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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. Mysterious rituals, legends of mighty gods, massive temples, tombs filled with offerings for the afterlife, visions of mythical creatures, magic amulets, and echoes in literature that remain sacred today.

Prof. Candida Moss draws from her research in her recent book, God’s Ghostwriters, to reveal how enslaved scribes, copyists, and curators were essential to the production, preservation, and dissemination of the texts we now regard as sacred or canonical.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. This talk will analyze how the Chu, Qin and Han empires conquered and colonized this region, gradually transforming it from a culturally alien frontier into a regular, if remote, part of the Han empire. The paucity of texts on this region’s early history reflects the disdain early China’s literate elites held towards it and makes archaeological evidence particularly important.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. For nearly 100 years, the South African site of Mapungubwe has been central to our understanding of the Iron Age in southern Africa. Its burials, first excavated in the 1930’s, were laden with gold, thousands of glass beads, and clear expressions of social hierarchy.

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. As the Roman Empire expanded into the Eastern Mediterranean, the city of Rome became a crossroads of new products, peoples, and religions. Much to the dismay of some Roman authors, the capital transformed into a multi-religious city, home to cults and communities from Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, Judaea-Palestina, and beyond. Within this diverse landscape, religious groups both preserved their traditions and adapted to life in Rome.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. The first regions in East Asia to develop sophisticated metalworking traditions from the second millennium BCE onward were the various cultural and political centers of Inner China, including the historical Shang and Zhou dynasties based in the Yellow River valley.

ISAW's open house for prospective doctoral students will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. The event will include an opportunity to meet the ISAW faculty; an information session about our academic program; a Q&A session with current students; and sessions on archaeology, digital humanities, exhibitions, and the library at ISAW.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Prof. von Reden will offer alternative ways of thinking about why we find Chinese silk in Palmyra, Egyptian glass vessels in Afghanistan, and Roman coins in Thailand and Vietnam.

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. Belief systems around the body have a great influence on how societies conceptualize themselves, others, and their divinities. For the ancient world, the idealized bodies of gods and heroes, immortalized in flawless marble, have long defined our vision of Greece and Rome, but beyond these perfect forms lies a more complex story. This workshop delves into the lived reality of the body in antiquity, exploring how beliefs surrounding beauty, fitness, medicine, and disability shaped societies.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. In the 10th century BCE, the formerly grand kingdom of Assyria consisted only of what is today northern Iraq and centered on the three cities Assur, Nineveh (modern Mosul) and Arbela (modern Erbil).

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.

The domestication of plants in prehistory allowed humanity to demographically expand, form dense population congregations (urbanism and social hierarchies), and advance the arts and sciences. For millennia, humans drove the evolution of domestication traits in crops and animals. Archaeologists, ecologists, and geneticists are all working to develop new theories about how domestication in antiquity occurred; one of these theories – the ecological release hypothesis – suggests that crops and animals evolved traits of domestication as a response to humans simply removing predators and herbivores. Dr. Spengler will briefly explore a few key themes in this theory and the rich history of domestication and culture, which he traces in his recent book, Nature's Greatest Success: How Plants evolved to Exploit Humanity.