Featured Archaeology Major: Ian Bayliss
"My interest in archaeology began after a series of Late Bronze Age and Egyptology classes through the archaeology and NES departments."
CIAMS Congratulates 2026 Graduates
Congratulations to the CIAMS 2026 graduates! Cornell's 2026 Commencement Ceremonies took place on the weekend of May 22-24th, during which this year's graduates were able to celebrate their hard-earned accomplishments.
Featured Archaeology Major: Jacky Zhou
"Archaeology is increasingly interdisciplinary, and some of the most interesting work happens when you’re willing to borrow tools and ideas from outside your own field."
Classical art historian Annetta Alexandridis dies at 58
Annetta Alexandridis, a classical archaeologist known for her hands-on approach to research and teaching, died April 13 in New York City. She was 58.
Book Release by Professor Nerissa Russell; "Hunting and Eating Symbols"
"Hunting and Eating Symbols", by Dr. Nerissa Russell, published through Cambridge University Press, covers the symbolic and social aspects of big game hunting in the past, giving a broad overview of the world spanning from the Paleolithic to the current day through a variety of case studies. Dr. Russell states that "the three themes that…
Professor Matt Velasco publishes book, Feature in New York Times
Associate Professor of Archaeology Dr. Matt Velasco recently published his first book titled "The Mountain Embodied", exploring the social and cultural significance of the historic practice of head shaping in Peru's Colca Valley. Rather than simply categorizing head shaping as an ethnic marker, Velasco explores the relationship between this practice and various social processes, political…
Sacred Ground: Excavating Black History at Ithaca's Freedom Church
Sacred Ground: Excavating Black History at Ithaca's Freedom Church showcases a diverse range of artifacts from four seasons of excavations at Ithaca's St. James AME Zion Church, highlighting the collaborative efforts between Cornell students, faculty, and the St. James Congregation.
CIAMS Congratulates 2025 Graduates
Congratulations to the CIAMS 2025 graduates! Cornell's 2025 Commencement Ceremonies took place on the weekend of May 23-25th, during which this year's graduates were able to celebrate their hard-earned accomplishments.
Cornell Anthropology Opens New Collaboratory in Olin Library
Woven Indigenous art from Brazil, ceramics excavated from the Treman State Park area, stone tools, animal bones: a wide variety of objects from vast spans of time contribute to the study of the human condition undertaken by the Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S). A new Anthropology Collaboratory, which opened…
CIAMS Members Receive Awards at the Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting
Two members of CIAMS, Matthew Velasco (Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology), and Anna Whittemore (Ph.D. Candidate, Anthropology) will receive awards at this year's Society for American Archaeology (SAA) Meeting.
Cornell Undergraduate Unearths Miniature Hercules Statue in Montaione, Italy
A miniature Hercules statue was unearthed in Montaione, Italy, at a Roman mansio and bathhouse complex during the Montaione Excavation 2024 season. It was found by Alexander Cooper-Bohler (‘25), an Archaeology Major with a minor in East Asian Studies, and a student in the field school.
A Brief Look at a Select Glass Jar Lid from Community Excavations at Ithaca’s St. James AME Zion Church
We’ve been busy this Fall with the final season of community-engaged excavations at the St. James AME Zion Church in Ithaca. We’ve opened up the ground in a new 1 meter by 1 meter square very close to the western door of the new church kitchen currently being constructed. This new area is within a…
Stitch by Stitch: Uncovering the Past Through Textiles
What do your clothes say about you? When you wake up in the morning and get dressed, do you meticulously plan out your outfit, or do you just grab whatever’s clean and comfortable and throw it on? Either way, we all have a deeply personal relationship with the clothes we wear. This is why I…
Doing Archaeology of the Spiritual
I’m not a particularly religious person, but I’m struck by how the slow and deliberate act of moving my trowel across the dirt at the bottom of this 2x1 unit feels like a deeply spiritual act. I’ve worked in this unit before, with a rotating group of my academic peers and volunteers from Cornell and…
A Historical Analysis of the Intact Royal Salad Dressing Bottle Found at Ithaca’s St. James AME Zion Church
One of the unfortunate truths about archaeology is that most of the time, the artifacts we find are broken. This is especially true for artifacts made of fragile materials, such as glass. However, every now and then everything comes together to preserve a whole glass object in the ground where it can be found later.…
CIAMS Director Presents on the Destruction of Armenian Cultural Heritage by Azerbaijan
On September 19, 2024, Prof. Adam T. Smith (Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Anthropology, Director of CIAMS, and Co-director of Caucasus Heritage Watch) presented testimony to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the United States Congress. Smith’s testimony was part of a hearing on alleged human rights violations perpetrated by the government…
CIAMS Welcomes its New Students
In late September, CIAMS welcomed new and returning students and faculty at the Welcome Back Party, hosted at the A.D. White House.
