Beverly and Raymond Sackler
Art and Archaeology Lectures, 2002-2003
University of Connecticut
Storrs Campus

Dr. Norman Hammond, Boston University and Harvard University.
Thursday, December 6, 2001
Lecture: Archaeology at the Classic Maya city of La Milpa, Belize

Dr. Harvey Weiss, Yale University
Wednesday, February 13, 2002
Lecture: Abrupt Climate Change and the Rise and Fall – and Rise – of Mesopotamian Civilization

Dr. John Malcolm Russell, Massachusetts College of Art.
Thursday, March 28, 2002:
Lecture: Racing the Rising Euphrates: Salvage Archaeology in Ancient Til Barsib, Syria

The Department of Art and Art History of the University  of Connecticut,  with the generous support of Beverly and Raymond Sackler, is pleased to announce the  2001-2002 Beverly and Raymond Sackler Art and Archaeology Lecture Series.  The series brings some of today’s most distinguished archaeologists and scholars working in the fields of Near Eastern, Middle Eastern and Latin American archaeology to the University of Connecticut  to present recent research and discuss the critical issues currently facing the field.  In light of the dramatic changes taking place in Latin America and in the Near and Middle East today, what role does archaeology play in these regions, and what challenges lie ahead? How are archaeologists reassessing the goals of their discipline, and reinterpreting their vital contributions to our understanding of cultures and societies, both past and present?   

The Beverly and Raymond Sackler Art and Archaeology Lecture Series provides a unique opportunity to explore these and other critical issues in the field on the University of Connecticut campus at Storrs.  Three distinguished scholars have been invited to present lectures on a variety of archeological projects and sites, and share their insights on their cultural significance and historical impact. The first is Dr. Norman Hammond, Professor of Archaeology at Boston University and Associate in Maya Archaeology at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, who will lecture on "Archaeology at the Classic Maya city of La Milpa, Belize." Dr. Hammond’s lecture is scheduled for Thursday, December 6, 2001, at 5:00 p.m.  The second speaker in the series is Dr. Harvey Weiss, Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology in the Departments of Anthropology and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University. Dr. Weiss’s lecture, “Abrupt Climate Change and the Rise and Fall –and Rise—of Mesopotamian Civilization,” will be held Wednesday, February 13, 2002, at 4:30 p.m.  Dr. John Malcolm Russell, Professor of Art History and Archaeology in the Department of Critical Studies at Massachusetts College of Art, is the third archaeologist to lecture in the series. Dr. Russell’s lecture, entitled “Racing the Rising Euphrates: Salvage Archaeology in Ancient Til Barsib, Syria” will take place on Thursday, March 28, 2002 at 4:30 p.m.

All lectures in the Beverly and Raymond Sackler Art and Archaeology Lecture Series are open to the University community and the greater public. Admission is free and a reception follows. The lectures were held at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, 405 Babbidge Road, on the Storrs campus of the University of Connecticut. For further details, please contact the Department of Art and Art History, University of Connecticut, 860 486-3930.

Speaker Biographies

Dr. Norman Hammond is Professor of Archaeology at Boston University and Associate in Maya Archaeology at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University.  The leading authority in the field of Maya Archaeology, Dr. Hammond has directed numerous research projects and important excavations in Belize, Ecuador and in the Andes, and has also conducted field work in Libya, Tunisia and Afghanistan, and on Harvard University’s project in Guatemala. He directed his survey in Ecuador under the auspices of the British Museum. Dr. Hammond’s research interests include the emergence and decline of complex societies, as well as the history of archaeology. His current La Milpa project,  begun in 1992, has as an international staff and is funded by the National Geographic Society and Boston University.  Dr. Hammond has been a Visiting Professor at numerous academic and research institutes throughout the world, including Cambridge, Oxford, the Sorbonne, Jilin University (China), and the University of Bonn. He has also held a Dumbarton Oaks Fellowship. Dr. Hammond serves on the editorial boards of Ancient Mesoamerica, Antiquity, and the Journal of Field Archaeology, and is the archaeology correspondent for The Times (London).   Among his many publications, Dr. Hammond is perhaps best known for his books, Cuello: An Early Maya Community in Belize (1991); Nohmul: A Prehistoric Maya Community in Belize (1985); Ancient Maya Civilization (5th ed.,1994); Lubaantun: A Classic Maya Realm (1975); and his co-edited volumes The Archaeology of Afghanistan (1978); Maya Archaeology and Ethnohistory (1979).

Dr. Harvey Weiss is Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology in the Departments of Anthropology and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University. From 1968 to 1973 he excavated at and directed a variety of prehistoric and early historic archaeological sites in western Iran, including Hajji Firuz, Godin Tepe, Hasanlu and Qabr Sheykheyn.  In 1978 he initiated the Yale Tell Leilan Project in northeastern Syria, which aimed at elucidating important developmental patterns in the agricultural practices of northern Mesopotamia. In the early 1980s and through the 90s, Dr. Weiss’s attention moved to the forces that determined rain-fed agriculture in early historic West Asia.  In 1993 he and his colleagues published the hypothesis and confirmatory data for a major and abrupt climate change that affected the region from the Aegean to the Indus at ca. 2200 BC. Since 1993, this climate change has become the focus of considerable research attention among scholars in the paleoclimatic and archaeological research communities and beyond. Dr. Weiss’s most recent  studies have appeared in a range of publications including Science, The Sciences, Orient Express, The Dictionary of Art,  and The Encyclopedia of the Ancient Near East. His research on climate change was published in numerous edited volumes, including most recently, Confronting Natural Disaster: Engaging the Past to Understand the Future (2000) and was the subject of his co-edited volume Third Millennium B.C. Climate Change and Old World Collapse (1997).

Dr. John Malcolm Russell is Professor of Art History and Archaeology at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where he teaches the archaeology of the ancient Middle East and Egypt.  He is also the Associate Director of excavations at the ancient Assyrian city of Til Barsib, on the Euphrates river in northern Syria.  Prior to the Gulf War, Dr. Russell was Associate Director of archaeological excavations at Nineveh, Iraq. The author of four books and numerous articles on ancient Assyria, his most recent book, The Final Sack of Nineveh (1998), investigates the destruction of Sennacherib’s palace in Iraq as a result of the looting precipitated by UN sanctions. Dr. Russell’s discovery of a lost Assyrian sculpture in an English boy’s school and his exposure of the looting of Assyrian palaces in Iraq have been widely reported in the media both here and abroad.  He has conducted excavations under the auspices of the University of Liège and the Universities of Berkeley and Columbia. Dr. Russell earned the distinguished Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize for best article in 1988, and his book Sennacherib’s “Palace without Rival” at Nineveh received the Archaeological Institute of America’s James R. Wiseman Award for best archaeology book of 1991.  He is author of The Writing on the Wall: Studies in the Architectural Context of Late Assyrian Palace Inscriptions (1999), and From Nineveh to New York: The Strange Story of the Assyrian Reliefs in the Metropolitan Museum and the Hidden Masterpieces at Cranford School (1997).

Beverly and Raymond Sackler
Art and Archaeology Lectures
Art and Archaeology Home
2002
2003: Mesopotamia under fire
2004: Writing Civilization
2005: Egypt
2006: Ancient Near East
2007: The Aztec Empire