Facing Invisibility is an exhibit by the students in ARCH 1622, “Art, Secrecy, and Invisibility in Ancient Egypt,” curated for the Joukowsky Institute by Professor Laurel Bestock. Ancient Egypt is well known for having produced large and eminently visible art and architecture. But a persistent theme in Egyptian visual culture is that of invisibility, of art made and then deliberately hidden or destroyed. The range of examples is vast and varied, suggesting a complex relationship between visibility and meaning. This exhibit explores how unseeable art intersects with themes of audience, agency, and time in ancient Egypt.

Reflections | Ancient Objects/Modern Issues is an exhibit by the students in ARCH 1500, “Classical Art from Ruins to RISD: Ancient Objects/Modern Issues,” curated for the Joukowsky Institute by Cicek Beeby, Postdoctoral Fellow in Archaeology and the Ancient World. The exhibition presents research and creative commentary on selected objects from the Ancient Greek and Roman Galleries of the RISD Museum. Drawing inspiration from the ancient Mediterranean and connecting past with the present, our artists and contributors pull on threads of personhood, identity, belonging, belief, relationships, communication, power, and privilege.

This weekly series brings together local artists, architects, writers, thinkers, musicians at the Center for Public Humanities to discuss their work with the public, every Thursday at 6:30 pm. A short presentation will be followed by Q&A and a convivial gathering in a fairly intimate setting.

Today: Dietrich Neumann, Director of the JNBC, will speak about the past and future of Public Humanities and the transformative power of public art.

The Conversations Series is co-sponsored by the Herbert H. Goldberger Lectureships Fund.

This webinar is intended for anyone who has ever considered, or might consider, graduate school. It is free and open to all members of the public. We hope this can be an opportunity for curious individuals or all ages, all levels of experience (or inexperience), and all academic backgrounds to find out more about graduate school in archaeology.

This is an overview of the graduate application process by the faculty members who review applications for Brown University’s doctoral program in Archaeology and the Ancient World. These professors will tell you exactly what they look for in applications, how to write a personal statement, who to ask for letters of recommendation, what courses to take to prepare yourself for graduate school, and what jobs a graduate education in archaeology prepares you for. It’s a rare insider’s view of the process, and the best advice you can get about applying to grad school.

For more on applying to our doctoral program, please see our FAQ’s at brown.edu/go/archFAQs.

Registration for the webinar is free: https://brown.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUkcOutrjIiH91r1x0Lm13NXyB0ntolT_uJ

• FAQ’s About Applying to Graduate School in Archaeology

Breton Langendorfer, Visiting Lecturer in Brown University’s History of Art and Architecture, will discuss his research in an informal talk.

Breton Langendorfer is a scholar of the pre-Islamic Middle East, specializing in the art and visual culture of ancient Iraq, Iran, and Central Asia. He received his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019, writing a dissertation which explored the connections between the depiction of city sieges in the Assyrian palace reliefs and mythic conceptualizations of cosmic entropy and dissolution in Mesopotamia. His current research projects focus on the Bronze Age cultures of the Iranian plateau, and the use of ornamental repetition and replication in Achaemenid art. Before arriving at Brown he taught at the University of New Hampshire and Colby-Sawyer College.

For a full list of Archaeology Brown Bag talks, please visit our blog: https://blogs.brown.edu/archaeology/2022/10/03/brownbags-fall22/

What do Brad Pitt, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and countless sports teams have in common? The Trojan War!

Join students and faculty to watch and discuss the movie TROY, and talk more about archaeology, and ancient history, and literature in contemporary society.

Christina Hodge, Associate Director of Brown University’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, will discuss her research in an informal talk.

For a full list of Archaeology Brown Bag talks, please visit our blog:
https://blogs.brown.edu/archa…/2022/10/03/brownbags-fall22

Katina Lillios is an anthropological archaeologist interested in the ways people used material culture, the remains of the dead, and monuments to create, enhance, and challenge sociopolitical difference and inequality. She is intrigued by the ways that social phenomena and cultural values come to be materialized, and how their materiality triggers social action.

