This aerial video of the site of Pañamarca in northwestern Peru was taken by drone in summer 2022.

If you’ve traveled to Bulgaria or China and/or appreciate their cultural heritage, your experience and passion can help the U.S. Cultural Property Advisory Committee with their upcoming deliberations. Watch this short video to find out how you can join the AIA to speak up for threatened archaeological sites. Visit https://www.archaeological.org/preserving-bulgaria-and-china/ for letter templates and more information.

Our April 2023 #ArchaeologyAbridged talk features Sara Gonzalez - Associate Professor at the University of Washington and Curator at the Burke Museum. In her talk, "The Science of Storytelling" Gonzalez examines the challenges and opportunities for creating Indigenous archaeologies.

In "With, For, And By: Doing Archaeology In A Grand Ronde Way" Dr. Sara Gonzalez of the University of Washington how the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon makes archaeology work for and in accordance with its heritage values and cultural protocols. This AIA Archaeology Hour lecture was originally recorded on April 18, 2023 and presented by the AIA-Los Angeles County Society as part of AIA National Lecture Program. Learn more at https://www.archaeological.org/programs/public/lectures/ #archaeology

Our March 2023 #ArchaeologyAbridged talk features David Carballo - Boston University Professor of Anthropology, Archaeology, and Latin American Studies and Associate Provost for General Education. In his talk, "Traitors or Native Conquistadors? The Role of Tlaxcala in the Fall of Aztec Mexico" Carballo provides an overview of Tlaxcaltec resistance and resilience both during the Aztec period and early New Spain.

In "Collision of Worlds: An Archaeological Perspective on the Spanish Invasion of Aztec Mexico" Dr. David Carballo of Boston University provides a deep history of the encounter between the Spanish and native peoples in Mexico based in archaeology and material culture. This AIA Archaeology Hour lecture was originally recorded on March 14, 2023 and presented by the AIA-Vancouver Society as part of AIA National Lecture Program. Learn more at https://www.archaeological.org/programs/public/lectures/ #archaeology

Our February 2023 #ArchaeologyAbridged talk features Joan Connelly - classical archaeologist, NYU professor, MacArthur winner, award winning author, and Director of the NYU Yeronisos Island Expedition. In her talk "Why Are Islands Sacred?" Connolly explores islands as a symbol of transformation and their association with the divine in Greek history and myth.

In "A Maritime Small World in Western Cyprus: Yeronisos Island, Maniki Harbor, and Cape Drepanum," Dr. Joan Breton Connelly digs into why vast resources were lavished on a tiny, uninhabited islet off the western shores of Cyprus during the first century BCE. This AIA Archaeology Hour lecture was originally recorded on February 21, 2023 and presented by the AIA-Tucson Society as part of AIA National Lecture Program. Learn more at https://www.archaeological.org/programs/public/lectures/ #archaeology

Society Sunday 2023 - February 5, 2023 Elizabeth A. Murphy presents “Going to Work in the Roman Empire: The Archaeology of Potters and Potting” Professional working lives define our place in society and structure the rhythms of our daily experience—how, then, were such lives lived in the past? In this talk, Elizabeth Murphy, an Assistant Professor of Roman Archaeology in the Department of Classics at Florida State University, will investigate the everyday working lives of ancient craftspeople by venturing into the workshops of a single, common profession—potters. With many hundreds of kilns documented from the Mediterranean, with elaborate trade networks reconstructed from distributed pottery, and with workshops appearing in a range of settings (from cities to rural estates), potters and their ceramic products are arguably the most archaeologically visible craft profession of the ancient world, yet we have no biographical accounts or personal narratives from the period on the lives of these workers. Using the rich archaeological record, she will investigate their workplaces and working lives—from the technologies of production to the rituals and magic of workshops. Elizabeth A. Murphy is an archaeologist specializing in the study of the Mediterranean during the Roman Imperial and Late Antique periods. Her research and teaching concern the social and economic organization of the Roman world; more specifically, her work focuses on the history and archaeology of labor, production, and technology. She is a specialist in material culture studies, with particular emphasis on the artifactual record of crafts production, and her fieldwork projects have spanned the ancient Mediterranean world from Asia Minor to Italy. She currently co-directs the Landscape Archaeology of Southwest Sardinia project (LASS), a diachronic landscape project in the modern region of Sulcis (Sardinia, Italy). With LASS, she is investigating the settlement organization, landscape exploitation, and daily life practices of this rural region during the period of the Roman Empire. Learn more about other Archaeological Institute of America programs like this at archaeological.org #archaeology #romanempire #pottery

