Extra Credit Opportunities for
Archaeology Talks and Exhibits
Five final grade points of extra credit can be earned by visiting and participating in lectures, seminars, and exhibits listed below on this web page. A maximum of 2.5 final grade points can be earned per event. A maximum of 2 events can be used for credit. To receive credit for an event or exhibit listed on this page, you must (1) attend the lecture or visit the exhibit and (2) write a summary and critical discussion of the main issues raised by the speaker, tour leader, seminar facilitator, or the exhibit design and presentation. Each of these papers should be no more than two typed pages, double-spaced, one-inch margins, 12-point font, and proofread. No email or mailbox submissions accepted. Submit your extra credit paper to Rachel Gill or Chris Fennell by 9:50am on Dec. 11, 2019.
The lectures, talks, and exhibits related to archaeology topics set out below are scheduled to be held on or near campus or within the broader region during this semester. These are listed here for your information, and are not required components of this course. We will update this list as events are announced. If you are aware of an upcoming event that is not listed here, please email the information to Chris Fennell. Thank you!
Extra Credit Opportunity on Interactive Hierakonpolis
An additional five final grade points of extra credit can be earned by engaging with the challenges faced by the archaeologists and conservators working over the years on the Hierakonpolis project in Egypt. To receive these credits, compose a five-page, double-spaced essay following the assignment guidelines. These five extra credit points are separate and independent of the five points of extra credit you can earn by writing essays about an archaeology talk or a museum exhibit.
Talks and Exhibit Events on or Near Campus
Archaeological Institute of America Speaker Series
"A Surprising New History of Native Steam Baths in North America: From the Maya Up the Mississippi," presented by Timothy Pauketat, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Friday, September 13, 2019 at 2:00pm, in the Lucy Ellis Lounge on the first floor of the Foreign Languages Bulding, 707 S. Matthews Ave., Urbana.
“Glass in Late Antiquity,” presented by Anastassios Antonaras, Museum of Byzantine Culture.
Friday, September 20, 2019 at 2:00pm, in the Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum (UIUC).
“The Social, Economic, and Commercial Networks of Punic-Roman Tharros: New questions and new excavations for a major port town in Sardinia,” presented by Steven Ellis, University of Cincinnati.
Friday, October 4, 2019 at 2:00pm, in the Lucy Ellis Lounge on the first floor of the Foreign Languages Bulding, 707 S. Matthews Ave., Urbana.
Department of Anthropology Speakers
Brandon Ritchison, Visiting Assistant of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Downstream Effects of Abandonment: Settlement and Organization on the Late Prehistoric Georgia Coast. October 10, 2019, 3pm, Davenport Hall 109.
Abstract: By 1390 CE, the chiefdoms of the Savannah River Valley (SRV) had been depopulated. Settlement and radiocarbon evidence suggest that the former residents of the SRV abandoned their homes over the span of just a few short decades. On the neighboring Georgia Coast, some of these immigrants arrived into a rapidly changing context. Settlement expansion meant the establishment of new locales, occupied for the first time in history. The settlement history of the Kenan Field site, a 60-ha, persistently occupied site on Sapelo Island, provides a window into how residents of the Georgia Coast responded to the arrival of SRV migrants through a combination of dispersal, contraction, and the development of new political institutions.
Brandon Ritchison is an anthropological archaeologist who studies the islands and coasts of the southeastern United States. He has investigated sites in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. His research on the relationships between changing environments and social organization involves projects relating to reconstructing past environments, multi-scalar modeling of prehistoric settlement patterns, and the refinement of radiocarbon dating methods and modeling techniques.
Lemann Institute of Brazilian Studies
Dr. Luis Claudio Symanki, Distinguished Visiting Professor, Lemann Institute of Brazilian Studies. Historical Archaeology and the Material Expressions of Religiosity in African Diaspora in Brazil in the 18th and 19th Centuries. September 10, 2019, 2:00pm to 3:30pm, 101 International Studies Building, 910 S. Fifth Street, Champaign.
Abstract: "Historical reports from the nineteenth-century, in northern Brazil, describe maroon settlements with 'houses of saints.' These houses presented, in their interior, 'extravagant dolls made of wood, gourds fulfilled with herbs, and stones.' Starting from this kind of description, and based on historiographic, ethnographic and archaeological sources, this lecture will explore the material expressions of Bakongo religiosity in Africa and in the Portuguese America from the 18th century to the present. The focus will be on the possible ways that Central Africans, particularly those ones with a Bakongo cultural background, appropriated items found in plantations contexts from western and southeastern Brazil, such as crosses, crystals, bottles, ceramic pots, and iron slag, to express worldviews and cosmologies of their own."
East Central Archaeological Society
"The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Intersection between Archaeology and Religion," by Sarah Wisseman, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Thursday, September 19, 2019, 7pm to 8pm, Savoy Recreation Center, 402 Graham Dr., Savoy (five blocks west of the Savoy Post Office).
History Talk on Campus
"Tattooing, Branding, and Blushing: Skin in the First Global Age, 1450-1750," by Craig Koslofky, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Tuesday, November 12, 2019, 7:00pm to 8:00pm, Room 223 Gregory Hall.
Spurlock Museum Exhibits
"With approximately 40,000 objects in its artifact collection, the Spurlock Museum at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign celebrates our shared humanity by collecting, preserving, documenting, exhibiting, and studying objects of cultural heritage." Read more about these exhibitions on the Museum's web site at http://www.spurlock.illinois.edu/. Exhbits of interest include:
Krannert Art Museum
Blue and White Ceramics: An Enduring Global Obsession, exhibition through Aug. 31, 2019.