Lillios is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Iowa, and holds her degrees from Yale University (Ph.D. and M.A.) and Boston University (B.A.). Her areas of specialty are prehistoric Iberia, and mnemonics in the archaeological record. She has published widely, and is the principal investigator at the Bolores rockshelter in Portugal, and for a study of Portuguese Copper Age tools

Philipp W. Stockhammer is professor for prehistoric archaeology with a focus on the Eastern Mediterranean at Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich and co-director of Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean, Jena. His research focuses on the transformative power of intercultural encounters, human-thing-entanglements, social practices and the integration of archaeological and scientific interpretation.

Come to the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology’s Open Collection Hours! Explore the Institute’s (hidden!) Collection of ancient ceramic vessels, lamps, figurines, lithics, sherds, and more.

Viewing the Collection may also be possible by appointment. Please email [email protected] beforehand to arrange a visit.

Joukowsky Institute faculty member Professor Felipe Rojas – accompanied by recent alums and current students – will provide tips and advice on projects, funding, and what to think about when choosing a project. Open to all interested students - you don’t have to be an archaeology concentrator, or even have taken an archaeology class!

John Cherry, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology and Classics at Brown University, and Elizabeth Davis, doctoral student at Brown University’s Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology, will discuss their research in an informal talk entitled, “Archaeology in the Potter’s Field at Providence’s North Burial Ground”

For a full list of Archaeology Brown Bag talks, please visit our blog: https://blogs.brown.edu/archaeology/2022/10/03/brownbags-fall22/

Join the DigDUG (aka Archaeology Undergraduate Group) for free food, and (slightly spooky) fun! Archaeology-themed costumes optional, but encouraged!

Meet other DUG’s and upperclassmen! Plus, a costume contest! 

Join the DigDUG (aka Archaeology Undergraduate Group) for pumpkin painting and sharing spooky stories. Archaeology-themed costumes not required (but encouraged)! All students are welcome, no need to be an Archaeology concentrator or even have taken an ARCH course!

If you are planning to attend the Halloween Spooktacular, please fill out this Google Form as an RSVP – as always, everyone is welcome, but this will help us make sure that we have enough pumpkins for everyone!

Please join us for the 2022 Sachs Lecture in Assyriology: Professor Jana Mynářová (Charles University, Prague) will present her lecture entitled “Peace, War, and Violence in the Ancient Near East.” There will be a reception following this lecture.

J. Mynářová is Head of the Institute of Comparative Linguistics at Charles University in Prague. She acquired her PhD. in Philology - Languages of Asia and Africa (Semitic Languages) with her dissertation entitled “Greeting Formulae in Peripheral Akkadian”. She specializes above all in the relationships between Egypt and the Near East in the 2nd millennium B.C., ancient diplomacy, Egyptian history and society in the New Kingdom, Peripheral Akkadian and Ugaritic.

Come be part of an active archaeological excavation! Students will be digging on the grounds of Moses Brown School (next to Brown’s athletic center), uncovering the foundations of a 19^th century home and processing artifacts from that household. Stop by (with your family or on your own) any time between 11:00 am and 3:00 pm to see what artifacts students are discovering or even try your hand at digging.

Moses Brown School (Excavation at the corner of Hope St and Lloyd Ave)

See ancient coins from Greece and Rome up close! Touch human and animal bones! Examine and draw Persian and Roman ceramics, prehistoric tools, precious metals, and other artifacts from thousands of years ago – coached by experts! And talk with Brown’s archaeologists about their fieldwork all over the world!

Amanda Gaggioli, a Postdoctoral Fellow in Brown University’s Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, will discuss her research in an informal talk entitled, “Decolonialism, and Mediterranean Archaeology: The Case for the Aegean Prehistory/History Divide”.

Gaggioli recently completed her Ph.D. in Classics and Archaeology from Stanford University with a dissertation titled “Earthquakes and the Structuring of Greco-Roman Society: The Longue Durée of Human-geological Environment Relationships at Helike, Greece.” Her research includes interdisciplinary approaches that combine ancient textual, archaeological, and natural scientific approaches to past human-geological environmental relationships, in particular earthquakes and associated seismic phenomena, in the eastern Mediterranean. She has conducted fieldwork in Cyprus, Turkey, and Greece, spanning the third millennium BCE to fifth century CE, that aims at understanding how people impacted and responded to environmental conditions and change.

