Backdirt 2022: Changing Archaeology

BACKDIRT

ANNUAL REVIEW OF THE COTSEN INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY AT UCLA

FRONT COVER: Graduate students Brandon Keith (UCLA) and Mia Evans (University of Kent) use geophysical methods to investigate the remains of the Church of San Giovanni di Dustria, near Turin, Italy, in September 2022.

BACK COVER: Anya Dani, director of community engagement and inclusive practice as well as a lecturer at the UCLA/Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage, works on ancient pottery. (Photograph by Peter Ginter, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.)

ABOVE: After years of online meetings, Moupi Mukhopadhyay, a graduate student in the conservation of cultural heritage, presents “Understanding Pigment Composition in Kerala Temple Murals Using Non-Invasive Imaging Techniques,” the first of our hybrid (both in-person and online) Wednesday Talks (formerly Pizza Talks), on October 12, 2022.

To request a copy or for information on submissions, please contact the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press via email at: nomads@ucla.edu

Read Backdirt online at: http://ioa.ss.ucla.edu/content/backdirt ©2022 UC Regents

Willeke Wendrich Director of the Cotsen Institute

Randi Danforth Publications Director, CIoA Press

Hans Barnard Editor, Backdirt

Roz Salzman Assistant Editor, Backdirt

Peg Goldstein Copyediting

Sally Boylan Design

contents

back D irt 2022

Message fro M the Director

4 Willeke Wendrich

t he i nstitute in the n ews

5 Robbert Dijkgraaf, Minister of Education of the Netherlands, Visits UCLA and the Cotsen Institute

6 Giorgio and Marilyn Buccellati Receive Prestigious Balzan Prize

8 NEH Awards Conservation Program $310,000 for Training in Preservation of Indigenous Collections

8 Glenn Wharton Honored with Conservation Award

9 Sarah Beckmann Awarded Rome Prize Fellowship

10 Justin Dunnavant Welcomed as Scholar in Residence at Occidental College

11 Justin Dunnavant Attends Artifact Analysis Workshop in Monticello, Virginia

11 Two Cotsen Institute Alumnae Accept Tenure-Track Positions

13 Vanessa Muros Awarded Boochever Endowment

14 Cotsen Affiliates Present at Congress in Turin, Italy

15 Gregson Schachner, Reuven Sinensky, and Katelyn Bishop Contribute to Book Honored by the SAA

15 Christopher Donnan Publishes Book on a Royal Moche Tomb

f ro M the f iel D

16 Transformation of a Sacred Landscape around Lake Gilli, Armenia

Arsen Bobokhyan and Kristine Martirosyan-Olshansky

28 Bikol, the Philippines

Robin Meyer-Lorey and Stephen Acabado

32 St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

Justin Dunnavant

34 Underwater Archaeology Near Maui and Lana’i

Justin Dunnavant

36 Industria (Monteu da Po), Italy

Hans Barnard and Willeke Wendrich

42 Fire on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Jo Anne Van Tilburg

50 The Forgotten War in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

Hans Barnard and Willeke Wendrich

M ESSAGE from the Director

I HAVE AT TImES wondered why our annual report is called Backdirt. For non-archaeologists, this term has little meaning, so in brief: backdirt is the sand, soil, or rocky matrix left behind after the digging is done, the soil has been sifted, and the samples and finds have been cataloged, studied, and stored. In most cases, backdirt then becomes backfill: it is put back in the hole, covering and protecting whatever ancient remains are left underfoot. For archaeologists, it has positive connotations. Dirt is a term of pride. A dirt archaeologist is the opposite of an armchair archaeologist. He or she is someone who is not afraid of physical labor, getting dusty and sweaty; someone who thinks through the point of a trowel or the hairs of a brush.

Yet archaeology is rapidly changing. Much of our work is now nondestructive: geophysical methods can map out what lies underground without actual digging. A slew of techniques for the analysis of excavated material allows greater insights from less material. Our emphasis has shifted from discovering objects and buildings to finding things out. Many archaeological finds and archives that were never published are worthy of finally being published, even if the original excavator has long since retired or passed away. So increasingly, dirt archaeologists are getting less dirty (although storerooms and archives can be pretty dusty) but are no less involved in the materiality of our discipline.

The back in Backdirt probably makes sense if we consider an annual report to be about looking back, but that’s the thing: we are equally looking forward. In this volume you will find out how local conflicts directly affect archaeological projects in Tigray (Ethiopia) and Rapa Nui (Easter Island). On the brighter side, you will also read preliminary reports of recent fieldwork, much of which has been on hold for at least two years.

We are welcoming new cohorts of students in archaeology and conservation, and gradually the basement of the Fowler Building is becoming filled with voices again. I want to thank Greg Schachner, who served as chair of the Archaeology Program under very difficult circumstances, and to welcome Stephen Acabado as the new program chair. We also welcome new postdoctoral scholars, lecturers, and faculty members. Piphal Heng is a two-year postdoctoral scholar at the Cotsen Institute and the Program for Early Modern Southeast Asia. Greg Woolf, the Ronald J. Mellor Distinguished Professor of Ancient History, has joined the core faculty of the Cotsen Institute. Anya Dani is the inaugural director of community engagement and inclusive practice, as well as a lecturer in cultural heritage conservation for the UCLA/Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage. The program is also strengthened by the arrival

of Thiago Sevilhano Puglieri, a professor in the Art History Department with a background in chemistry. Our website has more information in the news section.

With that, I come to the large amount of work dedicated to providing up-to-date information on our website (https:// ioa.ucla.edu) concerning news, special events, and the accomplishments of staff, students, and faculty. Many times, I hear, “I was not aware of that,” while the fact in question featured on our website recently. Emails that draw attention to new entries are circulated regularly but are probably deleted rather than read. That’s understandable considering the avalanche that fills our inboxes, but please take a moment and check our website and its archive now and again to remain up to date. For its content, and that of Backdirt, we are obviously dependent on your contributions, so please do not hesitate to forward anything noteworthy to Roz Salzman (rsalzman@ioa.ucla.edu) or Hans Barnard (nomads@ucla.edu).

The Covid-19 pandemic stopped almost all fieldwork in its tracks but also resulted in two very well-filled issues of Backdirt. These included important reflections on the world in general and on the disciplines of conservation and archaeology in particular. It seems that our forced pause was helpful in some aspects, but it was devastating for students in the midst of their research. Despite or because the summer of 2022 saw a return into the field for many of us, this issue of Backdirt is slightly slimmer than those from the previous two years. I do hope that it provides you with both information and inspiration.

Willeke Wendrich Director, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

Cotsen Institute Director Willeke Wendrich

THE INSTITUTEIN THE

Robbert Dijkgraaf, Minister of Education of the Netherlands, Visits UCLA and the Cotsen Institute

As part of an ongoing effort to strengthen collaborations between UCLA and Dutch universities, Jo Anne and Johannes Van Tilburg hosted Robbert Dijkgraaf, the Dutch minister of education, culture, and science, during his visit to UCLA on September 9, 2022. Before accepting the position of minister, Dijkgraaf, a theoretical physicist working on string theory, was director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

The event, the culmination of a two-week trip to visit universities, major corporations, and governmental agencies in the United States, was cosponsored by the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and the Center for European and Russian Studies (CERS) at the UCLA International Institute. UCLA Dutch Studies, under the direction of CERS, is the largest program in the United States focused on the study of the Netherlands and Belgium in a global perspective, promoting student and faculty exchanges and scholarship in Dutch language and culture. The Cotsen Institute is a premier research organization dedicated to the creation, dissemination, and conservation of archaeological knowledge and heritage. It also houses the UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage, which educates and trains students in the highest standards of the conservation of material culture.

The minister and his delegation were welcomed by Darnell Hunt, UCLA executive vice chancellor; Anna Spain Bradley, vice chancellor of equity, diversity, and inclusion; and other campus leaders and faculty, including Laurie Kain Hart, director of CERS. “In keeping with UCLA’s mission of global reach, it was a great honor to welcome Minister Dijkgraaf and his delegation to UCLA for a rich exchange of knowledge across cultures and nations,” Spain Bradley said. “The minister’s deep commitment to the power of education to advance inclusive societies in which all peoples can thrive is a vision that UCLA and I share. We look forward to continued cooperation with the minister and the government of the Netherlands in years to come.”

Alex Swart, board member of the Netherland-America Foundation, Southern California Chapter, attended the luncheon with several NAF colleagues and explained, “Our organization supports meaningful exchanges between the Netherlands and Southern California in the science, commerce, culture, and education spaces, which of course include Dutch Studies and the annual Van Tilburg Lecture at UCLA, a highlight in the intellectual life of the Dutch community in Los Angeles.” The annual Johannes Van Tilburg Lecture in Dutch Studies was established in 2005 by a generous gift from Johannes and Jo Anne Van Tilburg for the establishment in perpetuity of an annual lecture in Dutch studies, as part of an exchange program between UCLA and the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.

Johannes Van Tilburg has served for more than a decade as honorary consul of the Netherlands for Los Angeles.

Vice Chancellor Anna Spain Bradley (left) welcomes Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf to UCLA. (Photograph by Oliver Chien.)

Jo Anne Van Tilburg is director of the Rock Art Archive at UCLA and an associate researcher at the Cotsen Institute, as well as principal investigator of the Easter Island Statue Project. She noted, “The Van Tilburg family is proud and very pleased to support the Johannes Van Tilburg Lecture in Dutch Studies within the UCLA International Institute. The important watchword inclusion, which is inherent in the approach of UCLA to higher education and a shared goal with the Dutch Ministry of Education, tends to suggest the generosity of sharing something already established. Perhaps at UCLA it could be amended to expansion, which better describes growth in cooperation with the community as a whole and within the long-established UCLA tradition of diversity.”

Willeke Wendrich, director of the Cotsen Institute, welcomed the visitors via Zoom from Budapest (Hungary), where she was attending a conference. Herself an alumnus of Leiden University in the Netherlands, Wendrich noted, “The push by UCLA for equity and diversity is extremely important, and I am delighted that we have been able to hire a diverse faculty. It is also important to put in the minds of all young students that UCLA is something they can aim for. The combination of having a role model and being told ‘this is for you’ is very powerful.”

At the conclusion of the meeting, Dijkgraaf reported, “This isn’t just the end of the trip; this is a grand finale. UCLA made sure we finished our visit to the United States on a very high note.” ■

Giorgio and Marilyn Buccellati Receive Prestigious Balzan Prize

On February 2, 2022, the International Balzan Prize Foundation announced that Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati had been awarded the 2021 Balzan Prize for Art and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East. This prestigious prize is awarded annually to a maximum of four recipients and includes a cash component for each recipient of approximately $800,000, half of which must be invested in research by young researchers. Previous winners have included several Nobel Prize laureates. The aim of the prize “is to foster culture, the sciences, and the most meritorious initiatives in the cause of humanity, peace and fraternity among peoples throughout the world.”

Giorgio Buccellati is a professor emeritus of the Department of History and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and the founding director of the Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, now the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. He is also director of the Mesopotamian Laboratory. Marilyn KellyBuccellati is a professor emerita of archaeology and art history at California State University–Los Angeles. Both are researchers affiliated with the Cotsen Institute.

Giorgio and Marilyn received the award “for their achievements in the study of Hurrian culture and for highlighting its importance as the foundation of a great urban civilization, among the most flourishing in the ancient Near East in the third millennium BCE; for promoting a digital approach to the study of archaeology; and for enhancing theoretical reflection on the nature of this discipline,” according to the announcement by the Balzan Prize Foundation.

The International Balzan Foundation was created in Lugano, Switzerland, in 1956 by Lina Balzan, daughter of Eugenio Francesco Balzan. Upon his death she decided to use his wealth to honor his memory. Eugenio Balzan was born on April 20, 1874, in Badia Polesine, near Rovigo in northern Italy, into a family of landowners. He spent almost his entire working life at Corriere della Sera, the leading newspaper in Milan. After joining the paper in 1897, he worked his way up from editorial assistant to news editor and special correspondent. In 1903 editor Luigi Albertini made him managing director of the paper’s publishing house, of which he became a partner and a shareholder. In 1933 he left Italy for Switzerland,

Robbert Dijkgraaf, Minister of Education of the Netherlands, Visits UCLA and the Cotsen Institute (continued)

where he had successfully invested his fortune. He continued his significant charitable activities until his death in Lugano in 1953.

Nominating letters on behalf of the Buccellatis came from an array of distinguished international scholars who have worked with them over the years. The letters praised their efforts in the areas of archaeological theory, art history, conservation, digital analysis, fieldwork, institutional commitment, and public archaeology. The letters were signed by Max Hollein, director, and Daniel Weiss, president and CEO, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Tim Whalen, director of the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles; Sarah Kansa, executive director, and Eric Kansa, program director, of Open Context in Berkeley; Wang Wei, president of the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Nazeer Awad, director general of the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums in Damascus (Syria); Christian Greco, director of Museo Egizio in Turin (Italy); Stefano Valentini, director of the Center for Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies in Florence (Italy); and Willeke Wendrich, director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.

In his letter from the Getty Conservation Institute, Whalen writes that the work of the Buccellatis “reflects an extraordinary blend of scholarly erudition and pragmatic

commonsense. They see near and far. Practicing archaeologists who have embraced both site and artifact conservation, innovators and experimentalists, brilliant networkers across multiple disciplines with the ability to engage help effortlessly from others with different expertise—these are the attributes of Giorgio and Marilyn. Their contribution to the integration of preservation, archaeology, and community comprises a milestone. Their record of accomplishment is stellar. We stand in admiration of their inventive ways of harnessing the benefits of archaeology for a larger purpose and in ways they never would have imagined— as a bulwark against the ravages of war.”

Wendrich congratulated the Buccellatis, whom she has known as colleagues for more than 20 years, on their well-deserved award, which she enthusiastically supported. In her letter of nomination, she extolled both professors as “great educators. They have trained students from UCLA, several Italian universities, the University of Damascus, and schoolchildren from the nearby city of Qamishli. They are fundamentally concerned with the safety and well-being of their Syrian counterparts and support a large community by helping to develop economic opportunities. Central to their work are the deep historical roots of the region; at the forefront of their minds are the living communities.” ■

THE INSTITUTE IN THE NEWS

Marilyn and Giorgio Buccellati in Tell Mozan, Syria.

NEH Awards Conservation Program $310,000 for Training in Preservation of Indigenous Collections

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded the UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage a grant of $310,362 for a project titled Preservation of Indigenous Collections: Training for Tribal Materials and Museums, to be directed by Ellen Pearlstein, a professor in the Department of Information Studies and the UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage and a core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute.

The award will fund a continuing education program for collections stewards that will include six online courses, two in-person regional workshops, and followup mentoring to support sustained application of lessons learned. The program is targeted to Native Americans working with tribal materials at museums and cultural centers across the country. Critical to preparation of the winning proposal were two staff members of the Mellon Opportunity for Diversity in Conservation program: Bianca Garcia, program manager, and Nicole Passerotti, program associate. Pearlstein is project director for the Mellon program.

Glenn Wharton Honored with Conservation Award

NEH Preservation and Access Education and Training awards are made to organizations that offer national, regional, or statewide education and training programs across the pedagogical landscape and at all stages of development, from early curriculum development to advanced implementation. Awards help the staff of cultural institutions, large and small, obtain the knowledge and skills needed to serve as effective stewards of humanities collections. They support projects that prepare the next generation of preservation professionals as well as projects that introduce heritage practitioners to new information and advances in preservation and access practices. ■

Glenn Wharton, professor of art history and chair of the UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage, which is part of the Cotsen Institute, has received the 2022 Sheldon and Caroline Keck Award for outstanding and distinguished contributions to the field of conservation from the American Institute for Conservation. The award recognizes a sustained record of excellence in the education and training of conservation professionals. The award was presented in Los Angeles on May 14, 2022, during the Fiftieth Annual Meeting of the American Institute for Conservation.

The American Institute for Conservation is the leading membership association for current and aspiring conservators and allied professionals who preserve cultural heritage. Its mission is to support conservation professionals in preserving cultural heritage by establishing and upholding professional standards, promoting research and publications, providing educational opportunities, and fostering the exchange of knowledge among conservators, allied professionals, and the public. ■

Glenn Wharton.

Sarah Beckmann Awarded Rome Prize Fellowship

Sarah Beckmann, an assistant professor of classics and a core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute, has been awarded a 2022 Rome Prize Fellowship in ancient studies for her work on “The Villa in Late Antiquity: Roman Ideals and Local Identities.” The highly competitive fellowship supports advanced independent work and research in the arts and humanities, according to an April 2022 announcement by the American Academy in Rome, which describes the award as “the gift of time and space to think and work.”

Each fellow receives a stipend, workspace, and room and board at the 11-acre campus of the academy on the Janiculum Hill in Rome, starting in September 2022. “These fellowships are transformative, and we look forward to seeing the ways this experience is translated in the work to come,” according to Mark Robbins, president and chief executive officer of the American Academy in Rome. Beckmann’s award was described as “a stunning achievement” by Alex Purves, a professor and chair of the Department of Classics at UCLA.

“I am delighted to be next year’s recipient of the Andrew Heiskell Rome Prize,” Beckmann said, noting that the prize will “allow me to spend the 2022–2023 academic year in residence at the American Academy in Rome.” She will work on her first monograph, focused on late antique villas. Beckmann describes the first part of the book as looking at architecture and decor, focusing on regional variations of so-called elite display traditions. Part two of the book moves beyond villa owners, analyzing evidence for estate laborers, both as “actors in their own right and as pawns in the promotion of the villa into a status symbol.”

On a more personal level, “I am absolutely delighted to return to Rome,” Beckmann added. “I studied there in college, and it was that experience that started me on my studies toward a PhD in Roman archaeology. Years later, I am incredibly lucky to be returning. I will be writing my first book but also touring around a bit to gather material for my second book project. And of course I am excited to revisit my old favorite places and find new ones. I am really looking forward to updating my images of major monuments and sites in and around Rome” for a class on Roman archaeology that she teaches every year at UCLA.

“I cannot wait to work alongside scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds,” she continued. She

described the opportunity presented by the Rome Prize as offering “time to think and write in a creatively stimulating environment with others whose work touches on or is in dialogue with Rome as a place or an ideal.”

Beckmann will be joined by her family, including her one-year-old son and four-year-old daughter. “I feel very lucky to bring them all, and I am looking forward to time off from writing to watch my son learn to walk on the cobblestones, sharing gelato with my daughter, and watching her Italian surpass my own, as well as spending a year in the magical city where my partner and I spent our honeymoon.”

Rome Prize winners are selected annually by independent juries of distinguished artists and scholars through a national competition. Beckmann continues a tradition of Cotsen Institute awardees, following in the footsteps of core faculty member Ellen Pearlstein, a professor in the Department of Information Studies and the UCLA/Getty Conservation Program, who received a Rome Prize in 2021–2022. ■

Sarah Beckmann and her daughter, Sally, in the Villa of Chiragan (Musée Saint-Raymond, Toulouse, France).

Justin Dunnavant Welcomed as Scholar in Residence at Occidental College

Justin Dunnavant, an assistant professor of anthropology and a core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute, has been honored with the 2022 Stafford Ellison Wright Black Alumni Scholar-in-Residence Award from Occidental College in Los Angeles. His residency took place through online lectures and presentations on February 16 and 17.

The Stafford Ellison Wright Endowment supports “select esteemed scholars whose work on Black life and culture has made a significant contribution and whose research will excite and engage the entire Oxy community,” according to Occidental College president Harry J. Elam Jr., who introduced the first lecture. Created by the Black Alumni Organization at Occidental College, the endowment honors its first Black graduates from 1952: Janet Stafford, George F. Ellison, and Barbara Bowman Wright. The residency is by invitation only and includes a financial award.

As part of his residency, Dunnavant gave a public lecture, “In Search of Maroon Geographies: Archaeologies of African Fugitivity in the Virgin Islands,” and participated in a panel discussion: New Approaches to Caribbean History and Heritage. Regina Freer, a professor of politics and a member of the Stafford Ellison Wright Committee, praised him for “exploring the remains of shipwrecks to investigate the ecological effects of the slave trade with an eye towards current-day connections.” She added, “His work is community-connected and he is passionate about training future maritime archaeologists. We are so excited to have him with us.”

Dunnavant described his approach to the Maroon geographies lecture as being “from the water perspective and GIS perspectives.” His second lecture “was framed toward an intergenerational conversation,” he said. “The mentor I was in conversation with, Dr. ChenziRa Davis Kahina,” has been working in Black studies since the 1980s “and is able to look at it from a historical perspective.”

He also addressed two classes, one in biology and the other in African American studies. To prepare for those presentations, he got syllabi from the respective professors, so he knew “what they’ve been talking about and what they’ve been reading.” Because he does so much interdisciplinary work, “I try to tailor

my conversation around the disciplines that they are coming from. So for biology, we’re talking about ecological work, about coral science and coral mining.” He also tries to explain to students that many of these fields fall within anthropology and archaeology. “I’m sort of trying to get them to convert over,” he said.

His recruitment of young people into anthropology and archaeology began with his work in the Virgin Islands, where he started a youth training program. “We take middle and high school–age kids and teach them archaeology. So from that, we’ve adopted this mind-set where everywhere we go, we have to be able to translate the work we do to a younger audience. And that was something I’ve been adamant about. Before coming to UCLA, I was interviewed for a series on Hulu, in which my work was shown as an animation. I wanted something that would attract young people, not only to my work but also to the fields that I explore.” ■

Justin Dunnavant.

Justin Dunnavant

Attends

Artifact Analysis Workshop in Monticello, Virginia

In the summer of 2022, Justin Dunnavant, core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute and a 2022 NEH Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery Fellow, attended a monthlong intensive workshop for the analysis of colonial ceramics, glass, metals, and small finds, held in Monticello, Virginia. The workshop aimed to facilitate uploading archaeological data into an online, open-source database that will allow for cross-site comparisons of archaeological sites related to slavery. ■

Two Cotsen Institute Alumnae Accept Tenure-Track Positions

Carrie Arbuckle MacLeod and Debby Sneed, both of whom earned PhD degrees from the Cotsen Institute in 2018, have recently accepted tenure-track positions. Arbuckle MacLeod is now an assistant professor of classical and Near Eastern archaeology at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and Sneed is an assistant professor of classics at California State University–Long Beach.

