Archaeology News and Announcements

from Brown University's Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World

Author: JIAAW (Page 4 of 51)

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Society of Black Archaeologists | SBA Elections – Deadline December 22, 2023

SBA logo

We are excited to announce the opening of elections for the Society of Black Archaeologists! 

Your vote is essential, as it plays a vital role in shaping the future of our community.

Your vote is crucial in determining the future direction of our organization.

Your vote ensures that your voice is heard in selecting leaders who represent your values and priorities.

Every vote matters, and your participation strengthens the democratic process within our community.

Vote here:Link ]


To ensure a smooth and secure voting process, please follow these instructions:

  • Take the time to familiarize yourself with the candidates running for each position.
  • Read their personal statements and gain a better understanding of their proposed initiatives and plans.
  • Make an informed decision based on your assessment of each candidate.
  • Click on the circle next to your chosen candidate for each position.
  • If you would like to cast a vote for an SBA member not listed, you may write in an SBA member by selecting the circle next to the word “other”.
  • Before finalizing your vote, review your selections.
  • Confirm your vote by clicking submit.
  • Once confirmed, your choices are submitted and cannot be changed.

The voting period ends on December 22nd, 2023.

Ensure you cast your vote before the deadline to have your voice heard.

Link to SBA Ballot : [ Link ]

Thank you for your active participation in the democratic process of the Society of Black Archaeologists!

If you have any further questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to the nominations committee at admin@societyofblackarchaeologists.com

A Gift of Geology: A Virtual Book Talk on December 13, 2023

Gift of Geology flier

Register for the book discussion

 

Watch live-streaming on Facebook

 

A Gift of Geology

Ancient Egyptian Landscapes and Monuments

By Colin D. ReaderBook cover

While much is known about Egypt’s towering pyramids, mighty obelisks, and extraordinary works of art, less is known about the role played by Egypt’s geological history in the formation of pharaonic culture’s artistic and architectural legacy. The fertile soils that lined the Nile Valley meant that the people of Egypt were able to live well off the land. Yet what allowed ancient Egypt to stand apart from other early civilizations was its access to the vast range of natural resources that lay beyond the Nile floodplain.

In this engagingly written book, Colin Reader invites readers to explore the influence of geology and landscape on the development of the cultures of ancient Egypt. After describing today’s Egyptian landscape and introducing key elements of the ancient Egyptian worldview, he provides a basic geological toolkit to address issues such as geological time and major earth-forming processes. The developments that gave the geology of Egypt its distinct character are explored, including the uplifting of mountains along the Red Sea coast, the evolution of the Nile river, and the formation of the vast desert areas beyond the Nile Valley. As the story unfolds, elements of Egypt’s archaeology are introduced, together with discussions of mining and quarrying, construction in stone, and the ways in which the country’s rich geological heritage allowed the culture of ancient Egypt to evolve.

Paperback | 9781649032188

74 b&w and 26 color illus.

240 pp.| Jan 2023

EG: AUC Bookstores

US: Indiepubs.com

UK: Bookshop.org

Praise for A Gift of Geology

“Fascinating . . . hugely ambitious . . . .This is a book that should be on every Egyptologist’s bookshelf.”

—Ancient Egypt Magazine

“[A] travel-sized masterclass. . . . The breadth of this volume makes it perfect for anyone wanting to ground their knowledge of ancient Egypt into a geographic reality, and it should be essential reading for undergraduates in the field.”—Egyptian Archeology

“A fascinating overview of the Egyptian landscape and the long geological processes that gave rise to one of the world’s most unique civilizations.”—The Explorers Journal

“[A] congenial . . . easy read. . . . a delight.”—Litro Magazine

“An authoritative, valuable, accessible introduction to Egypt’s geology and its influence on understanding ancient Pharaonic Egyptian culture. Highly recommended. Lower–and upper–division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers.”—CHOICE

About the author

Author photoColin D. Reader is a professional engineering geologist who has long been fascinated by the monuments of ancient Egypt. He has visited Egypt on countless occasions to explore the country’s landscape, undertaking geological mapping at Saqqara, led tours into the Eastern and Western Deserts, and has contributed to several TV documentaries looking at aspects of construction in ancient Egypt.

