On Thursday March 27th at 5PM in the Rittenberg Lounge of Mather Hall, Dr. Karen Foster  spoke to us about monkeys in Aegean art and imagination: “Karen Pollinger Foster (Ph.D., Yale University) specializes in the art and archaeology of the Bronze Age Aegean, with particular interests in interconnections with Egypt and Mesopotamia and studies of walling painting programs from Thera. Her most recent book, Civilizations of Iraq (2009), co-authored with Benjamin R. Foster, received the 2010 Felicia A. Holton Book Award from the American Archaeological Institute of America. She has recently completed a trilogy dealing with volcanic imagery in art and literature, beginning with the Thera eruption and concluding with the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii. Her current major research project involves the final preparation of Strange and Wonderful: Exotic Flora and Fauna in Image and Imagination, a comprehensive study of this material from ancient to modern times.”

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On April 23rd 2017 at the Common Hour in Rittenberg Lounge Dr. Christelle Fischer-Bovet spoke to us about “Identifying People in Hellenistic and Early Roman Egypt – A Comparative Perspective.”
“Hellenistic rulers and the Roman government were already exposed to the issue of identifying people for juridical and fiscal purposes. The systems that were used in Egypt at both periods have been variously interpreted and often contrasted. By looking at legal and fiscal documents preserved on papyri, this paper explores how official categories of persons allowed both states to single out groups that were particularly valuable to the state formation process and whose loyalty was essential. It suggests that both systems are more similar than usually thought and that the Roman system in Egypt can be understood as a systematization of developments already occurring in the last century of Ptolemaic rule. However, in contrast to the early period Ptolemaic, this systematization did not create new elites, but rather maintained the privileges of most of the same families.”

On Monday March 6th 2017 in Archaeological Institute of America lecture, Dr. William Fitzhugh, delivered a lecture entitled, “Vikings: the North Atlantic Saga.”

More info: https://www.archaeological.org/events/22333