The alumnae agree that hard work and perseverance are major contributors to their success. Sneed explained, “There really is no key to success in academia. You can do everything you are told to—publish in the right journals, teach in the right departments, communicate with the right people—and still not land a tenure-track position.” Her priority is “to focus on doing what I find fulfilling about this work, without fixating on trying to work within a system in which there are no guaranteed outcomes. For example, I have tried to focus on writing the articles that I wanted to write, not those I thought would get me the most mileage in the job market, because I didn’t want to regret neglecting what I’m passionate about.”

Sneed will primarily teach ancient Greek to undergraduate students, as well as courses in ancient Greek and Roman myth, culture, history, and archaeology. She also plans to develop a new course on disability in the ancient Mediterranean world. Sneed had been a lecturer in the same department since January 2020. She said, “I got my current position because of terms outlined in the new collective bargaining agreement negotiated by the California Faculty Association, which represents faculty in the California State University system.” She advises current students and recent graduates to unionize.

Since receiving the Ben Cullen Prize for an article published in Antiquity, Sneed has completed a research fellowship at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, where she was from January through August of 2022. She also published an article on disability and infanticide in ancient Greece in Hesperia and submitted other articles scheduled for future publication. She is in her second year as a lecturer for the National Lecture Program of the American Institute of Archaeology and is working on additional projects, including a book about disability and daily life in ancient Greece, an article about disability and religious practice in archaic Athens, and an article about assistive technology in the ancient world.

Justin Dunnavant analyzes a redware jar.

Excavated fragment of an embossed, mouth-blown glass bottle.

Two Cotsen Institute Alumnae Accept Tenure-Track Positions (continued)

Arbuckle MacLeod is originally from Vancouver, Canada, and was interested in finding a position in Canada. Before obtaining her PhD from the Cotsen Institute, where she taught the course Archaeology in the Digital Age, she completed her BA in classical and Near Eastern archaeology at the University of British Columbia and her MA in Egyptology at Oxford University. After graduating from UCLA, she returned to the University of British Columbia, where she spent four years in a postdoctoral position teaching ancient Egyptian archaeology, religion, and language courses and working as an editor for the Database of Religious History. Together with Danielle Candelora, also a UCLA alumna, she is codirector of a short undergraduate teaching program at Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy.

As an archaeologist who specializes in the study of ancient Egypt, she is interested in understanding the lives and techniques of ancient Egyptian carpenters. She studies the long history of coffin construction in ancient Egypt to understand better how carpenters adapted their techniques to political, environmental, and religious shifts. She is also frequently involved in public history and digital humanities projects, particularly those related to archaeology and digital games. Regarding teaching, she says that “creating a welcoming learning environment should be the first goal of every instructor. When students feel confident that their voices will be heard, discussions are more productive and both students and instructors will gain greater enjoyment from the experience.” She teaches the courses Introduction to Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology and Introduction to Egyptian Archaeology. She has also proposed a course on her

subspecialty: Introduction to the Archaeology of Wood and Woodworking.

Arbuckle MacLeod found the call for applications for her current position on Indeed.com, but she also subscribed to many listservs and maintained contacts at UCLA and elsewhere, through which she would get updates on different openings for positions. She points out that there were “maybe five or six openings every year that I was suited for, and there may have been hundreds of people applying. Last year I think I applied for five positions. You find out pretty quickly that you are one of many very qualified candidates. It really just depends on what the position calls for. For my current job, the call was open to scholars in Greek, Roman, the Near East, and Egyptian specialties. So I thought I had a foot in there.”

She continued, “In the United States, the job postings often say that priority is given to American citizens. It was the same thing here: priority was given to Canadian citizens. I had a postdoc that they were willing to extend to a third year if I wanted, so I was only applying for jobs that were tenure track.” She mentioned things that need to be done to make sure your CV is competitive: publish, teach, present at conferences, and so on. “But everybody is doing that. So I would say it is about 30 percent that and 70 percent luck, quite frankly. I know it gets very disheartening when you apply for these things and you don’t even make it to the final round, thinking that there is something wrong with you or your CV. Usually it is just that there is a really specific gap that they are trying to fill, and you don’t happen to fill that gap.” She concluded, “It is just a matter of persistence.” ■

Carrie Arbuckle MacLeod (left) and Debby Sneed.

Vanessa Muros Awarded Boochever Endowment

Vanessa Muros has been awarded funds from the Kathleen and David Boochever Endowment for Fieldwork and Scientific Analyses by the Archaeological Institute of America. The endowment supports fieldwork or laboratory research informed by new technologies. Muros is director of the Experimental and Archaeological Sciences Laboratory at the Cotsen Institute.

The project for which she received the award will test the efficacy and reliability of two low-tech methods: ultraviolet-induced visible fluorescence and the Raspail test, a microchemical test for plant terpenoids to analyze organic residues in pottery in the field.

Muros will first run tests on ceramic tiles she will make in the laboratory. Based on the results, she will use the developed methods on pottery from ancient Methone in northern Greece when she works in the field in summer. A conservator on the Ancient Methone Project, she is responsible for the preservation of the excavated materials. She is mainly focused on the conservation of artifacts (ceramics, metals, stone, glass, bone, and ivory) but also helps other team members with research on the excavated material.

“Part of the work that I do in terms of conservation and research is materials identification,” she explained. She is often asked to help archaeologists identify residues found in excavated ceramic vessels. “Sometimes we can bring portable analytical instruments to the field for more sophisticated characterization of materials, such as with the portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. Most of the time, however, we need to rely on low-tech methods that we easily can use in the field.”

She has already been using ultraviolet-induced visible fluorescence and the Raspail test for the identification of residues but says that some work from the Arizona State Museum showed that the analysis is not consistent. “Because I was relying on these techniques in the field, I thought it would be important to set up systematic testing of the methods to check how consistently either can be to identify the types of organic materials that we may be looking for on the excavated material at ancient Methone. To do this, I am now creating a set of ceramic tiles that I will be coating with different materials (pine resin, mastic,

beeswax, and birch bark tar), and then I’ll analyze the resins using both methods. The thickness of the coatings will vary, so I can see how this affects my identifications.”

She added, “I also am going to artificially age a set of coated tiles to see if that has any impact on the results. The goal is to understand how the two methods respond to the materials and how consistent they can be if the residue thickness changes or the material is aged and deteriorated. The results of the tests will be used to determine how best to apply these methods on the ceramics I will be examining this summer at Methone.” ■

Vanessa Muros.

Cotsen Affiliates Present at Congress in Turin, Italy

Willeke Wendrich, director of the Cotsen Institute, and UCLA graduate students Brandon Keith, Iman Nagy, and Matei Tichindelean presented their research at the tenth congress of the Italian Association of Urban History, held September 6–10, 2022, in Turin, Italy. The association aims to promote the study of urban history. The theme of the congress was “Adaptive Cities through the Postpandemic Lens.”

Nagy, who presented by recorded video, and Tichindelean are both graduate students in the Cotsen Institute. Keith is a graduate student in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. Their presentation was “Construction, Destruction, and Reconfiguration of the Ritual Landscape of Philae (Egypt)” and was part of the session Expressing the Longue Durée, 3D Modeling Change Over Time, co-organized by Wendrich and Elaine Sullivan, currently at UC Santa Cruz and a former postdoctoral

researcher at UCLA. Wendrich presented in the plenary session Controversial Adaptivity and reported on the session Interactions between Humanity and the Environment in the Long Durée. Keith, Tichindelean, and Wendrich are currently involved in archaeological fieldwork just east of Turin.

The Italian Association of Urban History is one of the most active Italian cultural associations and is concerned with the history of cities. It enjoys strong institutional support from universities, research centers, and cultural institutions, as well as broader academic engagement. Because the history of cities is multifaceted and plural, the association is multidisciplinary, inclusive, and international. It is in this context that the association seeks to promote scientific research and interdisciplinary and cross-sector dialogue; to stimulate debate in civil society; and in particular to support the many young researchers who attend the various activities it organizes every year. ■

Graduate students Matei Tichindelean (left), Brandon Keith, and Iman Nagy (through a recorded video) present their research in the Faculty of Engineering of the Politecnico di Torino (Italy).

Gregson Schachner, Reuven Sinensky, and Katelyn Bishop Contribute to Book Honored by the SAA

Christopher Donnan Publishes Book on a Royal Moche Tomb

The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) has named Becoming Hopi: A History the recipient of its 2022 Scholarly Book Award. The book, published by the University of Arizona Press, was coedited by Wesley Bernardini, Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa, Gregson Schachner, and Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma. Schachner, an associate professor of anthropology and former chair of the Interdepartmental Archaeology Program; Reuven Sinensky, a doctoral student in anthropology at UCLA; and Katelyn Bishop, a UCLA graduate in anthropology and now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign, coauthored multiple chapters in the volume.

The SAA announcement commended the book as follows: “Becoming Hopi shows a masterful interwoven collective work of conventional archaeological data and Hopi traditional knowledge to carefully study the Hopi Mesas of Arizona. In this volume, the voices of the Hopi are integrated with archaeological and ethnographic work conducted over two decades to show an important Indigenous group of the American Southwest with its rich and diverse historical tradition dating back more than 2,000 years. This tradition is deeply rooted in time, and the voices of the Hopi can be heard by scholars and non-experts. In addition, the collaborative effort resulted in a book that can be used by members of the Hopi community to learn about their own past.”

Schachner was also an editor, together with Richard Wilshusen and James Allison, of Crucible of Pueblos: The Early Pueblo Period in the Northern Southwest, which was published by the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press in 2012. This volume received a Choice 2013 Award for Outstanding Academic Title. ■

Christopher B. Donnan, a professor emeritus of the Department of Anthropology at UCLA and former director of the Andean Laboratory at the Cotsen Institute, has published La Mina: A Royal Moche Tomb (University of New Mexico Press). The book includes more than 200 color images of archaeological treasures unearthed at La Mina, an “extraordinarily rich tomb that was looted on the north coast of Peru in 1987,” according to the publisher. Joanne Pillsbury, editor of Moche Art and Archaeology in Ancient Peru, calls the book a “monumental achievement and an incomparable contribution to the field of Andean archaeology and art history.”

For more than 50 years, Donnan has studied the Moche civilization, which flourished between 100 and 700 CE in northwestern Peru, combining a systematic analysis of Moche art with numerous archaeological excavations. He is the author of several monographs from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, including Chotuna and Chornancap: Excavating an Ancient Peruvian Legend (2012) and Moche Tombs at Dos Cabezas (2007). He is a coauthor of several other publications by the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, including The Pacatnamu Papers (1986), written with Guillermo A. Cock, and Moche Fineline Painting from San Jose de Moro (2007), written with Donna and Donald McClelland. ■

Transformation of a Sacred Landscape around Lake Gilli, Armenia

Lake Gilli (also known as Lake Zodi, Tilli, Mazrayi, or Jili) and its basin once formed a unique ecological environment southeast of Lake Sevan in the Masrik Valley, Armenia (Figure 1).3º Lake Gilli was a shallow and swampy lake with a circumference of about 7.5 km (4.5 miles), surrounded by lush reed vegetation. Three rivers—the Akanic’, Karmir aġbyowr, and Kaler—once flowed into the lake. The Masrik River passed through it and flowed into Lake Sevan. Lake Gilli sustained unique flora and fauna, especially birds, but dried up completely in the mid-twentieth century due to the artificial lowering of the water level in Lake Sevan.4

The Gilli Reserve was later established to preserve the remaining swamps, along with the aquatic vegetation and endemic fish species in Lake Sevan (Figure 2; Ananyan 1952, 1961–1975; Hakobyan et al. 1986:863). This unique ecological niche has been a source of various

1. Director, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia.

2. Director, Armenian Laboratory, Cotsen Institute.

3. Archaeological surveys on the eastern shores of Lake Sevan are realized under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia and the Scientific Committee (Grant 21AG-6A080). They are partly supported by the Research Program in Armenian Archaeology and Ethnography at the Cotsen Institute.

4. The artificial drying of Lake Gilli began in 1959–1960. In 1978 the Armenian government decided to establish Sevan National Park and restore Lake Gilli within the park area. Studies on the restoration of Lake Gilli and project work resumed in 2000. The restoration program was presented as a global biodiversity conservation issue (Government of the Republic of Armenia 2002). In 2003 the government issued a restoration of Lake Gilli postage stamp (no. 285; designed by Albert Kechyan).

folk tales and legends. These are best summarized in Vakhtang Ananyan’s 1951 novel On the Shore of Lake Sevan, which was later adapted into a film.5 According to legend, a dragon lived in the lake; roars and growls regularly heard from the lake were attributed to the dragon. For inhabitants of the Armenian highlands, the various folk tales, stories, and worldviews concerning dragons have long been associated with monolithic steles called višapak‘ar (dragon stones), which depict animal forms and images with specific symbolic meanings indigenous to the highlands (Ananyan 1952:17–18; Bagoyan 2019:269; Hovhannisyan 2019:80; Petrosyan 1987:64, 2015:14; Simonyan and Hovhannisyan 2019:170). The monuments, located between 1,200 and 3,000 m (4,000–10,000 feet) above sea level, date to the Middle and Late Bronze Ages (2300–1200 BCE). In Armenia, the two main višapak‘ar clusters are on Mount Aragats and in the Geghama mountain range (Hnila et al. 2019).

Arsen Bobokhyan1 and Kristine Martirosyan-Olshansky2

5. The Secret of the Mountain Lake (1954), directed by Yuri Erznkyan and produced by Armfilm.

Višapak‘ar have long been associated with dragons

Very little archaeological and ethnographic research was carried out in the Gilli Basin during the pre-Soviet and Soviet years (before 1991), primarily because the region was unwelcoming to researchers for ethno-political reasons (Smbateants 1895:631). Among the few studies of importance are the works of Yervand Lalayan and Sedrak Barkhudaryan, who studied the history, population, and monuments of the villages around Lake Gilli, in particular Geġamasar (Šiškaya), during the first half of the twentieth century (Barkhudaryan 1973:311–12; Lalayan 1910:21–30). More systematic research in the region, under the auspices of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, began after independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. This article presents some of the results of this research, detailing historical processes of the transformation of the area from a pre-Christian to a Christian sacred landscape, as exemplified by Spitakavor Church in the village of Geġamasar.

et al. 1986:863), though some have proposed a connection to the archaic root geġ-, the basis of many historical toponyms of Geġark’ownik’ (Petrosyan 2015:14). Indirect information on the history of the Gilli Basin appears in various publications about the Lake Sevan Basin or Sotk’ Province. From these texts we know that during the Middle Ages (the fourth through eighteenth centuries CE), the Gilli Basin was within the province of Sotk’ (Alishan 1893:63–76; Grigoryan 2020:186–206; Orbelean 1910:514–15).

Historic sources and archaeological excavations in recent years show that the Lake Gilli Basin, and the region in general, reached its peak of urban development in the Middle Ages, when spiritual and secular infrastructures, defense systems, and settlements preserved from the previous periods were renovated, restored, and actively used. The single-naved Spitakavor Church (also known as Akk’ilisa, Axilisa, or Ag-Gilisē),6 located on the former shore of Lake Gilli, 4 km (2.5 miles) to the southwest of the village of Geġamasar, is first mentioned by Ghevond

There is very little information about Lake Gilli in medieval sources. The name is probably connected with the adjacent settlement of Gil (Basmajean 1927; Hakobyan

Figure 1. Location map of Armenia and Spitakavor Church.

6. The “List of Preservation of Monuments of the Republic of Armenia” describes a church located at 40.29361°N, 045.63374°E, and 1,929 masl, 4 km (2.5 miles) southwest of the village. The list says that to the right of its entrance, a xačk’ar (cross-stone) stands on the ground and that both the church and the xačk’ar appear to date to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries CE.

Alishan (1893:75), who writes, “On the shore by Šišgaya is the old church Ag-Gilisē, perhaps also a monastery, which is otherwise not known to me.” Yervand Lalayan (1910:24), describing the valley in front of the village of Šišgaya, which stretches for about 3 km (2 miles), writes that there is “a half-ruined small church here; there is a large xačk’ar (cross-stone) within it which bears a distorted epigraphic inscription” (Barkhudaryan 1973:311). Archaeologist Hovsep Yeghiazaryan (1942:5) mentions a medieval settlement around the church under the cultivated fields and notes the presence of pottery fragments dating to the tenth through thirteenth centuries CE. A church with the name Akkilisa also appears on Soviet maps.7

To date, our team has not found any information about the construction date of the church. However, its historical-archaeological context provides a rough estimate.8 Spitakavor Church is situated on the edge of a flat area, 1,929 m (6,329 feet) above sea level (Figures 3 and 4). Before excavavations, it was filled with soil and garbage (Figure 5). In 2021 the Sotk’ expedition of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography carried out excavation, conservation, and restoration work at the church under the direction of Avetis Grigoryan. After cleaning, it became clear that the church is a single-naved building with a rectangular plan (6.1 x 4.3 m [20 x 14 feet]; Figure 6). At one point, it had a vaulted roof, which has not been preserved. It is built of locally sourced, unworked white marl limestone and river stones, bonded together with lime mortar. Large chunks of conglomerates—sediments of fossilized lake sandstone—were also used in the wall masonry.

Entrance to the church is from the west (Figure 7). Twin windows have been preserved on the east facade, and there are small niches on the northern and eastern walls, one on each side. Slightly to the west of the north–south axis of the church, the remains of a vaulted arch have been preserved. The lower parts of the vaulted arch extend down the wall along a pilaster but do not reach the floor, ending 0.5 m (1.5 feet) above it. The inner facades of the church walls and the floor were lime plastered and have been preserved in some areas. It is perhaps because of the lime plaster that local Muslim populations called the church ag-Gilisē (the White Church). On the western side, a fragment of a wall abutting the church suggests that there used to be an anteroom, only the southern wall of which has been preserved. This structure, made with a much simpler construction technique, with walls having an earthen filling, was probably a later addition. The eastern part of the church is divided into two parts by a low partition wall (height and length about 0.9 m [3 feet]), separating the area into two niches, which probably served either as prayer rooms or as sacristies. In each niche, a centrally placed window would have lit the area.

Figure 2. View of the Lake Gilli area. (Photograph by Arshaluys Mkrtchyan.)

7. Such as map number K-38-XXVIII, 1978.

8. We thank architect Artak Ghulyan for insightful discussions on the architectural elements of Spitakavor Church.

There is little about Lake Gilli in the medieval sources

One fragment of a višapak‘ar (dragon stone) remodeled into a xačk’ar (cross-stone), discussed in more detail below, was likely the main sacred object of the church. It stood upside down (from the perspective of the višapak‘ar) in the center of the church. Examination of the placement and measurements of the fragment indicates that it also served an architectural function as a pillar bearing the load of the vaulted ceiling over that section of the church.

Excavations revealed a clay-plastered floor, which was preserved throughout the interior, apart from the area immediately around the višapak‘ar-xačk’ar (a dragon stone remodeled into a cross-stone), where the floor was damaged when the stone was embedded into it. The lower fragment of another finely carved xačk’ar was found near the entrance of the church, embedded into the lower masonry of the outer wall (Figure 8). The fragment depicts interlaced patterns and a pair of pigeons facing one another under a palmetto. The pigeons probably symbolize those who prayed for the salvation or intercession of the soul of the deceased. Based on the characteristics of the iconography, this xačk’ar should date to the thirteenth century (Figure 9; Petrosyan 2008, 294–97). Inside the church, near the

entrance, three reliquaries filled with ashes were found. The middle one was built with roughly worked slabs, the western one was simply dug into the ground, while four roughly rectangular stones with furrows were used to line the walls of the eastern reliquary. The latter stones likely belonged to an older structure in the vicinity. The reliquaries were looted, so the details of their initial contents remain unknown (Figures 8 and 9).

With its architectural design (Figure 10), Spitakavor Church has a number of parallels in the eastern basin of Lake Sevan, such as a small church on the eastern peak of Šorža, the Ada Monastery on the Artaniš Peninsula, the church of Gill, the St. Astvaçaçin (Mother of God) and St. Gevorg Churches of Ayrk’, and others. In Arc’ax, parallels include the old part of the single-naved Basilica of Hoṙekavank’, the churches of Jrvštiki, the Monastery of the Apostle Eġiše, and the church-tomb of Vačagan the Pious (Ayvazyan and Sargsyan 2013:1–11; Barkhudaryan 1982:104–5). It cannot be excluded that Spitakavor Church could have been a church-tomb. Judging from the architectural elements of the church and the geopolitical environment of the region, the church was most likely constructed in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. The discovery of building stones of

Figure 3. Aerial view of Spitakavor Church and its environs. (Photograph by Arshaluys Mkrtchyan.)

secondary use within Spitakavor Church, an assortment of pottery dated to the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, a fragment of an ornately decorated xačk’ar, and an inscription on the višapak‘ar-turned-xačk’ar attest to the existence of an earlier sanctuary here, on the base of which perhaps the present church-reliquary was built. Spitakavor Church fell out of use sometime in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the region was emptied of its Indigenous Armenian population (Smbateants 1895:592–631).

The thick wall constructed of roughly worked, large stones that surrounds the church was part of the medieval landscape of Spitakavor (Figure 6). In its style and masonry, it is more like Bronze and Iron Age structures in the vicinity. Stone structures of indeterminate use found within the parameters of the wall, a roughly worked stone with a simple cross carved on one face found near the northern wall of the church, and a primitive xačk’ar bearing a cross with two-lobed wings, typical of the ninth and tenth centuries, were part of the medieval church complex. The latter is now around 1.5 km (1 mile) northeast of Spitakavor, in the middle of a field, near a large apple tree. It is now a sacred place and frequently visited by locals.

