2024-2025 Public
Lecture Program
for the
the local chapter
of the
ARCHAEOLOGICAL
All lectures are co-sponsored by the Toledo Museum of Art.
[last updated 7 August 2024]
1. 6:30 pm, October 11 (Friday), 2024
* * * 3rd
Annual Mohamed El-Shafie
Memorial Lecture on Ancient
Egypt * * *
Speaker: Peter Brand,
Ph.D., Professor of Egyptology at the University of
Memphis (Memphis, TN)
Venue: the Little Theater at the Toledo Museum of Art
2.
6:30 pm, November 8 (Friday), 2024
* * * National AIA Lecturer * * *
Speaker: Nicholas Bartos, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of California at Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA)
Lecture: “Sailing at the Edge of Empire: the Roman Red Sea and Beyond”
Synopsis: New archaeological fieldwork from the edges of the Red Sea and Arabian Sea is revealing the complex cultural entanglements across this dynamic maritime space during the Roman period. Voyages spanning between Roman Egypt and the Indian subcontinent entwined many of the economies of these littoral communities, yet these relationships were also transformed by the sociopolitical circumstances of each participating region. This presentation draws from archaeological material to trace the evolution of maritime networks and cultural exchange across the western Indian Ocean from the reign of Augustus to late antiquity. Close-attention to the spatiality and chronology of these networks reveals the impacts of sociopolitical change across the Roman world, South Arabia, East Africa, and South Asia on the structures and longevity of seaborne contacts.
Venue: the Little Theater at the Toledo Museum of Art
Speaker: Michael Pytlik, Ph.D., Professor of Jewish Studies at Oakland University (Rochester, MI)
Venue: the Little Theater at the Toledo Museum of Art
4. 6:30 pm, January 24 (Friday), 2025
* * * 27th Annual Kurt T. Luckner Memorial Lecture on Ancient Art and Archaeology in Museums * * *
Speaker: Allison Thomason, Ph.D., Professor of History at Southern Illinois University (Edwardsville, IL)
Lecture:
“Sensing
the Past: Sensorial Experiences in
Ancient Mesopotamia”
Synopsis: We are all sensing people, and the basic physical structure of our sensing organs has not changed for many thousands of years. But how did ancient humans perceive and experience sensory stimuli in their environment differently than we do today? Dr. Thomason sets out to explore this topic for the ancient Mesopotamians in particular. The history of the senses and explorations of sensory experiences in the ancient world have been increasingly the focus of scholarly research. Archaeologists, art historians and textual scholars have tried to recreate past sensory environments and experiences by using evidence from images, artifacts, and ancient texts of all kinds. In this 4-dimensional (4D) presentation where the audience can sense along the way, Dr. Thomason, a specialist in ancient Mesopotamian material culture, explores how ancient Mesopotamian perceptions of sensory experiences can be compared to our own modern ones, with sometimes surprising results.
Venue: the Little Theater at the Toledo Museum of Art
Lecture: “Late Classic Queens of the Snake Realm and their Role in Crafting State Politics: A View from Ancient Waka’”
Synopsis: This talk focuses on the symbolic significance of Classic Maya royal queens of the snake realm (Kaan) and their political power which rose prominently during the Late Classic period (~AD 550-900) under the auspices of that regime. Their hypogamous marriages to subordinate vassal polities throughout the southern Maya lowlands created a network of alliances that elevated the snake realm’s hegemony. In consideration of the Indigenous ontological creation principle of gender complementarity as a foundation, the speaker argues the power of these snake Queens was grounded not only in their association with that regime, but as women with the attendant implications of fecundity and reproductive power as central to their political cachet. These power domains, steeped in the potent magic of fertility, were also central to their rulership as conjurers and diviners, with acts of sorcery themselves metaphorically linked to birth and birth work. Orienting her position from the ancient city of Waka’, the speaker reviews the substantial archaeological and epigraphic data surrounding two such queens who ruled during the 6th and 7th centuries, respectively. Evaluation of these lines of evidence permit a keen understanding of their governing strategies, their wielding of sacred power, and how the people they ruled, elevated them as revered ancestresses in memory for generations to follow. This cemented their legacy within Waka’s social and political landscape and beyond.
Venue: the Little Theater at the Toledo Museum of
Art
6. 6:30 pm, March 14 (Friday), 2025
*
* * 11th Annual Dorothy M.
Price Memorial Lecture on
Ancient Art * * *
Lecture: about her research on ancient Greek houses
Synopsis: pending.
7. 6:30 pm, April 18 (Friday), 2025
Speaker: Mary
Elizabeth Ibarrola, Ph.D., Assistant
Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas
(Austin, TX)
Lecture: “Fort Mose Above and Below: Excavations and Climate Change at an African Fort in Spanish Florida”
Synopsis: First
constructed in 1738, Fort Mose was the earliest
legally sanctioned Afro-Diasporic settlement in the
modern United States. Self-liberated Africans escaping
from the British colonies to Florida were ultimately
recognized as free Spanish subjects if they accepted
Catholicism and participated in the defense of St.
Augustine. Fort Mose, manned by these freedom seekers,
was established as the northernmost defensive line for
the city, a critical bulwark against the British and a
position of great vulnerability. In the 1980s,
archaeologists identified the fort’s location and
extensive historical and archaeological research
revealed much about lifeways at Mose. In 2019, the
speaker and her colleagues reopened archaeological
investigations at the site. This talk will share the
history of the fort, but also reflect on the last five
years of work at the site, including the current
research team’s effort to utilize both terrestrial and
underwater methods in the face of rapidly rising sea
levels and continual coastal erosion.
8.
6:30 pm, May 16 (Friday), 2025
Lecture: “Early Wichita Sites and Fortifications in Oklahoma”
Synopsis: Common ideas on early Native American life in the prairie plains of Oklahoma frequently conjure images of mobile Native groups such as the Comanche living in tepees and hunting bison on horseback. Although bison were an essential resource for most people in prehistory, groups such as the Wichita by AD 1000, established permanent villages along rivers and streams throughout the state, growing crops such as corn, beans, and squash as part of their economy. In 1759, Spanish forces from what is now Texas attacked a large Wichita village on the Red River in southern Oklahoma. The Wichita easily repulsed this attack, but Spanish accounts provide our earliest description of a Native fortification in Oklahoma. Archaeological research at this site, now known as Longest, discovered the remains of the fort in the 1960s. Since then research at this site and several others across Oklahoma has revealed evidence that the Wichita began building forts to defend against other Native tribes as early as 1450 or 1500, well before the arrival of Europeans in the area. This presentation discusses current information on how these forts were built and used.
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(phone: 419-530-2193; e-mail:
james.harrell@utoledo.edu)