Congratulations to Porunai Archaeological Museum located in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, India on its recent ribbon cutting! This beautiful new facility, which opened in December 2025,  was established to preserve and present archaeological findings from major ancient sites along the Porunai (Tamiraparani) river basin, including Sivakalai, Adichanallur, and Korkai. These sites represent some of the earliest known cultural and metallurgical traditions in South India.

The museum documents a long technological continuum dating back to approximately BCE 3435, including:

• Evidence of advanced Tin-bronze technology
•  Early iron metallurgy and tools
• Burial traditions and Material culture
• Maritime trade and cultural interactions with West Asia, the Mediterranean, and Southeast Asia

The Porunai Archaeological Museum serves as a centre for heritage preservation, public education, and academic reference, and contributes to broader global discussions on the origins and development of early civilisation and metallurgy.

To read about the project, please go to https://www.deccanherald.com/india/tamil-nadu/tamil-nadu-artefacts-from-oldest-iron-age-site-sivakalai-to-adorn-porunai-museum-in-tirunelveli-3834532

To follow the efforts to unite the Native people of Tirunelveli , Thootukudi & Tenkasi in Chennai, please visit https://www.facebook.com/CVNMNS4U.

Enclosures: In and Out of Worldmaking
Friday May 1, 2026 | 485 Broadway Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Submission Deadline: 11:59 pm EST, Friday, January 16, 2026
Abstract (250-300 words) and Biography (100 words) to harvardvisualchina@gmail.com

Harvard Visual China (HVC) invites submissions to our fourth annual graduate symposium on how images and architecture in Chinese and East Asian art at large construct, sustain, and reimagine worlds, including but not limited to:
-Interplays and tensions between architecture and images (murals, sculptures, etc.) in the making of worlds
-Framing and enclosure: thresholds, niches, city walls, gardens, and other devices of worldmaking · Interactive worldmaking through embodied viewing, ritual movements, and material imaginations
-Cross-cultural and transmedial approaches to worldmaking in art and visual culture shedding light on the relationship between architecture and images

HVC welcomes submissions from graduate students at all stages of study from any area, postdocs, and early career scholars. Speakers will be notified by early February. Presentations will be 20 minutes in length, followed by a Q&A session led by a discussant. If selected, you will be asked to send a 15-page double-spaced paper by early March for the discussant. You may be asked to verify your status and institutional affiliation if selected.

CfP_2026_Harvard_Visual_China_Graduate_Symposium

Ars Libri is pleased to offer for sale the libraries of these distinguished archaeologists and scholars: Professor Daniel Potts, Professor Piotr Steinkeller, Professor Irene Winter, Professor Geoffrey Martin, Professor Dr. Gerhard Fecht, Professor David Mitten, Professor Dr. Hans von Steuben, Professor Clemency Coggins, and Professor William Kelly Simpson. Each library is offered complete. Catalogues of the libraries in PDF format are to be found on their collections page on the Ars Libri website. Their current stock of collections includes libraries on Archaeology, Art, Architecture & Design from the Ancient World to Contemporary Art.

Please email orders@arslibri.com for inquiries and further details.

Read the latest open access articles in Archaeology, potentially published through one of Cambridge’s open access publishing agreements, with highlights including:

• Turning-the-edge, Tranchet, and Social Signalling at Boxgrove, Ceri Shipton, Frederick Foulds, Aaron Rawlinson, Mathieu Leroyer, Nick Ashton and Mark White, Cambridge Archaeological Journal
• The Chinese identity of St Mark’s bronze ‘Lion’ and its place in the history of medieval Venice, Gilberto Artioli, Roberto Ciarla, Ivana Angelini, Valentina Cantone, Antonella Gnutti and Massimo Vidale, Antiquity
• Local Responses to a Fourteenth-Century AD Immigration Event on the Georgia Coast, Brandon T. Ritchison, American Antiquity
• Current Key Intersections between Theoretical and Computational Archaeology, Martin Hinz, Jan Kolář, Monika Baumanova, Julian Laabs, Maria Wunderlich, Margaux Depaermentier, Michael Kempf, Advances in Archaeological Practice
• Eastern European sheath-ends during the Final Bronze Age and the beginning of the Early Iron Age, Danylo Klochko, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society
• Carthaginian bronze coins from a hoard found off the coast of Tunisia, Håkon Roland, Paolo Visonà, Libyan Studies
• Economic Change in the Mediterranean between the Principate and Late Antiquity, Paulina Komar, European Journal of Archaeology

The Archaeological Institute of America’s Outreach and Education Committee invites nominations for the inaugural Archaeological Institute of America Public Engagement Award. This award recognizes the broad and important range of outreach conducted by AIA members.

All current professional, K-12 educator, and Student AIA members are encouraged to self-nominate for this recognition for public engagement conducted during the period from September 2024 to August 2025.

To qualify for this award, self-nominees must have dedicated a minimum of 12 hours to their public engagement work and/or must have participated in three separate public engagements. For an engagement to qualify toward this recognition, it must not be a required part of the AIA member’s professional duties (e.g. if you work professionally as a K-12 educator, your regular class sessions would not count toward this recognition; if you work regularly as a museum educator, the work you do as part of your everyday job would not count toward this recognition).

For the purposes of this recognition, public engagement is defined as outreach and partnerships (virtual and in person) that benefit a range of non-specialist audiences including K-12 classrooms, senior centers, community organizations, museum visitors, library patrons, and other diverse groups of learners.

The deadline for nominations is October 1, 2025. Click here to submit!

Rhode Island Historical Cemetery Awareness & Preservation Weeks (aka Rhode Island Cemetery Weeks) offer dozens of free programs from April 1 through May 31. Programming includes tours, clean-ups, hikes, exhibits, and talks exploring the history, art, ecology, and conservation of the Rhode Island’s historic cemeteries. Rhode Island Cemetery Weeks is organized annually by the Rhode Island Advisory Commission on Historical Cemeteries (RIACHC) and Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission (RIHPHC) in collaboration with many volunteers and community partners.

Programs range from nature walks to hands-on gravestone preservation, with ample opportunities for attendees to get dirty and make a tangible difference. Talks and tours throughout April and May give the state’s graveyards additional cultural context, highlighting the role of faith communities, the family dynasties, and stone carving traditions in Rhode Island. Several events honor the memory of those who served their country in wartime.

Each year hundreds of Rhode Islanders participate in Rhode Island Cemetery Weeks, producing and attending programs across the state. From the smallest graveyards to the largest landscaped garden-cemeteries, the ground is fully covered over eight weeks of events.

The full event calendar and program descriptions are available on the RIACHC website, and new listings are added weekly as more citizen-led events are finalized. The online calendar has the most up-to-date information about times, locations, tour size limits, registration (if required), and other key details.

EVENT CALENDAR

Rhode Island Cemetery Weeks ’25 Press Release

2025 RICW Flyer FINAL

SCALE journal is a new student publication at Brown and RISD devoted to the built environment partnered with RISD Research. SCALE is a place to translate understandings of the built environment between students of different cultural and educational experiences. They are seeking high-quality essays and artworks concerning the built environment between students of different cultural and educational experiences. Please direct all submissions to scale-journal.com.

The deadline to submit is February 16, 2025, at 11:59pm EST. Please do not submit previously published work. Please refer to the web page FAQ and google form for any preliminary questions.