The xačk’ar was erected in the center of Spitakavor Church and, at the time of our visit in 2020–2021, was broken into three fragments. Village inhabitants recently placed one fragment in front of the entrance to the church. One of the two fragments that remained within the church leaned against the eastern wall. The other fragment was embedded in the floor of the church (Figure 5). Two of these fragments show a relief of a cross erected on a stepped pedestal, linear crosses on the lateral faces, and an Armenian inscription (Figures 11 and 12). The arms of the main cross have a simple double-branched ending, with each branch ending in three spheres. This is one of the earliest examples of the transition from two spheres to three spheres typical of the early iconography of the cross.9 The stepped pedestal into which the cross was placed, as a rule, symbolizes not only the important, sacred status of the cross in Christian art but also the hill of Calvary (Golgotha), on top of which stood the

The Xačk’ar of Spi Takavor Chur C h and iTS i n SC rip T ion

Figure 4. Digital elevation model of Spitakavor Church and its environs. (Image created by Arshaluys Mkrtchyan.)

9. This transition can be inferred from examples at Tat’ev, Gndevank’, Arowč, Joragyowġ, and Gaṙni (Shahinyan 1984:17–18).

Figure 5. Aerial view of Spitakavor Church before excavations. Locations of the three fragments of the višapak‘ar-xačk’ar (a dragon stone remodeled into a cross-stone) are indicated by numbers. (Photograph by Arshaluys Mkrtchyan.)

Figure 6. Aerial view of Spitakavor Church after excavations. (Photograph by Arshaluys Mkrtchyan.)

cross used for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ (Petrosyan 2008:278.) The symbolism of a stepped pedestal and a circular rosette, not present on this xačk’ar, is usually the same. Thus in the presence of a stepped pedestal, a rosette is absent and vice versa (Petrosyan 2008:279).

The inscription, with its asymmetric letters and lines, gives the impression that an inexperienced hand carved

them into the xačk’ar (Figure 13). The average height of the letters ranges between 10 and 15 cm (4–6 inches). The inscription consists of nine lines and was carved to the right of the cross, near the bottom of the xačk’ar. Yervand Lalayan (1910:24) wrote, “I found out only the year 1251.” More than half a century later, Sedrak Barkhudaryan (1973:311), in his discussion on the history of the region, quoted Lalayan; thus we assume that he did not see the xačk’ar himself. The inscription was finally deciphered in 2021 by Arsen Harutiunyan, who also noted that Lalayan had misread the 1251 date The inscription, which is published here for the first time, reads: “The Holy Cross was erected in memory of Abgar’s son, Gregory and the latter’s son, let them be remembered in glorifying God, 936.”

The višApAk‘Ar Turned in T o A XAčk’Ar

During initial examination of the stone in 2020, our team noted that certain characteristics—such as the style of processing the stone and the type of rock—are more typical of pre-Christian steles. A detailed examination of the individual fragments revealed an outline of a bull’s head carved onto one of them. It became clear that the fragments once formed a complete, even if not finely executed, bull-headed višapak‘ar. The stele is not described as a višapak‘ar in any historical texts dealing with the region or this monument in particular. Despite having been broken into three pieces, the stele is relatively well preserved. When joined it measures 360 x 107 x 55 cm (142 x 42 x 22 inches). The freestanding fragment measures 123 x 85 x 46 cm (48 x 33 x 18 inches), the fragment inside the church is 137 x 104 x 50 cm (54 x 41 x 20 inches), and the

Figure 8. Oblique aerial view of Spitakavor Church after excavations. (Photograph by Arshaluys Mkrtchyan.)

Figure 7. Architectural details of Spitakavor Church, seen from above. (Photograph by Arshaluys Mkrtchyan.)

fragment embedded in the ground is 115 x 107 x 55 cm (45 x 42 x 22 inches). Although the relief is incomplete, a bull’s head and front legs can be made out on the obverse of the stele (Figures 11 and 12).

One question is whether the višapak‘ar-turnedxačk’ar is in its original location or was moved to its current location from elsewhere. At present this question cannot be answered with any certainty. The wall surrounding the church is typical of megalithic structures of the Bronze Age, such as cromlechs and Cyclopean structures, made during a period when višapak‘ar steles

became widespread in the Armenian highlands. It is thus possible that the višapak‘ar is in its original location and was placed on a small hillock or a barrow, which was there until Spitakavor Church was built. However, we cannot completely exclude the possibility that the stele was brought to its current location from the surrounding plain sometime during the Middle Ages. The area around the village of Geġamasar is famous for various Bronze and Iron Age sites, as well as for a Cyclopean fortresssettlement (Biscione et al. 2002:63–65). From the point of view of secondary use, in addition to the already

Figure 9. Fragment of a thirteenthcentury xačk’ar (cross-stone, unrelated to the višapak‘ar-xačk’ar in Figure 8) incorporated into masonry of the outer wall, north of the entrance to Spitakavor Church. (Photograph by Avetis Grigoryan.)

Figure 10. Plan and architectural drawings of Spitakavor Church. (Drawings by Artak Hakhverdyan.)

mentioned crosses and inscription, there are cup-marks on two of the fragments of the višapak‘ar. 10 These are often found on višapak‘ars and were often made after the fall of a monument, likely during the Iron Age.

From the description of Yervand Lalayan above, it is clear that during his visit in the first years of the twentieth century, the “big xačk’ar” was standing in one piece and was not broken. The break must thus be recent, likely dating to the Soviet period (1922–1991), when the church was closed and filled with debris. According to a local inhabitant, in 2010 only the upper part of one of the freestanding fragments was visible on the surface. It was cleared, removed, and placed in front of the church as a xačk’ar, while the second stone was cleaned by the villagers in 2015 and was left inside the church (personal communication with Gurgen Abrahamyan, resident of Geġamasar). After excavation of the church and its surroundings, the three fragments were joined by our team in 2021 and placed to the east of the church (Figure 6).

Petrographic analysis of the rock of the višapak‘arxačk’ar to determine its mineral composition was undertaken by Arshavir Hovhannisyan of the Institute of Geological Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia. The sample was taken from the central part of the višapak‘ar, directly from the edge of the broken fragment, away from the face of the stele. Analysis determined that the rock is an andesite-basalt, with 1.5, 2, and

Figure 11. Close-up of the višapak‘ar-xačk’ar of Spitakavor Church.

(Photograph by Arsen Bobokhyan.)

Figure 12. The višapak‘ar-xačk’ar of Spitakavor Church. (Drawings by Artak Hakhverdyan.)

10. Cup-marks are concave depressions or concentric circles pecked into a rock surface. They are common in European Neolithic art.

3.5 mm–long crystals of long prismatic hypersthene, rich in mineral inclusions and micro-dendrites. Based on these characteristics, the raw material used to carve the stele can be sourced to the Quaternary-period andesite-basalt lava flows of the Geghama and Vardenis mountain ranges. A defining feature of the višapak‘ar rock is the adhesion of biotite crystals to the walls of its pores. This is typical of the lava flows of P’orak, a volcano in the Vardenis mountain range. The lava flows of P’orak reach the southern shores of Lake Sevan and occupy a significant area. These lava flows are the closest to the current location of the višapak‘ar, 13 km (8 miles) in a straight line across the lake. If we take into account that the water levels in Lake Sevan were 15–20 m (50–65 feet) higher at the time of the creation of the višapak‘ar and that the current location of the višapak‘ar then also must have been on the shore of Lake Sevan, then the most optimal route for transporting the višapak‘ar, or its raw material, to Spitakavor was across Lake Sevan (Figure 14). Alternatively, the višapak‘ar could have crossed a land route of about 25 km (16 miles) through unfavorable terrain. In all probability, rafts were used to transport the rock across the lake to its final destination, where it remained for centuries until it was appropriated, remodeled, and incorporated into Spitakavor Church.

d i SC u SS ion

Lake Gilli was a unique ecological environment in ancient times and became an important and sacred center of collective memory. The višapak‘ar, or its raw material, was likely brought to its current location at Spitakavor, across Lake Sevan from the lava flows of Mount P’orak, sometime during the second millennium BCE. During the first half of the tenth century, the stele was remodeled into a xačk’ar by adding symbols typical of Christian iconography, mostly crosses of various types. An inscription haphazardly carved near the central cross identifies the time of the event and the persons associated with it. A few centuries later, probably during the sixteenth or seventeenth century, a church-reliquary was built around the xačk’ar, so it appeared in the center of the structure, serving a dual purpose as both a sacred object and a pillar supporting the vaulted roof.11

11. A remarkable historical-ethnographic parallel of this connection between pre-Christian and Christian monuments is known from the Javakheti region in Georgia. At the end of the nineteenth century, local Armenians worshipped a stone measuring 1 m (3 feet) in length on the top of Mount Great Abuli, under which a saint was said to be buried. According to legend, previously the idol of Apollo was on Mount Great Abuli, from which the name Abuli may have derived (Melikset-Bekov 1938:117; Rostomov 1898:23–24).

Figure 13. Inscriptions of the višapak‘ar-xačk’ar of Spitakavor Church. (Photograph and drawing by Arsen Harutunyan.)

Spitakavor Church probably fell out of use in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the region was emptied of its Indigenous Armenian population. According to modern accounts, the višapak‘ar-xačk’ar was broken during the Soviet period, though it is unclear if this was an intentional act or an accident. During the earliest appearance of xačk’ars, in the ninth through eleventh centuries, many pre-Christian and early medieval steles, including višapak‘ars, were remodeled into xačk’ars by carving a cross or crosses into them. Inscriptions were often added to commemorate those who had commissioned or carved the cross-stones (Harutyunyan 2019:504). The probable reason for such a phenomenon was the destruction of pagan steles, viewed as a form of idolatry, through application of a cross (Muradyan 1985:22–23), although, in the case of višapak‘ars, the destruction was a symbolic one, as the parameters of steles were ideal for turning them into xačk’ars. That is, in the early years, when xačk’ars began to be created and used, višapak‘ars were perceived as ready-made steles that could be repurposed by simply carving Christian symbols—crosses, rosettes, birds, palmettos, stepped pedestals, and so on—into them.12

One more reason can be singled out in the context of the stability of collective memory. In particular, in the case under discussion, the act of turning a višapak‘ar into a xačk’ar after the adoption of Christianity and the act of “destruction” of a višapak‘ar-turned-xačk’ar after the appearance of non-Christian nomadic tribes in the region clearly illustrate points of connection and breaks of collective memory and value systems during transformation of the sacred landscape. The nomads broke the višapak‘arxačk’ar, destroyed the church, covered it with soil, and actively leveled the surroundings, trying to cover up the existence and long history of the sanctuary as much as possible (for similar cases, see Korkotyan 1932:26–7, 112–13) This implies a radically different approach to perception of space compared to the former Indigenous population. Though the natives did not have a direct memory of the makers of the višapak‘ar, they nevertheless felt a connection to the sacred space and perhaps even the stele. It is also not by chance that the axis of visibility of the višapak‘ar-xačk’ar is Mount Aragats, which is visible beyond Lake Sevan and is home to the highest accumulation of višapak‘ars on the Armenian Plateau.

Figure 14. Coastal boundary of the lava flow of P’orak (Karchaghbyur) and possible routes for transport of the višapak‘ar found at Spitakavor. (Map created by Arshavir Hovhannisyan.)

12. The fragment of the xačk’ar near the entrance to Spitakavor Church is remarkable, as there are pairs of pigeons facing each other, which is an iconographic style typical of višapak‘ars.

The three fragments were joined by our team in 2021

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Basmajean, Karapet. 1927. New Armenia and Neighboring Countries. [In Armenian.] Paris: Palents Publishing House.

Biscione, Raffaele, Simon Hmayakyan, and Neda Parmegiani (editors). 2002. The North-Eastern Frontier: Urartians and Non-Urartians in the Sevan Lake Basin. Rome: CNR, Istituto di studi sulle civilta dell’egeo e del vicino oriente.

Government of the Republic of Armenia. 2002. The Decision of the RA Government on Reorganizing the “Sevan National Park” State Institution, Approving the Statutes of “Sevan” National Park and “Sevan National Park” State Non-Commercial Organization, no. 927-N. [In Armenian.] Yerevan: Government of the Republic of Armenia.

Grigoryan, Avetis. 2020. Memoirs of Medieval Armenian Historians on Historical Sotk. [In Armenian.] HistoricalPhilological Journal 2:186–206.

Hakobyan, Tadevos, Stepan Melik-Bakhshyan, and Hovhannes Barseghyan. 1986. Dictionary of Toponyms of Armenia and Adjacent Regions, Vol. 1. [In Armenian.] Yerevan: Yerevan University Press.

Harutyunyan, Arsen. 2019. The Epigraphic Inscriptions on Dragon-Stones Turned into Cross-Stones. In Vishap between Fairy Tale and Reality. [In Armenian.] Edited by A. Bobokhyan, A. Gilibert, and P. Hnila, pp. 505–17. Yerevan: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences.

Harutyunyan, Khachik. 2019. Memoirs of Armenian Manuscripts. [In Armenian]. Yerevan: Matenadaran.

Hnila, Pavol, Alessandra Gilibert, and Arsen Bobokhyan. 2019. Prehistoric Sacred Landscapes in the High Mountains: The Case of the Vishap Stelae between Taurus and Kaukasus. In BYZAS 24: Natur und Kult in Anatolien, edited by B. Engels, S. Huy, and C. Steitler, pp. 283–302. Istanbul: Veröffentlichungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Istanbul.

Hovhannisyan, Karen. 2019. Manifestation of the Archetypal Image of Dragon in the Armenian Worldview. In Vishap between Fairy Tale and Reality. [In Armenian.] Edited by A. Bobokhyan, A. Gilibert, and P. Hnila, pp. 75–107. Yerevan: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences

Korkotyan, Zaven. 1932. The Population of Soviet Armenia during the Last Century (1831–1931). [In Armenian.]

Yerevan: State Publishing House.

Lalayan, Yervand. 1910. New-Bayazet Province or Gegharkunik: Topography, Rural Society of Mazra. [In Armenian.] Ethnographic Journal 19(1):21–30.

Melikset-Bekov, Levon. 1938. Megalithic Culture of Georgia. [In Georgian.] Tbilisi: Federation.

Muradyan, Paruyr. 1985. Turned into Xačk’ar Vishap Stelae from Eghegnadsor. In Artistic Monuments and Problems of Culture of the East. [In Russian.] Edited by B. Lukonin, pp. 20–26. Leningrad: Nauka.

Orbelean, Stepannos. 1910. History of Sisakan Province. [In Armenian.] Tbilisi: N. Aghanean Press.

Petrosyan, Armen. 1987. Reflection of Indo-European Root *wel- in Armenian Mythology. [In Russian.] Herald of Social Sciences 1:56–70.

———. 2015. Thirty Years Later: Vishap Stone Stelae and the Myth of Dragon Slayer. In Vishap Stone Stelae. [In Armenian.] Edited by A. Petrosyan and A. Bobokhyan, pp. 13–52. Yerevan: Science.

Petrosyan, Hamlet. 2008. Khackar: The Origins, Functions, Iconography, Semantics. [In Armenian.] Yerevan: Printinfo.

———. 2015. Some Remarks on Vishap Stelae. In Vishap Stone Stelae. [In Armenian.] Edited by A. Petrosyan and A. Bobokhyan, pp. 81–98. Yerevan: Science.

Rostomov, Ivan. 1898. Akhalkalak District in Archaeological Terms, Collection of Materials on the Description of Localities and Tribes of the Caucasus. [In Russian.] Tbilisi: Directorate of the Caucasus Educational District Press.

Shahinyan, Abraham. 1984. Medieval Monumental Stelae in Armenia: Xačk’ars of the 9th–13th Centuries. [In Armenian.] Yerevan: National Academy of Sciences.

Simonyan, Lilit, and Karen Hovhannisyan. 2019. Ancient Water Supply Systems, Minor Mher and Vishap-Stones. In Vishap between Fairy Tale and Reality [In Armenian.] Edited by A. Bobokhyan, A. Gilibert, and P. Hnila, pp. 164–79. Yerevan: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences.

Smbateants, Mesrop. 1895. Topography of See-Surrounded Province of Gegharkunik, Which Is Now Nor-Bayazet Province. [In Armenian.] Vagharshapat: Publishing House of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin).

Yeghiazaryan, Hovsep. 1942. Report of H. Yeghiazaryan, the Collaborator of the Committee for the Preservation of Monuments in Armenia of the Armenian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences on the Results of Archaeological Survey in Nor-Bayazet, Martuni and Basargechar Regions. [In Armenian.] National Archives of Armenia, Collection 1063, List 1, Folder 1421, p. 5.

Bikol, the Philippines

1. Anthropology graduate student, UCLA.

2. Associate professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, UCLA.

Figure 2. Mount Isarog, an iconic landmark in Bikol. This was the view while we were surveying for sites in a rice field system. The Bikol region was home to extensive mechanized logging by American corporations during the U.S. colonial regime in the Philippines. Two key sites were identified in Tamban and Tandoc, Siruma.

Figure 1. Map of the Philippines with the Bikol region indicated.

Robin Meyer-Lorey1 and Stephen Acabado2

conversation

Sur. A barangay is the smallest political unit in the Philippines. Community-engaged work allowed us to interview community leaders and local residents about American industries in the present-day towns of Tinambac and Siruma. Many older community members recall the presence of logging companies during their childhoods and recount stories told by parents and grandparents. Given the important role of priests in the region, our research was greatly facilitated by collaboration with the Archdiocese of Caceres. Detailed drone imagery of barangays, three-dimensional models of selected buildings, and aerial photographs were all important results, which we shared with community members and local governments. Left to right: Maddie Yakal, anthropology graduate student anthropology at UCLA and codirector of this year’s field season, Robin Meyer-Lorey, Stephen Acabado, and Annie Cabral.

Figure 3. Our

with barangay captain Annie Cabral of Barangay Tamban, Tinambac, Camarines

Figure 4. Drone selfie taken by incoming graduate student Earl John Hernandez (Cotsen Institute) after a successful flight. Eager field school students learned archaeological remote sensing techniques by operating our drone and LiDAR equipment during practice flights and actual survey sorties.

Figure 5. Graduate students Yen Chun Wang (left) and Earl John Hernandez (right) assist the authors in setting up for a LiDAR mission. This project is one of the first archaeological LiDAR studies from a drone in Southeast Asia. A generous grant from the Philippine Commission on Higher Education allowed Partido State University in Goa to purchase the Matrice 300 RTK drone system with a Zenmuse L1 LiDAR sensor used for this research project. Practical field experience with this equipment enabled us to learn and hone skills that will benefit many future research projects at the Cotsen Institute and the Department of Anthropology at UCLA.

Figure 6. Graduate students Iman Nagy (left), Edward Cleofe, and Robin Meyer-Lorey enjoy some R&R at Lake Buhi after a mapping mission for community collaborators.

St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

Justin Dunnavant1

We returned to Estate Little Princess for the first time since the pandemic to continue archaeological excavations at the eighteenthcentury Danish sugar plantation. Our team comprised colleagues from UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and the California Academy of Sciences, as well as four students in the UC-HBCU program, which seeks to improve diversity and strengthen UC graduate programs by investing in relationships between UC faculty and historically Black colleges and universities. Among the students was Darartu Mulugeta, an undergraduate Bunche Fellow at UCLA. Excavations explored the extent of the village once housing the enslaved community and the architecture of the cabins, as well as the daily life of enslaved Africans on the plantation.

1. Assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute.

Figure 1. Map of St. Croix with Estate Little Princess highlighted.

Figure 2. Justin Dunnavant demonstrates GPS mapping to UC-HBCU student Jasmine Mitchell, an undergraduate student of history at Fisk University.

Figure 4. Jasmine Mitchell (left) and London Booker (right) sort artifacts at Estate Little Princess.

Figure 3. Darartu Mulugeta excavates an archaeological unit at Estate Little Princess.

Underwater Archaeology Near Maui and Lana‘i

In October 2022, I received a grant from the National Geographic Society to join a team of maritime archaeologists, educators, and science communicators researching submerged heritage sites around the islands of Maui and Lanai in Hawai‘i. For two weeks, I helped create photogrammetric models of a sunken Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter aircraft, a Curtiss SB2C Helldiver bomber, a tracked amphibious vehicle, and other remains dating to the Second World War. Our

research was complemented by a primary school curriculum created by Ashleigh Glickley. We conducted project operations from the EV Nautilus , owned and operated by Robert Ballard, National Geographic explorer at large, who previously discovered the wrecks of the Titanic (1985), the battleship Bismarck (1989), the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier (1998), and John F. Kennedy’s patrol torpedo boat PT-109 (2002).

1. Assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute.

Justin Dunnavant1

Figure 1. Photogrammetric model of the investigated sunken Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter aircraft, created by Dominic Bush.

Figure 2. Underwater archaeologists at work. (Photograph by Jenny Adler.)

Industria (Monteu da Po), Italy

Aresearch project at the Roman city of Industria (modern Monteu da Po), postponed for several years because of the Covid-19 pandemic—which hit northern Italy particularly hard—was at last initiated in September 2022.3 Industria was founded during the first century CE as a typical Roman city to replace the Ligurian settlement of Bodincomagus (mentioned by Pliny the Elder, Natural History iii, 122), its location most likely chosen because of its proximity to the confluence of the Dora Baltea, coming down through the Aosta Valley, and the river Po. Around the same time, and only about 30 km (20 miles) to the west, the Roman city of Augusta Taurinorum (modern Turin) was founded to replace the Ligurian settlement of Taurasia, near the confluence of the river Po and the Dora Riparia, coming down through the Susa Valley.

Under patronage of the Avillius family, the city flourished during the first and second centuries as an industrial town, as reflected in its new name, processing metal ores brought down from the Alps. Originally from Padua, near Venice, the Avillius family had made a fortune in trade across the Aegean Sea, with their main base at the Cycladic island of Delos, and looked to diversify their assets. Initially attracted by possible gold deposits in the Alps, they ultimately settled on exploring the much larger copper deposits and on the production of bronze ingots and

At the time of the founding of Industria, the Roman Empire was at the height of its expansion and power, resulting in an increased exposure to foreign cultures and religions. This was certainly the case for the internationally connected Avillius family. Prominent examples in

objects.

1. Associate researcher, Cotsen Institute, and associate adjunct professor, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.

2. Joan Silsbee Chair of African Cultural Archaeology, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and director of the Cotsen Institute.

3. “The Valleys of the Shadow of Death,” Economist, October 31, 2020, p. 77, www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/31/ italian-towns-hit-hardest-by-covid-19-are-doing-better-now.

