Pizza Talk

Pizza Talk: "Early Farming Expansions in Mesoamerica and beyond: Macroregional Analysis and Continental Synthesis"

Submitted by mswanson on September 20, 2016 - 4:42pm

Speaker: Dr. Richard Lesure, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

Lesure will report on the work of a team of archaeologists from the UCLA Anthropology Department and Cotsen Institute of Archaeology who are trying to understand the demographic impact of the transition to agriculture at a continental scale. The area of interest is Greater Middle America, roughly from southern Utah (USA) to the Panama Canal. We build on recent studies of the Agricultural Demographic Transition (or ADT) and on efforts to trace expansions by early farmers on scales approaching the continental.

Pizza Talk: "The Last Paintings of Antiquity: Panel Paintings from Roman Egypt at the Getty Villa"

Submitted by mswanson on August 30, 2016 - 10:20am

Speaker: Dr. Mary Louise Hart, Getty Museum

The last several years have seen extensive research and conservation of the Getty Villa’s collection of Romano-Egyptian panel paintings, which contain a good collection of mummy portraits dating from around AD 50 to about AD 220, the in situ portrait of a red-shroud mummy, and a “group” of Isis and Serapis flanking a square portrait of a mortal man (above).

Pizza Talk: "An Early Bronze Age Metallurgical Center at the Central Aegean Coast of Anatolia: New Results from Çukuriçi Höyük, Turkey

Submitted by mswanson on August 15, 2016 - 1:39pm

Speaker: Dr. Barbara Horejs, Director of the Institute for Oriental and European Archaeology, Austrian Academy of Sciences

The excavations of Çukuriçi Höyük at the Aegean coast of Turkey revealed intensive metallurgical activities dating to the Early Bronze Age I period in early 3rd millennium BC. Beyond a high number of metal artefacts, the complete chaîne opératoire of metal production can also be reconstructed based on raw materials, slags, crucibles, a variety of tools and half-finished products.

Pizza Talk: "Soto: 2,300 Years of Evolving Ritual Architecture and Practice at a Monumental Paracas Huaca"

Submitted by mswanson on March 24, 2016 - 9:49am

Speaker: Ben Nigra, PhD Candidate, UCLA

'Paracas’ refers to a polychromatic fine-ware tradition, a canon of architectural elements, a set of specific mortuary practices, and a rich textile tradition associated with Peru's southern coast during the first millennium BCE. Despite decades of research dedicated to Paracas 'art', craft goods and iconography, south coast archaeologists struggle to understand the basic sociopolitical character of Paracas and the social and material conditions that drove its development through time.