FREE WEBINAR: Applying to Graduate School in Archaeology (Nov. 8, 2023)

Applying to Graduate School in Archaeology

November 8, 2023
4-5pm (Eastern US time)

Register Online

This webinar is intended for anyone who has ever considered, or might consider, graduate school. It is free and open to all members of the public. We hope this can be an opportunity for curious individuals of all ages, all levels of experience (or inexperience), and all academic backgrounds to find out more about graduate school in archaeology.

This is an overview of the graduate application process by the faculty members who review applications for Brown University’s doctoral program in Archaeology and the Ancient World. These professors will tell you exactly what they look for in applications, how to write a personal statement, who to ask for letters of recommendation, what courses to take to prepare yourself for graduate school, and what jobs a graduate education in archaeology prepares you for. It’s an insider’s view of the process that offers specific advice on applying to our graduate program.

Registration Required:

Watch Past Webinar Videos:

For more on applying to our doctoral program, please see our FAQ’s at brown.edu/go/archFAQs.

CONFERENCE: Material Histories and Environmental Politics, Past and Present (Brown University, Nov. 3-4, 2023)

Material Histories and Environmental Politics, Past and Present

Friday, November 3 – Saturday, November 4, 2023
Brown University, Providence, RI

Full schedule: go.brown.edu/environmentalpast

Material Histories and Environmental Politics, Past and PresentThis two day conference, organized by Amanda Gaggioli (University of Memphis) and Raymond Hunter (Brown University), brings together scholars of the environmental past to discuss how contemporary environmental crises focus the political orientation of their scholarship.

We live in an age of intertwined environmental crises. Ongoing biodiversity loss, global heating, sea level rise, pollution of air and water, geophysical conditions, and mass extinction — crises often grouped together under the term ‘Anthropocene ’— creates an urgency for environmental studies. Despite criticisms in its definition (both when and what the Anthropocene is), the environmental crises for which the term has become shorthand have increasingly focused debate in the social sciences and humanities as in other disciplines. Confronting these crises poses political, theoretical, and methodological challenges as scholars must contend with human-environment relationships assembled at ever expanding chronological and geographic scales.

Scholars of the past have responded to these challenges in different ways. For some, the urgency to attend to contemporary environmental crises prompts a shift towards searching for resolution in ‘lessons from the past.’ Others turn to the environmental past as a means of calibrating theoretical and political engagements in the present; for instance, by drawing on historical data to challenge the ways in which concepts like the Anthropocene recast a false and treacherous ontology of humans as apart from, separate to, and outside of ‘nature’, or advocating radical ethics that foreground the unruliness of uniquely modern objects and materials, such as plastics and pesticides. Still others draw on Indigenous and non-Western ontologies and advocate political (re)alignments that approach the living world holistically, understanding bios and geos alike as living entities. Others draw out the historical connections between environmental crises and ongoing injustices, especially anti-Indigenous and anti-Black violences, to demand that climate politics attend to inequalities along intersections of race, class, gender, coloniality, and latitude.

This conference aims to further these critical approaches by querying how researchers who focus on the material traces of the human-environmental past can engage the political valences of contemporary and future crises in their scholarship. It also explores theoretical and methodological challenges posed by contemporary environmental crises, especially questions of scale posed by globalizing ecological thought. How can studies of the environmental past contend with the political urgencies, theoretical quandaries, and methodological challenges engendered by contemporary crises? How do these crises re-focus and re-calibrate the ways in which researchers should approach the environmental past?

The conference will provide a unique opportunity for scholars to engage in dialogue and collaboration, while reorienting studies of the environmental past to attend to the political exigencies of ongoing environmental crises at scales that portend a new geological age.

Free and open to the public. No RSVP or registration required.

Co-Sponsored by Brown University’s Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World and by the Institute at Brown University for Environment and Society.

More details at go.brown.edu/environmentalpast

Student Fieldwork: Highlights, Information and Advice — and Maybe a Few Cautionary Tales 11/6

Join us Wednesday, November 6 at 6:00 PM EST for an informal conversation and Q&A with Archaeology concentrators, the DigDUG, and Professor Felipe Rojas.
Student Fieldwork 2022

Summer School in Tuscany

The “la Biagiola” International School of Archaeology, in Sovana di Sorano (GR) Tuscany, Italy is a special program which provides students with first-hand experiences from the fieldwork activities to the communication to the public. We provide the exciting opportunity to learn how to study a multi-layered site.

