Lectures
The Cleveland Archaeological Society (CAS) is a local chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA). Each year, CAS sponsors a series of lectures. Lectures will be held in person at the Cleveland Museum of Art , with the exception of our October 2026 lecture, which will be held at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and our February 2027 lecture, which will be held exclusively on Zoom. All lectures are free and open to the public, except for our May Fundraiser.
Community Archaeology and Civil Rights Heritage at The Malcolm X House
Krysta Ryzewski, Department Chair and Professor of Anthropology, Wayne State University
Wednesday, September 9, 2026, 7:00p.m.
Location: Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture Hall
Preregister for Zoom
In the Detroit suburb of Inkster there stands a small house where Malcolm Little was living in 1952 when he assumed leadership roles in the Nation of Islam, changed his name to Malcolm X, and rose to international prominence as a civil rights leader. In 2020, a local non-profit partnered with archaeologists and historic preservationists to secure funds to purchase and restore the derelict house into a museum and community center commemorating Malcolm X’s legacy. Three sessions of archaeological fieldwork have focused on recovering information about the house’s mid-century architecture and objects associated with the period during which Malcolm and his family lived there. This presentation details the roles that archaeological finds, local neighbors, and archaeologists played in the process of restoring the Malcolm X House, illustrating the daily lives of a prominent African American family, empowering an underrepresented community, and elevating the profile of an important episode in Detroit’s Civil Rights heritage.
The Nelson Stone Tool Cache: Evidence of Ohio's First Stone Age People?
Metin Eren, Professor of Archaeology, Kent State University
Wednesday, October14, 2026, 7:00p.m.
Location: Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Preregister for Zoom
The Nelson Stone Tool Cache was discovered by accident in 2008 in Mount Vernon, Ohio. It contains 164 beautifully chipped chert specimens. But how old is it? Where did it come from? Who made it, and why? Led by Kent State researchers, 26 archaeologists, scientists, and photographers described and analyzed the Nelson Cache over the course of several years and all signs regarding its mysterious existence point to an Ice Age origin.
Who Made the Earliest Stone Tools? Exploring the Origins of Lithic Technology
Emma Finestone, Curator and the Robert J. and Linnet E. Fritz Endowed Chair of Human Origins, Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Wednesday, November 11, 2026, 7:00p.m.
Location: Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture Hall
Preregister for Zoom
Humans use tool technology to shape environments and solve adaptive problems far beyond the scope of any other species on Earth. The origins of this behavior took root millions of years ago, when our ancestors first began striking stones together to produce flakes with sharp cutting edges. For decades, the earliest stone tools were assumed to have been invented by our ancestors in the genus Homo. However, recent research from Kenya contributes to a growing body of evidence that our evolutionary relatives in the genus Paranthropus—and potentially earlier members of Australopithecus—may have been among the earliest stone tool users.
Teotihuacan: Towards a Social History of a Sacred City
David Carballo, Professor of Anthropology, Archaeology, and Latin American Studies, Boston University
Wednesday, February 10, 2027, 7:00p.m.
Location: Zoom only
Preregister for Zoom
There is still much that puzzles us about Teotihuacan, the largest city in the Americas during its time (ca. 1-600 CE), considered by the later Aztecs as the place where the Fifth Era of creation began, and today among the most touristed archaeological sites in the world. The rich corpus of texts and pictorial documents from the Aztec period is a tantalizing source of information for inferring aspects of Teotihuacano religion, governance, and social institutions, but it was produced as much as a millennium after the city’s decline. Yet because the city was abandoned and did not see significant reoccupation of its central core, Teotihuacan offers a relatively large expanse of urban apartments, neighborhoods, and districts that can be studied archaeologically to understand what life was like for most of its inhabitants. In this talk I discuss these two halves that make the whole: Teotihuacan as a sacred city and as a lived city.
From Persepolis to Chicago: Achaemenid Art and Architecture
Kiersten Neumann, Curator, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum, Lecturer, Near Eastern Art and Archaeology, University of Chicago
Wednesday, March 3, 2027, 7:00p.m.
Location: Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture Hall
Preregister for Zoom
From the reign of Cyrus II to the fall of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330 BCE), the Great Kings of Persia crafted a visual landscape whose art and architecture broadcast an idealized message of harmonious order, power, and unity. The dynastic center of Persepolis stands as a pinnacle of this visual legacy—founded by Darius I around 520 BCE and sacked by Alexander III of Macedon in 330 BCE. While its ruins were known throughout history, Persepolis did not become the focus of scientific excavations until 1931, when the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (formerly the Oriental Institute) of the University of Chicago launched an eight-year archaeological expedition to the site in present-day Iran. Today, the ISAC Museum stewards a collection of artifacts and archival photographs connected with this project—among the best resources on Achaemenid art and architecture in the world. This lecture revisits ISAC’s work at this magnificent UNESCO World Heritage Site and what its discoveries tell us about the Achaemenid world.
In Living Color? Aethiopians in Roman Sculpture and the Problem of “Ethnic” Portraiture
Sinclair Bell, Professor, Art History, Northern Illinois University
Wednesday, April 14, 2027, 7:00p.m.
Location: Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture Hall
Preregister for Zoom
This talk reunites a corpus of material that has never been studied comprehensively together: marble heads identified as portraits of Aethiopians (Black Africans) who lived in the Roman Empire. By collectively studying works within this medium together and by foregrounding core issues (such as scale, materiality, archaeological context) besides iconography alone, this lecture attends to larger issues of how ancient “portraits” can—and cannot—inform us about the representation of ethnicity and social rank in the Roman Empire.
May Fundraiser:
Date: TBD
Location: The Wine Spot