Faculty

A crop domestication center emerged ~5000 years ago in Eastern North America. Native Americans in this area transformed several wild plant species, including sunflower (Helianthus annuus) into staple crops. Archaeological evidence from Eastern North America and genomic evidence from extant cultivated and wild sunflower supports this narrative, and it was once thought that cultivated sunflower did not reach Mexico until after European colonizers established trade routes.

This past field season was the second of two excavation seasons which focused on the earliest levels at the site of Chiripa. We managed to expose two major areas where the deposits were sitting on sterile and contained early ceramics and other material. The Berkeley team is focusing on studying the early engagement with tubers and chenopods,w th laboratory work ongoing throughout the year.

Authors: Jun Sunseri, Matthew Moore, Rebecca Allen, Zack Emerson

For its ninth field season the Pompeii Artifact Life History Project advance its research on the residential properties in Insula (block) I.11 at Pompeii on various fronts. The team completed its evaluation of the portable artifacts and furniture components from the Casa della Venere in Bikini (I.11.6.7) and the unnamed bar/residence at I.11.1.2 stored at the Casa di Bacco storage facility.

The multi-year project of the Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology (DAGRS), the Excavation and Conservation of the Early Christian Basilica, at the Sanctuary of Zeus in Ancient Nemea, Greece, continued in 2023. The center and east ends of the 5thc. CE building were investigated including the nave, aisles, and apse, had been excavated in the 1920s and 1960s. We recorded all of the walls and individual blocks by drawing, photographing, and 3D scanning.

The recent recognition of Late Epipalaeolithic sites on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus moves the date of early explorers to the island back at least 3000 years, changing our preconceptions about the nature of these first settling communities. Evidence at these early sites suggests that people were bringing plants and animals with them from the mainland (Simmons 1999), creating a sense of home in an unfamiliar landscape.

Summer 2022 saw the long-delayed start of the NEH-funded project, "City life at Classic Maya Palenque, Mexico", a collaboration between UC Berkeley Professor Rosemary A. Joyce, Universidad Autonoma de México Professor Rodrigo Liendo, UNLV Assistant Professor Lisa Johnson, and Sapienza University of Roma Marie Curie Fellow Arianna Campiani. The team began excavations using fine-grained methodologies to explore household life in the residential sector of this World Heritage Site, the first systematic effort to understand urban organization and growth there.

The multi-year project of the Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology (DAGRS), the Excavation and Conservation of the Early Christian Basilica, at the Sanctuary of Zeus in Ancient Nemea, Greece, began in 2022. The west end of the 5thc. CE building was investigated including the

The Taraco Archaeological Project completed excavations during the summer of 2022 at the Formative site of Chiripa on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The focus was on early occupation seeking early farming evidence.  They encountered these levels under historic hacienda deposits in four units.  We had a great open day where all of the school children visited the laboratory and excavations.  

Mesopotamian lexical lists consist of lists of words and lists of signs. Lists of words are often thematically organized, such as a list of birds, or a list of professions. Lists of signs provide each cuneiform sign with pronunciation glosses. Word lists and sign lists belonged to the staple of scribal education. Large numbers of school texts with extracts from lexical lists have been found at almost all sites where cuneiform texts have been unearthed.