Heritage Broadcasting Service, or just plain Heritage, launched on January 1, 2021. Developed by the nonprofit Archaeological Legacy Institute (that’s us, the people who created The Archaeology Channel at archaeologychannel.org), Heritage features more than 250 outstanding film titles from many countries on familiar subjects. As of May 29, 2023, new films include: "America from the Ground Up, Season 2, Episode 6: Go West, 1530 - 1890," "Bewitchment," and "Ben Cropp's Wild Australia, Season 1, Episode 12: Search for Sunken Treasures." Check out these and more, only on Heritage! https://www.heritagetac.org/ #archaeology #heritage #anthropology #TheArchaeologyChannel

Heritage Broadcasting Service, or just plain Heritage, launched on January 1, 2021. Developed by the nonprofit Archaeological Legacy Institute (that’s us, the people who created The Archaeology Channel at archaeologychannel.org), Heritage features more than 250 outstanding film titles from many countries on familiar subjects. As of May 15, 2023, new films include: "Strata: Portraits of Humanity Season 9, Episode 8," "America from the Ground Up, Season 2, Episode 5: An Un-Civil War, 1850 - 1865" and "Ben Cropp's Wild Australia, Season 1, Episode 6: Legends of The South Pacific" Check out these and more, only on Heritage! https://www.heritagetac.org/ #archaeology #heritage #anthropology #TheArchaeologyChannel

Heritage Broadcasting Service, or just plain Heritage, launched on January 1, 2021. Developed by the nonprofit Archaeological Legacy Institute (that’s us, the people who created The Archaeology Channel at archaeologychannel.org), Heritage features more than 250 outstanding film titles from many countries on familiar subjects. As of May 1, 2023, new films include: "America from the Ground Up, Season 2, Episode 4: Paradise Lost, 1492 - 1861" "Grainger's World, Season 1, Episode 36: In The Wake of the Viking" and "Ben Cropp's Wild Australia, Season 1, Episode 5: Islands Lost in Time" Check out these and more, only on Heritage! https://www.heritagetac.org/ #archaeology #heritage #anthropology #TheArchaeologyChannel

Heritage Broadcasting Service, or just plain Heritage, launched on January 1, 2021. Developed by the nonprofit Archaeological Legacy Institute (that’s us, the people who created The Archaeology Channel at archaeologychannel.org), Heritage features more than 250 outstanding film titles from many countries on familiar subjects. As of April 17, 2023, new films include: "Strata: Portraits of Humanity, Season 9, Episode 7" "America from the Ground Up, Season 2, Episode 3: Worlds Collide, 1535 - 1821" and "Grainger's World, Season 1, Episode 35: In the Footsteps of the Pharoahs." Check out these and more, only on Heritage! https://www.heritagetac.org/ #archaeology #heritage #anthropology #TheArchaeologyChannel

Season 9 Episode 8 Strata: Portraits of Humanity, April 2023 (Nick Card interview, “Artifact” film) (1) In a series of new and occasional interviews with archaeologist newsmakers, Rick Pettigrew interviews Nick Card, Keynote Speaker for TAC Film Festival 2023, about excavation results and interpretations of the Neolithic Ness of Brodgar site in Orkney. (2) In this film, a bitter archaeologist uncovers the truth about a mysterious discovery he made with his mentor years ago. “Artifact” is an entirely self-produced narrative short film, shot without a script or crew on the Alvord Desert playa in southeastern Oregon. #heritage #strata #archaeology #anthropology