"The exhibition centers on Chinese blue-and-white porcelain, which has been collected and emulated around the world since the Yuan Dynasty, as well as the many ceramic traditions inspired by these wares. Even as new types of decoration were developed over the centuries, blue-and-white never went out of fashion."
Events in the Region
Illinois Association for Advancement of Archaeology
The IAAA promotes archaeological events, research, and site conservation in the state of Illinois. IAAA List of Regional Talks, Fall 2019.
Illinois Archaeological Survey Conference
September 7, 2019, at the Interpretive Center, Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, Collinsville, Illinois. Schedule of presentations available online.
Field Museum, Chicago
The "Ancient Americas" exhibit is being presented at the Field Museum in Chicago. Read more about this exhibition on the Field Museum's web site at https://www.fieldmuseum.org/at-the-field/exhibitions/ancient-americas.
From the exhibit web site: "Step into the windswept world of Ice Age mammoth hunters. Walk through a replica of an 800-year-old pueblo dwelling and imagine your entire family cooking, eating, and sleeping in one small room. Explore the Aztec empire and its island capital, Tenochtitlan, a city of more than 200,000 people and an extraordinary feat of engineering for any era. The Field Museum's ground-breaking new exhibition, The Ancient Americas, takes you on a journey through 13,000 years of human ingenuity and achievement in the western hemisphere, where hundreds of diverse societies thrived long before the arrival of Europeans. You'll discover what Field Museum scientists and others have learned about the people who lived in the Americas before us, and how it's changing nearly everything we thought we knew!"
The "Inside Ancient Egypt" exhibit is being presented at the Field Museum in Chicago. Read more about this exhibition on the Field Museum's web site at https://www.fieldmuseum.org/at-the-field/exhibitions/inside-ancient-egypt.
From the exhibit web site: "The Field Museum is one of the few places in the country where you can explore an ancient Egyptian tomb. The Museum’s three-story recreation of a mastaba features two authentic rooms from the 5,000-year-old tomb of pharoah’s son Unis-Ankh. From hieroglyphs, mummies, and a Book of the Dead, to a marketplace showing artifacts from everyday life, this exhibition demonstrates how the elaborate preparations that ancient Egyptians made for the afterlife give clues to their lives on Earth -- and to what ancient Egyptians might have had in common with people today."
The "Africa" exhibit is being presented at the Field Museum in Chicago. Read more about this exhibition on the Field Museum's web site at https://www.fieldmuseum.org/at-the-field/exhibitions/africa.
From the exhibit web site: "Explore a sampling of the cultures and environments of the vast and varied African continent…from the scene of a holy day in the capital city of Senegal to the mountainous rainforests of Rwanda…from the Royal Palace of the Bamum in Cameroon to a research station on the Great Rift Valley…from an iron smelting workshop in Ethiopia to a camel caravan crossing the Sahara Desert in Nigeria.
Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago
The Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago "is a world-renowned showcase for the history, art, and archaeology of the ancient Near East. The museum displays objects recovered by Oriental Institute excavations in permanent galleries devoted to ancient Egypt, Nubia, Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Anatolia, and the ancient site of Megiddo, as well as rotating special exhibits." Renovated galleries and a new schedule of exhibitions are planned to open in September 2019. Read more about this museum's offerings at https://oi.uchicago.edu.
Illinois State Museum Exhibits
The Illinois State Museum in Springfield, Illinois hosts a number of exhibits concerning archaeology, anthropology, and Illinois' prehistory, including "Changes: Dynamic Illinois Environments" and "Peoples of the Past." Read more about these exhibitions on the Illinois State Museum's web site at http://www.illinoisstatemuseum.org/content/exhibitions-page.
Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site
"Managed by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, in Collinsville, Illinois, is located on the Mississippi River floodplain, across from St. Louis, Missouri. This site was first inhabited by Indians of the Late Woodland culture about AD 700. The site grew during the following Mississippian period, after AD 900, and by AD 1050-1150, the Cahokia site was the regional center for the Mississippian culture with many satellite communities, villages and farmsteads around it. After AD 1200, the population began to decline and the site was abandoned by AD 1400. In the late 1600s, the Cahokia Indians (of the Illinois confederacy) came to the area and it is from them that the site derives its name." This state park includes an excellent interpretative and exhibit center. Learn more online at https://cahokiamounds.org/.
Lincoln's New Salem
"Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site" is located in Petersburg, Illinois. Abraham Lincoln lived in New Salem from 1831 to 1837. While the cooper shop is the only original building still standing, numerous buildings including a carding mill, gristmill, tavern, shops, a school, sawmill and cabins have been reconstructed to their 1830s appearance. Signs for an "archaeology walk" show places excavated during archaeological investigations. Learn more online at http://www.lincolnsnewsalem.com.
Museum of the Grand Prairie
"Our mission is to collect, preserve and interpret the natural and cultural history of Champaign County and East Central Illinois." The Museum is located west of Ubana-Champaignm, in Mahomet. Exhibits include "Blacksmithing on the Prairie." Read more about these exhibitions on the Museum of the Grand Prairie's web site at http://www.museumofthegrandprairie.org/exhibits.html.
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Last updated: November 10, 2019
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