2006 Fall Newsletter

We do our best to keep our members informed about archaeological events in Southern California, specifically San Diego County, however we could always use your help.  If you are aware of any local archaeological events please let one of our officers know or share your information at our next meeting.  We would love to be able to spread the word to the rest of our members.  Check out our website for more information about events happening in our area and also these Southern California archaeological websites for more information!
San Diego Society of the AIA:

• http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~griffins/AIA/
• Society for California Archaeology: www.scahome.org
• The San Diego Archaeology Center: www.sandiegoarchaeology.org
• San Diego Museum of Man: www.museumofman.org
• San Diego Historical Society: www.sandiegohistory.org
• San Diego State University Classics and Humanities Department:http://clasxhum.sdsu.edu/events/index.htm
• Bowers Museum (Orange County): www.bowers.org

San Diego AIA is celebrating its 45th anniversary year and we are marking the occasion with an exciting line-up of speakers.

9/15/06 Brad Cook (Asst. Prof. of Classics, SDSU) “Imag(in)ing Philip II of Macedon: Archaeology, Science, and Literature” — Cook will review the archaeological and literary evidence for reconstructing the physical appearance of Alexander the Great’s father.

10/13/06 Robert J. Littman (Prof. of Classics at University of Hawaii) “Moses: Myth, History, and Archaeology” — Littman will explore Egyptian material, archaeological remains, and inscriptions for what they can tell us about the early history of the Hebrews, particularly Moses, Jacob and Joseph.

12/1/06 Mark Anderson (Director, Marothodi International Archaeological Field School in South Africa) “The Marothodi Institute for Archaeology in Africa: Exploring the Past, Touching the Future” –Anderson will explore the archaeological finds and larger mission of the Marothodi Institute.

All Fall 2006 lectures will be held at Mesa College, Room G101 from 7:15-9:00 PM.  Lectures are free and open to the public.  Watch your e-mail for reminders and longer descriptions of each talk.  If you are not receiving the monthly reminders, contact membership chair Emily Pace (emyj13@hotmail.com) with your e-mail address.  Please tell others about the lectures and forward the e-mails to anyone who might be interested!

In our 45th year, the San Diego Local Society is playing host to the 108th Annual Meeting of the AIA from January 4-7, 2007.  Meetings will be held downtown at the San Diego Marriott and Marina.  Check the Annual Meeting link on the AIA web site <www.archaeological.org> for more information, including the preliminary program, attendee registration, and volunteer sign-up.

Please consider attending or volunteering (see “Volunteer at the Annual Meeting”)!  Two activities are open to the public.  On Wednesday, 1/3 at 7PM in the Marriott, AIA Vice President Brian Rose will present a public lecture on the AIA-sponsored antiquities awareness program being offered to US troops who are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.  On Sunday, 1/7 from 11AM – 3 PM the Archaeology Fair will offer, for a nominal entry-fee, hands-on archaeology exhibits for children and adults.  Apart from the public lecture and the Archaeology Fair, you must register (or complete two volunteer shifts) to attend the professional talks and book exhibit.

Whether a Roman town in India, a Bronze Age woman buried in the Roman Forum, or an olive tree from Santorini, archaeological finds have been grabbing the headlines lately.  Here are just a few of the headlines and the sessions to attend at the annual AIA meeting in January if you want to hear more about similar recent finds.

Archaeologists digging at Pattanam on the southwest coast of India have found what they believe to be the ancient Roman seaport of Muziris, according to the India Daily and BBC.  Scholars have long known of Muziris from a first century merchants’ shipping handbook (Periplus of the Erythraean Sea) and a late antique Roman map (Peutinger Table), but its actually location was only guessed at until now.   The claim is supported by coins, beads, fragments of Roman amphorae, and geological evidence of the shifting bed of the Periyar River.  Identifying this port would be just one more piece in the puzzle of Roman-Indian trade in the imperial period.  If you are interested in this kind of find, Session 3H at the Annual AIA meeting, “Exploring the Roman East,” is for you.

A female skeleton found recently in the Roman Forum by Italian archaeologists appears to date to ca. 1000 BCE, two-hundred fifty years prior to the legendary founding of the city by Romulus, according to BBC reports.

The woman’s jewelry (an amber necklace, bronze ring, and bronze hair pin) suggests that she was from a wealthy family.  The find will help scholars better understand the burial practices of the region’s pre-Roman inhabitants.   Session 1B of the annual meeting, entitled “The Archaeology of Death,” will explore grave/funerary practices.

Radio-carbon testing on an ancient olive tree excavated in an ash layer at Thera (modern Santorini) has suggested radical re-dating of the catastrophic volcanic eruption on that island.  Sturt Manning (Cornell University) and Walter Friedrich (University of Aarhus, Denmark) are the lead authors of articles, published in the journal Science (28 April 2006), offering this new interpretation.  The carbon-14 results suggest a date between 1627 and 1600 BCE for the eruption.  This shifts, to a century earlier, a traditional marker for the dating of all Bronze Age events in the Mediterranean and elsewhere.  The ramifications of this find will be far reaching and will require the rewriting of the history books!  To gauge immediate response to the find, check out annual meeting sessions 1C on Pre- and Proto-Palatial Crete and 3G on Pre-historic Crete.

For more archaeology headlines, point your browser to the AIA website, www.archaeological.org, and look for the “Archaeological News” section.