Hans Barnard1 and Willeke Wendrich2

Industria was founded during the first century CE

Figure 1. Map of Piemonte, northern Italy, with the location of the Roman city of Industria (previously Bodincomagus; modern Monteu da Po) indicated.

Figure 2. Satellite image of Industria in northern Italy. The road pattern dates to Roman times. The ruins of putative temples to the Egyptian deities Isis and Serapis are visible north of a single-track railroad.

Rome of the resulting fascination with cultures farther east include the pyramid (tomb) of Gaius Cestius (circa 18–12 BCE), statuary of Hadrian and his companion Antinous in remarkable Egyptianized style (circa 135 CE; originally in Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli and now mostly in Room III of the Gregorian Egyptian Museum in the Vatican Museums), eight Egyptian obelisks moved to Rome between around 10 and 350 CE, five obelisks carved in Italy in Egyptian style between around 25 and 275 CE, and the first century CE Bembine Tablet of Isis (Mensa Isaica), now in Museo Egizio in Turin. In Industria, this trend and the influence of the Avillius family seem to have resulted in the two main temples of the city being dedicated to the Egyptian deities Isis and Serapis

After reaching its peak in the second and third centuries CE, the fortune of Industria changed when the river Po slowly moved away from the settlement and Roman economic structures changed. During the fourth century CE, the bronze industry came to an end, and the inhabitants abandoned the city, with many moving into the foothills of the Monferrato Mountains farther south. Most of the Roman building materials were removed to be used elsewhere, and the remains of the city slowly disappeared under orchards and agricultural fields.

Figure 3. Community outreach was the main focus of our first field season, postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

During the fourth century the bronze industry ended

Figure 4. Willeke Wendrich (left) discusses research strategies with codirector David Walsh of the University of Newcastle.

Figure 5. Hans Barnard (right) sets up a total station with the help of UCLA graduate student Brandon Keith.

Figure 6. Francis Leung (University of Kent), Brandon Keith, and Vittorio Scolamiero (Politecnico di Torino) collect resistivity and high-resolution GPS data.

In the course of the eighteenth century, the dukes of Savoy, based in nearby Turin, developed an interest in Industria, seeing another opportunity to increase their cultural and intellectual standing and with that their political influence among the noble families of Europe. In 1745 Charles Emmanuel III sent his librarians Giovanni Paolo Ricolvi and Antonio Rivautella to investigate the site. They returned to Turin with many ancient artifacts, which became part of the growing collection of the Savoy family. These are now kept in Museo di Antichità in Turin. In Napoleonic times (1798–1814), the site was purchased, excavated, and studied by Count Bernardino Morra di Lauriano. More excavations, as well as protection and presentation of the ancient remains, were performed between 1981 and 2003, mostly under the direction of Elisa Lanza and Emanuela Zanda of the University of Turin. Federico Barello and Alessandro Quercia of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio published additional insights, overviews, and reconstructions (Barello 2012; Zanda 2011).

Much of the archaeological attention on the site focused on the center of the city, with its temples and other public buildings, also because many of the ancient remains are below privately owned land. Large areas thus remain mostly unexcavated and understudied, including living quarters, industrial facilities, and cemeteries. This leaves many details of the economic and technological function of the ancient settlement unclear. This holds true for details about the daily life and religious practices of the common inhabitants of the city. After visiting the site several times with students of the summer teaching program in Museo Egizio and in close cooperation with the local authorities, we developed a project to reinvestigate the site,4 focusing on areas outside the protected center of the ancient city. This obviously required significant communication with the local community to reach consensus on the meaning and value of the ancient remains. The name of the project—Comunità Antiche e Moderne a Industria (Ancient and Modern Communities at Industria)—reflects this focus.

Of prime importance for the success of our interaction with the local population and authorities is our collaboration with local archaeologist Anna Lorenzatto, who also participated in our project in Shire, Tigray, Ethiopia.5 The scientific research is partly executed by scholars from the University of Newcastle, with which Romanist and codirector David Walsh is affiliated, and a geophysical surveyor of the University of Kent in Canterbury. During our first field season we were joined by graduate students Mia Evans and Francis Leung of the University of Kent, as well as Brandon Keith and Matei Tichindelean of UCLA. We were also briefly joined by a survey team from the Politecnico di Torino, directed by Fulvio Rinaudo, which created orthographic photographs of the site and a digital elevation model. All our work was performed with the permission and cooperation of the Direzione Generale Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio, Ministero della Cultura.

Figure 7. Lorenzo Teppati (left) of the Politecnico di Torino and Willeke Wendrich inspect drone imagery in real time.

Large areas remain unexcavated and understudied

4. See Backdirt 2017, pp. 68–69, and Backdirt 2019, pp. 10–15.

5. See Backdirt 2015, pp. 48–53, and Backdirt 2019, pp. 54–59.

Conversations took place with the local community

Our first season comprised an intensive topographical and geophysical survey of a triangular piece of land, measuring 8,100 m² (2 acres), just north of the ancient city center. This preserves the remains of the Church of San Giovanni di Dustria, which was active from the fourth to the twelfth century. Both the magnetic and earth resistance data revealed a subterranean semicircular feature associated with several compacted surfaces. The alignment of these structures was 11° east of north, which is consistent with the street plan and Roman structures nearby. Another set of structures appeared to be aligned 14° east of north, which is consistent with the standing remains of the church. Apart from these structures, we saw several discrete areas with ferrous materials, which could be modern, as well as one area that had once been subjected to high temperatures.

During the collection and processing of these data, informal conversations took place with many representatives of the local community, including those living near the site, passersby, and the mayors of the two nearby communities (Monteu da Po and Lauriano). On September 24, 2022, after the project ended, we presented our preliminary results to the local community during the eighth Tramonto a Industria festival in Monteu da Po. We spoke along with Anna Lorenzatto, after introductions by Valentina Barberis and Alessandro Quercia. Our presentation was received well; two articles on the project ran in a local newspaper. The owners of the restaurant where we ate lunch every day were aware of the ancient site and have now decided to embrace it by designing a cocktail named Industria. Our experiences and first results provide us with great hopes for future field seasons, and we strive to continue our research with as much involvement of the local community and our graduate students as feasible.

Refe R ences cI ted

Barello, Federico. 2012. Un abile dilettantte: Il lapidario Morra di Lauriano da Industria. [In Italian.] Turin: Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici del Piemonte e del Museo Antichità Egizie.

Zanda, Emanuela. 2011. Industria: Città Romana sacra a Iside: Scavi e ricerche archeologiche 1981–2003. [In Italian.] Turin: Umberto Allemandi.

Figure 8. The authors, together with local archaeologist Anna Lorenzatto (not pictured), presented their work and preliminary results to the community during the eighth Tramonto a Industria festival in Monteu da Po on September 24, 2022. (Image courtesy of Mauro Facciolo, La Vita Casalese.)

Fire on Rapa Nui

Jo Anne Van Tilburg1

Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) has more than 30,000 archaeological sites and features both within Rapa Nui National Park and outside. These have been cataloged by at least 10 international survey teams. A large part of that collective survey data is archived and curated by the Easter Island Statue Project2 and included in a volume currently in preparation as an illustrated atlas to be submitted to the Cotsen Institute Press. The most impressive sites on the island include megalithic mortuary temples (ahu), monolithic stone statues (moai), and the Rano Raraku statue quarry. A profound personal history links the Rapanui people and their ancient built environment with their ancestral lands.

I arrived on the island for the first time in 1981, when the resident population was about 2,500. Only two decades earlier, the Rapanui people had wrenched power from colonial Chilean leadership. Today, all major political institutions are headed by locally elected officials of Rapanui ancestry. My last visit was in 2018, when there

were 7,750 residents, including mainland Chileans. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the island was closed to all visitors. Over time, social and economic pressures apparently built up within the community, which has a long Indigenous history with fire. Eventually there emerged long-buried conflicts with roots deep in the dismal colonial history of the region.

1. Director of the UCLA Rock Art Archive and director and principal investigator of the Easter Island Statue Project. 2. http://www.eisp.org.

I arrived on the island for the first time in 1981

Before human settlement, Rapa Nui was lushly forested. Although the full spectrum of natural and anthropogenic causes is debated, there is no question that the original Polynesian settlers, the ancestors of the current population, cleared huge swaths of land for agriculture by a process inelegantly known as slash and burn. The resultant grasslands encouraged early Chilean colonists to establish a sheep ranch and to import horses, cattle, and oxen. The consequent damage to the archaeological sites is visible but not yet fully quantified. The ranch years eventually ended, but the Rapanui community was left with the destructive legacy of free-ranging stock and a practice of setting uncontrolled grass fires to encourage the growth of new forage. During our Rano Raraku mapping forays (Van Tilburg et al. 2005, 2016), we struggled with overgrown brush and shrubbery on the slopes and watched horses running wild.

the field

The Pas T

Figure 1. The Rano Raraku statue quarry, Rapa Nui. (EISP Archives and Database, 1983.)

Before human settlement, Rapa Nui was forested

Today, the entire island of Rapa Nui is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has a long conservation relationship with the World Monuments Fund. Rano Raraku, the monolithic statue quarry, is the gem of Rapa Nui National Park and the most visited of the many tourist sites on the island (Figure 1). The inner region is a unique ecosystem hosting nesting tropical birds (tavake) and a rain-fed lake with surrounding wetlands (Figure 2). Fire has swept through the interior of Rano Raraku multiple times; one of the most serious events took place in 1996. Beginning in 2005, and while my Easter Island Statue Project (EISP) team conducted multiple seasons of mapping and excavations in Rano Raraku, four grass fires raged uncontrolled over the statue-strewn slopes and quarries. In every known case, these fires were deliberately set.

Rapa Nui is a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Figure 2. The inner region ecosystem and quarries at Rano Raraku. (EISP Archives and Database, 2012.)

Fi R e!

Figure 3. Archaeological map of Rano Raraku (1981) superimposed on the fire sector in Rano Raraku with combined survey points. (Illustration by Lya and Tahira Edmunds, October 6, 2022. Courtesy of Sonia Haoa Cardinali.)

Figure 4. The Rano Raraku inner region fire sector, 2022. (Courtesy of José Miguel Ramírez-Aliaga.)

On October 4, 2022, Rano Raraku endured perhaps its worst fire in modern times (Figure 3). It created its own windstorm within the bowl-shaped interior region. Lake water evaporated, and organic matter in and around the lake burned for days (Figure 4). All the statues, including those lying on the slopes, and quarries were subjected to flames and intense heat (Figure 5). Island authorities described the surface damage as “irreparable.” My colleagues and I were heartbroken, the Rapanui community was devastated, and UNESCO sent an evaluation team.

aR chaeol ogy a N d h uma N Behavio R

Statue conservation is a major focus, and horses are always a problem because they enter Rano Raraku through an artificially created gap and range uncontrolled among the statues (Van Tilburg 1990). One of the first steps local agencies took toward damage assessment in preparation for statue conservation was to consult the comprehensive mapping of Rano Raraku created by the Universidad de Chile (Cristino Ferrando et al. 1981) and the many

reports of my team. At the end of our last full field season, in 2015, EISP provided complete documentation to the Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales and multiple other agencies (Oficina Provincial de Isla de Pascua 2022). That included numerous copies of supplemental reports as well as illustrated maps (Figure 6), excavation and conservation reports, drawings (Figure 7), and “biographical” histories of 339 statues and archaeological features in Rano Raraku. Island agencies would likely agree with Beaudet and Elie (1991) that archaeology is not “fundamentally destructive.” Considering it so “constitutes . . . a denial of the multiple dangers faced by archaeological sites in the real world” and minimizes “contributions of archaeological research to the understanding of past lifeways, material culture, and other related aspects of history and human behavior.”

Figure 5. Statue head 185 on the inner region slope, 2022. (Courtesy of José Miguel Ramírez-Aliaga.)

We struggled with overgrown brush and shrubbery

Figure 6. Inner region map sheet 9, draft 2014, with statue head 185. (Illustration by Alice Hom, EISP Archives and Database.)

The Fu T u R e

Multiple local agencies are led today by a younger, welleducated generation charged with the enormous task of assessing damage to the archaeological record and coordinating local and international mitigation efforts (Figure 8). They must also meet the more intimate challenge of public education and encourage behavioral changes with firmness and compassion. My experience with California rock art sites reminds me of methods used by Indigenous California peoples in their traditional management of fire. They teach that fire can refresh the landscape for principled reuse but that burning to “revitalize the land” demands respect for the power of fire and skill in its control.3 The unknown person or persons who unwittingly caused the Rano Raraku catastrophe tried to refresh the land for reuse but lacked the experiential resources needed to control the fire. It is now imperative to work together toward new responses to such old, ineffective behaviors. Armed with the comprehensive archaeological data that we and others have amassed, the community as a whole has an opportunity to meet the challenge that this recent fire posed for the natural and cultural wonders of the island.

a ck N owledgme NT s

I sincerely thank Sonia Haoa Cardinali, Lilian González Nualart, Jimena Ramírez, Ninoska Hucke, and other heads of Rapa Nui and Chilean conservation agencies; EISP team members Cristián Arévalo Pakarati, Alice Hom, Matthew Bates, and Shannon Billimore; Charlie Steinmetz and our colleagues at the Archaeological Institute of America; and Jonathan Bell and his team at the World Monuments Fund.

3. Kat Kerlin, “How Indigenous Practices Can Help Forests Thrive: New UC Feature Illuminates Cultural Burning,” UC Davis, April 7, 2022, https:// www.ucdavis.edu/news/cultural-burning-illuminated.

Figure 7. Statue head 185. (Drawing by Cristián Arévalo Pakarati, EISP Archives and Database, 2008.)

It is now imperative to work together

Tito Hotus (councilor, Rapa Nui), Jimena Ramírez (STP-CMN, Rapa Nui), Claudia Uribe (director, Regional Office of Education for Latin America and the Caribbean, OREALC/UNESCO); behind (with hat): Armando Tuki (president, Comunidad Indígena Ma’u Henua); in front of him: Jean Pakarati (director, Comunidad Indígena Ma’u Henua); in back, next to Tuki: Nancy Rivera Chávez (Comunidad Indígena Ma’u Henua); in front: Paula Valenzuela (with hat; director, MAPSE), Joaquín Soler (Ma’u Henua), and Lorenzo Teao (Ma’u Henua); standing: Moana Gorman Edmunds (archaeologist, Ma’u Henua). (Photograph courtesy of Jimena Ramírez.)

Re F e R e N ces c i T ed

Beaudet, Pierre, and Monique Elie. 1991. Is Archaeology Destructive or Are Archaeologists Self-Destructive? Northeast Historical Archaeology 20, https://doi.org/10.22191/neha/vol20/iss1/1.

Cristino Ferrando, Claudio, Patricia Vargas Casanova, and Roberto Izaurieta San Juan. 1981. Atlas Arqueológico de Isla de Pascua. Santiago de Chile: Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, Centro de Estudios Isla de Pascua, Corporación Toesca.

Oficina Provincial de Isla de Pascua. 2022. Informe preliminar afectación sitio patrimonial arqueológi;co por incendio 04.10.2022: En sitio de Rano Raraku y alrededores. Rapa Nui, 23 Octubre 2022. Internal report; copy on file at EISP Archives and Database.

Van Tilburg, Jo Anne. 1990. Respect for Rapa Nui: Exhibition and Conservation of Easter Island Stone Statues. Antiquity 64(243):249–58.

Van Tilburg, Jo Anne, Cristián Arévalo Pakarati, Peter Boniface, and Alice Hom. 2005. “The Easter Island Statue Project (EISP), GPS Mapping of Rano Raraku Interior and Moai Conservation.” In The Reñaca Papers: VI International Conference on Rapa Nui and the Pacific , edited by J. M. Ramírez-Aliaga, F. J. Morin, and N. Barbacci, pp. 483–92. Los Osos, CA: Easter Island Foundation.

Van Tilburg, Jo Anne, Christian H. Fischer, Mónica Bahamondez Prieto, and Cristián Arévalo Pakarati. 2016. Seeking Solutions: An Archaeological Approach to Conservation of a Threatened Heritage on Rapa Nui (Easter Island). In Finding Solutions for Protecting and Sharing Archaeological Heritage Resources , edited by Anne P. Underhill and Lucy C. Salazar, pp. 65–77. Cham: Springer, https://doi. org/10.1007/978-3-319-20255-6-5.

Figure 8. Rapa Nui conservation agency heads in Rano Raraku after the fire of 2022. Left to right: Nicolas Rojas Inostroza (cultural consultant, UNESCO),

The Forgotten War in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

Having worked in the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia since 2014, we were greatly surprised by the terrible conflict that erupted in November 2020 and still carries on today. We had always been impressed with the levels of organization and education in the region, the obvious efforts to increase the economic prosperity of the population, and the genuine interest in our work.3 After the bloody Wars of Eritrean Independence (1961–1991), the brutal regimes of Mengistu Haile Mariam (1974–1991), and the great famines of 1983–1985 and 2003, we assumed that a period of peace and progress had begun, despite warnings to the contrary by some of our local collaborators. Blissfully ignorant of what was brewing behind the unexplored archaeology, the breathtaking landscapes, the enchanting wildlife, and the fascinating foodstuffs, we came and went to study the local archaeology ranging back to at least the Middle Stone Age (Finneran et al. 2003). We were always excited to come back and continue our work and collaboration where we had left off the previous year.

Obviously, this is not the place to discuss the conflict in any detail.4 Nor can we do justice to the resulting immeasurable human suffering. Indeed, the situation on the ground is far from clear as the region has been cut off from (cell) phone and internet infrastructure for most of the duration of the conflict. We know that some of our collaborators safely made it to Europe; others are alive at the time of writing. We also learned that at least two of our collaborators perished in the conflict, and we have not heard from many others. The lack of communication has also greatly hampered our feeble efforts to help, either by sending money, providing immaterial assistance, or offering words of support and comfort.

1. Associate researcher, Cotsen Institute, and associate adjunct professor, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.

2. Joan Silsbee Chair of African Cultural Archaeology, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and director of the Cotsen Institute.

3. See Backdirt 2015, pp. 48–53, and Backdirt 2019, pp. 54–59.

4. For this we refer to, for instance, “Master of the Horn?” Economist, May 22, 2021, pp. 37–38; “Defeat in the Mountains,” Economist, July 3, 2021, pp. 51–52; “Down from the Mountains,” Economist, July 31, 2021, p. 40; “Bodies in the Fields,” Economist, October 9, 2021, p. 46; “A Battle for the Capital Looms,” Economist, November 6, 2021, pp. 39–40; “Back to the Mountains,” Economist, December 18, 2021, p. 36; “Happy Christmas, War Is Over?” Economist, January 15, 2022, p. 39; “Falling Apart,” Economist, August 27, 2022, pp. 35–36; https://emnetnegash.wordpress.com; and other news sources.

Hans Barnard1 and Willeke Wendrich2

We were always excited to come back

In December 2021 we received an email message from someone we had gotten very close to. To quote his words (edited for clarity and with the names of individuals removed): “At this time the only challenge is no bank, no internet, no electricity, no money, no clean water, and I am very hungry much of the time.”

After this understatement, he reports on the state of our living quarters and site: “The dig house is partially destroyed by Eritrean soldiers, especially the room on the first floor. Some of the project materials were stolen, including the generator and some of the excavation equipment. . . . [The custodian] and his family were not in the city or the dig house at the time because of the heavy war in Shire. The last day of their stay in Shire, Eritrean forces killed a lot of people and they moved into a nearby cave to save their lives. After they came back they found the dig house broken into and burnt. The windows were repaired and repainted in September 2021. . . . Regarding the site of Mai Adrasha, it is fully damaged, there is no reason to continue archaeological work there. It is now full of plants like avocado, mango and others, deep wells have been dug, and the site is used as a quarry for stones for building houses. . . . The archaeological finds storeroom in the regional administrative office is 100% damaged and burnt by both Eritrean and Ethiopian forces.”

We received a second message in April 2022 (likely copied from an external source): “The human cost in any conflict is the first and highest priority; however, archaeology and heritage are extremely vulnerable to attack and damage during conflict, and conflicts continue to inflict damage to numerous sites, both large and small, around the Tigray region. Conflict is impacting the lives of millions of people, and the archaeology and heritage of many nations. All conflict-damaged archaeology and heritage can play a vital role to help rebuild damaged communities and offer hope of employment and reintegration to those impacted by war. . . . In the last 18 months, Ethiopian and Eritrean government troops in Tigray have repeatedly shelled archaeological sites, archaeological finds, archaeological excavations, churches and mosques, as well as towns and villages. The shelling has been carried out with a total disregard for the buildings or their importance. Many are not simply of local or national importance, but are cultural treasures of global significance. These attacks have been accompanied by the killing of dozens of local people, including priests, and by extensive looting. So deliberate has this been, that it must be considered to be a conscious decision by both the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments; part of a strategy to try to destroy the cultural heritage and the social fabric of the local society.”

Figure 1. Map of Ethiopia indicating the position of the Tigray region.

Figure 2. Map showing the results of the UCLA survey just east of Shire (Inda Selassie), Tigray, December 2019. Note the site of Mai Adrasha in the northwestern corner of the survey area. (Map created by Matthew Curtis.)

Farther down he continues in his own voice (again edited for clarity): “The project has made a lot of sacrifices to build good relationships with the local communities, including the local administration, in order to make the site a tourist attraction and tell the rest of the world the story of the Tigray region and the ancient civilizations in the northern Horn of Africa. Excavated finds from Mai Adrasha have been dated back to 1250 BCE, making it the oldest site in northern Ethiopia. All finds were washed, documented, catalogued and analyzed, after which they were stored in a room in the regional administrative building. In December 2020 this building was bombed by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces. As you can see in the pictures, the shelves are now empty and all boxes thrown to the ground. Later, some of the local people took the opportunity to visit the storeroom and further damage the boxes. Not a single box is now in a

good condition; every box is destroyed and most of the finds are broken, some of them stomped into dust.”

Writing about our living quarters he continues, “Until November 2020 the house was safe and very clean, but after the Eritrean forces occupied the city of Shire and made access impossible it became very dirty. . . . In July 2021, Eritrean forces broke down the gate and every room was searched for weapons, electronics and other materials. During that time, there was a heavy war and a lot of houses and hotels were damaged and vandalized.