Heritage Broadcasting Service, or just plain Heritage, launched on January 1, 2021. Developed by the nonprofit Archaeological Legacy Institute (that’s us, the people who created The Archaeology Channel at archaeologychannel.org), Heritage features more than 250 outstanding film titles from many countries on familiar subjects. As of March 27, 2023, new films include 3 new episodes of "America from the Ground Up" -- "Season 1, Episode 6: The War of 1812," "Season 2, Episode 1: The Ancestors, 3500 BC to AD 1589," and "Season 2, Episode 2: New Spain, 1541 - 1750." Check out these and more, only on Heritage! https://www.heritagetac.org/ #archaeology #heritage #anthropology #TheArchaeologyChannel

Heritage Broadcasting Service, or just plain Heritage, launched on January 1, 2021. Developed by the nonprofit Archaeological Legacy Institute (that’s us, the people who created The Archaeology Channel at archaeologychannel.org), Heritage features more than 250 outstanding film titles from many countries on familiar subjects. As of March 15, 2023, new films include "Strata: Portraits of Humanity Season 9, Episode 6", and 2 new episodes of the "America From the Ground Up" : "Season 1, Episode 4: Revolution, 1775 - 1783,” and "Season 1, Episode 5: The Science of Archaeology." Check out these and more, only on Heritage! https://www.heritagetac.org/ #archaeology #heritage #anthropology #TheArchaeologyChannel

Heritage Broadcasting Service, or just plain Heritage, launched on January 1, 2021. Developed by the nonprofit Archaeological Legacy Institute (that’s us, the people who created The Archaeology Channel at archaeologychannel.org), Heritage features more than 250 outstanding film titles from many countries on familiar subjects. As of February 27, 2023, new films include 3 new episodes of the "America From the Ground Up" : “Season 1, Episode 1: America's Lost Civilization, AD 800 - 1600,” “Season 1, Episode 2: The Fur Trade, 1600 - 1750,” and “Season 1, Episode 3: World War America,1750 - 1775.” Check out these and more, only on Heritage! https://www.heritagetac.org/ #archaeology #heritage #anthropology #TheArchaeologyChannel

Heritage Broadcasting Service, or just plain Heritage, launched on January 1, 2021. Developed by the nonprofit Archaeological Legacy Institute (that’s us, the people who created The Archaeology Channel at archaeologychannel.org), Heritage features more than 250 outstanding film titles from many countries on familiar subjects. As of February 15, 2023, new films include : “Strata: Portraits of Humanity Season 9, Episode 5,” “Transfigurations: Reanimating the Past,” and “Sewu Temple and the Tale of a Thousand Temples.” Check out these and more, only on Heritage! https://www.heritagetac.org/ #archaeology #heritage #anthropology #TheArchaeologyChannel

Heritage Broadcasting Service, or just plain Heritage, launched on January 1, 2021. Developed by the nonprofit Archaeological Legacy Institute (that’s us, the people who created The Archaeology Channel at archaeologychannel.org), Heritage features more than 250 outstanding film titles from many countries on familiar subjects. As of January 30, 2023, new films include : “Komi: A Journey Across the Arctic”, and “Samucha: The Last Journey of a Shepherd”. Check out these and more, only on Heritage! https://www.heritagetac.org/ #archaeology #heritage #anthropology #TheArchaeologyChannel

Dr. Bob Cargill invites University of Iowa students to enroll in his course, The Dead Sea Scrolls (CLSA:4452). It is an introduction to the Dead Sea Scrolls in English translation; an examination of the archaeology of the Qumran site; and a survey of the broader sociopolitical context of Second Temple Judaism (6th century BCE to 135 CE), out of which the scrolls emerged.

Join Dr. Bob Cargill for this University of Iowa course, Jerusalem: The Holy City (CLSA:2489), available to University of Iowa students. This course surveys the religious, political, and cultural history of Jerusalem over three millennia as a symbolic focus of three faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The course content will focus on the establishment and transformation of Jerusalem as a sacred space as reflected by literary and archaeological evidence by examining the testimony of artifacts, architecture, and iconography in relation to the written word. Students will receive an overview of the history of Jerusalem from the 12th C. BCE to modern time. Students will gain an understanding of the archaeology of Jerusalem and how it pertains to the interpretation of the city, with a particular eye toward the relevant religious texts from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that contribute to the creation of mythic Jerusalem through event, experience, and tradition. Students will gain an understanding of the present day conflict between Israel and Palestine, including relevant diplomatic texts, and will analyze the points of contention and possible solutions in the conflict. Students will also become familiar with new technologies that can be used to visualize and understand the special relationships between historical sites.

