Recent Events

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. This lecture examines Arsacid luxury material beyond Iran both as object and idea. As under the Achaemenids before and Sasanians after, these charismatic objects potentially entangled or “assembled” aspects of identities of those outside the empire at a range of societal levels, including those who had dealings with the empire and those who encountered them even in negative and in reaction.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. This lecture will focus on the development of an Arsacid tradition of precious metal and ivory vessels and a new Iranian court culture that participated in both the Hellenistic and Iranian ecumenes.

This event will take place in person. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Please join us as Roberta Casagrande-Kim, ISAW Exhibitions Director, hosts guest curator Vincent Jolivet École Normale Supérieure in a gallery conversation about the recent work and discoveries at the Etruscan necropolis at Norchia. Using the objects on display, Vincent will discuss how his team's excavations have helped us understand more about the Etruscan language and society, and how digital techniques such as drone photography and photogrammetry have allowed us to bring Norchia into the gallery for visitors to experience.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. This lecture focuses on the role of luxury objects and spectacles as deployed by the Seleucids in their conflicts the Antigonids, Ptolemids, Greco-Bactrians, Arsacids and later the Romans.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. This lecture begins with considering the role that luxury material played in creating politically useful subjectivities in the Achaemenid Persian Empire before turning to the formation of a new, competing traditions of luxury under the empire’s rivals and successors.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. The ubiquity of the image on ancient Near Eastern artefacts and its function as a medium for visualizing knowledge has not been a primary concern in ancient Near Eastern studies.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. This talk outlines the results and ongoing archaeological investigations of KK1’s diverse remains, including ceramic and metallurgical analyses, bio-archaeological and ecological studies, and broader palaeo-hydrological and landscape investigations.

This workshop will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. Before the Classical period, where Athens and Sparta dominate as central figures in Ancient Greek history, two earlier civilizations have sparked significant debate regarding their identity and acknowledgment. The first is the Minoan civilization, based on Crete and named by Sir Arthur Evans after the mythical King Minos. The second is the Mycenaean civilization, identified as the first recognized Greek civilization.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Since 2021, a team from ISAW/NYU has been involved in archaeological fieldwork at the Greek and Roman city Lyktos in central Crete, Greece. Celebrated by Homer, considered as the birthplace of god Zeus by Hesiod, and identified as the cradle of the Spartan constitution by Aristotle, Lyktos boasts an unusually rich literary and epigraphic record.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. For many, the history of Christianity in China begins with the Jesuit missions of the 16th and 17th centuries. However, nearly a millennium earlier, during the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), East Syriac Christians had already made their way to China through the ancient Silk Road trade routes spanning Eurasia.

This lecture is the third in the ISAW Libraries events series for the 2024-2025 academic year. It will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Sarah Bond will share some of her research from her recently published book Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire (Yale University Press), exploring how Roman workers used strikes, boycotts, riots, and rebellion to get their voices—and their labor—acknowledged.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. In antiquity and the early Middle Ages, a network of trade routes known as the Silk Road connected East and West Asia and Europe. The Silk Road was not just an economic link, but also the avenue for cultural and genetic exchanges between these regions.