UCSC SOCIETY

Welcome to the web page of the UC Santa Cruz Society of the AIA. The society also maintains a facebook page.

UC Santa Cruz is launching a society of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) Society. The AIA is the North American organization of professional archaeologists. Local Societies sponsor lectures and events of interest to their members, and provide a local forum for people with an interest in archaeology to meet and talk. The national organization also sponsors a series of three lectures for each local society a on a broad range of topics (see the list of available lecturers for this year; compare the list of past lecturers for the AIA-UCSC).

The UCSC society is now a local AIA society "in formation": that is, we have more than twenty-five members of the AIA; a society in good standing must have at least fifty members, of whom no more than twenty percent can be student members. Membership in the AIA can be combined with a subscription to the Institute's popular magazine, Archaeology, or its professional journal, the American Journal of Archaeology. If you would like to support the formation of this local society by joining the AIA, further information on membership can be found here; discounts are available for first time members here. If you would like your membership to be counted for the Santa Cruz society, be sure to notify Charles Hedrick that you have joined, or indicate the Santa Cruz society if you join on the AIA web page. Whether you join the AIA or not, you are welcome to attend lectures of the society.

Welcome back to another year of events! We are now entering the third week of classes at UCSC and Hedrick has been working to arrange a slate of lectures. Precise titles are still to be worked out, and details about time and place remain (only) a bit murky, but I wanted to let you know where things stand at present.

The first lecture will be given on Dec. 2 by Elaine Sullivan of UCLA. She is a specialist in Egyptian Archaeology, and will speak on the use of computer-generated 3D models in the investigation of ancient sites, particularly Karnak.

The second lecture will be given on February 17 by Cameron McNeill, a paleoethnobotanist from CUNY, on the early history and archaeology of Cacao in Mesoamerica. I’m hoping to arrange an educational and fun reception (involving chocolate) in connection with this event.

The third lecture will be given on March 31 by Jodi Magness of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, on the archaelogy of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

It has also come to my attention in the past week that there is the possibility of scheduling a fourth lecture at the end of the year. I’m looking into this and will be back to you with more information when I have it.

Finally, I would like to thank all of you for joining. We now have more than 30 members of the AIA-UCSC society. The AIA has consequently recognized us as a “society in formation”: so, if you go to the national society web page (archaeological.org) we now appear in their list of local societies (helpful in terms of attracting new members).