Figure 3. Aerial view of the UCLA excavations at Mai Adrasha, Tigray, December 2019. Trench 1 is in the center of the image, Trench 2 toward the top right, and Trench 6 toward the bottom left. (Photograph by Jeremy Là Zelle and Kristin Gates.)

I am very hungry much of the time

. . . I could not visit the storeroom or the site due to the presence of Eritrean soldiers, making any attempt to visit very dangerous. According to informants from the area, Eritrean forces were vandalizing project equipment and private houses nearby. In August 2021, I could visit the site, the storeroom, and the dig house. During this visit, I was heartbroken because the storeroom appeared to have been totally destroyed, burnt and looted, the site severely damaged, and the dig house broken into.”

Remarkably, he ends his message on a more positive note: “The archaeological site of Mai Adrasha and its finds are totally destroyed. It is true that the project cannot continue there, but it is possible to initiate a new project in the Shire region, for instance in Mezaber Adi Menaber, the caves [with Paleolithic remains], or another site. . . . To develop a new proposal for a new archaeological project would be beneficial for both sides.”

Unfortunately, we do not share this optimism and fear that the conflict will continue for a considerable time. Also outside the Tigray region, academics with a Tigrayan background are now fearing not only for their jobs but for their lives.5 Help for Tigray is hindered by an attitude that Tigray called this on itself, but the people we know and love are not politicians but rather farmers and field archaeologists who have a difficult time making a living under the best of circumstances. For the sake of the people of Tigray and their history, we have to make sure they will not be forgotten with the attention of the world continuously shifting to other events (Ogundiran 2021).

Figure 4. Airstrike on Mekele, the capital of the Tigray region, November 2020. (Image courtesy of Voice of America.)

Not a single box is now in a good condition

5. “Obituary Professor Meareg Amare (1959–2021),” Emnet Negash, November 9, 2021, https://emnetnegash.wordpress.com/2021/11/09/ obituary-professor-meareg-amare-1959-2021.

from the field

Figure 5. Satellite image of Aksum Airport, Tigray, November 2020. Note the walls built across the runway to render it inoperable. (Image courtesy of Maxar Technologies/Google Earth.)

Figure 7. The site of Mai Adrasha in August 2021.

Figure 6. Internally displaced people receive drinking water in Shire (Inda Selassie), Tigray, April 2021. (Image from Wikimedia Commons, reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.)

R EFEREN c E s c i TE d

Finneran, Niall, Jacke Phillips, Asamerew Desie, Chester Cain, Michael Harlow, and Tekle Hagos. 2003. The Archaeological Landscape of the Shire Region, Western Tigray, Ethiopia: A Preliminary Report on the 2001 Field Season. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 38:139–47, https://doi.org/10.1080/00672700309480361.

Ogundiran, Akin. 2021. Doing Archaeology in a Turbulent Time. African Archaeological Review 38:397–401, https://doi. org/10.1007/s10437-021-09460-8.

Figure 8. The site of Mai Adrasha in August 2021.

Figure 9. The storeroom of the UCLA project in the regional administrative office in Shire (Inda Selassie) in August 2021.

Figure 10. The storeroom of the UCLA project in the regional administrative office in Shire (Inda Selassie) in August 2021.

reports

fRom the ChAiRs

Report from the Chair of the Archaeology Program

Stephen B. Acabado1

As we find ourselves at the tail end of the Covid-19 pandemic and begin to return to some semblance of normality, we aim to continue to work collaboratively and engage with one another in a safe and productive environment. This is my first official report as chair of the Archaeology Program. This statement therefore provides details on the achievement of our students under the guidance of Gregson Schachner, who stepped down as chair after three years of service. However, Greg is still very much actively engaged in my transition, responding to my many questions. Thank you, Greg! Since Greg’s last report, seven students fully completed their degrees. Because of the pandemic, we invited both 2020 and 2021 graduates to participate in the spring 2022 celebrations. Faculty, students, and staff of the Cotsen Institute celebrated our graduates on the terrace of the Fowler Museum, together with families and friends.

KAtelyn Jo Bishop graduated with a thesis entitled “Ritual Practice, Ceremonial Organization, and the Value and Use of Birds in Pre-Hispanic Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, 800–1150 CE.” Gregson Schachner and Richard Lesure, both at the Department of Anthropology, chaired her dissertation committee. Katelyn has joined the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign as an assistant professor of anthropology.

BrAndon BrAun graduated with a thesis entitled “Commemorating Classical Battles: A Landscape Biography Approach to Marathon, Leuktra, and Chaironeia.” Sarah Morris and John Papadopoulos, both at the Department of Classics, chaired his dissertation committee.

1. Associate professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UCLA.

Figure 1. Our graduation party on the roof terrace of the Fowler Museum, May 11, 2022. Left to right: Gazmend Elezi (and his son), Katelyn Bishop, Willeke Wendrich, and Karime Castillo Cardenas.

Figure 2. Redecoration of our institute, which started during the Covid-19 pandemic, is making progress but was far from completed as of October 2022.

KArime CAstillo CArdenAs graduated with a thesis entitled “Glass Production in Colonial Mexico: Technology Transfer, Adoption, and Adaptation.” Ioanna Kakoulli of the Samueli School of Engineering chaired her dissertation committee. Karime has joined the faculty of Bowdoin College in Maine as an assistant professor of anthropology.

AdAm diBAttistA graduated with a thesis entitled “Animal Transformations of Animal Materials in Early Greece.” Sarah Morris and John Papadopoulos, both at the Department of Classics, chaired his dissertation committee. Adam now is a visiting research scholar at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University.

GAzmend elezi graduated with a thesis entitled “Sociocultural Dimensions of Production, Use, and Circulation of Late Neolithic Pottery for the Southern Balkans.” Sarah Morris and John Papadopoulos, both at the Department of Classics, chaired his dissertation committee. Gazmend now is a postdoctoral researcher in the Pasarow Mass Spectrometer Laboratory at UCLA.

VerA rondAno graduated with a thesis entitled “The Economy of Human Resilience: Exploring Economic Growth during Periods of Political Fragmentation in Ancient Egypt.” Kathlyn Cooney, at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, chaired her dissertation committee.

Amr shAhAt graduated with a thesis entitled “Climate Change and the Social History of Food in Ancient Egypt: Between Humanities and Life Sciences.” Willeke Wendrich, at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, chaired his dissertation committee. Amr now is a postdoctoral researcher at the Cotsen Institute.

Our continuing students received numerous awards over the course of the academic year. They succeeded in internal UCLA competitions, receiving a Graduate Research Mentorship (Lucha Martinez de Luna; Dominque Spark-Stokes), a FLAS Fellowship

(Dominique Spark-Stokes), a CMRS-CEGS Fellowship (Earl John Cedo Hernandez), and an Edward A. Dickson Fellowship in the History of Art (Eden Franz). Carly Pope received a Fulbright Fellowship and a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Short-Term Fellowship to support her dissertation work in Panama.

Six students joined our program beginning in fall 2022; their backgrounds and research interests are highlighted elsewhere in this volume. Alex Casteel joins UCLA after completing an MA/MPhil and will focus his PhD research on Norse archaeology, mythology, and Old Norse sagas. Earl John Cedo Hernandez recently completed his MA in anthropology and will look at the archaeology of Spanish colonialism in his graduate work at UCLA. Ariadin Jones majored in Asian area studies and minored in archaeology, with an additional concentration in bioarchaeology. She is looking at combining these interests at UCLA. Luis Rodriguez-Perez will pursue research on urbanism and landscape in the Mediterranean during the Hellenistic and Roman periods using applied photogrammetry and three-dimensional modeling. The graduate research of Gabriel Silva Collins will focus on the pre-Hispanic Andes and will examine interregional exchange along the borders of the Inca Empire. He is especially interested in the relationship between political and environmental borders at the domestic and non-elite scale. Zichao Wang has proposed research covering the history and civilization of early China, especially political and cultural transformations in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. His academic interests include historical geography, early Chinese epigraphy, studies of Confucian classics, Chinese intellectual history, ancient Chinese architectures, Chinese ritual history, and cultural theories.

Again, I thank Greg Schachner for steering the Archaeology Program to great heights, even amid the pandemic. Through Greg’s leadership, the program maintained its high National Research Council ranking. I look forward to working with our dedicated staff, faculty, students, volunteers, donors, and the larger UCLA community. I welcome questions, concerns, and input to further strengthen the Archaeology Program.

I eagerly anticipate a successful year ahead!

Report from the Chair of the Conservation Program

Glenn Wharton1

Comin G out of p A ndemi C lockdown, 2022 was a year of growth and development for the UCLA/ Getty Conservation Program. Our third year MA students returned from a year in absentia to in-person classes and internship opportunities, and our PhD students were finally able to pursue their long-delayed field research. Faculty and staff were happy to be back on campus and in our laboratories in the Getty Villa, teaching and working with our students.

We are not only back, we are growing! I am pleased to announce new students, new hires, and exciting new research initiatives. We welcome two new faculty members: Thiago Sevilhano Puglieri as assistant professor of art history and cultural heritage conservation, and Anya Dani as director of community engagement and inclusive practice as well as a lecturer in cultural heritage conservation.

Puglieri comes to our program from the Department of Museology, Conservation, and Restoration at the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil. He holds a PhD in physical chemistry from the University of São Paulo. Trained as a chemist, he has focused his research on the characterization of art and cultural materials. He has copublished a range of studies based on his research on pigments, ceramics, metal objects, and paintings, using a wide range of analytical tools. Most recently, at the Getty Conservation Institute, he investigated the potential of a relatively new analytical technique, shellisolated nanoparticle-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, to detect and characterize chemical components leaching out of plastic objects. Puglieri was professionally active in Brazil, serving as vice president of the Brazilian Association of Heritage Science and Technology. He also serves on the international advisory committee of a project titled An International Research Infrastructure for Heritage Science, coordinated by the Netherlands Institute for Conservation, Art, and Science. In 2019–2020 he was a visiting researcher at the Getty

Conservation Institute. One of the most compelling aspects of his work in Brazil has been community engagement. He regularly worked with local high school teachers to introduce research methods that connect chemistry and the humanities to students in the hope of attracting them to study the intersection of art and science.

As a lecturer and as director of community engagement and inclusive practice, Any Dani focuses on the preservation of African American cultural heritage and helping the program reach underserved communities. She is committed to a people-centered approach that not only diversifies the types of cultural items we conserve but also empowers communities and normalizes community engagement. In her first few months at UCLA, she investigated the needs of local Black communities, working to understand existing initiatives, meeting with potential collaborators, and developing plans for future projects. Dani is an objects conservator with a focus on anti-racism and social justice. She joins UCLA from Stanford University. She is a cofounder of the Black Art Conservators group, a member of the American Institute for Conservation’s Equity and Inclusion Committee, and a lecturer at San Francisco State University.

Five new MA students and two new PhD students arrived in September. The MA students, Taylor Brehm, Cheyenne Caraway, Rachel Moore, Kathryn Peneyra, and Makayla Rawlins, were introduced in the 2021 issue of Backdirt (pp. 136–39). Saiful Bakhri and Liu Chongwen joined our PhD program. Their backgrounds and research interests can be found elsewhere in this volume.

Our third-year MA students spent their final two quarters back in our laboratories at the Getty Villa, taking in-person courses after a year in absentia due to the pandemic. We all rejoiced at being together again. These students are now spread around the world on internships. Lauren Conway is doing hers at Kaman Kalehöyük in Turkey, the Weltmuseum in Vienna, and the Arizona State Museum. Tamara Dissi is spending a full year at the National Museum of Asian Art (the Freer/Sackler Museum). Jennifer McGough is working

1. Professor of art history and the conservation of material culture, and the Lore and Gerald Cunard Chair of the UCLA/Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage.

in the Ancient Agora in Athens, the Angkor National Museum in Cambodia, and the Museum at the University of Pennsylvania. Isabel Schneider’s internships include work at the American Excavation Samothrace in Greece, the Arizona State Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum. Céline Wachsmuth is doing her internships at the Study Center for East Crete of the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Brussels, and the Denver Art Museum.

Our first cohort of doctoral students are all making progress with their research. Moupi Mukhopadhyay continued her noninvasive technical data collection from wall paintings of Kerala, India, from five temples with varied histories, stakeholders, and physical conditions. This year she presented preliminary data to authorities in Kerala to request permission for further testing. She hopes to supplement her existing data with another field season of point analysis and minimally invasive sampling to better understand the materials and techniques of the murals and to inform their future conservation.

Elizabeth Salmon’s doctoral research focuses on traditional preservation methods developed in India, particularly the use of local plants for pest management. This fall she began fieldwork in India to document the role of traditional methods of care in museum collections and to learn more about pending questions related to the reliable use of botanicals for museum pest management. This research will be followed by laboratory evaluation using entomological and conservation methods.

Chris de Brer was able to begin his delayed fieldwork in Mexico. He traveled to Tepic, Nayarit, and Guadalajara, Jalisco, to interview scholars and regional museum staff and begin documenting and analyzing ceramic funerary vessels from the Late Formative/Preclassic period. He plans to return in 2023 to conduct additional noninvasive analysis, comparing data to vessels from museums in Southern California, including the Fowler Museum, where he serves as head of conservation.

Important work was also undertaken by our faculty. This past year Ioanna Kakoulli launched a new undergraduate course titled Materials Structure and Technology in Archaeology and Architecture. It introduces science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics to students across campus. Offered through the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), the course combines lectures, discussions, laboratory work, and writing. It not only develops skills and critical thinking but also brings together students from different backgrounds and fosters a sense of a community for a more inclusive classroom. Through

her position as diversity officer of MSE, Kakoulli has recently created a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee consisting of voting members from faculty, staff, and student bodies. The committee is tasked to make recommendations to the department to build an inclusive community through improvements in teaching, research, mentorship, professional development, activities, and events.

Kakoulli’s research group consists of 12 members: six PhD students (three from MSE and three from the Conservation Program), four MA students (three from MSE and one from the Conservation Program), and two undergraduate students from MSE. Research projects developed in her group focus on reconstructing ancient technology to draw inferences on materials selection and manufacturing processes and the design of novel materials inspired by the properties of ancient materials. Current projects range from the study of ancient pigments and painting technologies from the eastern Mediterranean to India to the development of sustainable porous building materials and antifouling coatings for cultural and natural heritage preservation as well as novel radiative cooling paints. Kakoulli continues to serve as a member of faculty advisory committees of the Cotsen Institute, the Conservation Program, and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture and on the board of trustees of the Cyprus American Archaeological Institute. She also serves as an expert witness for the Department of Homeland Security on issues pertaining to looted antiquities and as a scientific consultant for UNESCO.

Ellen Pearlstein’s research, teaching, and service continue to reinforce each other in a push to promote more socially inclusive conservation. As a result of her 2022 fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, she has taken on the work of exploring barriers to collaborative conservation internationally, focusing on how ethnological museums in Vatican City and Italy engage with the Native American communities whose collections they hold. She is further examining socioeconomic, political, and legal factors informing the development of museum attitudes toward collaboration and the implications for conservation education. Surveys and site visits in German, French, and Austrian museums have expanded her research on the European continent. This work builds upon her Conservation and Stewardship of Indigenous Collections: Changes and Transformations in the Readings in Conservation series of the Getty Conservation Institute, which is currently completing peer review. Pearlstein has been invited to return to the American Academy in late 2022 and to the Musée du Quai Branly–Jacques

Chirac in Paris in 2023 to continue her research and writing. She continues to collaborate with the Getty Conservation Institute on a project to develop tunable LEDs to recolor faded, and therefore unexhibitable, featherwork, including Indigenous regalia, in a way that preserves original and intrinsic properties. Additionally, her grant-funded research this year includes examining how best to embed sustainability into conservation graduate education and continuing to develop methods for improving skills and experiences for collaborative and inclusive conservation practices.

Pearlstein continues to direct the Mellon Opportunity for Diversity in Conservation, a pipeline program for introducing underrepresented students to the field of cultural heritage conservation. Out of almost 70 participants to date, 28 have been awarded fully funded internships; five are engaged in graduate conservation studies, with three more preparing applications; three have been awarded Getty Foundation Post-Baccalaureate Conservation Internships; two are doing graduate studies in art history (one is a PhD student at UCLA); and three are engaged in collections and archival work.

I am coediting a book titled Philosophical Issues in the Conservation of Contemporary Art. This too will be part of the Readings in Conservation Series of the Getty Conservation Institute. In addition, I am working on two articles and a book chapter related to the Artist Archives Initiative, which was launched at New York University prior to my arrival at UCLA. I was invited to present three public lectures this year, allowing me to bring together my current thinking, and future writing, about the future of cultural heritage conservation. The first, at Bern University of Applied Sciences, was titled “Sustainability, Collaboration, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Conservation Education.” The second, the annual Patricia McCarron McGinn Lecture in the Art History Department at UCLA, was titled “Why Conserve Cultural Heritage? Reframing a Discipline ” The third, presented in conjunction with a workshop on art and nature conservation at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands, was titled “Art Conservation as Change Agent: Towards a Sustainable Future.” I am now working on an article with my colleagues in the Netherlands on what cultural heritage conservators can learn from nature conservation. In addition, I serve on a number of boards and committees, including the steering committee for Held in Trust, together with Ellen Pearlstein. This initiative is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, through the Foundation for the American Institute for Conserva-

tion, to evaluate the state of preservation and conservation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage in the United States. Findings from the research will influence the direction of future conservation funding from the federal government.

Pearlstein and I served as principal investigators in the first phase of the Sustainability in Conservation Education Initiative, again funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. We are working with Justine Wuebold, research associate, and William Shelley, laboratory manager, to gather information, publish an article, and make two professional presentations on the integration of sustainability in conservation education. We also serve as principal investigators on Community, Collaboration, and Cultural Heritage Conservation, a third initiative funded by the same endowment. This initiative supports three of our MA students in working with tribal museums and other underserved collections and sites. The research includes collaboration with Indigenous scholars, tribal representatives, and students. The model developed for tribal collections will be extended to African American, Latinx American, and Asian American collections.

Figure 1. Jennifer McGough works on a basket on loan from Beth Glasco and her family to the Barona Cultural Center of the Barona Band of Mission Indians. (Photograph by Jennifer McGough.)

The staff of the UCLA/Getty Conservation Program continue their work helping our students and managing the program. Student affairs officer Shaharoh Chism works closely with the Archaeology Program and the UCLA Graduate Division to manage admissions, student finances, and course scheduling. Laboratory manager William Shelley helped oversee the complete renovation of our laboratory at the Cotsen Institute, which included new flooring, lighting, paint, and MA student workspaces. He also renovated the photography suite in our laboratory at the Getty Villa, which included installation of a new photography table, a custom-built backdrop, and other new equipment.

The Conservation Program continued two remote lecture series we launched during the 2020 lockdown, given their success in attracting large audiences. We invite leaders in allied fields in the Distinguished Speaker Series to reflect on aspects of cultural heritage conservation from their own disciplinary viewpoints. In February, Sarah Sutton, CEO of Environment and Culture Partners, gave the first lecture of the year. She discussed the caretaking of cultural heritage and its potential role in broader efforts to address climate

change. In April, artist and UCLA emeritus professor of Chicana and Chicano and Central American studies Judith F. Baca spoke about the conservation of her iconic mural painting The Great Wall of Los Angeles. As artistic director of the Social and Public Art Resource Center, Baca worked with young people from the surrounding neighborhood on the original design and execution, and later conservation, of the mural. Our fall lecture was given in October by Roger Michel, executive director of the Institute of Digital Archaeology at the University of Oxford. He described his work creating three-dimensional machined replicas of the Parthenon marbles, arguing for their British Museum acquisition and repatriation of the originals to Greece.

In our second lecture series, Conservation Collaborations, we aim to respond to student requests for lectures on a range of conservation topics. We organized presentations on Indigenous, diaspora, and in-country participation, including cultural positioning by practitioners in conservation, understanding Euro-Asian lacquer, traditional knowledge applied to textiles, and Indigenous influences on conservation research and policy.

Figure 2. The cohort of the Mellon Opportunity for Diversity in Conservation in the summer of 2022. (Photograph by Bianca Garcia.)

i ncoming s tudents

sAiful BAKhri is an incoming PhD student in the UCLA/Getty Conservation Program. He seeks to address the importance and production of conventional materials for conservation treatment to meet the environmental, social, and cultural needs of non-Western communities and how other, more appropriate materials and methods can be incorporated into Western practice. Saiful previously worked as a conservator at the Bali Cultural Heritage Preservation Office in Indonesia. Having completed his master’s degree in cultural materials conservation at the University of Melbourne, Australia, he has expertise in place-based conservation and disaster management for heritage sites and museums.

Alex C A steel was born in southern Indiana and has long been exploring new ways to think about the past and the present. After his first field school in 2013 in Huari-Ancash, Peru, he volunteered at nearby Chavín de Huántar and subsequently accepted a commercial archaeology position in Colombia. Although his archaeological career started in precolonial South America, his interest shifted to the Viking and early medieval period in Iceland. Alex attended Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. In working toward his BA in archaeology, he combined written texts with material culture. In 2020 he earned an MA/MPhil in Viking and medieval Norse studies from the University of Iceland and the University of Oslo. In his thesis, he used an Old Norse kenning (figure of speech) to explore how the self might have been conceived of at the time of writing and how differences might bear ontological weight. During his time at the Cotsen Institute, Alex hopes to make use of his language skills, his knowledge of archaeological methods, and his obsession with archaeological theory to engage critically with the built landscape in Mosfellsdalur, Iceland, the research focus of the Mosfell Archaeological Project. He is motivated by a desire to bring human pasts into dialogue with affirmative presents and futures and to disrupt unfounded projections of similarity derived from the twenty-first century. He wonders what ancient buildings can convey in modern times. Such material lenses into worlds as dynamic and full of life as the present might well shed light on the subjective and singular experiences of individuals in the past.

