Information on the next Annual Conference is now available. It can be found here.

Date: Tuesday, May 1 at 7:30
Hosts: Finger Lakes Chapter of the NYSAA
Location: Ithaca College, Center for Natural Sciences Room 208

Abstract: This talk will provide an introduction to the Central Lydia Archaeological Survey (CLAS) and its ongoing ceramics research.  The CLAS project of Boston University, co-directed by Cornell graduates Christopher Roosevelt and Christina Luke, seeks to understand the relationship between people and their landscape in Western Anatolia through time.  The survey is located in the Marmara Lake basin within the modern Turkish province of Manisa, an area that corresponds to the
center of the ancient Lydian kingdom.  The project has accumulated ceramic data from a number of different cultural periods spanning the Late Chalcolithic to the Modern Turkish period.  We are using a variety of methods in order to characterize and learn from these ceramics, including INAA and petrography.  My research has centered around the thin section petrographic analysis of the sherds.  In this talk I will introduce the ceramic profile of this region and present the initial results from the scientific investigation of the sherds from the third through first millennia BCE.  This research has helped us to see differences in raw material selection that indicates changes in the organization of production of the ceramics through time, which may be related to political shifts in the region.

Bio:  Peter holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an MSIS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.   Currently he is an A.B.D. doctoral candidate in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World graduate group at the University of Pennsylvania. Peter’s research focus is the Late Bronze and Iron Ages in Anatolia and he has worked in Turkey for a number of years. Currently, his summer fieldwork includes a survey project north of Sardis in central Lydia, Boston University’s Central Lydia Archaeological Survey, as well as Penn’s Gordion Archaeological Project. Peter is particularly
interested in Anatolia’s interactions with the Greek world to the west and the Near Eastern polities to the southeast. He has been learning about different analytical methods for ancient ceramics, including petrography. He hopes to apply these skills to his dissertation research with a study of second millennium B.C.E. ceramics from across
west-central Anatolia.

This lecture is free and open to the public, so please pass the word!  Anyone with an interest in archaeology is welcome to join us.  We should plan on spending a few minutes discussing whether Tuesday evenings are the best time for our chapter to meet, since some IC students and faculty have course conflicts during our current meeting time.  If people wish to vote on an alternate day or time before Tuesday’s meeting, please let me know via email and I will summarize.  Depending on the availability of our usual room, some people have suggested meeting at the same time on Wednesdays or Thursdays instead of Tuesdays, or to meet at 5 pm so we all make it home earlier in the evening after the talks.

Driving directions from Ithaca to Ithaca College are as follows:

Take Aurora St./ Route 96B south out of Ithaca and drive 1.2 miles from the edge of the Commons.  Take a left turn into the main entrance of Ithaca College at the street light.  Proceed 3/4 of the way around Alumni Circle and turn right on to Grant Egbert Blvd.  Drive straight until you see a sign for Textor Circle (and a freestanding sign for the Gerontology Program).  Turn right on Textor Circle, then take the first left and a second left into Blue parking Lot O.  Park your car, and then head towards campus, going up the stairs visible from the parking lot.  The CNS building is a large red brick building on your right. Walk straight, under the covered walkway, about halfway up the left side of the building, and turn right to find the entrance.   Go through the double glass doors and proceed up the stairs immediately to your left.  CNS 208 is near the top of the stairs. It may also be possible to park in the lot just above the CNS building to avoid stairs, in which case you would enter the building on the same floor as room 208.

Wendy Bacon, secretary of the Finger Lakes Chapter, has sent us some new events to put on our event calendar.

•  March 6 – Samuel Duwe’s “The Pueblo Cosmos in Time and Space”
• April 3 – Phil Nicholson on megalithic monuments in Scotland
• May 1 - Peter Cobb on second-millennium BCE ceramics in western Turkey
• June 1 - Ted Sobel and Carol Griggs on Ithaca pottery

All Finger Lake Chapter events are held on the first Tuesday of every month at 7:30PM at Ithaca College (953 Danby Rd, Ithaca NY 14850 (Building) in either room 206 or 208 of the Natural Sciences building.

Also added:

• September 21-23 – 2012 International Iroquois Beadwork Conference (More Details Soon)

Welcome to the new New York State Archaeological Association website. The site is just about done. Please contact us at contact@nysaa-web.org.

The site will be totally done on January 6, 2012. My first priority is adding all of the past publications.