Pizza Talk

Speaker: Dr. René Vellanoweth, Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, California State University, Los Angeles

In 1835, as part of broader efforts to missionize California Indians, the native people of San Nicolas Island were removed and sent to live on the mainland. This essentially marked the end of a 10,000-year history of native occupation and sealed the fate of all Nicoleño on the island except for one person who lived alone for 18 years.

Speakers: Dr. James Snead, California State University, Northridge; Austin Ringelstein, National Park Service

Archaeologists working within they landscape paradigm have increasingly begun directing attention toward the subject of movement. Recent  work has underlined the centrality of "motion" to the human experience, creating a body of  theoretical and empirical literature that has wide application. This presentation will discuss new fieldwork on Yap, in the Eastern Caroline islands of Micronesia.

Speaker: Dr. Meredith Cohen, UCLA Art History

Speaker: Dr. Stephanie Pearson, Institut für Archäologie at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany

In the later first century BC, Egyptian material sweeps into Roman houses on an unprecedented scale.

Speaker: Dr. Carlo Severi, Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale, EHESS, Paris

For linguists, anthropologists and archaeologists, the emblematic image always and everywhere preceded the appearance of the sign. This myth of a figurative language composed by icons, that form the opposite figure of writing, has deeply influenced Western tradition. In my talk, I show that the logic of Native American Indian mnemonics (pictographs, khipus) cannot be understood from the ethnocentric question of the comparison with writing, but requires a truly comparative anthropology.

Speaker: Dr. Fumie Iizuka, University of Arizona

Monagrillo (ca. 4500-3200 14C BP) is the earliest ceramic of Central America. It is found in Central Panama in shell-bearing middens of the Pacific coast, rockshelters of the Pacific plains, foothills, and the cordilleras, and the Caribbean slopes. People had been farming for thousands of years when they adopted pottery. Population was significantly increasing.

Speaker: Dr. Anneke Janzen, Postdoctoral Scholar, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

Specialized pastoralism emerged in Kenya around 3000 years ago and has adapted with changes in the social and ecological landscape to this day. My dissertation work used stable isotope analysis to explore the mobility and herd management strategies of early pastoralists in south-central Kenya 3000 to 1200 years ago, before the appearance of agriculture in the region.

Speaker: Dr. Alan Farahani, Postdoctoral Scholar, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

This talk is a summary of the research conducted by Postdoctoral Scholar Alan Farahani at the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology over the past two years. His research has been focused on the long-term social and environmental consequences of agricultural production throughout the world using the method of paleoethnobotany, which is the study of archaeological plant remains to understand past human cultures.

Speaker: David Scott, Professor, UCLA Department of Art History and UCLA/Getty Conservation Program

Speaker: Alessia Amenta, Vatican Museums

The Vatican Coffin Project gathers an international team of scholars who are divided into three groups with three different areas of expertise: Egyptology, Diagnostic and Conservation. The project has three objectives: the study of the construction and painting techniques of coffins, the identification of workshop patterns and the understanding of the 'packaging' of a coffin. Our work is also aimed at elaborating a protocol for the conservation of the artifacts.