Willeke Wendrich1

1. Director, Cotsen Institute.

sA iful B AK hri

Alex C A steel

GABriel silVA Collins has spent the majority of his life in New York City, but he was born in Michigan and also lived in Brazil. In 2019 he earned a BA in anthropology from Williams College. His first archaeological fieldwork focused on the Peruvian coast, where he helped excavate the Ichma site of Panquilma with Enrique López Hurtado. This experience initiated his long-standing interest in pre-Hispanic archaeology of the Americas. Gabriel expanded upon this as an undergraduate student while working with Antonia Foias studying Aztec religious statues and their forms of gender representation. He returned to the Andes for an undergraduate thesis, in which he surveyed and examined a series of roads and accompanying structures between the former Inca capital of Cusco and the imperial palace of Huchuy Qosqo. This project enhanced his interest in using archaeology to examine intercommunity relations between different pre-Hispanic peoples across differences in political control and environmental space. It also resulted in an awareness of interactions between human constructions and nonhuman environments, an area he studied with Megan English through ethnographic and biological research on contemporary Cambodian human–elephant conflict. Gabriel hopes to pull these interests together at UCLA by examining non-elite pre-Hispanic interactions across the simultaneously political and environmental borderlands of the Inca Empire. He is excited to work with Stella Nair and Jason de León to study the archaeology of space and place, and how human communities shaped and were shaped by those factors, along the Inca frontier, in ways that continue to influence the Andes today.

eArl John Cedo hernAndez is an anthropological archaeologist from Bikol, the Philippines. He received his BA in political science from Ateneo de Naga University in 2015 and an MA in anthropology from the University of the Philippines–Diliman in 2022. As a Bikolano anthropologist, he is interested in the anthropology of religion, the archaeology of Spanish colonialism, and engaged museum programs. As a curator of the Museo de Isarog at Partido State University, Earl advocates for co-creation and co-curation programs, working with colleagues, scholars, students, and the community. Since 2018 he has been working with the Bicol Archaeological Project, an interdisciplinary archaeological and heritage program aiming to understand Indigenous and local responses to Spanish colonialism during the early modern period. At the Cotsen Institute, he is interested in using remote sensing to understand human–environmental interactions during the Spanish colonization of Bikol and other regions.

G AB riel s ilVA Collins

e Arl John Cedo hernAndez

AriAdin Jones started her research trajectory as an undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia, where did a major in Asian area studies and a minor in archaeology, with a focus on bioarchaeology. Looking to combine these interests, she attended the UCLA Yangguanzhai field school in 2018, excavating a Neolithic village from the Middle to the Late Yangshao period (4000–3000 BCE). This introduced her to Chinese archaeology and kindled her interest in understanding the creation of urban centers during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age periods. Between 2017 and 2019 she also worked alongside the curators of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, helping design and execute events showcasing Indigenous performance artists and lecturers. In 2020 Ariadin graduated with an MPhil in applied biological anthropology from the University of Cambridge. Her thesis explored how paleoparasitology can inform on subsistence patterns and hygienic practices and how urban planning is reflected in pathologies manifested in the archaeological record. At UCLA, Ariadin will pursue an interdisciplinary project that consolidates her temporal and geographic areas of interest, focusing on intersections of ritual and quotidian life and how these relate to the intraregional flow of people. With funding from the Huayu Enrichment Scholarship, Ariadin took courses in the Chinese Language Department of National Taiwan University to prepare for this next phase of her academic career.

ChonGwen liu received his BA in chemistry with a second degree in conservation of cultural relics at Peking University in 2021. During his undergraduate studies, he engaged in both the practical and academic sides of conservation. He completed a summer internship at the Research Centre for Cultural Heritage Protection at the Chinese Academy of Social Science, where he participated in the conservation treatment of iron Han Dynasty agricultural tools from the Tongzhou District, Beijing. His thesis focused on a batch of lacquerware excavated from Dongshan West Han Dynasty tombs in Taiyuan, with a highlight on the distinctive deterioration mechanisms of lacquer films. Chongwen obtained an MSc in archaeological science at University College London. His graduate research there focused on Byzantine glass mosaic tesserae and shed light on the glass technology of a critical transition period in the Mediterranean world. During his UCLA journey, Chongwen hopes to dig into the deterioration mechanisms and weathering properties of both photo- and taphonomic-degraded lacquerware. He is interested in developing specific guidance for the conservation and restoration of lacquerware with regard to its distinctive characteristics. He is excited about having opportunities to develop improved analytical methods for conservation based on instrumental chemistry.

Ari A din Jones

Chon G wen l iu

luis rodriGuez-perez was born in Cuba and moved to Miami at a young age. He earned a BA in archaeology and history, with a minor in classics, at the University of Southern California. He has participated in several excavation and survey projects in Italy and Greece, including at Pompeii, Vergina, and the Cyclades. He has also done ethnographic investigations on the Colombian islands of Old Providence and Ketlina, where he served as a field supervisor for the 2022 field season. As an undergraduate student he used three-dimensional modeling techniques to reconstruct and subsequently reaccess artifacts in their original find spots (in virtual reality contexts) in Tomb II in Vergina, Greece, and Tomb KV62 in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt. While working at the Archaeology Laboratory at the University of Southern California, he also participated in the Pimu/Santa Catalina Archaeological Project, which photogrammetrically captured and digitally reconstructed the historic hunting lodge on the island during two distinct time periods in a virtual reality museum space. At UCLA Luis hopes to continue to apply visual technologies to different archaeological approaches in Mediterranean archaeology and beyond.

ziChAo wAnG received his BA in culture and arts management at Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, followed by an MA in comparative and public history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and another MA in East Asian studies at McGill University. His research covers the history and civilization of early China, especially political and cultural transformations in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. In the past eight years, he has expanded his academic interests and knowledge in various subjects and disciplines, which resulted in his BA thesis on the preservation of intangible cultural heritage and his MA thesis on law and geography in China during the Warring States period. His academic interests also include historical geography, early Chinese epigraphy, Confucian classics, Chinese intellectual history, ancient Chinese architecture, Chinese ritual history, and cultural theories. Although Zichao has no formal training as an archaeologist, he has been fascinated by the discipline for a long time. He believes it is essential to rescue history from being forgotten. At UCLA he intends to combine written records with archaeological information available in his fields of interest.

l uis rodri G uez- p erez

CoTsen CommunITy evenTs

The Cotsen Institute Takes an Active Role in the Archaeological Centers Coalition

The CoTsen InsTITuTe, in concert with the Archaeological Centers Coalition (ACC), hopes to have a positive influence on the future of archaeology. The ACC, a community of academic institutions in archaeology, formed in response to urgent calls to enhance equity, diversity, and inclusion and to address issues of systemic racism.

Willeke Wendrich, director of the Cotsen Institute, notes that the Society of Black Archaeologists (SBA) and the Indigenous Archaeology Collective (IAC) have played central roles in this first-ever collaboration between directors of the main archaeological institutes in the United States. She explained that the ACC strives for equitable access and an inclusive experience for all archaeologists while they are studying or teaching at a university as well as during fieldwork.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, the initiative emerged out of conversations between the SBA, the IAC, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Sapiens magazine, and the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies. The Cotsen Institute is one of more than a dozen institutes currently represented in the ACC. Together they seek to define avenues of impactful change in four key areas: curriculum and training, administration and finance, the culture of archaeology, and capacity-building and community engagement.

Justin Dunnavant, assistant professor of anthropology and a core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute, is cofounder of the SBA and is active in the ACC. He explains, “In the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement and the pandemic, individuals from Sapiens and the Wenner-Gren Foundation reached out to the SBA, offered their support, and asked how they could help. We have had a number of conversations with colleagues about various issues around diversity in the field as well as other important subjects. We determined that it would be best if they could call a meeting of all major funders

in archaeology and all of the major archaeological centers in the country.”

According to Dunnavant, “They followed through. From our preliminary conversations during the first meeting with the archaeology center directors, we found that it was the first time that they had ever met collectively. We reinforced the idea that if they would meet more frequently, they have the ability to shape what archaeology in the United States will look like in the future.”

One contributor, UCLA archaeology graduate student Carly Pope, explained her interest in participating in the ACC: “The summer of 2020 was the height of Black Lives Matter. We, as field archaeologists, were beginning to reckon with racial justice as a key component of moving forward.” One issue Pope brought out was that “archaeology, as with anthropology, largely grew out of White Westerners and Europeans examining other cultures. Frequently we have the issues of a White researcher going into a Black or Native or poor community and bringing in academic expertise, but not in a way that benefits or serves the community.” She continued, “There is no adequate representation of a variety of viewpoints in the field of archaeology. . . . Many American institutions have systematically disinvited Blacks and other minorities from participating in the practice of archaeology.”

Pope was active in helping the ACC create a survey about the real cost of field schools. These programs, which are seen as necessary training opportunities, cost thousands of dollars, which does not include the cost of lost wages. The survey is intended to pinpoint barriers to access that may be keeping people out of the field. The intention is to find a remedy to a systemic problem rather than just giving an individual funds, she added.

The topic of mentorship was also a major issue of the ACC, an issue that Pope has a great deal of familiarity with through her own work with the Archaeology Mentorship Program, of which she is a cofounder. ACC discussions have covered ways to bring people into the field of archaeology and how to support them while they are here, she said. The goal is to have a “whole system in place to make sure that everyone has access to the same resources and information.”

After two years, Pope is ready to step back from her participation in the ACC, creating an opportunity for another graduate student to provide their voice. Reflecting on her service, she said, “It is like seeing behind the curtain. As a graduate student, you do not see the high-level workings of an academic institution; you do not see discussions that directors have about the direction that a program should take. So being able to see and contribute to those discussions was invaluable. Plus, you bring a different perspective, having more recently been an undergraduate student and having applied to graduate schools. There is a different level of awareness about current issues in the field from a graduate student’s point of view.”

As monthly ACC meetings continued, Dunnavant realized the potential impact. The coalition could influence major research agendas for the next 5 to 10 years, the requirements for PhD programs, and best practices, he explained. The discussions became expansive around the issue of inclusivity: “We talked about gender issues,

harassment issues, and of course race issues, as well as other subjects.” A resulting survey was developed and funded in part by the ACC and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. “Those survey results are being analyzed now,” he said. The organizers had more than a thousand responses from individuals who had attended or considered attending field schools. He echoed the sentiment expressed by Pope that funding of field schools was to be a major issue.

The ACC is now discussing scholarships to provide more access to individuals who cannot afford to attend field schools, as well as rethinking what field school practice looks like. “Instead of a four-week, extended field school somewhere, it could be a shorter, two-week field school locally,” Dunnavant noted. “And then there is the culture of the field schools and thinking about best practices for how to deal with harassment issues, if and when they arise, and how to prepare for that, as well as how to alleviate some of these concerns before they happen.” He pointed out that they were looking into what a more diverse curriculum looks like, considering that traditional introduction to archaeology classes tend to repeat the same narratives of how archaeology was developed and what it is today. “Just starting these conversations is going to lead the field in a new and interesting way. This actually asks us to explore these questions and come up with exciting answers,” he added.

Dunnavant is featured in episode 4 of the Sapiens season 4 podcasts, which “explores how Black and Indigenous voices are changing the stories that archaeology tells.” The podcasts are supported by the WennerGren Foundation and produced by the House of Pod. A companion series, “Talk Back,” sponsored by several archaeological institutes, including the Cotsen Institute, addresses crucial aspects of archaeology. Iman Nagy, another graduate student at the Cotsen Institute, participated in the first episode of this series, and the Cotsen Institute sponsored episode 7, “Repatriation Is Our Future,” released April 13, 2022. Wendrich acknowledges the leadership of Pope and Dunnavant at UCLA, adding, “There are opportunities for students, faculty, and staff members who are interested in participating in the discussions and practical aspects of repatriation of Native American human remains and objects, as well as the return of objects to their places of origin outside the United States. These will be rolled out in the near future.”

The Cotsen Institute Lecture series

The second year of the Covid-19 pandemic brought hope that in-person events would resume. However, with new strains of the virus and subsequent outbreaks, events continued remotely for most of the academic year. Virtual attendance ebbed and flowed throughout the year while demand for in-person gatherings grew. From the spring quarter onward, the Cotsen Institute hosted hybrid events: live lectures with limited audiences, live-streamed to remote audiences.

The institute launched two new lecture series: Groundbreaking | Breaking Ground and Author Spotlight. Groundbreaking | Breaking Ground brings recent archaeological research to public audiences. Author Spotlight features authors who recently published with the Cotsen Institute Press. The UCLA/Getty Conservation of Cultural Heritage Program continued the highly regarded lecture series Distinguished Speaker in Conservation and Conservation Conversations. Teen Friends of Archaeology brought two new lectures to a national audience of teens. The student-led Andean Working Group hosted several lectures this year as well. Presented here is a complete list of events hosted by the Cotsen Institute in the past academic year.

October 22, 2021

Marija Gimbutas: A Magnificent Vindication. Panelists: Ernestine S. Elster, director of the Mediterranean Laboratory at the Cotsen Institute; James Mallory, professor emeritus of prehistoric archaeology at Queen’s University Belfast; David Anthony, associate in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and David Reich’s Ancient DNA Laboratory and an emeritus professor at Hartwick College; and Dorcas Brown, Hartwick College. The session was moderated by Willeke Wendrich, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA and director of the Cotsen Institute.

February 8, 2022

Archaeology in the Popular Black Press: African History in Ebony Magazine. Presenters: Justin Dunnavant, assistant professor, Department of Anthropology at UCLA, and Darartu Mulugeta, undergraduate student at UCLA.

May 5, 2022

Toward an Engaged Science of Human–Environment Interactions. Presenter: Kristina Douglass, Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute and assistant professor of anthropology and African studies, Pennsylvania State University.

auThor spoTlIGhT

March 1, 2022

Paso de la Amada: An Early Mesoamerican Ceremonial Center. Author: Richard Lesure, professor in the Department of Anthropology at UCLA.

May 24, 2022

Divine Consumption: Sacrifice, Alliance Building, and Making Ancestors in West Africa. Author: Stephen Dueppen, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon.

dI s TI n G u I shed s peaker I n ConservaTI on

November 12, 2021

Benin Royal Art and Questions of Restitution. Presenter: Ndubuisi Ezeluomba, Françoise Billion Richardson Curator of African Art, New Orleans Museum of Art.

February 4, 2022

Cultural Heritage and Climate Change: D(d)iplomacy for Neighbors and Nations. Presenter: Sarah Sutton, CEO of Environment and Culture Partners.

April 29, 2022

The Great Wall of Los Angeles by Judith F. Baca: Looking to the Past and Building the Future. Presenter: Judith F. Baca, professor in the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies and the Department of World Arts at UCLA.

ConservaTI on ConversaTI ons

October 22, 2021

Conservation and Revitalization of Rajbagh Silk Factory, Srinagar, India: Connecting Memory and Material Culture Toward Building a Future. Presenter: Gurmeet S. Rai, director of Cultural Resource Conservation Initiative, New Delhi, India.

November 19, 2021

Buddhist Wall Paintings in Ladakh: Painting Technique, Conservation and Ethical Considerations. Presenter: Sreekumar Menon, paintings conservator and partner at Art Conservation Solutions.

December 10, 2021

Embodied Knowledges within Cultural Collections. Presenter: Sven Haakanson, curator at the Burke Museum and associate professor of anthropology at the University of Washington.

January 21, 2022

Regional Distinctions of Traditional Palestinian Embroidered Dress, 1850–1948. Presenter: Wafa Ghnaim, artist, researcher, writer, educator, and businesswoman.

February 18, 2022

Preserving the Wreck of an Intact SeventeenthCentury Warship: The Challenging and Rewarding Conservation Work at the Vasa Museum. Presenter: Malin Sahlstedt, conservator at the Vasa Museum, Stockholm, Sweden.

March 18, 2022

Conservation and Restoration Approaches at the Musical Instrument Museum. Presenter: Rodrigo Correa-Salas, conservator, Musical Instrument Museum, Phoenix, Arizona.

April 22, 2022

Teatime, What Every Conservator Needs to Know about the Complexity of Asian Lacquer. Presenter: Marianne Webb, Webb Conservation Services.

May 20, 2022

The Conservation and Restoration of the Church of Kuñotambo by Its Community. Presenter: Claudio Cancino, architect, architectural conservator, and senior project specialist at the Building and Sites Department of the Getty Conservation Institute.

January 24, 2022

Making and Selling Drinks and Other Ways to Study Marginalized Ethnic Groups in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Cuzco. Presenter: Leo Garofalo, Department of History, Connecticut College.

January 31, 2022

Símbolos, rituales y paisaje durante el formativo en los Andes centrales. Presenter: Miguel Guzmán Juárez, Department of Architecture and Urbanism, Universidad Ricardo de Palma, Peru.

February 28, 2022

Archaeology, Design, and Markets in Elena Izcue’s Works. Presenter: Jorge Coronado, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University.

April 25, 2022

Patterns Are Good to Think: Inka Abstraction across Media. Presenter: Carolyn Dean, Department of History of Art and Visual Culture, University of California–Santa Cruz.

May 11, 2022

Ghost Landscapes: Recovering and Visualizing Hidden Histories and Landscapes of the Early Colonial Andes (1530s–1700). Presenter: Jeremy Mikecz, postdoctoral fellow in Native American studies, Neukom Institute, Dartmouth University.

andean WorkInG Group and arChITeCTural WorkInG Group

May 12, 2022

Digital Sketches: Creating Qualitative, Humanistic Maps and Visualizations in Inkscape. Presenter: Jeremy Mikecz, postdoctoral fellow in Native American studies, Neukom Institute, Dartmouth University.

May 24, 2022

Kuskalla Abya Yala in the Context of Quechua Revitalization. Presenter: Zoila Mendoza, Department of Native American Studies, University of California–Davis.

February 17, 2022

How to Build a Career and Life in Archaeology: Tips from the Hired and Hirers for BIPOC Archaeologists. Moderators: Willeke Wendrich, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA and director of the Cotsen Institute; Angela McArdle, senior historic preservation specialist at the Department of Veterans Affairs; Albert Gonzalez, associate professor of anthropology and director of the C. E. Smith Museum of Anthropology, California State University–East Bay; Kristina Douglass, assistant professor of anthropology, Pennsylvania State University; Stephen Acabado, associate professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, UCLA; Sarah Herr, president, Desert Archaeology Inc.; and Julie Stein, executive director of the Burke Museum and professor of anthropology, University of Washington.

Waystation program Lecture

April 28, 2022

Vigango, Ancestors, Sacred Objects, and Informed Consent: 15 Years of Restorative Justice at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Presenter: Stephen E. Nash, director of anthropology and the Avenir Conservation Center at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Wednesday taLks (formerLy pizza taLks)

January 12, 2022

Round Table Discussion with Laetitia La Follette. Moderators: Laetitia La Follette, president of the Archaeological Institute of America; John K. Papadopoulos, professor in the Department of Classics and former chair of the Archaeology Program; and Monica L. Smith, professor in the Department of Anthropology, UCLA.

January 19, 2022

What Makes East Asian Archaeology So Special?

Presenter: Lothar von Falkenhausen, professor in the Department of Art History, UCLA.

January 26, 2022

Through the Looking Glass: An Alternative Career in Archaeological Research. Presenter: Christopher P. Thornton, director of the Division of Research Programs of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

February 9, 2022

A Conversation about Scholarly Publishing in the New Millennium. Moderators: Jennifer Chan, associate librarian, Young Research Library, UCLA; Randi Danforth, director of publications, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press; and Willeke Wendrich, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA and director of the Cotsen Institute.

February 16, 2022

A Career Learning about and from the Ancestral and Living Maya. Presenter: Lisa J. Lucero, professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

February 23, 2022

Sustainability Curricula for Cultural Heritage

Conservation. Presenters: Justine Wuebold, research associate in the UCLA/Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage, and William Shelley, laboratory manager in the UCLA/ Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage.

April 13, 2022

Archaeology and North American Indigenous Foodways, Connected. Presenters: Heather Trigg, research scientist at the University of Massachusetts–Boston, and Tiffany Fulkerson, postdoctoral fellow at Washington State University.

April 27, 2022

The Archaeology of Covid-19: Contemporary Research from Norway. Presenters: Matthew Magnani, associate professor at the University of Tromsø, the Arctic University of Norway; Anatolijs Venovcevs, PhD candidate at the University of Tromsø, the Arctic University of Norway; Stein Farstadvoll, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tromsø, the Arctic University of Norway; and Natalia Magnani, associate professor at the University of Tromsø, the Arctic University of Norway.

May 11, 2022

Foundations and Universities: How Philanthropy, Research, and Community Intersect. Presenters: Sharon Gerstel, professor in the Department of Art History, UCLA, and Charlie Steinmetz, president and director of the Steinmetz Foundation, president of JCA Associates, and president of Tiernay Properties.

May 18, 2022

Conflict and Consumption: Foodways, Practice, and Identity at New Kingdom Jaffa. Presenter: Jacob Damm, adjunct lecturer, State University of New York–Cortland.

teen friends of archaeoLogy

November 6, 2021

The Joys and Blunders of 25 Years of Work at the 9,000-Year-Old Town of Çatalhöyük. Presenter: Ian Hodder, Dunlevie Family Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Archaeology Center.

April 9, 2022

Archaeological Techniques and Excavating the Indus Civilization. Presenter: Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, George F. Dales Jr. and Barbara A. Dales Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Events Cosponsored with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture (UCLA), the Embassy of Greece, and the Archaeological Institute of America–Los Angeles County

October 9, 2021

Documenting Diversity in Thessaloniki and Its Hinterlands: Three Archaeological Stories. Presenter: Anastassios C. Antonaras, head of exhibitions, communication, and education, Department of the Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki, Greece.

October 16, 2021

The Sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidauros: New Finds Rewrite the Function and History of the Most Important Sanatorium in Antiquity. Presenter: Vassilis Lambrinoudakis, professor emeritus of classical archaeology at the University of Athens, Greece.

October 23, 2021

New Evidence on a Spartan Religious Center: The Sanctuary of Apollo Amyklaios at Sparta and the Current Research Project. Presenters: Stavros Vlizos, associate professor, Ionian University, and Vicky Vlachou, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.

stella nair Co-organizes Conference and native American Community-Based Workshops

sTella naIr, assoCIaTe professor of art history and a core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute, is co-organizer with Paul Niell of Florida State University of The Forgotten Canopy: Ecology, Ephemeral Architecture, and Imperialism in the Circum-Caribbean and TransAtlantic World. This project comprises three conferences at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, which is affiliated with UCLA, and three Native American community–based workshops to be held in Southern California in 2022–2023.