In an excerpt from an earlier video, Dr. Bob Cargill differentiates between the digital scanners, who skillfully made the digital scans of the so-called Mt. Ebal inscription for a recent publication, and Drs. Stripling and Galil, who identify what they believe to be "letters" in these digital scans. The purpose is to recognize that those co-authors of the Heritage Science publication who made the scan ARE NOT the ones claiming to see and identify letters on the inside of the object, and are NOT necessarily endorsing NEITHER the identification of letters NOR the interpretation of the scans, despite the fact that they are all named as co-authors for the entire article. Rather, some of the co-authors are responsible for making the scans, while Drs. Stripling and Galil are responsible for the imagined letters they are claiming, as well as their interpretation and thus the inflated significance of this find.

Enroll today in this University of Iowa course: CLSA:2620 — Sex and the Bible

Matthew Johnson (Northwestern University) Much archaeological theory treats the study of long-term change and the understanding of everyday lived experience as either/or options or competing alternatives. I have been thinking about long-term change in the British Isles over the last millennium, and have become increasingly persuaded that this is a false choice. We cannot understand how and why moments of transformation had a decisive impact without asking how they were played out through everyday actions, and we cannot understand everyday lived experience without setting it within its long-term physical and cultural context. So far, so obvious: but things get more complex when archaeologists engage with concrete moments when changes to the material world seek to engage with and to recast the nature of time and space itself. To put it another way: much of the material record of the early modern world is about the everyday consciousness of ‘revolution’ and of historical change – new things from the New World, the destruction of ancient landscapes through enclosure, the reformation of the parish church, ‘improvement’. This paper will explore how particular understandings of historical change were mediated and argued about through particular objects, buildings, and landscapes.

Ana Amor Santos (Independent Researcher) The Prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula offers several examples of body representation in portable art, particularly from the Neolithic period onwards. To some extent, it is due to the body’s representation that these objects can be regarded as forms of art, and it is also because of it that they are often under a rather circular interpretation umbrella, frequently dismissive of their potential. Furthermore, large-scale and long diachrony studies focusing on these objects are not common, which inhibits the potential of seeing how body representation changes through, and with, time. In contrast, this presentation offers a brief view of the multiple ways in which the human body has been represented in Iberian portable objects, from the 5th to the 1st millennium BCE, showcasing the author’s take on the ‘body worlds’ ontology created in the last decade by Dr John Robb and Dr Oliver Harris. Drawing from our master thesis research, we aim to demonstrate how long diachronic approaches, centred around the representation of the body, and the object(s) in which it occurs, favour and allow for other/new interpretative readings of past social change.

Sadie Watson (Museum of London Archaeology) The archaeological periodisation of London is often framed around the major fires that are known to have occurred across the city, from the Boudican rebellion of AD60/1 to the great Fire of 1666, with many other conflagrations between and since. The major Roman fires are renowned as drivers of change in an acknowledgement of their perceived impact, and we are familiar with using them as chronological divisions. Fires loom large in the consciousness of the public and are embedded in familiar narratives of destruction and recovery. Excavations of the Roman town north of the Thames often encounter fire horizons but even when we don’t these major events still form part of the chronological structure of our reporting. But what actual evidence do we have for the immediate impact of these fires, and how has our understanding of them changed in recent years? How do we account for sites where there is no evidence, and what do they say about our ongoing use of the fires as chronological markers? What can we understand about the impact of these events on the population? Was recovery always inevitable, was it linear, and how did it differ between communities? How do more recent fires fit into this narrative? This paper will take the Roman fires as primary case studies to examine these questions, our responses to the archaeology of the fires, our assumptions over how the recoveries happened, and what we might learn about people from studying fires as major events.