For a full list of Archaeology Brown Bag talks, please visit our blog:
https://blogs.brown.edu/archa…/2022/10/03/brownbags-fall22

In 2018, the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University received the Engaging the Americas grant from the Mellon Foundation “to support improving physical and intellectual stewardship” of the Museum’s “Native American and Indigenous collections and further their integration in the Brown curriculum.” Much of this ongoing work has focused on re-inventorying, cataloging, photographing, and rehousing the extensive lithic assemblages in our archaeological collection. In this presentation, Dr. Jessica Nelson, Curatorial Assistant on the Engaging the Americas grant, will share highlights of the project with an emphasis on the New England assemblages in our collection.

How does one begin to engage with modern and contemporary art of Africa? Which analytical tools can one deploy in dealing with its complex multifaceted elements? Its analytical features defy all known and recognizable art historical permutations of visual analysis. Yet, the questions to ponder are: has contemporary African art adapted to the taste of the 21st century? And if so, in what ways has it succumbed to the allure of pastiche-postmodernism’s hydra headed undercurrents.

This program will examine some of the issues militating against the presentation and display practices of African art in the West while focusing attention on exhibiting: A Verry Drunk Hunters Dream.

Bolaji Campbell is Professor of the Arts of Africa and the African Diaspora in the Department of Theory and History of Art and Design at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI. Campbell holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as MFA and B.A in Fine Arts from the Obafemi Awolowo University (formerly University of Ife) Nigeria. He has published numerous essays in learned journals and as chapters in books, his most recent books are: Fabric of Immortality: Ancestral Power, Performance and Agency in Egungun Artistry(Africa World Press, 2020) and Painting for the Gods: Art and Aesthetics of Yoruba Religious Murals(Africa World Press, 2008).

Supported by generous donors to Friends of the Haffenreffer Museum

Daniel Everton, a Master’s student in Brown University’s Public Humanities program and the winner of the Archaeological Institute of America’s 2022 Elizabeth Bartman Museum Internship, will discuss his research in an informal talk entitled, “Re-imagining the Predynastic Man Exhibit at Museo Egizio”.

Everton’s work focuses on repatriation, decolonization, and collections management. He has worked with art museums, library archives, and the National Park Service in the Greater Southcoast Area of Massachusetts. His interests include, but are not limited to, the history of craft and trade in textiles, gender and sexuality, and effects of colonization. His internship with the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy provides foundational research for his thesis about the care and ethics of managing Ancient Egyptian collections and their exhibition, as well as offering opportunities to learn digital humanities applications in the museum world.

For a full list of Archaeology Brown Bag talks, please visit our blog: https://blogs.brown.edu/archaeology/2022/10/03/brownbags-fall22

Discussions of migration in circles as diverse as liberal humanitarianism and right-wing ethno-nationalism have shared a common framing of migration as a “crisis” that is symptomatic of a deeper series of problems whose “root causes” need to be identified and addressed. Recent scholarship has emphasized the diversity of forces that engender human mobility and attended to the lived experiences of migrants, but scholars have continued to see large scale migration as a relatively recent phenomenon. Where we have referenced deeper histories, it has all too often come in the form of appeals to the universality of human mobility (e.g., “Everyone is a migrant;” “All Americans are immigrants.”) that elide histories of settler colonialism and enslavement and devote too little attention to how specific regimes of migration and settlement have been produced. Anthropological archaeologists are well positioned to reorient scholarship on the history of migration and settlement due to our subfield’s temporal and geographic reach.

This workshop brings together a group of scholars who are doing this work, for a conversation that will consider the constitutive relationships between settlement and migration, trace the development of hegemonic regimes of mobility, and draw on the past to envision alternative futures.

Schedule:

9:30AM - 10:45AM — Settlement and Subjectivity in Assyria and South Asia

10:45AM - 12:00PM — Settlement and Racial Dialectics in the Colonial Americas

1:30PM - 2:45PM — Black Migration and Mobility in the Atlantic and the United States

2:45PM - 4:00PM — Mobility and Resilience in Native North America

4:00PM - 5:00PM — Commentary and Discussion 

Speakers: 

Anna Agbe-Davies (UNC Chapel Hill)
Yannis Hamilakis (Brown)
Michelle Lelievre (William and Mary)
Yoli Ngandali (University of Washington)
Matthew Reilly (City College)
Melissa Rosenzweig (Northwestern)
Mudit Trivedi (Stanford)
Parker VanValkenburgh (Brown)
Terence Weik (University of South Carolina)