Public Lecture Series 2025-2026

Come join us for fascinating lectures on archaeological topics from all over the world!  Our lectures are held at UBC's Vancouver Campus as indicated below. These lectures are free and open to the public, whether or not you're a member, but we encourage you to join the AIA and support its mission of archaeological education, fieldwork and advocacy.

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*THURSDAY* Sept. 18, 2025

"The Southern Mani Archaeological Project: Fieldwork at the End of the World"

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Dr. Chelsea Gardner

Department of History & Classics, Acadia University​​

Dr. William Parkinson

Curator and Professor of Anthropology, Field Museum, Chicago

Time: 7:30 PM

Location: UBC-Vancouver , Room TBA

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​The Mani peninsula is the literal (geographical) and metaphorical “end of the world”, since it occupies the southernmost point of mainland Greece and the mythical entrance to Hades, the ancient Greek underworld. Mani’s occupation history includes being home to the earliest hominid caves in Greece, the highest density of Byzantine churches, landscapes pockmarked by early modern tower-houses and intergenerational feuding, sanctuaries to the ancient gods, and the location where the Greek War of Independence began. I have been working in Mani since 2012, and this talk will introduce Mani, its liminality, and its storied past through three separate archaeological initiatives: the Diros Project (2012-2015), the CARTography Project (2018-2022), and the first season of the Southern Mani Archaeological Project, a SSHRC-funded survey that began in May 2025.

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TUESDAY, Oct. 28, 2025

“Farming at the Edge of Empire: The Apulum Roman Villa Project”​

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Dr. Matthew McCarty

Dept. of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies, UBC

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Time: 7:30 PM

Location: UBC-Vancouver, Buchanan A103

How does empire shape lives, lands, and labour? Set on the edge of the Roman world, in one of the last regions to be conquered and incorporated into the Roman Empire—and the first to be “abandoned” by the Roman army—a rural villa in central Transylvania offers a rare look at processes of provincialization and deprovincialization. As the first scientifically excavated villa in Roman Dacia, the site offers new understandings of empire, its impacts through time, and its aftermath.

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TUESDAY, Nov. 18, 2025

“The Roman Legion at 'Armageddon'”​

Dr. Mark Letteney

Dept. of History, University of Washington

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Time: 7:30 PM Location: UBC-Vancouver, Buchanan A103

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A Roman legion was stationed at Legio, Israel, from the early second century CE until the beginning of the fourth century, when the Sixth Legion “Ferrata” moved east to confront a growing Sassanian threat. For two hundred years a full-sized legionary castra stood at the southern tip of the Jezreel Valley, controlling movement between Egypt to the south and the Persian frontier to the North and East, and along the way hosting communities of foreign soldiers next to Jews, Samaritans, and Christians in its legionary support village. This talk will offer an overview of the first six seasons of excavation at Legio, and use that new archaeological data to re-contextualize and re-date one of the most influential texts remaining from the ancient Mediterranean: the New Testament book of Revelation.

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TUESDAY, Jan. 20, 2026

“Recent investigations on Ice Age archaeology and paleoenvironments in coastal British Columbia – examining the coast's place in the study of the Peopling of the Americas”

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Dr. Bryn Letham

Dept. of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University

Time: 7:30 PM Location: UBC-Vancouver, Buchanan A104   

While often vested with popular allure and archaeological romanticism, the identification of Ice Age archaeological sites on the Northwest Coast of North America is a methodologically and logistically challenging endeavour. The region remains at the heart of the debate regarding when, and by what route, humans first entered the continent. Despite a widening rejection of the ‘Ice Free Corridor’ hypothesis for the early peopling of North America, and a generally more popular embrace of the ‘Pacific Coastal Route’ hypothesis, it remains that no archaeological site on the Northwest Coast has yet been identified with reliable dates to empirically ‘put the nail in the coffin’ of the debate. In this presentation I will review new evidence that speaks to the environmental conditions and characteristics of the Ice Age landscape of the region that help us understand what the world would have looked like to people living there. We will also explore the current archaeological evidence for late Pleistocene habitation of the coast, and I will present results from new excavations that strive towards identifying the earliest peopling of the region. 

