Please join us for our spring lecture by Dr. Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith from the University of Otago. The lecture, “Recent Advances in Understanding the Human Settlement of the Pacific”, will take place at 6:30 pm on Wednesday, February 20th in Rhode Island Hall 108, Brown University. We hope to see you there!

Dr. Matisoo-Smith will also be a keynote speaker at the upcoming conference, State of the Field 2019: The Ancient DNA Revolution in Archaeology. The conference starts Friday, February 22nd at 4 pm in Rhode Island Hall 108. Please check here for details, including the full schedule.

Abstract:

Since the 1980s a general scenario regarding the human settlement of the Pacific has been constructed based on linguistic, archaeological and some basic genetic data. This picture focuses on two major colonization events – an early Pleistocene settlement of Near Oceania (Australia, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands) followed by the later Lapita colonization of Remote Oceania (the islands east of the Solomon Islands). These Lapita colonists are generally seen as the immediate ancestors of the Polynesians and most Micronesians. Mitochondrial DNA and whole genome data, both ancient and modern, obtained initially from commensal animals (those transported by humans during colonisation) and more recently from human populations suggest that things may be slightly more complicated than this traditional two wave theory often presented. In this talk I argue that it may be time to reconsider our ideas about population origins and history particularly of Remote Oceania. I will discuss how the data generated from humans, dogs, rats, chickens and various plants introduced to the Pacific are contributing to our understanding of Pacific settlement history.

Please join us for our annual celebration of International Archaeology Day on Saturday, October 20 from 11am – 3pm to learn about artifacts, archaeological techniques, and lots of fun!

Please join us for our fall lecture by Dr. Kathryn Sampeck from Illinois State University. The lecture, “A Day in the Life of a Sixteenth-Century Ani-Yunwiya (Cherokee) Village”, will take place at 6:30 on Wednesday, October 3rd in Rhode Island Hall 108, Brown University.  This lecture is part of AIA’s Nadzia Borowski Lecture series. We hope to see you there!

Abstract:

What was daily life like for Cherokees just at the moment when groups of people from across the Atlantic—Spaniards and Africans—started to become part of their world? A tour of one settlement, Cowee, lets audience members understand what Cherokee  homes, communities, and networks of communities were like and the kinds of activities  that were important to peoples’ lives. Each example is based on archaeologically-recovered information as well as community history and knowledge. This visit shows what an important historical moment this time was for Cherokees and colonists alike, why these settlements are places of enduring importance, and how Cherokee peoples were crucial in early colonial encounters and subsequent political and economic developments.

Photograph by Michael Oppenheim

Please join us for our spring lecture by Dr. Kieran O’Conor from the National University of Ireland Galway. The lecture, “The Deserted Anglo-Norman Town and Castle of Rindoon, Co. Roscommon, Ireland”, will take place at 6:30 on Thursday, March 15th in Rhode Island Hall 108, Brown University. We hope to see you there!

Abstract:

The deserted Anglo-Norman royal town and castle of Rindoon lies on a peninsula jutting out into Lough Ree – one of the great lakes of the Shannon River system that runs through central Ireland. It is regarded as one of the best examples of a deserted medieval town in the British Isles, as it only existed for just over a hundred years before its mainly English inhabitants deserted it in the early 14th century. This lecture, drawing on a recent multi-disciplinary study that included field survey, geophysics and an analysis of the surviving historical sources, will discuss each of the various elements that made up the town, particularly its multi-phase castle, and will argue that elements of what certain British archaeologists have called ‘an elite landscape’ occur at Rindoon. Furthermore, it is clear that this Anglo-Norman frontier fortress and town, trading with but also under military pressure from local Irish (Gaelic Irish) lords, was not founded on a green-field site in the early 13th century. Evidence from field survey, stray finds, geophysics, the available historical sources and aerial photography all suggest that there was an important pre-Norman settlement here. This is a fascinating complex that is now part of the rural tourism product offered by Roscommon County Council and attract more than 9,000 visitors a year. The lecture also offers insights into the relationship between the Anglo-Normans / English and the local Gaelic Irish during the 13th and early 14th centuries. Lastly, the talk will indicate how in times of recession, a relatively small research budget can achieve measurable academic results than can also be used by the local community for cultural tourism purposes.

Please join us for our fall lecture by Dr. Scott MacEachern (Bowdoin College), titled “African crossroads: the rise of states around Lake Chad”. See the end of this post for the lecture abstract. The lecture will take place on October 26th at 6:30 pm in room 108 in Rhode Island Hall on Brown University campus. We hope to see you there!

Abstract:

Lake Chad sits at a crossroads in Africa, where trans-Saharan trade routes open up to the savannas and forests south of the desert, and astride the immense grasslands that extend west-to- east from the Atlantic to the Nile. It is no surprise that this region has been a zone of encounter between very different groups of people throughout prehistory, and that its political history is enomously complex. Archaeological research in the region through the last 50 years has provided a great deal of evidence for that complexity: large defended communities contemporary with Iron Age oppida in Europe; the early introduction of horses, used in warfare and predatory slave-raiding; and the development of defended mountain zones that are enormously complicated culturally and linguistically. Today, the lands around Lake Chad are best known in the West for the activities of the Boko Haram terrorist organization. In this lecture, I will try to provide an alternative view of an endlessly complex and fascinating part of the world.

The lecture will take place in Room 108, Rhode Island Hall, Brown University campus with a small reception to follow. We hope to see you there!

Lecture Description:  During the Renaissance, Italian humanists attempted to recover the maritime golden age of ancient Greece and Rome. In resurrecting ancient warships, humanists looked at the most magnificent period in maritime history, the Hellenistic Age (323-31 B.C.), which produced a burst of unprecedented proportions resulting in warships of increasingly large size that eventually came to replace the trireme. Since no archaeological remains of ancient warships were available and have yet to be found, the study of ancient texts was crucial to the recovery of ancient naval architecture. Based on the study of several Renaissance naval treatises and unpublished archival sources, two shipbuilding projects are known: the quinqueremis built in 1529 by the Venetian humanist Vettor Fausto (1490-1546), and the grandiose and yet completely unknown attempt in 1570 by the erudite Filippo Pigafetta (1533-1604) to recover the design of the tessarakonteres of Ptolemy IV Philopator (r. 221-204 B.C.), the biggest ship ever built in the ancient Mediterranean. Both Fausto and Pigafetta believed that the knowledge of ancient texts was centrally relevant to the design of their ships and to the solution of practical problems of naval architecture in the material world.