Congratulations to Professor Jeffrey Moser who is on sabbatical from Brown University (2021 - 2022) and is currently Paul Mellon Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, where he is working on his book Moral Depths: Making Antiquity in a Medieval Chinese Cemetery.
From the News from Brown website, Nov. 16, 2021:
"Were the ancient Maya an agricultural cautionary tale? Maybe not, new study suggests," featuring Prof. Andrew Scherer (Anthropology).
Congratulations to two of our PEC community who received Richard B. Salomon Research Awards for 2021:
Alani Hicks-Bartlett (Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and French Studies) [Pictured], for her project," 'Soutenez moi, li max d'amours m'ocit' [Sustain me, for lovesickness is killing me]: A Translation and Critical Edition of Li Romanz de la poire".
Jeffrey Moser (Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture), for his project, "Moral Depths: Making Antiquity in a Medieval Chinese Cemetery."
Congratulations to William S. Monroe, Senior Academic Engagement Librarian at Brown, who successfully defended his dissertation entitled "The Trials of Pope Formosus" on March 19, 2021 and officially received his PhD in History from Columbia University on May 19. Additionally, Dr. Monroe was nominated last year and elected early this year to a three-year term on the Council of the Medieval Academy of America. Well done, Bill!
Parker VanValkenburgh (Stanley J. Bernstein Assistant Professor of Social Sciences) and Andy Dufton (PhD, '17, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World) recently visited the Archaeotech podcast ("Archaeology and Big Data," Episode 133) to discuss a supplement about digital archaeology and ethical considerations they brought to the Journal of Field Archaeology.
History of Art and Architecture Professor Sheila Bonde is quoted in an April 13, 2020 National Geographicarticle about Covid-19's impact on Cathedral of Notre Dame reconstruction.
Researchers have been searching for Sak Tz’i’, an important city from the ancient Maya civilization, since 1994; thanks in part to Brown anthropologists, they now have physical evidence that it existed.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — For days, a man selling carnitas on the side of the road in rural Mexico tried to get Whittaker Schroder’s attention as he drove past.
At first, Schroder — a University of Florida archaeologist and a Class of 2010 Brown University graduate — thought the man was simply trying to sell him food. Schroder doesn’t eat meat, so he ignored the vendor.
Eventually, he wondered if the man had something else to share. One day, he pulled over, and the man began to describe a stone tablet that his friend had discovered in his backyard. The man’s friend, a cattle rancher, thought the tablet might be thousands of years old, left behind by the Maya.
He was right — and the tablet wasn’t the only extraordinary artifact to be found. As Schroder, Brown Associate Professor of Anthropology Andrew Scherer, Brandeis University anthropologist Charles Golden and other colleagues continued to explore and excavate the rancher’s backyard in June 2018, they realized it was the site of the long-lost Maya capital of Sak Tz’i’ — Mayan for “white dog.”