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TUESDAY, Feb. 24, 2026

“Petra's Forgotten Past: Uncovering the Iron Age Foundations of Nabataean Society”

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Dr. Jennifer Ramsay      *AIA Joukowsky Lecturer*

​Department of Anthropology, State University of New York, Brockport

Time: 7:30 PM Location: UBC-Vancouver, Buchanan A202

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Petra was the capital of the Nabataeans, an ancient Arab civilization that flourished in northern Arabia and the southern Levant from the 4th century BCE to the 2nd century CE. The rise of Nabataean culture is crucial because it represents a remarkable transformation from nomadic origins to a sophisticated civilization that controlled key trade routes and demonstrated extraordinary adaptability in a challenging desert environment. This region, especially around Petra, was integrated within the broader Achaemenid provincial infrastructure during the preceding Iron Age, although we lack definitive evidence for the precise administrative structure. As a result, there is a significance gap in our understanding of the origins of the Nabataeans and this period in the prehistory of Jordan in general. The impact of this gap in the historical record is substantial because of region's significance during this period in providing a critical nexus of contact between Mesopotamia, Iran, Egypt, Arabia, and the Mediterranean. The current fieldwork I am carrying out with colleagues is addressing this knowledge gap through targeted surveys of specific sites and site features that have evidence of both Iron Age and Nabatean origins. Specifically, our team is interested in understanding cultural activities such as rituals, funerary practices, agriculture, and economy during the Late Iron Age (800 - 600 BCE) and how these practices evolved or persisted into the Nabataean period (300 BCE - 200 CE). By studying their development, we gain profound insights into cultural synthesis, technological innovation, and the complex geopolitical dynamics of the ancient Near East.

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TUESDAY, Mar. 17, 2026

“Rethinking Early Urban Administrative Practices and Regional Interactions in Greater Mesopotamia: New Insights from Godin Tepe, Western Iran”

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Dr. Rasha Elendari (PhD, University of Toronto)

Time: 7:30 PM Location: UBC-Vancouver Room, Buchanan A104 

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In the late fourth millennium BC, Greater Mesopotamia underwent major transformations marked by the rise of urbanism, expanding regional networks, and increasingly formalized administrative systems. Scholarly attention has long focused on southern Mesopotamian centers such as Uruk and Susa, where these developments were first identified and subsequently recognized at contemporary sites across the region. This emphasis has introduced a southern-centric framework that often interprets parallel developments elsewhere as derivative, leaving indigenous sociopolitical practices and material cultures in regions such as the Iranian Highlands analytically underexplored. Established archaeological interpretations of Godin Tepe, in central western Iran, exemplify this interpretive bias.

The discovery of Southern Mesopotamian-styled artifacts within what excavators termed a defensive ‘Oval Compound’ drew considerable scholarly attention. This complex was believed to have been constructed at the center of a pre-existing local settlement, and since its discovery, Godin has been widely interpreted as hosting a southern Mesopotamian colonial enclave within it.

My re-evaluation of the 1970s excavation archive housed at the Royal Ontario Museum demonstrates that the so-called ‘Oval Wall’ never existed; it represents an amalgamation of wall segments from multiple occupational phases mistakenly combined into a single feature. The architecture, instead, reveals a more extensive and internally coherent complex that extends beyond the presumed oval and aligns closely with Iranian Highland building traditions.

This reinterpretation undermines colonial models that relied on the ‘Oval Wall’ to argue for a defensible Uruk/Susa enclave. Instead, the evidence indicates that Godin functioned as an integrated highland hub along long-established overland routes connecting the Iranian Highlands and Mesopotamia. The material culture supports this view, reflecting shared late fourth-millennium traditions that blend with long-standing Iranian Highland cultural elements and technologies with those of Mesopotamian lowlands. This cultural continuity, spanning Late Uruk/Susa II to Proto-Elamite/Susa III, challenges rigid periodization and highlights Godin’s active role in regional transformations of technology and interactions.

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TUESDAY, April 21, 2026

“Ancient Egypt and the Nile”

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Dr. Christine Johnston

Dept. of History, Western Washington University

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Co-sponsored with ARCE Vancouver

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Time: 7:30 PM Location: UBC-Vancouver Room TBA

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Ancient Egyptian society developed around and was dependent on the Nile River. It was the physical and cultural heart of the pharaonic state, playing important roles in transportation and trade, agriculture and subsistence, and belief and ideology. The Nile brought bounty to the people of Egypt through both the resources it held and the rich sediments it deposited across the Nile valley during the annual inundation. These sediments supported the production of agricultural products like grain, while the river environment provided fish and fowl and supported the raising of livestock and the cultivation of plants like flax and papyrus used to make linen and paper. Although the Nile represented an important source of life, it could also be dangerous. It was home to creatures like hippopotami and crocodiles and helped to spread water- and insect-borne parasites and illnesses like malaria. Fluctuations in the annual inundation could also have devastating effects on agriculture, while the migration of the river across the valley altered physical and cultural landscapes. This talk will focus on the relationship between the river and the inhabitants of the Nile Valley in Egypt, including differences in regional environments, the changes that occurred over time, and the impact of the river on the lives and beliefs of the ancient Egyptians.

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