Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World

Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World

The Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World (JIAAW) is dedicated to the academic study and public promotion of archaeology and the ancient world. We are especially focused on the archaeology and art of the ancient Mediterranean, Egypt, and Near East.

Students interested in archaeology are strongly encouraged to think about exploring fieldwork opportunities, either by participating in a project led by a Brown University faculty member or by finding other projects that focus on regions or topics of particular interest to the students. 
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Faculty and students in the Joukowsky Institute organize a wide variety of events, ranging from multi-day international conferences to informal guest lectures to regular reading group meetings. Nearly all JIAAW events are free and open to the public.
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The Joukowsky Institute is fortunate to be surrounded by students and faculty in affiliated programs in the departments of Anthropology, Classics, Egyptology and Assyriology, Geological Sciences, History, History of Art and Architecture and Religious Studies, and in the programs in Judaic Studies and Early Cultures, whose research and resources provide many opportunities for collaborative courses, events and research.
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News

The University of New Mexico Press

New Edited Volume by JIAAW Director Andrew Scherer

"Substance of the Ancient Maya: Kingdoms and Communities, Objects and Beings," edited by Andrew K. Scherer and Thomas G. Garrison, collects twelve essays by top scholars that highlight what is new in research pertaining to the ancient Maya. Subjects range from updated political histories of major kingdoms in the southern Maya Lowlands to explorations of the nature of Maya writing and materiality. These essays were inspired by the scholarship of Stephen Houston and celebrate his transdisciplinary commitment to research in anthropological archaeology, epigraphy, and art history.

The contributions in this volume are organized into two sections that respectively reflect different scales from which to approach the substance of the ancient Maya—from hand-held objects to entire kingdoms. This dichotomy reflects the breadth of questions central to current research on the Maya. It also illustrates how certain themes, such as the relationship between the living and the realm of the supernatural, are fundamental to both thinking by and about the Maya at all scales. A diversity of methods is not only embodied by this assemblage of essays but is also spread equally across the two sections of the book, illustrating that archaeologists, epigraphers, geographers, and art historians can equally contribute to the substance of kingdoms and communities, as they can to objects and beings.

Collectively, these contributions show how the objects and beings that composed the Classic Maya world were both literal and sacred substances that mediated relations not only among living people but with gods and ancestors. A final chapter by Stephen Houston reflects on unfinished projects of the ancient Maya as a metaphor for all of the work yet to be done to move forward in our studies of the past.

Andrew K. Scherer is the director of the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World and an associate professor of anthropology and archaeology at Brown University.

Thomas G. Garrison is an assistant professor of geography and the environment and the director of the Lidar and Landscapes of the Ancient Mediterranean and Americas (LLAMA) Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the lead editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of the Maya.
Brown Alumni Magazine | Digital Dig

"Digital Dig" | Kiosk Featured in Brown Alumni Magazine

The November–December 2024 issue of Brown Alumni Magazine includes an article by Megan Talikoff ’25 on Kiosk, a field recording data management system developed by the Joukowsky Institute's Professor Laurel Bestock and Lutz Klein: "Digital Dig: Archaeology’s Free Field Recording Program—Alum-created and Brown-subsidized."

Featured Fieldwork | Koutroulou Magoula Archaeology and Archaeological Ethnography Project

Koutroulou Magoula is a multi-period archaeological site in central Greece with the main period of occupation around 6000 BCE (Middle Neolithic period). There are also burials dating to the Bronze Age (1500 BCE), and the Medieval period (c. 1200 CE). It is a finds-rich site, with buildings surviving to more than 1 m. in height, pottery, lithics, animal bones, and an impressive corpus of more than 350 clay figurines.