Paul J. Kosmin is a Professor in the Department of the Classics at Harvard University. His research addresses the political, cultural, and intellectual history of the ancient Greek world, and he has taught and published on historical questions from the archaic period in the seventh century BCE down to the total Roman dominance of the east Mediterranean at the turn of the eras. The core of his work to date has focused on the Hellenistic east, that is, on the political landscape that extended from the Greek mainland to India and Central Asia in the last three centuries BCE.

His research is focused on two broad historical themes. First, the relationship between empires and systems of knowledge and practice, and, second, the interaction between the Greek world and its Near Eastern neighbors. He has begun a third big research project, provisionally titled The Ancient Shore. This will be a cultural history of the coastline in Greek antiquity, explored as a site of social processes, as a dynamic of claim-making and territorialization, and as an inducement to thinking, wonder, and religious experience.

The Archaeology DigDUG is serving up cookies and hot chocolate in the atrium of the Joukowsky Institute from 3 to 5 PM. Please stop by and take a break from studying or writing! 

tiny—a gallery of miniature might and meaning

artifacts from the collections of ARCH 0303 students

with a screening of nina katchadourian’s

“the recarcassing ceremony”

Students in the Brown University class, tiny (ARCH 0303), which is devoted to the archaeology of miniaturization, are curating a gallery exhibition at Rhode Island Hall. 

The artist Nina Katchadourian has kindly granted us permission to screen her film, “The Recarcassing Ceremony”, which is a powerful reflection of many of the themes discussed in class, including the cross-cultural role of miniatures as capsules of memory, the blurry lines between play and ritual among both children and adults, and how the scaling of anthropomorphic figurines can serve to trouble the divide between (animate) mind and (inanimate) matter.  

The opening will take place on Thursday, December 5, in Rhode Island Hall from 6 to 8pm.

Aviva Cormier, Postdoctoral Fellow in International Humanities with the Department of Anthropology at Brown University, will be discussing her research in an informal talk. Pizza and soda will be provided, or feel free to bring a lunch.

For a full list of Archaeology Brown Bag talks, please visit http://blogs.brown.edu/archaeology/2019/08/19/brown-bag-talks-for-fall-2019/

Join us for a book launch party to celebrate the publication of Shiyanthi Thavapalan’s The Meaning of Color in Ancient Mesopotamia (Brill, 2019)!

In The Meaning of Color in Ancient Mesopotamia, Shiyanthi Thavapalan offers the first in-depth study of the words and expressions for colors in the Akkadian language (c. 2500-500 BCE). By combining philological analysis with the technical investigation of materials, she debunks the misconception that people in Mesopotamia had a limited sense of color and positions the development of Akkadian color language as a corollary of the history of materials and techniques in the ancient Near East.

Organized by the Department of Egyptology and Assyriology and the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World

Learn to produce technical illustrations! Handle ancient objects close up!
Casual atmosphere, no experience or artistic confidence necessary!

Luca Zavagno is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Bilkent University. His research interests include Byzantine history and archaeology, early Islamic history, and Cypriot and Eastern Mediterranean history from the 6th to the 10th century. Dr. Zavagno is the author of many articles on the early Medieval Mediterranean and his most recent book is Cyprus between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (ca.600-ca.850 A.D.), An Island in Transition (Routledge, June 2017). He is also the co-organizer of the Conference of the Mediterranean Worlds, Associate Scholar of the Mediterranean Seminar, member of the Princeton University FLAME-Framing the early Medieval Coinage and former Visiting professor in Byzantine Art History at the University of Venice.

Watch a video of the lecture here: Luca Zavagno - The Worlds of Byzantine Islands

Join the TrowelBlazers@Brown for a Wikipedia edit-a-thon aimed at improving content on women and other minority or historically marginalized communities in archaeological research. Drop in anytime between 11am and 2pm - no background in archaeology or experience editing Wikipedia is needed! Instruction and resources (and food) will be provided. We recommend that you bring your own laptop if possible and that you create a Wikipedia account ahead of time.

Trowelblazers@Brown is a group of early career researchers from historically underrepresented communities and their allies coming together in solidarity to reflect on experiences in the field and academia and engage in meaningful exchanges related to gender issues and accessibility. This group is striving towards a more intersectional understanding of what it means to be a woman in archaeology and the challenges one may or may not face in doing so.

Kaijun Chen, Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies at Brown University, will be discussing his research in an informal talk. Pizza and soda will be provided, or feel free to bring a lunch.

For a full list of Archaeology Brown Bag talks, please visit http://blogs.brown.edu/archaeology/2019/08/19/brown-bag-talks-for-fall-2019/

Dr. Pablo Vidal is Director of the Anthropology Research Institute at the Universidad Cat’olica de Valencia, Spain and currently a Visiting Fellow at the Yale MacMillan Center Council on Latin American & Iberian Studies. His research focuses on the relationship between people and nature (mountains, nomadic and transhumance people, immaterial heritage, and hiking) and is based in the Mediterranean, especially Corsica, Morocco, southern France, and the Iberian Peninsula.

Watch a video of the lecture here: Pablo Vidal - Mediterranean Transhumance

Laurel Bestock, Associate Professor of Egyptology and Archaeology and the Ancient World and Lutz Klein, Research Associate in Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University’s Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology, will be discussing their research in an informal talk. Pizza and soda will be provided, or feel free to bring a lunch.

For a full list of Archaeology Brown Bag talks, please visit http://blogs.brown.edu/archaeology/2019/08/19/brown-bag-talks-for-fall-2019/

Dr. Ahmad Al-Jallad is the Sofia Chair in Arabic Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Culture at The Ohio State University. Dr. Al-Jallad is a philologist, epigraphist, and historian of language. His work focuses on the languages and writing systems of pre-Islamic Arabia and the ancient Near East. He has authored and edited four books and nearly thirty articles on the early history of Arabic, language classification, North Arabian and Arabic epigraphy, and historical Semitic linguistics.