Juan Jesús Padilla-Fernández (University of Salamanca) Pottery is commonly the most abundant material element in the Iron Age archaeological record. For this reason, it has been preferably used to build typological relationships and establish relative chrono-cultural phases. However, thanks to the increasing interest in creating social discourses in Archaeology, pottery assemblages has begun to be understood as material containers of information, directly connected to the people who produce and later consume them. Under this new archaeological perspective, pottery become a basic tool to connect with past communities and open alternative ways to understand their social and identity complexity. Researchers may then be able to understand from the present and on an equal basis the idiosyncrasy of the Iron Age human groups. The aim of this paper is to show how technology is useful for creating action protocols to make potteries speak about the role played by gender identities more than two thousand years ago. In this sense, the anthropological concept of Chaîne Opératoire is a key tool to fulfil this task. Above all, technique is here understood as a practice that is negotiated and formalized in a specific social context. According to this view, the actions and gestures used in each technology depend both on the available resources and on the prevailing technological traditions. It is through these practices that social attributes, group identities, and value judgments about what is considered appropriate, or not, are formulated and transmitted

Lukas Waltenberger & Katharina Rebay-Salisbury (Austrian Archaeological Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences) Lukas Waltenberger (Austrian Archaeological Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences) and Katharina Rebay-Salisbury (Austrian Archaeological Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences) In eastern Central Europe, late Bronze Age burial practices encompass large cremation burials with hundreds of urn burials. Early Iron Age cemeteries first only differ in terms of including iron objects; subsequently, burial practices change to deposition in larger wooden chambers under burial mounds that include multiple burials, including inhumations. Recently, the scientific methods of isotope analysis and osteological sexing advanced, which increased the information that can be extracted from cremated human remains. We analysed 690 urn burials from the necropoleis Franzhausen-Kokoron, Inzersdorf, Statzendorf, and Getzersdorf the Lower Austrian Traisen valley spanning from the beginning of the Urnfield phenomenon in the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age (1300-600 BC). Methods included strontium isotope analysis of 450 human bone samples and comparative environmental samples to identify local and non-local individuals, 100 C14 dates of cremated remains and unburnt meat offerings, osteological age and sex assessment, as well as tooth cementum annulation. TCA allowed age-at-death calculations when no diagnostic elements for age estimations in adults were present. Compared to the gender, age and status analysis based on grave goods, the data obtained in this project significantly advances our knowledge of ritual practices, gendered mobility and social relations during the Late Bronze Age in Austria. Preliminary results indicate different patterns of gendered migration at different sites and in different chronological periods. Non-local individuals at the early Urnfield Culture cemetery of Inzersdorf are primarily sub-adult and female, whereas male mobility increased at the late Urnfield Culture cemetery of Franzhausen-Kokoron. Our case studies at the dawn of the Iron Age provide insights into how identity categories intersect with aspects of mobility.

Raquel Liceras-Garrido (Complutense University of Madrid) Feminist and Gender Archaeology has been revolutionising discourses in Archaeology since the 1970s. Its fundamental principles call not only for the equal access of researchers to archaeological practice independently of their gender but also for creating egalitarian narratives that embrace gender diversity in the past. There are periods and regions in which Feminist and Gender Archaeology has had a broader impact and has contributed to the creation of knowledge about sectors of the population traditionally considered secondary, such as women, no binary genders, or children. Until recently, one of the regions that had remained unaffected by these new narratives was the Northern Iberian Meseta occupied by populations traditionally known as the ‘Celtiberians’ in the Iron Age. These peoples were characterised by violence, shown in the landscape, iconography, artefacts, or the narratives depicted by Greco-Roman authors, amongst others. The material evidence has contributed to producing discourses about these communities focused (almost exclusively) on young male warriors, forgetting the rest of the population. This presentation discusses the textual and material evidence that speaks about other gender identities, especially women, and different age groups, such as children and the elders in the Iberian North Meseta during the Iron Age.

