the highest concentration of tholos tombs in the Greek world. Although smaller and of poorer material than their predecessors, the EIA tholos tombs of Thessaly show deliberate reference to Mycenaean tombs. The second will consider the tholos tombs from elite cemeteries in the Archaic and Classical periods. Although referring to Mycenaean prototypes, these later tombs show an architectural (and perhaps social) disconnect from EIA tombs. Contextualized in the broader appropriation of heroic ancestors evident in the region’s sanctuaries, mythologies, and genealogies, it becomes evident that the post-Mycenaean tholos tombs of Thessaly were potent symbols in the competitions, cooperations, and contradictions behind complex identity-formation processes.
TUESDAY, October 4, 2022
“A 12th Century BCE Climate Crisis and Community Resilience in Ancient Athens”
Dr. Trevor Van Damme
Department of Greek and Roman Studies, University of Victoria
Time: 7:30pm Location: UBC-Vancouver Buchanan A 202
There is growing scientific consensus that the 12th century BCE witnessed a prolonged period of dry conditions particularly in the northeastern part of the Mediterranean basin. This paper presents new evidence from an ongoing reinvestigation of the stratigraphy and finds from the Mycenaean Fountain on the North Slope of the Athenian Acropolis excavated in 1937 and 1938 by the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Built as a protected water source in the 13th century BCE, the Mycenaean Fountain was abandoned and filled with rubbish early in the 12th century BCE. Oscar Broneer, the director of the excavation, proposed in his 1939 publication of their findings that the abandonment of the well was due to the collapse of the stairwell built to access it, likely as the result of an earthquake. Based on a new study of the filling of the Mycenaean Fountain, I argue instead that the abandonment of the Mycenaean Fountain is part of a broader pattern of well closures observed throughout Athens at this time. I propose that these closures are linked to a sudden drop in the water table which ultimately led to a considerable contraction in the overall size of the settlement as the population migrated elsewhere. One likely candidate for where they went is argued to be a settlement associated with the cemetery at Perati, which rapidly grew during the same period.
**WEDNESDAY, November 2 2022
“Instructing the Eye: Museum Catalogues and the Archaeological Imaginary in Early 20th-Century Tunisia”
Dr. Daniel Sherman
Department of Art and Art History, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Co-Sponsored with the Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies, UBC
Time: 7:30pm Location: UBC-Vancouver Buchanan A 202
Abstract coming soon
TUESDAY, November 22, 2022
“The Late Roman Estate of Philippianus: Recent Excavations at Gerace near Enna (Sicily)”
Dr. Roger Wilson
Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies, UBC
Time: 7:30 PM Location: UBC-Vancouver Buchanan A 202
Gerace is a Roman estate centre in the heart of Sicily which the speaker has been excavating since 2013. A substantial estate granary, built c. 300 CE but violently destroyed, probably by earthquake, was succeeded by a compact Roman villa in the late fourth century, which had been equipped with some mosaic pavements but appears unfinished. Ubiquitous tile-stamps recording the name of Philippianus indicate the identity of the estate owner at that time. Further up the hill a substantial freestanding bath-house, built perhaps c. 380 CE, was decorated with polychrome marble on the walls and geometric mosaics on the floors; but this structure was systematically stripped of its building materials (and the floors smashed) when the baths were decommissioned in the fifth century – an interesting example of Roman recycling. The one room with an intact floor was the cold room, which had a unique mosaic design, and an inscription around all four sides, uniquely so in the Roman Empire. Among other things it gives us the property’s name – the praedia Philippianorum, ‘the estate of the Philippiani’. The bath-house was badly damaged in a further earthquake in the second half of the fifth century, and after a brief attempt to repair it the building was abandoned and filled in; the backfill contained many interesting finds, including a series of chamber pots. The number of horse bones found at the site is greater than at any Roman site in the Mediterranean: so could there have been a stud farm at Gerace, raising ponies for the circuses of the Roman world?