Students will take part in the exploration of an ancient site in Tuscany, working alongside expert archaeologists and others foreign students. The school also provide a complete formation in standing building archaeology, survey, and medieval castles studies, and, last but not least, students will be involved in the creation of a popularization documentary. This program is offered in collaboration with the Cultural Heritage Office of Tuscany, the regional authority that manages archaeological sites and monuments.

The School is taking place from 15/July to 26/August/2019.
FIRST SUMMER SHIFT: from July 15 to August 5
SECOND SUMMER SHIFT: from August 6 to August 26

The school will focus on the evolution of an Etruscan villa through centuries: from the early Roman period to the Langobard occupation, up to the Post-Medieval rural settlement. A research applied on a multilayered site with a special focus on archaeological method.

The school will provide field and lab activities, lectures and cultural trip. Sovana’s surroundings are fabulous and very rich in archaeological sites and cultural event.

For further information you can have a look at the dossier below, or at www.culturaterritorio.org, or contact presidente@culturaterritorio.org.

Fieldwork Opportunity: Field Anthropology School with Maynooth University

Our Field Anthropology summer school program (see here), in partnership with Maynooth University and the Irish National Heritage Park, is still open for enrolment until April 12th 2019.
This 2 week program will run from June 23rd to July 6th, 2019 and carries 7.5 ECTS (3-4 US semester credits) awarded by Maynooth University.
Scholarships, through Maynooth University, are available to students who represent diverse and under-represented communities, deadline March 15th 2019.
The program will be taught from the site of Carrick Castle (and settlement), the first Norman Castle in Ireland, constructed in 1169. The castle site is located within the stunning confines of the Irish National Heritage Park in Wexford, southeast Ireland, a 40-acre parkland featuring the largest open air museum in Ireland. The program teaches students how to excavate and critically assess an archaeological site within its landscape, using a range of methods that include archaeological survey, archaeological excavation and post-excavation analysis.
The program is particularly suitable for any students with an interest in archaeology, history, anthropology, medieval studies – or just students looking for a unique study abroad experience in general.
See the program brochure here:Anthropology Field School Brochure 2019
Contact Mairead Stobie, Program Administrator, by email with any questions.

Fieldwork Opportunity: Apolline Project – Pompeii, the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius, and the Apennines

sca12Call for participants – Fieldwork opportunities in Pompeii, the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius, and the Apennines.
The Apolline Project is an open research network, which sheds light on the hitherto neglected past of the area to the north of Mt. Vesuvius, in the Bay of Naples, and the Apennines. The project has run actively since 2004 and has several components, with current major work focusing on the Suburban Baths of Pompeii, a post-79 Roman villa with baths on the northern slope of Mt. Vesuvius, the Roman city of Aeclanum, along the Via Appia in inland Campania, and the Imperial Villa of the Pausilypon. The results gained so far have been presented worldwide and published in an edited book and in several articles, which you can download (http://www.apollineproject.org/academics/publications.html).
The Apolline Project is now accepting applications for its Summer 2019 lab and field activities, which can be divided into: dig at the ancient city of Aeclanum, boot camp of human osteology, study of the pottery assemblages from the Suburban Baths in Pompeii and the late antique villa in Pollena Trocchia, dig at the Imperial Villa of the Pausilypon, and courses on geophysics and restoration!
For further information, including course descriptions and fieldwork opportunities, visit: http://www.apollineproject.org/dig.html.

Funding & Fellowships: Lemmermann Foundation Fellowship for study in Rome

The Lemmermann Foundation awards a limited number of fellowships to master’s students and doctoral candidates in order to support their cost of research in the classical studies and humanities. Topic of research must be related to Rome and the Roman culture of any period, from the Pre-Roman period to the present day time.
Applicants must provide evidence for their need to study and carry out research in Rome, Italy.

Eligibility requirements:
Applicants must:
1. be enrolled in a recognized University program
2. have a basic knowledge of the Italian language
3. be 35 years of age or younger at application deadline

Deadline:
Deadline for sending applications is March 31, 2019.

Stipend:
The monthly amount is established in 750 euro.

Applicants are requested to send their original application to the Lemmermann Foundation’s office in Rome by March 31, 2019 (postmark deadline) and include the electronic application number that is obtained upon completion of the on-line application form.

Legal Disclaimer:

  • The Foundation is unable to return any documents sent by the applicants. Please do NOT send any original documents.
  • Applicants who are resident in Lazio are excluded from the award; however, students from Lazio with outstanding proposals can be awarded with a una-tantum grant of research of 500 euro.
  • At its own discretion, the Lemmermann Foundation’s scientific committee will select award winning students upon the basis of their credentials and potential contributions to the scientific community. All committee’s decisions are final.
  • Recipients must return the signed contract within 2 months of its reception.
  • After 12 months have passed without any communication from the recipient, the scholarship will be revoked for all legal purposes.