Raquel San Quirico García (University of Alicante) The aim of this contribution is to propose new interpretations on the role of women in the communities of the Iberian Iron Age in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula. A model of social organisation with women as an essential axis in the structures of power is based on the study of several necropolises located in this area. These necropolises cover a wide chronological framework that shows the evolution of this society over the centuries. Thanks to anthropological studies of the bone remains of the tombs, we know of the high presence of women in the necropolis in the central centuries of the first millennium BC. Many of them are also found in prominent places, inaugurating burial spaces that will give order to the necropolis and where new tombs will later be buried. Likewise, the grave goods that accompany them reveal a high social status, often related to productive activities, such as textiles, which were of great importance in the economic structure of these communities. These aspects have led to some authors (Vives-Ferrándiz, Grau, Comino) to propose a model of social organisation based on bilateral descent and on heterarchical structures in which power is shared by various competing groups. Following these theoretical proposals, I am going to deeper into the archaeological interpretation of some of the most important necropolis of the area. The application of this socio-political schemes would also contribute to balance the androcentric view of Iberian society that has long been held and incongruously, given the archaeological evidence.

Meritxell Ferrer (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) & Giulia Saltini Semerari (University of Michigan) At the end of the 2nd Millennium BC local populations from western Sicily and Basilicata started a process of deep transformation which dramatically changed the economic, political, and territorial organization of both regions. From the 8th century BC this process was further catalyzed by the gradual installation of groups of Aegean and/or Levantine immigrants on their coasts, and the subsequent establishment of complex processes of culture contact. While these transformations have been traditionally read only from the perspective of the newcomers, in the last decade these processes have begun to be analysed from the indigenous perspective, restoring the voice of these people in the development of their new social and political dynamics. However, it should be noted that most of these Mediterranean indigenous narratives still maintain an androcentric perspective, in which adult elite men are presented as the only active actors and gender dynamics are poorly considered. To confront these narratives, the aim of this contribution is to analyse and compare changes in gender roles within communal ritual spaces of two different Mediterranean areas -western Sicily and Basilicata- during this long-term process of transformation, as well as to evidence the active participation of certain women in the construction of a sense of community. In doing so, we show how gender -one of the main axes which people lives is structured- was deeply interwoven with the development of new social and political dynamics that affected these two Mediterranean areas.

Sílvia Maciel & Rebeca Blanco-Rotea (University of Minho) The development of Portuguese Iron age Archaeology was entangled with a few important factors, such as the diversity of the Portuguese territory, translated into different forms of occupation of it and, consequently, different landscapes, and the diachronic historical evolution on the territory. This led to a diverse number of archaeological contexts and interpretations, having in common the usage of textual sources, such as Strabo that refers to gender roles in these communities and also the patriarchal and androcentric discourses practiced in Portuguese archaeology since the 19th century. In this context, there were few but important women who focused on the study of the Iron Age in Portugal, a scenario that has changed in the last two decades, with the growing interest of women researchers in the study of this topic and, most recently, the focus in Gender Archaeology. Thus, with this paper we aim to present the analysis of two distinctive aspects within the historiography of Portuguese Iron Age Archaeology, namely the percentage of men and women working in this specific time period through the last four decades, evaluating the weight of each role on the practice of archaeology and, at the same time, we will review the gender discourses that were practiced by these researchers in archaeological interpretation, in order to analyse their evolution and identify current trends. This analysis is much needed in order to revolutionise the way by which the Iron Age communities were and still are perceived, allowing an overall perspective of gender roles.

Alba Abad España (University of Alicante) Contrasting to traditional or historical-cultural studies, the archaeological study of sociocultural patterns of practices, under the rubric of the Archaeology of Everyday life, allow us to investigate the creation of identities and specific gender roles. This framework includes domestic and maintenance activities, understood as tasks carried out fundamentally by women. These practices are, essentially, food preparation, craftworks -mainly textile- and caring the members of the family and community. Motherhood and the socialization of children play an essential role, since through recurrent activities they perpetuate the cultural roles established. Despite their importance, the study of these dynamics and their spatiality have been neglected, mainly due to the androcentric basis of traditional research. However, this proposal offers a good example of how gender and feminism Archaeology can change and amplify the understanding of Iron Age. In this framework, the aim of this paper is the archaeological study of the culinary and alimentation practices of the Iberian Iron Age groups of the Eastern Iberia. Through the study of three well known urban settlements: El Puig d'Alcoi, La Serreta and El Cabeço de Mariola (Alicante Province, Spain), I analyse culinary practices and food preparation in a broad chronological framework between the 5th and 1st centuries BC. The palaeobiological data, culinary pottery and workspaces are studied to discern variations of gender, temporality, identity, ideology and power.