All upcoming Archaeology programs

China has more than three thousand years of recorded history, but misconceptions abound at every stage. Historian Justin Jacobs clears up misinterpretations as he takes you on a thematic tour of four important topics in ancient Chinese history. Each lecture includes a rich, nuanced overview based on the latest scholarship and illustrated with copious slides. This session focuses on the relations with nomads.

China has more than three thousand years of recorded history, but misconceptions abound at every stage. Historian Justin Jacobs clears up misinterpretations as he takes you on a thematic tour of four important topics in ancient Chinese history. Each lecture includes a rich, nuanced overview based on the latest scholarship and illustrated with copious slides. This session focuses on the sacred mountains.

China has more than three thousand years of recorded history, but misconceptions abound at every stage. Historian Justin Jacobs clears up misinterpretations as he takes you on a thematic tour of four important topics in ancient Chinese history. Each lecture includes a rich, nuanced overview based on the latest scholarship and illustrated with copious slides. This session focuses on the civil service exams.

The sophisticated courts of the classic Maya city-states offer a trove of information and artifacts. At their heart are the impressive architecture of palaces, temples, and ball-courts; intriguing relief carvings of deities, kings, queens, and scribes; painted ceramic vessels; and richly appointed burials. Cultural historian George Scheper explores the storied splendors of two such city-states, Copan and Tikal, and how the decipherment of Maya glyph-writing has opened new worlds of written history of the dynasties of these impressive sites.

The period of post-biblical Judaism is exceedingly rich in archaeological evidence, found both in Israel and in the lands of an ever-widening Diaspora. In an illustrated full-day program, biblical scholar Gary Rendsburg of Rutgers University synthesizes archaeological findings and literary evidence to reveal a multifaceted portrait of Jewish life in late antiquity.

China has more than three thousand years of recorded history, but misconceptions abound at every stage. Historian Justin Jacobs clears up misinterpretations as he takes you on a thematic tour of four important topics in ancient Chinese history. Each lecture includes a rich, nuanced overview based on the latest scholarship and illustrated with copious slides. This session focuses on the maritime voyages of Zheng He.

As twilight settled in the ancient world, a host of activities began, some of which were significantly different from what was done during the day. Paleolithic archaeologist April Nowell reveals the people who worked the night shift in ancient societies: the hunters, sewage workers, poets, ironsmiths, rebellion leaders, and others. Drawing on archaeological data and textual evidence, she argues that night in the ancient world was anything but sleepy.

At the end of 1177 B.C., many of the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean lay in ruins, undone by invasion, revolt, natural disasters, famine, and the demise of international trade. The so-called First Dark Age had begun. Classicist and anthropologist Eric Cline, author of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed, surveys this dramatic period and how the downfall of powerful civilizations created new circumstances, innovations, and opportunities to which people and societies had to adapt.