Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World

Centers and Strategic Initiatives

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Centers and Strategic Initiatives

The Joukowsky Institute supports major initiatives and other synergistic activities among JIAAW faculty and student from across multiple departmental units at Brown. Initiatives promote not only the research and/or teaching of JIAAW faculty but also its postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate students.

Mayan sculptureCenter for Global Antiquity

Director: Amy Russell

The Center for Global Antiquity (CGA) is Brown’s home for those researching early, ancient, or pre-modern cultures around the world. CGA exists to support research on the cultures, religions, and histories of ancient civilizations in a global context, with a particular emphasis on interdisciplinary research, comparative research, and research that reaches beyond the West. The Center defines “ancient” broadly and primarily methodologically, as relating to all past cultures for which scholars cannot rely on evidence preserved in the specific archival forms associated with Western modernity. The exact chronological limit differs by geography, but outside Europe it typically corresponds to the early stages of European colonization, while in Europe it occurs during the early medieval period. CGA provides opportunities for rich collaboration, critical exploration and lively interdisciplinary scholarship by sponsoring a wide array of programming.

 

Integrated Laboratory for Archaeological Sciences (ILAS)Archaeological Sciences Initiative (2023-2026)

Head: Andrew Scherer

The Archaeological Sciences Initiative (ASI) draws together faculty, postdocs, and graduate students whose research focuses on the critical application of scientific methodologies to address humanistic research questions. These scholars have expertise in an area of specialized archaeological practice, such as archaeometallurgy, bioarchaeology, ceramic characterization, geophysical archaeology, paleoethnobotany, zooarchaeology, or the analysis of satellite remote sensing and lidar data. Scholars involved in the ASI demonstrate critical attention to both the epistemology and ethics of applying specialized forms of analysis to material remains and consideration of how specialized analyses complement other ways of knowing the past, such as archival and epigraphic research, ethnography, and oral history. 

Central to the mission of the ASI is the development of the Integrated Laboratory for Archaeological Sciences (ILAS) at Brown. Efforts of the ASI include the acquisition of an enterprise drone platform, a Proceq GS8000 Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) system, and a polarizing light miscroscope with camera for petrographic analysis. 

The ASI supports various laboratories and working groups at Brown, including the Paleoethnobotanical Laboratory at Brown, the Digital Archaeology Laboratory at Brown, and the Bioarchaeology at Brown Working Group.