Almonds, pottery and wood help date famed Kyrenia shipwreck
The Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory identified the likeliest timeline of the Hellenistic-era ship's sinking as between 296-271 BCE, with a strong probability it occurred between 286-272 BCE.
CIAMS Celebrates Juneteenth at St. James AME Zion Church
As part of the city’s Juneteenth celebration, Ithaca’s Southside Community Center hosted a series of events from June 9th to June 19th, continuing a tradition that has endured over 4 decades.
CIAMS Congratulates 2024 Graduates
Rebecca Gerdes (pictured right), Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology. Her dissertation is entitled: "Assessing the use of organic residue analysis to investigate plant oils in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean: An environmentally and archaeologically contextualized approach."
'My research in New Zealand boosted my confidence as a global citizen'
Milan Taylor is an anthropology & archaeology major.
Defying the Odds: Elja Sharifi’s Voice for the Powerless
Afghan visual artist Elja Sharifi, currently a visiting scholar at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, sees her escape from the Taliban as a call to action. She will enter Cornell’s PhD program in art history next fall.
Exploring the remains of ancient daily life
The collection “Households in Context: Dwelling in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt” shifts the archaeological perspective from public and elite spaces such as temples, tombs and palaces to everyday dwellings and interactions of families.
Milstein faculty fellow's course examines tech's role in cultural preservation
As a new faculty fellow in the Milstein Program in Technology & Humanity, Adam T. Smith co-developed the new course this spring.
Summer Experience Grant applications now open
The grants provide funding for students in unpaid or low-paying summer experiences to offset the cost of taking on those positions.
St. James Excavations – on video!
See CIAMS students in action: troweling, screening, and recovering artifacts in the field.
A Dendrochronological Report from the St. James AME Zion Church of Ithaca, NY
Cornell undergraduate student Madeleine Wenger '24 presents an ArcGIS StoryMap explaining the results of dendrochronology work conducted at St. James AME Zion Church. Research was conducted by Prof. Sturt Manning, Dr. Joshua Oliver, Dr. Brita Lorentzen and CIAMS Ph.D. student Liam McDonald. This StoryMap includes a virtual tour mapping the locations of each wood sample…
Faunal Remains at St. James AME Zion Church
“It’s a tooth!” We had been excavating a newly opened unit in the backyard of St. James AME Methodist church when my classmate made the discovery. We were excavating at the yard as part of a community partnership between Cornell’s archaeology department and the church. St. James had been an important stop along the Underground…
Conference celebrates 40 years of Andean studies at Cornell
“The conference showcased the true intergenerational and diverse group of scholars involved in Andean Studies,” said Prof. Cohen-Aponte.
Underground Railroad Seminar Course Advances to a Multilevel Research Project
The St. James AME Zion Church Community Excavations were featured in a recent story for The Cornell Daily Sun.
