UCSC Society of the Archeological Institute of America and the President’s Chair in Ancient Studies present a lecture in an ongoing series on “Archaeology and the Ancient World”

The Korean peninsula was almost the Asian end of the “Silk Road,” yet exotic objects from the Mediterranean world are found in Korean burials beginning in the first century B.C. In studying how these objects came to be deposited in Korean burials, it becomes clear that objects arrived in Korea by at least three different routes. Professor Nelson will discuss the Steppe Route north of the Altai Mountains, the Silk Road through Xinjinag, and a Sea Route, along with the objects that arrived in Korea from as far away as the Mediterranean world.

Sarah Milledge Nelson is the John Evans Distinguished Professor with the University of Denver’s Department of Anthropology. She received her degrees from Wellesley College, and the University of Michigan (M.A. and Ph.D.), and her areas of specialization are East Asia, particularly Korea and northeast China, gender issues, religion in archaeology, leadership, and ethnicity. Professor Nelson has conducted fieldwork in China and South Korea, as well as several sites in the southwest U.S. Her recent main publications include Shamanism and the Origin of States, Spirit, Power and Gender in East Asia (2008, Left Coast Press), and the edited volume Gender in Archaeology (2006, Alta Mira Press).

Free parking for lecture in Cowell-Stevenson parking lots. For more information on the lecture or the AIA, please contact hedrick@ucsc.edu.

Staff support provided by the Institute for Humanities Research.