Co-sponsored by the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, the Center for Middle East Studies, the Program in Early Cultures, and the Department of Egyptology & Assyriology

Watch a video of the lecture here: Ahmad Al-Jallad - Writing and Rock Art in the Black Desert of Northern Jordan

Zachary Dunseth, a postdoctoral fellow in Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University, will be discussing his research in an informal talk. Pizza and soda will be provided, or feel free to bring a lunch.

For a full list of Archaeology Brown Bag talks, please visit http://blogs.brown.edu/archaeology/2019/08/19/brown-bag-talks-for-fall-2019/

Come be part of an active archaeological excavation! Students will be digging on the grounds of Moses Brown School (next to Brown’s athletic center), uncovering the foundations of a 19^th century home and processing artifacts from that household. Stop by (with your family or on your own) any time between 11:00 am and 3:00 pm to see what artifacts students are discovering or even try your hand at digging.

Moses Brown School (Excavation at the corner of Hope St and Lloyd Ave)

See ancient coins from Greece and Rome up close! Touch human and animal bones! Try on a Roman legion helmet! Examine and draw Persian and Roman ceramics, prehistoric tools, precious metals, and other artifacts from thousands of years ago – coached by experts!  And talk with Brown’s archaeologists about their fieldwork all over the world!

Raphael (Rafi) Greenberg, Associate Professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University and Visiting Scholar at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University, will be discussing his research in an informal talk. Pizza and soda will be provided, or feel free to bring a lunch.

For a full list of Archaeology Brown Bag talks, please visit http://blogs.brown.edu/archaeology/2019/08/19/brown-bag-talks-for-fall-2019/

Kathryn A. Catlin, Voss Postdoctoral Research Associate in Environment and Society at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, will be discussing her research in an informal talk. Pizza and soda will be provided, or feel free to bring a lunch.

For a full list of Archaeology Brown Bag talks, please visit http://blogs.brown.edu/archaeology/2019/08/19/brown-bag-talks-for-fall-2019/

Join us for the Joukowksy Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World’s Field Dirt: The Undergraduate Edition, where undergraduate students will discuss their summer fieldwork in a casual forum.

This event is free and open to the public - all are welcome!

Tyler Franconi, a Visiting Assistant Professor of Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University, will be discussing his research in an informal talk. Pizza and soda will be provided, or feel free to bring a lunch.

For a full list of Archaeology Brown Bag talks, please visit http://blogs.brown.edu/archaeology/2019/08/19/brown-bag-talks-for-fall-2019/

Claudia Glatz is a senior lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Glasgow. Her research interests include early states and empires, highland-lowland encounters and relationships, the politics of craft production, settlement and landscape archaeology, food ways and identity, border and frontier dynamics, and cultural heritage and heritage protection in Iraq and the Middle East. Dr. Glatz leads the Qala Shirwana Cultural Heritage Project, aimed at stabilizing and restoring the earthquake damaged 19th century AD baked brick castle called Qala Shirwana, and co-directs the Sirwan Regional Project, an international archaeological research project that has been exploring the Kurdish Region of Iraq since 2013.

Watch a video of the lecture here: Claudia Glatz - Imperial and Other Encounters in a Highland-Lowland Transitional Zone

Rui Gomes Coelho, a postdoctoral fellow in Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University, will be discussing his research in an informal talk. Pizza and soda will be provided, or feel free to bring a lunch.

For a full list of Archaeology Brown Bag talks, please visit http://blogs.brown.edu/archaeology/2019/08/19/brown-bag-talks-for-fall-2019/

Nicola Terrenato is a Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Michigan. He specializes in first millennium BCE Italy, with particular reference to northern Etruria, early Rome and the period of the Roman conquest, and has been involved in fieldwork in and around Rome, Volterra, and Potenza. He currently directs a major new excavation of the Latin city at Gabii, as well as a new investigation of the Sant’Omobono sanctuary in the river harbor of Rome. At Gabii, the NYT-featured discovery of extensive architecture dating to the 4th-3rd centuries BCE has provided an important glimpse into the early stages of Roman monumental construction. Other interests include field survey methods, history of archaeology and especially the role of elite mentality in the formation of cities and empires in the Mediterranean. Taking apart the view of these political abstractions as all-powerful entities, he explores with the help of archaeology the role of specific human groups in political decision-making.

Watch a video of the lecture here: Nicola Terrenato - Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas

Professors Yannis Hamilakis, Candace Rice, Felipe Rojas, Andrew Scherer, and Peter van Dommelen will share the latest news from their archaeological fieldwork in Greece, Italy, Turkey, Jordan, and Mexico.

Free and open to the public. All are welcome.

Transient Matter is a student-organized and curated exhibition of artifacts linked to the migrant and border crossing experience and collected from the island of Lesvos, on the Greek-Turkish Border. It was prepared as part of the course, MGRK1210: A Migration Crisis? Displacement, Materiality, and Experience, taught by Professor Yannis Hamilakis. It asks us to reflect on the physical traces and remnants of border crossing, and invites us to understand the phenomenon paying attention to “small things forgotten”, to life-vests, thermal blankets, prayer mats and other personal objects that migrated and crossed borders together with humans. It addresses the whole assemblage of border crossing and migration, from migrants to volunteers and solidarity networks, and foregrounds both the agony and pain of displacement as well as the resilience, determination and inventiveness of the new nomads of our age.

Transient Matter can be found in spaces on the first, second, and third (mezzanine) floors of Rhode Island Hall and will be on view until Fall 2019.