The conferences will draw scholars from across the world to study the intricate relationships between colonialism, ecologies, and building practices in the early modern world. The series is part of the Core Foundation Program of the Clark Library/Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies at UCLA, which also provides research and financial opportunities for graduate students. The program focuses on the topics of ecology (November

4–5, 2022), ephemeral architecture (February 10–11, 2023), and imperialism (April 14–15, 2023) in early modern times (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries). Nair is a Clark Professor at the Clark Library/Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies.

The workshops that accompany the conference received a $25,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art and aim to share and amplify the critical contributions of Native Americans and Black Americans to the architecture of the Americas. The workshops are organized in collaboration with Shannon Speed, associate professor of gender studies and anthropology and director of the American Indian Studies Center at UCLA. Speed is a tribal citizen of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma. The Terra Foundation aims to foster intercultural dialogues and encourage transformative practices to expand narratives of American art.

Figure 1. Stella Nair, far right, at a ceremony in Los Angeles on April 22, 2022, during which the FBI returned two paintings, 10 historical documents, and four stone axes to representatives of the Peruvian government. Nair was one of the specialists who evaluated the paintings for the FBI.

Kara Cooney and Willeke Wendrich support Program to Increase Inclusivity within the Field of egyptology

kara Cooney, a professor of Egyptian art and architecture, chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and a core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute, has been instrumental in the creation of an eight-week course to increase inclusivity within the field of Egyptology, in collaboration with Mario Beatty of Howard University.

The course, called Summer Research Internship and Pathway to PhDs in Ancient Egyptian, North African, and Western Asian Studies, started in the summer of 2022. Four students from historically Black colleges and universities were at UCLA to learn about the field while receiving mentorship and support from faculty beyond the program. Besides the course, other benefits included air transportation to Los Angeles, a stipend, room and board in UCLA student housing, and free trips around Los Angeles, with admission to the Getty Villa, the Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art, and others museums.

Together with Jonathan Winnerman, academic administrator for ancient studies, Cooney looked critically at the field of Egyptology before submitting an application for this initiative in 2020. “A small investment of time and money can make a huge change in a small field,” she said. “If we can get that pipeline rolling, we can help students make a dent in American Egyptology and its representation.”

Cooney and Winnerman served as the primary course instructors. Together with Beatty, an associate professor of Afro-American studies at Howard University, and Solange Ashby, a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA, they continue to mentor students. Willeke Wendrich, director of the Cotsen Institute, was a guest lecturer for the course, which was designed to offer a pipeline program for Black students. Other notable faculty included Talawa Adodo (University of Houston), Salim Faraji (CSU Dominguez Hills), Jessica Johnson (UC Berkeley), Gina Konstantopoulos (UCLA), and Rita Lucarelli (UC Berkeley). They volunteered to give guest lectures on their areas of expertise and to answer questions about graduate programs in Near Eastern studies. Several UCLA graduate students volunteered to meet with students in the program and to accompany them on outings throughout Los Angeles.

Following the end of the program, Beatty continues to support students at both Howard University and other historically Black colleges and universities and to promote such initiatives. Winnerman concludes, “This is not just a summer-long program but an ongoing mentorship that will continue for years. We work with these students, one on one—even after the program—to help them with their research projects and even with applications to graduate school.”

Figure 1. Students of the Summer Research Internship investigate Ethiopian manuscripts in the Library Special Collections at ULCA.

Figure 2. Students and instructors of the Summer Research Internship visit the Getty Villa.

In theSpotlight

Stephen Acabado Named New Chair of the Archaeology Program

Roz

Salzman

Stephen Acabado, an associate professor of anthropology and a core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute, has been named chair of the Interdepartmental Program in Archaeology for a three-year term beginning July 1, 2022. Acabado is also director of the UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies, a position he will maintain during his tenure as chair.

In making the announcement, Darnell Hunt, dean of social sciences, said, “I’d like to thank all of you who have shared your thoughts with me about the most pressing needs within archaeology and about who is best situated to serve as chair for the next few years. You have aided me greatly in identifying Stephen as the colleague to lead the Archaeology Program in this moment, as we endeavor to build on excellence. I am also especially grateful to Gregson Schachner for his service as chair since 2019. Greg’s visionary leadership has served the program well over many years, and I have truly enjoyed working with him these past three.”

Schachner, also an associate professor of anthropology and a core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute, added, “I extend my congratulations to Stephen on his appointment as the next chair of the Archaeology Program. I am confident in his ability to guide the program onward and look forward to his leadership.”

“I’m looking forward to working closely with colleagues at the Cotsen Institute and the Archaeology Program,” Acabado responded. “I hope that my appointment as chair will strengthen my contributions in making archaeology at UCLA even more accessible and inclusive.”

Stephen Acabado.

Anya Dani Joins Conservation Program to Help Expand Inclusivity

Glenn Wharton and Roz Salzman

As part of an effort to expand “our own capacity to teach cultural heritage conservation in an inclusive manner,” Anya Dani has been named director of community engagement and inclusive practice, as well as a lecturer in cultural heritage conservation, at the UCLA/ Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage. Glenn Wharton, chair of the program, said the position will help broaden “our network of partners and institutions to include African American communities.” The newly created position is funded through a grant from the Getty Foundation, with additional support from the UCLA Social Science Division, the UCLA/Getty Conservation Program, and individual donors.

An objects conservator with more than 20 years of experience working in the cultural heritage sector, Dani says she aims to “incorporate social responsibility” into her work and will “strive to end systemic racism in the cultural heritage conservation field.” Wharton says her work will include interaction with community members, scholars, students, and institutions associated with African American culture and history, as well as outreach to attract more diverse students to the field. “These activities will all aid in the preservation of African American material culture, which has historically been overlooked. The position also includes advocating for social justice in cultural heritage and expanding African American representation in the field of conservation,” he added.

Dani stressed that with this position, she “really wants to reach out to the greater UCLA community, the greater Los Angeles community,” and eventually into all of California and the western United States. For example, she hopes to work with people in archaeology and African American studies and talk with those in the surrounding communities, as well as local institutions that focus on African American history and culture, such as the California African American Museum in Los Angeles. Part of her effort will include holding on-campus seminars.

“There is a strong African American presence on campus,” she explained, and she looks forward to working with Black student affinity groups. “Reaching out within the UCLA community is going to be my first

stop so that I can better understand their needs and examine some of the ways that conservation can help them to learn and connect with our cultural history,” she said. She also anticipates working with Justin Dunnavant, assistant professor of anthropology and a core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute, who has been involved in excavating artifacts from a sunken slave ship. Dani thinks this work demonstrates the “strong emotion evoked when you are a Black person excavating these materials from your own culture.”

She added, “Part of what I see as my role here is not just getting the word out about conservation to the Black community but hopefully also changing the way we work as conservators to introduce projects that are meaningful to Black culture, as well as developing methods of working that reflect the values of the Black community.”

Anya Dani. (Photograph by Mirijam Neve.)

Historically, according to Dani, “the Western conservation tradition has been to overlook African American material culture, basically not putting an emphasis on its preservation at all. In rare instances when an African American cultural item is conserved, it would be done by predominantly White conservators in a conservation laboratory, with little understanding of its original context and without community collaboration.” These are very important aspects of the conservation of cultural heritage that need to be addressed, she explained. “Our field is slowly understanding the necessity of community collaboration. My personal vision of the future of conservation is truly inclusive.”

In discussing who currently is addressing these issues well, Dani highlighted the community-based George Floyd Global Memorial. She specifically named Jeanelle Austin, who is leading the work and has collaborated with the Midwest Art Conservation Center to help the community better preserve offerings the public is making. “People started leaving very personal offerings and creating public art to express their grief,” Dani continued. “I’ve been told that it’s important to the Black people in Minneapolis that that artwork be preserved, but by the local community itself. So the community-based organization is making decisions about how the items are cared for. The memorial wants to leave the offerings out as long as possible but not let them fall into disrepair. They are finding ways to store and catalog the items, to have the community participate in conservation activities, and to create pop-up exhibits. So here’s a great example of how local conservators, community caretakers, and artists are all working together.”

That project also demonstrates how involving the community in the caretaking of the items can help in healing the trauma of the event. “I really resonate with the emotional aspect that comes with the work they are doing,” Dani said. She also commended all the good work being done at the National Museum of African American Heritage and Culture at the Smithsonian.

“I want the UCLA program to be really responsive to the needs of the community” she added. “I hope that my background working on community projects and with conservation activism can be put to good use at UCLA.” That background includes almost 10 years at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. There she established a program that worked with local museums and artists on the conservation of the unique cultural heritage of Okinawa.

“I’m trying to come to UCLA with a collaborative spirit but humbly know that it will take time to build trust with local communities,” she added. “I want to share my experiences and knowledge and explore what UCLA and conservation can offer holders of Black cultural heritage. The UCLA/Getty Conservation Program has state-of-the-art conservation facilities that can be used by students to work with art and artifacts from local communities, but we don’t want to fall into the same pitfalls as before. I hope I can discuss conservation with members of the surrounding Black community and that we can reciprocally share knowledge. Maybe we can even spark a love of conservation in people who might not have previously known what it is. All cultures have a history of caretaking in some way: how they take care of their treasured artifacts. I think that is something that almost anybody can understand.”

Dani received both a BA and an MS in art conservation from the University of Delaware and recently finished working on a conservation survey grant, supported by the Institute for Museum and Library Services, at the Stanford University Archaeology Collections. In this work she incorporated cultural sensitivity and sustainable practices alongside condition documentation. She is also a member (formerly cochair) of the Equity and Inclusion Committee of the American Institute for Conservation and a cofounder of the Black Art Conservators group. She began her community-centered work at the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs.

Although she will frequently be on campus, Dani will primarily work remotely from her home base in the Bay Area, where she lives with her husband and two young children. When not working, she helps preserve another art form: swing dancing and doing the Lindy Hop. In fact, she met her husband when dancing. “I really enjoy that, and it kind of ties into my love of Black culture because that’s where these dance styles originated. It comes from jazz clubs and dancing in Harlem in the 1930s.”

I want the UCLA program to be really responsive

Piphal Heng Welcomed as Cotsen and PEMSEA Postdoctoral Scholar

Stephen Acabado and Roz Salzman

Many members of the Cotsen Institute, as well as countless others, will need no introduction to Piphal Heng, the incoming 2022–2024 postdoctoral scholar at the Cotsen Institute and the Program for Early Modern Southeast Asia (PEMSEA). That is because he is a featured commentator in Angkor 3D: The Lost Empire of Cambodia, a new IMAX movie playing at the California Science Center. Heng has also been awarded a prestigious fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), which will run concurrently with his postdoctoral research at the Cotsen Institute and PEMSEA.

PEMSEA is directed by Stephen Acabado, associate professor of anthropology and core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute. According to Acabado, who made the announcement of Heng’s appointment, “Dr. Heng will strengthen our understanding of the early modern period in Southeast Asia. His research interests resonate with issues about peoples in the margin. The early modern period is the least understood time period, even though it saw the most radical environmental, economic, and sociopolitical changes in the region.” Acabado continued, “Most importantly, the archaeology of Southeast Asia is poorly represented in North America. Dr. Heng’s work will definitely bring Southeast Asian archaeology into the center of the discussions about the early modern period.”

A native of Cambodia who has been working in the field for nearly twenty years, Heng received his MA and PhD in anthropology from the University of Hawai‘i–Mānoa. Most recently he was a postdoctoral researcher and graduate faculty scholar at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) and the Department of Anthropology at Northern Illinois University. The former Fulbright scholar is also the recipient of an ACLS–Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation postdoctoral fellowship in Buddhist studies and a Harvard–Yenching Institute doctoral fellowship.

Heng described his archaeologically based research program as primarily examining political economy, religious-ideological changes, settlement patterns, urbanism, and state formation in early modern Southeast Asia. His most recent research explored ideological and organizational shifts associated with Buddhism from the Angkorian to the post-Angkorian period. “This research contributes to our understanding of religion changes, from Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism to Theravada Buddhism, and the relation of religion with communities and state organizations,” he explained.

In a 2021 colloquium hosted by CSEAS at UCLA, Heng noted, “Archaeology provides a complementary dataset to a field dominated by art history and history, and Angkor is the best example of that.” He presented an alternative to conventional studies on Cambodia through examination of the material aspects of archaeology. He also argued that compassion was instrumental in building, maintaining, and expanding the power of Angkor from the ninth through the fifteenth centuries. As an example he used the Jayavarman VII inscriptions, which provide a detailed description of the king’s perspective on ruling power: “The suffering of men’s bodies became for him the suffering of the soul, which is much more; for the grief of kings is the suffering of their subjects, and not their own.”

Heng described his own research as “contributing to the holistic understanding of changes occurring in Southeast Asia” during the early modern period. He believes in breaking archaeological boundaries to be more interdisciplinary and reframing research questions to move beyond functional or symbolic analyses. He has suggested shifting the research process to explore such topics as the daily lives of different social classes or rulership through analyzing temples, statues, and sites. “The way to move forward is to look at modern comparative studies and cross-cultural studies, especially for Southeast Asia,” he said.

Figure 1. Piphal Heng in Angkor, Cambodia.

In describing Heng’s potential contributions to the work being done at UCLA, Acabado noted that Heng’s “life history highlights the plight of post–Khmer Rouge and Vietnam-occupied Cambodia, particularly in higher education. His success in graduate school and the potential to contribute to anthropological archaeology will serve as a model for Southeast Asian immigrants in the United States in general and in California in particular.” Acabado continued, “It is widely known among academics that Southeast Asian immigrants, especially Khmer, Hmong, and Lao, are historically underserved groups. Although they get lumped into the wider Asian minority, they have less access to higher education opportunities. As a postdoctoral scholar at both the Cotsen Institute and PEMSEA, Heng will be able to work with the Cambodian community in Long Beach, the largest Cambodian community outside Cambodia.”

Being able to work regularly with the Cambodian community in Long Beach was one of the attractions of the postdoctoral position at UCLA, according to Heng. “Outreach programs like heritage education and archaeology allow the Southeast Asian communities in the United States and Southeast Asia to connect with their heritage, identity, and transboundary network,” Heng explained. He and Acabado have already done many outreach activities through their research projects and classrooms, and they hope to strengthen these efforts through collaborations with American universities and allied institutions in Southeast Asia and by supporting the participation of students of Southeast Asian heritage in their field projects.

Heng noted that during the first week of May, he and Miriam Stark, director of CSEAS at the University of Hawai‘i–Mānoa, gave a series of talks to students at California State University campuses at Dominguez Hills and Long Beach, as well as at the Long Beach Public Library. Heng also met with Cambodian heritage students at Millikan High School to discuss archaeology, graduate school, and other relevant subjects. “We met with professionals working on Cambodia and Southeast Asia and with members of Southeast Asian communities in the United States to forge future collaborations,” Heng added.

Aims are to establish communications between universities, centers, and communities and, in the future, to assist professionals and communities in developing K–12 curricula on “carrying culture” related to these communities. “These talks and meet-and-greets will establish a connection so that UCLA can become a major base for future outreach activities,” Heng noted. Acabado will continue to be involved with some of these meetings.

Heng also explained that because both he and Acabado are studying the early modern period, “it is what fits my current research theme. My research speaks to that of PEMSEA generally, and I am excited to be a part of this. Stephen and I share a lot of common ground.” He pointed out that his research in urbanism parallels that of Monica Smith with her work on cities. Smith is a professor of anthropology, a core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute, and the author of Cities: The First 6,000 Years. “I use a lot of her work in my recent articles. This is someone else I can talk to,” he said.

The IMAX film, which was based on research done 10 years ago, features the light detection and ranging (LiDAR) mapping performed at Angkor. Heng explained that during his original research, they did not have access to this kind of technology. “Simple mapping of Angkor is challenging because of the forest. With LiDAR, we can see the relationships between different settlements and different temples. It allows us to see a bigger picture of what Angkorian urbanism was like.” On this project, he worked with archaeologist Damian Evans, a colleague and one of his coauthors on “The Evolution of Agro-Urbanism: A Case Study from Angkor, Cambodia,” which appeared in the September 2021 issue of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. He is also the author of “Landscape, Upland-Lowland, Community, and Economy of the Mekong River (6th–8th Century CE): Case Studies from the Pre-Angkorian Centers of Thala Borivat and Sambor,” which was published in February 2022 in World Archaeology.

Figure 2. Piphal Heng and colleagues collect data in the field.

Cotsen Institute Welcomes

Greg Woolf

Roz Salzman

In his studies, all roads may have led to Rome for Greg Woolf, the newest member of the core faculty of the Cotsen Institute. When he was teaching, the road covered the United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, France, Spain, Italy, and now Southern California.

A Roman historian and archaeologist, Woolf joined the History Department at UCLA in September 2021 as the Ronald J. Mellor Distinguished Professor of Ancient History. Currently, he is also an honorary professor of archaeology at University College London. Prior to coming to UCLA, he was a professor of classics and director of the Institute of Classical Studies at the School of Advanced Study at the University of London. He spent nearly two decades as a professor of ancient history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and was a lecturer and a fellow at Oxford. He is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, a fellow of the British Academy, a member of Academia Europe, a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

Having visited the United States many times, Woolf sometimes thought about crossing the Atlantic Ocean permanently. After he had directed the Institute of Classical Studies for six years and his children had finished college, he finally had the chance to make the move. “I was ready for something new,” he said. “The first year you run an institute is great because you spend a lot of time fixing what’s broken. Then the second year, you spend a lot of time fixing the things you broke yourself when you did not realize how things were working. As time goes by, it all gets a little less exciting and interesting.” While directing the institute, he kept his hand in teaching with some graduate classes at the University of London. He added, “Then this opportunity came up, and I was delighted to come.” He had previously visited California only for conferences; one memorable one in an off-season Disneyland hotel in Anaheim and a couple in the grand setting of the Getty Villa.

As a member of the History Department, “my interests are going to coincide with people in different parts of the university. I did teach a graduate seminar last fall and had some students from the Cotsen Institute as well as some from both classics and history. I think that the future is probably going to be increasing interconnections between these three areas.” He added that he cannot do his research without archaeology and archaeological

Greg Woolf.

evidence and observed that UCLA is “a very easy place to stretch beyond one’s home department in a way that is not always true in the United Kingdom, and certainly not in other parts of the world. I’m looking forward to those permeable boundaries.”

During his undergraduate and graduate studies, he was “fortunate to study classical literature, history, prehistory, and classical archaeology. My research interests continue to lead me back and forth across these fields within the very broadly conceived study of antiquity. If I had to choose a label, it might be ‘cultural historian of classical antiquity,’ but in practice, labels—like disciplinary boundaries—limit more than they enable.” He noted that he was very aware of the Cotsen Institute before being asked to join. In addition, the Institute of Classical Studies has a huge library with many publications on archaeology, classical and otherwise. “The Cotsen Institute Press publications are very much on the radar,” he said.

Woolf enthusiastically described some of what he will be teaching in the upcoming quarters: a course that presents an outline of Roman history and a capstone seminar on environmental history in the ancient world. The course deals with “lots of interesting information about urban resilience and disaster management, the kind of risk-buffering strategies people developed in the ancient Mediterranean world. If you have a positive mind-set, you think about resilience. If you’re more negative, you think about disaster and how disasters are created out of a combination of human activities and social structure, vulnerabilities, and outside forces.”

Ancient civilizations were “dealing with frequent famine or crop failure, as well as living on a tectonically volatile zone. And you’ve got plenty of plague. There are also quite interesting positive dimensions to thinking about how well adapted they were to these particular conditions.” He added, “In the last major

book that I wrote (The Life and Death of Ancient Cities: A Natural History), I tried to explain why ancient Mediterranean cities were so different from those created in many other parts of the world.”

Woolf has a long-standing interest in the culture of empire in the ancient world. He has worked on the formation of provincial cultures, often using archaeological materials, and on the cosmopolitan culture of the metropolis. Much of his work considers the Roman world in a global perspective. He has written on literacy, knowledge cultures and libraries, ethnography, the Roman economy, gendered Roman history, and the emergence of religions. Currently he is working on a book on migration and mobility as well as urban resilience as one aspect of the environmental history of antiquity.

Next fall he will give the Sather Classical Lectures at UC Berkeley. His provisional theme is seasonality as a structuring force in Roman and Mediterranean society. According to the University of California Press, the Jane Sather Professorship of Classical Literature is “the most prestigious of all English-language annual professorships on a classical subject.” Woolf modestly suggests that the speakers usually come from around the world and “they might never have invited me if I had already been part of the University of California at the time. From a distance, I appear more exotic.”

He also explained some of the similarities and differences between graduate programs in the United Kingdom and the United States. “Graduates are always excellent students; they are really motivated and they always work too hard,” he offered. But it is a very different structure of graduate studies in the United Kingdom, where “you do your doctorate quite quickly, in about four years.” He feels there are pros and cons to both systems: “When you finish your doctorate in the United Kingdom, you haven’t had as much training. And you haven’t had the chance to acquire all the necessary skills. On the other hand, you’re a bit younger and a bit less in debt.”

Woolf still has a house in Scotland, and people keep sending him pictures of fallen trees and crashing waves there. He is a “keen swimmer” with experience in the North Sea, but the only waves he is interested in now are those on the beach near his apartment in Santa Monica.

I was ready for something new

An Interview with Helle Girey

Michelle Jacobson1

A family trip to a dude ranch in Colorado in the mid-1970s changed Helle Girey’s life—and no doubt changed the course of history for the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. Helle was the first and for a number of years the only employee of the institute. She worked for every director before her retirement in 2017. In November 2022, Helle moved to Maryland to be near her daughters and grandchildren. Before she left, we discussed her impact on the Cotsen Institute and its impact on her.

Michelle Jacobson: You have been associated with UCLA archaeologists for more than 40 years. How did you find them, or how did they find you?