Applications must be sent by March 31, 2019 to:
Fondazione Lemmermann
c/o Studio Associato Romanelli
via Cosseria 5 00192 Rome – ITALY
For more information  visit http://www.lemmermann-foundation.org/

Fieldwork Opportunity: Archaeology and Geophysics (GPR) Field School in Transylvania (Romania)

We are continuing to make great strides into a new understanding of the development of the Roman frontier populations. Dacia (i.e. modern historical Transylvania) was, arguably, the most important frontier of the Roman Empire: its gold and silver sustained the collapsing imperial economy for two centuries. However, the “imperial idea” on the Eastern European Provincial frontier was more complex than Rome ever expected it… and it even outlasted the idea of Rome itself. Local Roman Provincial realities, born out of economic, cultural, social and political creolization, constant and dynamic negotiation of power, and shifting populations, have outlived the ideological centers that have claimed historical ownership of these regions, creating their own distinct expressions of identity.
Our programs offer a very extensive approach to the anthropology and archaeology of Roman frontier environments, through field work, laboratory analysis and lectures. Our participants will be able to experience several field approaches, ranging from Classical excavation, anthropological site exploration, traditional STP (shovel test pit), geochemical (phosphate analysis) and geophysical (GPR) survey. Our programs provide an anthropological and scientifically integrated approach to a Classical site, in a very complex environment, in a region fundamentally important to our understanding of European genesis.
Our field archaeological and geophysical programs:
Roman Villa And Settlement Excavation and Survey – Identity and Wealth on the Roman Frontier
Location: Rapolt, Hunedoara County, Transylvania – Romania
Dates:
Session 1: June 9 – June 29, 2019
Session 2: June 30 – July 20, 2019
Team Size: 15-20 participants per session
E-mail: archaeology@archaeotek.org
Description: The integrated results of our various field techniques have yielded extraordinary results: a rural built space of almost one hectare, with massive fortification walls decorated with exterior frescoes, richly built two stories buildings, containing exceptional artifacts (well preserved bronze statues, jewelry, pristine condition coins, writing implements, etc.). Our target excavation, the central building of the “villa” has already presented us with a very complex and surprising occupation sequence and practices. We will continue to explore the way identity is built and negotiated in a very dynamic and rich frontier environment, as well as the development of a “creole” Roman landscape.
Cost: US$ 1395 per session ( includes program fees, lectures, equipment, room and board – see flyer for details; ; not included: travel to and from Rapolt, medical insurance) ).
Web Site: https://www.archaeotek-archaeology.org/roman-villa-excavation

Application Form: https://www.archaeotek-archaeology.org/application-excavation-and-gpr
Applied Field Geophysics Workshop – Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) Applications
Location: Southern Transylvania (Deva region, Hunedoara County), Romania
Workshop Dates:
Session 1: (FULL)
Session 2: June 2 – June 9, 2019
Session 3: June 9 – June 16, 2019
Session 4: June 16 – June 23, 2019
Session 5: (FULL)
Team Size: 3 participants
E-mail: archaeology@archaeotek.org
Description: The workshop is designed as an intensive 6-day laboratory and field school in all aspects of ground penetrating radar investigation, from theoretical principles to survey design, field preparation, data collection, in depth analysis, report writing, and podium presentation. Our participants, in 2-3 person teams, will learn the theory and methods involved in GPR exploration in various environments. Our participants will explore a very complex archaeological environment, conducting original research, in a multilayered, target rich environment, ranging in human occupation from pre-Roman to modern periods. They will learn how to manipulate, optimize and analyze in-depth the data collected using SenSoft’s EKKO Project GPR analytical software package, in order to generate professional reports as well as present the research and its results in a scientific manner, in a podium presentation.
Program Fee: US$1085 per session (it includes full room and board as described on the project web page, lectures, training, all field gear, access to analytical software, local transportation to the sites when needed; not included: travel to and from Romania, medical insurance)
Web Site: https://www.archaeotek-archaeology.org/gpr-exploration

Application Form: https://www.archaeotek-archaeology.org/application-excavation-and-gpr
Our programs are available for both credit students and non-credit participants.

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