Dr. Daniel Contreras from the University of Florida

What Can Peru's Archaeological Radiocarbon Record Tell Us about the ‘Early Horizon’?

Since the early 20th century, archaeologists have organized Central Andean prehistory by identifying horizons: periods during which style, iconography, and material culture were shared over broad areas. The identification of horizon phenomena began as a vital chronological tool for archaeologists, but the spread of absolute dating methods now enables a focus on horizons themselves as objects of investigation.

Dr. Contreras says, "In this talk I use the example of the so-called “Early Horizon” associated with first millennium B.C.E. site of Chavín de Huántar to explore how chronology can shed light on the character and even existence of horizon phenomena. By situating the radiocarbon evidence associated with Chavín in the broader context of the regional radiocarbon record, I identify not only peer sites with which Chavín interacted, but also other less obvious contemporaries. In the process I ask whether horizons are identified or imposed, what processes produce the patterns of evidence termed horizons, and how we can better understand the Peruvian past."

Dr. Contreras an anthropological geoarchaeologist interested in human-environment interactions, particularly anthropogenic components of dynamic landscapes and environmental change. His research currently includes both field-based and modeling projects in Peru, Utah, Jordan, France, and Greece, where he examines landscape change and its relationship to long-term human occupation, looking at the ways in which humans have both adapted to and caused environmental changes.

Dr. Adam King from the University of South Carolina

The Rise of Etowah: Creating Community, Place, and Identity

The Etowah site is one of the best-known 14th century Indigenous ritual centers in the Deep South. As a place, Etowah began in the 12th century when local people and immigrants from neighboring regions brought together a unique set of practices and ideas to create a new kind of community. By the start of the 14th century, an influx of new people and ideas ushered in Etowah’s rise to prominence as its architects transformed their landscape to create an impressive ritual and political center. Within a few generations, an attack by an unknown enemy ended that reign when they burned the Etowah community and severed its connection to the sacred. In this talk, Dr. King explores how the people who built Etowah used everyday things, monuments, and the sacred to forge a sense of place, history, and identity.  LEARN MORE ABOUT ETOWAH MOUNDS STATE HISTORIC SITE

Adam King is a Research Associate Professor in the Research Division. His research interests center on variation in the organization of Mississippian period societies in the Deep South. He is currently pursuing projects in the Etowah River Valley of northwestern Georgia and the middle Savannah River Valley on the Georgia-South Carolina border. In the Etowah Valley, he is working on reconstructing the history of the polities associated with the famous Etowah site. Current projects include 1. creating GIS layers and a relational database to analyze the extensive mortuary data from Etowah's Mound C, 2. exploring beliefs about the sacred and their intersection with social inequality through the study of Mississippian art and iconography, and 3. investigating the layout of the Etowah site through full cover remote sensing surveys. In the Savannah Valley, he is exploring the histories of four small centers and associated polities through examination of town layout and settlement distributions.

Dr. Carolyn Kennedy, professor at Texas A&M University

The Gaspe Maritime Archaeology Project

Gaspe Bay is located in eastern Quebec and was visited by early European ships in order to fish for cod. The ships were large and technically advanced, yet some of their features are still unknown. The Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A & M has surveyed the area hoping to find wrecks of these ships. This lecture will present the results of the remote-sensing survey, the documentation efforts of the nautical materials, and the long-term goals of the project.

I am a nautical archaeologist with a focus on North American maritime history. I received my Master’s and PhD from Texas A&M University’s Nautical Archaeology Program where my thesis and dissertation examined the hulls of four 19th-century steamboats in Lake Champlain, Vermont, analyzing how their designs differed and developed over the course of the century as shipbuilders sought to create the ideal hull for the novel steam propulsion.  After graduating, I spent a year as a research associate using cutting-edge laser-scanning technology to document the disarticulated timbers from three historic shipwrecks in Alexandria, Virginia, and reconstructing the ships digitally to better understand their original design and use.

Currently, I am co-directing the Gaspé Maritime Archaeology Project, launched in 2019, which seeks to study the maritime heritage and nautical archaeology of early European colonization and subsistence activities of eastern Québec and Canada. In addition to my interests in the historical and maritime archaeology of Canada and the United States, my research specialties and teaching interests also include public archaeology, analytical archaeology, and the conservation of archaeological materials.

Dr. Elizabeth Murphy, AP of Roman Archaeology in the Department of Classics at FSU

Potters in the Roman East: Daily life of an everyday profession in the Roman Empire

Dr. Murphy will discuss the everyday working lives of ancient potters. With many hundreds of kilns documented from the Mediterranean, with elaborate trade networks reconstructed from distributed pottery, and with workshops appearing in a range of settings (from cities to rural estates), potters and their ceramic products are the most archaeologically visible craft profession of the ancient world, yet we have no biographical accounts or personal narratives from the period on the lives of these workers. Using the rich archaeological record, she will investigate their workplaces and working lives—from the technologies of production to the rituals and magic of workshops.

Elizabeth A. Murphy (PhD, Joukowsky Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, Brown University) is an archaeologist specializing in the study of the Mediterranean during the Roman Imperial and Late Antique periods. Her research and teaching concerns the social and economic organization of the Roman world; more specifically, her work focuses on the history and archaeology of labor, production, and technology, with complementary interests in ancient urbanism and the Roman military. She is a specialist in material culture studies, with particular emphasis on the artifactual record of crafts production, and her fieldwork projects have spanned the ancient Mediterranean world from Asia Minor to Italy. She currently co-directs the Landscape Archaeology of Southwest Sardinia project (LASS), a diachronic landscape project in the modern region of Sulcis-Iglesias (Sardinia, Italy). With LASS, she is investigating the settlement organization, landscape exploitation, and daily life practices of this rural region during the period of the Roman Empire.

Dr. Emily Zavodny, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Central Florida

Building the Seasonal Round: faunal and isotopic evidence for agro-pastoral scheduling in prehistoric Croatia

Dr. Nancy Thomas, Professor Emerita of Art History Jacksonville University

Was Herodotus Right? Lions in Ancient Greece

Modern scholars scoff at Herodotus because he said real lions existed in ancient Greece. Was he right after all? Myths and art are not good enough proof. Even a few real lion bones could be the remains of imported pets, or pelts. Since the 1970s, however, this picture has totally changed as more and more Panthera leo bones have been unearthed all over Greece. Combining different kinds of evidence, Nancy R. Thomas, Professor Emerita of Art History at Jacksonville University, gives us a new, lion’s eye view of life in ancient Greece.