Helle Girey: Well, if I go all the way back, it started with a family vacation to a dude ranch at Lake Mancos in Colorado when my children were young. After being on horseback for days, we had a day off and went to Mesa Verde. There I realized that I knew nothing about Indigenous Americans because all my education had been in Europe. I thought, how can it be that I don’t know anything about Indigenous Americans? So I went to Pierce College, near our home in the San Fernando Valley, and took classes there. I got involved in archaeology, did some fieldwork, and then ran out of classes to take. Therefore I moved to UCLA to take classes there. Wow! Suddenly, the whole world opened, and it wasn’t just California local archaeology. It was anything and everything that I was interested in. I worked with all the directors of the institute, starting with Giorgio Buccellati, when it was still named the Institute of Archaeology. I finally retired after Willeke Wendrich became director in 2016.2

MJ: You said that you are a proud Estonian. When did you come to the United States?

HG: My younger years are quite a story. We left Estonia in 1944, hours before the Russians arrived. My family ended up as refugees in Germany, in an American-run refugee camp. I was there for four years. We really wanted to leave Europe, but the Americans didn’t want us, so we went to Sweden for a year and from there to Canada. I grew up in Canada and graduated with a BSc degree in biochemistry. I worked in Montreal for eight years. Then we came to California in 1972.

I know it sounds dismal, but kids are resilient. Of course I have bad memories of the war, but living in a displaced persons camp was not bad for a child. I had my family, and I had friends in every other room. We went to school, we had Girl Scouts and sports events, and, well, life went on. We didn’t have any fancy toys, but we didn’t know that we didn’t have fancy toys. An American soldier gave me a bag of marbles, and those marbles became my kings and queens and ladies-inwaiting. We made castles from cardboard boxes. By the way, I still have those marbles.

MJ: Did you share this with your grandchildren? HG: Oh yes. They know all about it.

1. Director of development, Cotsen Institute.

2. See Backdirt 2016, pp. 120–23.

Figure 1. Helle Girey (right) with Elga Stephans in the Gobi Desert

HG: Once I came to California, I thought I would go back to biochemistry, but there really wasn’t anything suitable. And I had two small children, so I stayed at home. When I made my way to the Institute of Archaeology, I think that the people at UCLA saw this very enthusiastic middle-aged woman who was quite willing to do things. So I volunteered for quite a while. When Merrick Posnansky became director in 1984, he asked me to organize a public lecture program.

MJ: So you were the first employee of the institute? HG: I guess at some point they started paying me something. I don’t know where they got the money. In the beginning, the institute didn’t have any money. People brought scissors from home because they didn’t have money to buy equipment. My job was to get other departments to cosponsor the lectures, and we had a lot of lectures. I would call the Department of Anthropology or Art History, for example, and say, “We have this wonderful speaker coming. Will you sponsor it with $100?” They would ask, “Who are you again?” When I said I’m a volunteer with the Institute of Archaeology, it didn’t go over very well. So that’s when Merrick gave me the title director of public programs.

Then Eileen Schwartz, who was the graduate student adviser for archaeology, retired. Merrick and others recommended that I apply for the job. I did and they accepted me, and off I went. Around the same time, I was working part-time for a contract archaeologist, Roberta Greenwood of Greenwood and Associates, running her laboratory. She did the big Chinatown excavation, and I had thousands of artifacts. Ultimately the Cotsen Institute Press published her book.

MJ: Did you go out to other excavations with faculty over the years?

HG: Yes, so many that I had to write it down for you. I worked with Brian Dillon on several projects, the largest of which was at Vandenberg Air Force Base. I was in Guatemala with David Whitley and later with Marilyn Beaudry. I was in Peru with Tom Wake and Glenn Russell. Before that, I was at Lake Federsee in southern Germany with a professor from UC Santa Barbara. I was in Wales, excavating a castle; in Chiapas near San Cristobal with Richard Lesure; and again, two years later, with Barbara Voorhees from UC Santa Barbara.

Figure 2. The 1990 Pyramid of Donors of the Institute of Archaeology. In the top tier are Lloyd Cotsen/Neutrogena Corporation, Sandy and Ernestine S. Elster, and Bob and Bobbie Stern. Helle is in the third.

Figure 3. On December 15, 1992, Lloyd Cotsen (1929–2017) and Franklin D. Murphy (1916–1994) were the first recipients of The Trowel: The Institute of Archaeology Highest Honor.

MJ: The institute moved into the Fowler Building in 1991. How did that change things?

HG [laughing]: I don’t want to talk about moving at all right now.

MJ: It must have been such a transformation.

HG: It was actually. Tim Earle was director at the time, and literally everything changed. There was so much room. Before moving to the Fowler Building, we had all these little cubbyholes with two people in each. Then we moved into these luxurious spaces and every faculty member had a laboratory, and they were big. Over time, there were more people and more laboratories, so eventually they all got divided up. Before the move, I shared an office in Kinsey Hall with Merrick and another volunteer, Lady Harrington. For us to have our own office was absolutely magical.

I would say the biggest impact of moving, however, was the fact that we now had the Lenart Auditorium for lectures. Previously, we had public lectures in different places. It really was a hunt and peck type of a thing to find an available room for the evening, and who knew what condition the project and screen were in and so on. The Lenart Auditorium was promised to us for Thursday evenings, and it worked quite well. In the beginning, however, we had a problem because they also had first-year undergraduate classes in there.

Although there were big signs everywhere prohibiting food and drink, when Lady and I would go in before the lecture just to check things out, most of the time there would be half-eaten hamburgers and ants crawling over cups of ice cream. One time it was so bad and we had a very important speaker coming (not that they weren’t all important), so I called Chris [Donnan, then director of the Fowler Museum] and said, “This is just not suitable.” He came down with everyone who was upstairs with buckets and mops, and they cleaned it all up. Oh my gosh. It was great.

MJ: Do you have a favorite memory of your time at the institute?

HG: I’m a people person. I really enjoy interacting with people, with the speakers, with the students. The students were absolutely wonderful, especially during the ten years we had the Maya weekend, which was such a big and successful event. The students were very much part of it because they all volunteered their time to help. I won’t say we ran it on a shoestring, but there were so many things that we wanted to do, and when you bring the top-10 Mayan scholars in the world to speak, that will cost you quite a bit of money.

MJ: Let’s talk about the students, because they were a big part of what you did.

HG: Absolutely. You asked if I still keep in touch with them. I was their administrative adviser, but some of them really became my friends, especially the students who were a little bit older. We would all get together in the student lounge and talk, or have lunch together— staff, faculty, and students. I started to write down the names of the students I kept in touch with, and the list got longer and longer and longer! Most of them I now keep in touch with through Facebook.

MJ: In addition to the public lecture program and the Maya weekend, what other traditions at the Cotsen Institute did you start?

HG: In 1990 I instituted the Pyramid of Donors, honoring our donors and at the same time creating enthusiasm to become one. This was followed in 1992 by The Trowel: The Institute of Archaeology Highest Honor, for those who contributed to the institute in other than financial ways. The first was later complemented by the Lloyd Cotsen Prize for Lifetime Achievement in World Archaeology. The receiver of the first trowel was Lloyd Cotsen, who not only made the institute financially independent but was also a lifelong classical archaeologist, albeit only in his precious time off.

Figure 4. In 2005 Helle received The Trowel: The Institute of Archaeology Highest Honor.

Figure 5. Helle on safari in 2009. Highlights included sleeping in tents with lions mating behind the trees (at least that’s what they were told) and gin and tonics over ice at the end of each day of driving and looking at animals.

Figure 6. Helle prepares for the Cotsen party at the Seventy-Eighth Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (Honolulu, Hawai‘i, 2013).

The open house was another thing that I started, meant to inform the interested general public about our fieldwork, our laboratory research, and our publications. We had lectures at 7:30 in the evening. And believe it or not, people actually drove all the way to UCLA at that time. We later decided to show people the laboratories, so we opened them at 5:00, before the lecture. After a few years of doing that, we switched to a weekend.

MJ: Who did you invite for the open house?

HG: Absolutely everybody! The UCLA Lab School, for instance. All the parents got invitations. We advertised it in the Daily Bruin. Then, once the Friends of Archaeology [now the Friends of the Cotsen Institute] got bigger, we would send mailers out. In my last couple of years, I started to see a drop-off in the number of people coming. I think that freeway traffic and parking were really starting to hinder attendance. Now you have a really wonderful opportunity with Zoom, and I hope that you’re going to continue to use it. It means that I can stay engaged, as can all the alumni and faculty who move away from Los Angeles.

MJ: Well, Helle, what’s next?

HG: I hope I will continue doing a little bit of archaeology. I am taking my car to Maryland, so I am going to remain mobile. There is a place called the Londontown Historic Park, and they are quite willing to take volunteers. It’s a beautiful place and only 20 minutes from my new home. The Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Colombian Society of Washington, DC, has a lot of Zoom presentations, so I think I’ll stay entertained.

MJ: You’ll be missed for sure.

HG: I will always miss UCLA. It has a spot not just in my heart but also in my daughter’s heart, because she went to UCLA. When family visited, going to UCLA was always the one thing we really had to do. So her children have grown up at least once a year going to the UCLA campus.

MJ: I feel like we could go on reminiscing for hours. HG: Thank you for this hour. It was great. Take care of the institute. Bye-bye.

Figure 7. The retirement party of Helle in the Davis Courtyard of the Fowler Museum, May 9, 2016. Left to right: Jill Silton, Shannon McGarry, Willeke Wendrich, Charles Stanish, and Helle. (Photograph by Tanja Hrast.)

I N M EMORIAM Bill White (1948–2022)

Jo Anne Van Tilburg1

It Is wIth greAt sAdness and regret that we announce the passing of our dear friend and collaborator Bill White, a gifted photographer, videographer, and writer on September 4, 2022. Bill was a volunteer at the Rock Art Archive from the late 1990s to 2015. He worked on the Little Lake project and was with us on Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) for four or five seasons. Bill was a joyful and creative companion in the field. He will be missed and remembered by his friends at UCLA, who shared great fieldwork experiences with him on campus, in the California desert, and on Rapa Nui.

I N M EMORIAM

Jeanne E. Arnold (1955–2022)

Willeke Wendrich1

After A Long ILLness, anthropologist and archaeologist Jeanne Arnold passed away on Sunday, November 27, 2022. Jeanne was a professor in the Department of Anthropology and a core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute. She received a BA in anthropology (summa cum laude) from the University of Michigan in 1976 and subsequently both an MA and a PhD from the University of California–Santa Barbara. She was a visiting professor at Oregon State University in 1983 and 1984 and an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Northern Iowa from 1984 to 1988.

In 1988 Jeanne came to UCLA as an assistant professor in residence in the Department of Anthropology and associate director of the Institute of Archaeology, now the Cotsen Institute. In 2000 she was promoted to full professor of anthropology, and between 2001 and 2006 she served as vice chair of the Department of Anthropology.

Jeanne distinguished herself as one of the leading North American archaeologists of her generation and contributed to our insights into the sociopolitical emergence of complex hunter-gatherer societies in California. She published in many leading journals on her extensive fieldwork on the northern Channel Islands and in southwestern British Columbia. She focused her interest on how specialized craft production, labor organization, and exchange relationships impact political formations. After her retirement, Scott Sunell, one of her former graduate students, and Alfonso Lopez, office manager of the Cotsen Institute, helped ship most of Jeanne’s notes and finds from her fieldwork in California to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

1. Director, UCLA Rock Art Archive, and director and principal investigator of the Easter Island Statue Project.

1. Director of the Cotsen Institute and the Joan Silsbee Chair of African Cultural Archaeology, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.

Figure 1. Bill White on Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

As a dedicated teacher, Jeanne acted as a mentor and supervisor of numerous undergraduate and graduate students, many of whom went on to pursue careers in higher education, cultural resource management, and beyond. Among them is Jason De León, now himself a professor of anthropology at UCLA and a core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute.

Extending her interests in materiality and quotidian household life, Jeanne collaborated with Linda Garro and Candy Goodwin as core faculty members of the Center on Everyday Lives of Families at UCLA, a 10-year interdisciplinary research program directed by Elinor Ochs and supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Innovatively extending archaeological methods and sensibilities to the study of middle-class family life in Los Angeles, Jeanne worked closely with postdoctoral researcher Anthony Graesch, a graduate of the Cotsen Institute and now a professor at Connecticut College.

In 2012 this work culminated in the publication, by the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, of the awardwinning and best-selling book  Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: 32 Families Open Their Doors. Reflecting on their long collaboration, Graesch writes about Jeanne:

She was an intellectually formidable and highly influential scholar, teacher, and mentor, pivotal in moving California archaeology beyond regional and into national and international, theory-imbued conversations. Her scholarship questioned an assumed primacy of specific food-production strategies (agriculture) in the emergence of institutionalized power differentials in human societies, and she reframed complex huntergatherer societies as not mere exceptions to normative cultural-evolutionary patterns but rather examples of creative social and political strategies that anthropologists still do not fully understand. Throughout, Jeanne trained a generation of archaeologists in the most rigorous field and laboratory methods that I have encountered in our discipline. She held her students to high standards, was exceedingly generous with her time and intellect, and possessed a great deal of patience. Her legacy is impressive and indelible. Her many students are now directing cultural resource management firms, fill positions in government, or have landed academic posts. They are collectively training a new generation of archaeologists and exert a positive impact on the larger domains of heritage conservation, management, and higher education.

This sentiment is echoed by Jason Throop, chair of the Department of Anthropology, at the end of his message to the academic community: “Speaking for many of us who knew Jeanne personally, I know that she is already deeply missed as a generous friend, collaborator, and colleague.”

To honor the life and work of Jeanne Arnold, donations can be made in her name to either the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research or the Best Friends Animal Society.

Figure 1. Jeanne Arnold (right) discusses survey strategies during fieldwork on Santa Cruz Island in 1998. Anthony Graesch (Connecticut College) is at the wheel, and Howard Tsai (University of Michigan) is in the bed of the truck.

Figure 2. Jeanne (left) in her laboratory in the Cotsen Institute during an open house in May 2011.

Figure 3. The cover of the award-winning and bestselling Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: 32 Families Open Their Doors.

FroM thE publisher’s Desk

We continue to offer most of our list as either free pdf downloads or read-only editions (of our newer titles) at https://escholarship.org/uc/cioa_ciap.

Critical Archaeology in the Digital Age

Proceedings of the 12th IEMA Visiting Scholar Conference edited by University of Wisconsin lecturer Kevin Garstki, was published in the Cotsen Digital Series on our eScholarship site as a free pdf, in keeping with its subject matter. The contributors to this volume discuss a critical approach to archaeology in a digital world, a purposeful and systematic application of digital tools in archaeology, and how to understand their impact on practice and interpretation. Topics include three-dimensional data, predictive and procedural modeling, digital publishing, digital archiving, public and community engagement, ethics, and global sustainability.

Divine Consumption

Sacrifice, Alliance Building, and Making Ancestors in West Africa by University of Oregon professor Stephen Dueppen, brings together research of the diversified archaeological program at Kirikongo in Burkina Faso to identify and examine a complex series of ritual deposits, particularly of domestic and wild animals, ranging in time from the origins of sedentary farming communities to the ravages of the Black Death. Books on the archaeology of West Africa prior to 1500 CE are very rare, making this volume an invaluable addition to this area of scholarship. The author delivered a lively talk as the second event in our new series Author Spotlight, which celebrates our publications.

1. Director of publications, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press.

Randi Danforth1

Our Newest p ubli CAti ON s f O r 2022

first kings of europe

From Farmers to rulers in Prehistoric Southeastern Europe edited by University of Georgia professor Attila Gyucha and Field Museum curator William Parkinson, is a co-publication with the Field Museum in Chicago, to accompany an exhibition opening in New York City in fall 2022 and traveling on to Chicago and finally Ottawa. Over a span of four millennia, early agricultural villages gave rise to kingdoms and monarchies in Europe, the first complex state organizations. General audiences and scholars alike will appreciate the splendid selection of artifacts in bronze, gold, ceramic, and stone (many of which have never traveled outside the countries of origin), reconstruction drawings, and archaeological data in the book.

first kings of europe Exhibition Catalog

This catalog accompanies the exhibition First Kings of Europe and the companion volume First Kings of Europe: From Farmers to Rulers in Prehistoric Southeastern Europe. The catalog presents detailed images of most of the objects, photographed in studio settings, providing close-up views of these ancient masterworks.

CO mi N g i N 2023

Archaeology Outside the box

edited by Cotsen Institute affiliate Hans Barnard, aims to make contemporary archaeology germane to the general public as well as to researchers in other disciplines. Thirty-one richly illustrated chapters present a wide variety of projects by an international group of anthropologists, archaeologists, architects, and artists. Many chapters provide arguments relevant to the soul-searching discussions currently taking place within archaeology worldwide and accelerated by the Black Lives Matter movement and the recent Covid-19 pandemic.

Ancient methone, 2003–2013

Excavations by Matthaios Bessios, Athena Athanassiadou, and Konstantinos Noulas edited by Cotsen Institute affiliates Sarah Morris and John Papadopoulos, explores work at ancient Methone, a settlement with a crucial role in the economic and political history of Classical Greece as well as the prehistory of the North Aegean. Excavations there have uncovered remains from the Late Neolithic period through the fourth-century destruction by King Philip II of Macedon. This two-volume publication presents results of the project in selected artifacts, burials, and structures representing the chief phases of the city, in chronological order.

ritual and economy in east Asia Archaeological Perspectives

edited by Anke Hein, Rowan Flad, and Bryan K. Miller, is a commemoration of Cotsen Institute faculty member Lothar von Falkenhausen’s sixtieth birthday. It assembles 18 scholarly essays that explore the intersection between art, economy, and ritual in ancient East Asia. The themes collectively reflect the theoretical, methodological, and historical questions that von Falkenhausen has examined throughout his career. Most chapters work with archaeological and textual data from China, but there are also studies of materials from Mongolia, Korea, Southeast Asia, and even Egypt, showing the global impact of von Falkenhausen’s work. The chronological range of studies extends from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age in China into the early imperial, medieval, and early modern periods.

Animals, Ancestors, and ritual in early bronze Age syria

An Elite Mortuary Complex from Umm el-Marra

edited by Johns Hopkins University professor Glenn M. Schwartz, is a final report of the excavation of Tell Umm el-Marra in northern Syria, conducted in 1994−2010. It is likely the site of ancient Tuba, capital of a small kingdom in the Early and Middle Bronze Age periods, in the Jabbul plain between Aleppo and northern Mesopotamia. Its study advances our understanding of early Syrian complex society beyond the big cities of antiquity. Of particular importance in the Early Bronze Age excavations are results from the site necropolis, tombs of high-ranking persons containing objects of gold, silver, and lapis lazuli. Separate installations hold the remains of kungas (donkey–onager hybrids), sometimes along with human infants. This site provides the first archaeological attestation of the kunga equids, unique in the archaeology of third-millennium Syria and Mesopotamia.

people of Ancient Daunia

Voicing the Statue-Stelae

by Camilla Norman, is an in-depth analysis of the statuestelae of Early Iron Age Daunia (in northern Apulia, Italy), a group of stone slabs, each incised to represent the garb and accoutrements of a person. Additional figurative images drawn on many of the robes show ritual practices, everyday activities, and scenes of local legend. Beyond the funerary record, the material culture of Daunians is relatively poorly known. The stelae, however, provide a rich source of self-representation, offering an unparalleled window into the lives of a protohistoric people. This is the first time a holistic study of the stelae has been undertaken and is the first presentation of the material in English.

Ordering information

Cotsen Institute of Archaeology books in print are distributed by ISD (a distributor of scholarly books), https://www.isdistribution.com, 860-584-6546. They are also sold through our publications office; please contact ioapubs@ioa.ucla.edu. Recent titles are available as eBooks through https://www.amazon.com. Our complete online catalog can be found at https://www.ioa.ucla.edu/press/online-catalog.

Join the Friends of the Cotsen Institute

Private P hilanthro P y plays a vital role in fueling discovery and enabling future achievements. The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA is a premier research organization that promotes the comprehensive and interdisciplinary study of the human past. It is home to both the Interdepartmental Archaeology Program and the UCLA/Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage. The Cotsen Institute stimulates interaction among scholars and students of nine academic departments, who are engaged in pioneering research that can shed light on our society today.

Your contributions will help:

• Support talented graduate students, the future leaders in archaeology and conservation

• Provide students with travel support for fieldwork and professional conferences

• Host visiting scholars

• Present a wide range of lectures, conferences, and cultural events

To join, or for more information on membership, please contact Michelle Jacobson at 310-825-4004 or mjacobson@ioa.ucla.edu, or visit our website at https://ioa.ucla.edu/giving.

Special thanks

Donors and Funders of Projects

July 1, 2021–June 30, 2022

Mitchell J. Allen

American Institute for Conservation

Angela Gross Living Trust

Anonymous

Anonymous

Arvey Foundation

Leslie H. Atik

Dulcy and Diedrich Bader

Barrett Family Charitable Fund

John C. Bretney

Elizabeth J. Brooks

William F. Cahill

Cameron Family

Elizabeth F. Carter

Wei-Yun W. Chang

Linda L. Chapel

Cotsen Foundation for the Art of Teaching

Jeffrey P. Cunard

Mercedes Duque

Carol J. Gilbert

Helle Girey

Beverly M. Godwin

Bruce P. Hector

Edwin A. Hession

Marillyn H. Holmes

Willard M. Huyck Jr.

J. Paul Getty Trust

Michelle Jacobson and Anthony Caldwell

Joseph and Fiora Stone Foundation

Anke Hein and Lawrence C. Kao

Hanqing Liao

William T. Maccary III

Catherine S. Mallinckrodt

Mellon Foundation

Felice E. Miller

Patricia S. Nettleship

Vijay Patil

Seth D. Pevnick

Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Fran and Arthur Sherwood

Jim Shiraishi

Ronald E. Steensland

Ellen and Charles Steinmetz

Jane A. Stewart

Nathan C. Strauss

Lothar A. von Falkenhausen

Marvalee Wake

James L. Walker

Yufen Wang

Diane R. Watanabe

Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research

Glenn Wharton

Rita Winston

Jamie P. Wong

Ruth Yen

COTSEN INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY

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