An Initial Selection of Glass Artifacts from Community Excavations at Ithaca’s St. James AME Zion Church
The third season of community-engaged excavations at Ithaca’s St. James AME Zion Church, a pinnacle of Ithaca’s African American community for almost two centuries, is well underway! My experience three field days into the season plus time spent cataloguing and processing assorted artifacts in Cornell’s landscapes and objects laboratory have granted the privilege of familiarity…
Why Aren’t There More Nonwhite Archaeologists, Financially Speaking?
On September 9, 2023, I embarked on my first archaeological excavation at the St. James AME Zion Church. Located in the church’s backyard, the site was marked by wet, clumpy soil due to recent rain. We started the day working on a 2x1 unit, adapted for easier volunteer participation.
Freedom's Path: The Underground Railroad in Ithaca
Cornell Historic Preservation graduate student, Kami Cai, presents an ArcGIS StoryMap about the Underground Railroad in Ithaca. This StoryMap narrates and illustrates the stories of eleven houses (in addition to St. James AME Zion Church) that may have served as safe houses for freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad.
Looking back, to move forward…
International Archaeology Day, celebrated annually on the third Saturday of October, provides a unique opportunity to explore the captivating world of archaeology by engaging with objects from sites around the world and close to home. International Archaeology Day encourages archaeologists, enthusiasts, and curious minds to come together and celebrate the invaluable contributions of archaeological research…
Six postdocs honored with achievement awards
Cornell employs 790 postdoctoral scholars who are appointed across nearly 90 departments where they actively participate in the university’s research, teaching, and extension missions.
Hundreds of Armenian heritage sites at risk in Nagorno-Karabakh
Faculty researchers paint a picture of what will happen if multilateral organizations fail to protect Armenian cultural heritage as Azerbaijan shells the disputed region.
Engaged Opportunity Grants fund projects from Tompkins to Tanzania
The funded community-engaged learning projects provide opportunities for students to excavate ancient Pompeii, establish a community garden in Moshi, Tanzania and more.
Unearthing the lives of enslaved peoples at a historical St. Croix sugar plantation
MyKayla Williamson's archaeological excavation takes place on Estate Little Princess, a plantation where people of African descent lived and worked starting in circa 1740.
CIAMS members receive grants to support their research
This year, Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies (CIAMS) members received several grants and fellowships to support their research activities. This year, Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies (CIAMS) members received several grants and fellowships to support their research activities. Internally CIAMS awarded 35 Hirsch grants to graduate and undergraduate students to support…
Alum launches first Smithsonian museum dedicated to women
Lisa Sasaki ’97 is helping to shepherd the high-profile new Washington, D.C., institution into existence
Einaudi seed grants finding fertile soil
Faculty from six colleges across Cornell tackle issues ranging from the health of endangered wild dogs to the spread of misinformation through social media.
$2.5M in A&S New Frontier Grants supports bold projects
A&S faculty members will delve into questions ranging from quantum computing to foreign policy development and from heritage forensics to effects of climate change.
Nexus Scholars Program expands research opportunities to 101 students
This summer, 101 students in the College of Arts and Sciences will take part in groundbreaking research on campus with 61 faculty as part of the Nexus Scholars Program.
'Cornell gave me space to learn how to critically assess others' points of views...'
Hannah Master is an archaeology and Near Eastern studies major.
A movement brings community, visibility to neurodiversity at Cornell
Students and staff are finding support, community, visibility and a voice through Neurodiversity @ Cornell.
Rare drought coincided with Hittite Empire collapse
An interdisciplinary collaboration used tree ring and isotope records to pinpoint a likely culprit: three straight years of severe drought in an already dry period.
The unexpected importance of the sea sponge in classical history
In the Society for the Humanities Invitational Lecture Feb. 15, art historian Verity Platt will present her research on the humble sea sponge.
Study abroad students taste Cambodian culture
The Cornell Chronicle has written an article featuring Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies (CIAMS) affiliated faculty member Magnus Fiskesjö's class on heritage, archaeology and repatriation. This class is part of Cornell Winter Program in Cambodia and featured a trip abroad to Cambodia. The article features students' experiences and highlights the collaborative nature of…