Upcoming Events

Coppery Cookery: The Consumption, Maintenance, and Use of Bronze Vessels in the Pompeian Kitchen
by Dr. Aaron Brown, Stanford University

How did the ancient Romans feed themselves? Any satisfactory response to this question must take into account the full range of implements available to ancient cooks and how they were manipulated in the course of meal-making. While a diverse assortment of vessels, utensils, and portable cooking apparatus is known to have been employed in Roman kitchens, certain material classes have benefitted from more intensive study as a result of their relative abundance in the archaeological record. In contrast to pottery, which is prone to fragmentation but quite durable, bronze kitchenwares rarely survive in a good state of preservation archaeologically due to the corrosive, highly recyclable nature of copper alloys. The underrepresentation of bronzewares in the archaeological record raises a number of important questions concerning the role of bronze in the Roman kitchen, its relationship to ceramic, and the demand for and valuation of such wares. In this talk, I explore these issues by focusing on the material record of a single site: Pompeii. Here, in the terminal phase of the town, we find one of the largest, most diverse collections of well-preserved bronze kitchenwares found anywhere in the Roman world. Drawing on the results of recent fieldwork in Pompeii involving archival research and the analysis of use alterations and repairs exhibited by such implements, I chart patterns in the ownership and use of the town’s bronze kitchenwares. These patterns, in turn, allow us to consider the motives of ancient consumers and the degree to which a socially differentiated cuisine may have exited in Pompeii in the first-century CE.

Anyone in our society (or anyone interested in our society) is welcome to join.

Friday, December 5, 2025 at 7:00pm

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AIA Stanford Book Club: "A World Beneath the Sands: The Golden Age of Egyptology"
by Toby Wilkinson

From the decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822 to the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon a hundred years later, the uncovering of Egypt’s ancient past took place in an atmosphere of grand adventure and international rivalry.

In A World Beneath the Sands, acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson chronicles the ruthless race between the British, French, Germans, and Americans to lay claim to its mysteries and treasures. He tells riveting stories of the men and women whose obsession with Egypt’s ancient civilization helped to enrich and transform our understanding of the Nile Valley and its people, and left a lasting impression on Egypt, too. Travelers and treasure-hunters, ethnographers and archaeologists: whatever their motives, whatever their methods, a century of adventure and scholarship revealed a lost world, buried for centuries beneath the sands.

Anyone in our society (or anyone interested in our society) is welcome to join. You just need to register for our Zoom discussion.

Friday, January 16, 2025 at 7:00pm

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The Frederick R. and Margaret B. Matson Lectureship for Near Eastern Archaeology and Archaeological Technology: "Making the Ice Age Virtual and Accessible: Using VR and Underwater Robotics to Teach Archaeology"
by Professor Ashley Lemke, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

How can we engage the next generation with archaeology? How can we bring ancient time periods and societies to life? As an underwater archaeologist researching submerged ancient sites, Dr. Lemke is familiar with the latest technology to explore deeper and further back in time - but how can you involve students and the public in these discoveries? Work with computer scientist has developed a virtual world of the ancient Great Lakes, where past environments, animals and archaeological sites can be investigated. You can enter this ancient world via virtual reality and better understand the past lifeways of people who lived there and hypothesize about where additional archaeological sites may be located. In addition, middle and high school students are often involved in building robots for competitions - but what if we took the robots out of the pool and used them for underwater archaeology? This talk will present case studies in bring VR and robotics to classrooms, museums, and beyond to introduce archaeology to a broader audience.

Anyone in our society (or anyone interested in our society) is welcome to join. You just need to register for our Zoom discussion.

Friday, February 6, 2026 at 7:00pm

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