Hot on the heels of its last Aspects of Antiquity lecture, the University of New England will again play host to a distinguished guest speaker when Christopher Davey, honorary director of the Australian Institute of archaeology, gives a talk entitled “John Garstang and Walter Beasley, and the foundation of the Australian Institute of Archaeology”.

The lecture will take place at 5:30 PM on Thursday, August 25 in The Gallery at Earle Page College.

In January 1935, Walter Beasley, an Australian businessman, met Professor John Garstang (from Liverpool) at his excavation at Jericho. Mr Davey’s lecture will review the life of Garstang and trace his influence on Beasley, who from the time of their meeting funded archaeological expeditions and in 1946 established the AIA.

Christopher Davey has been Honorary Director of the Australian Institute of Archaeology for ten years and has been responsible for re-establishing it at La Trobe University. He studied ancient languages at Cambridge University and archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University of London. He has excavated in Europe, Australia and the Middle East, and has undertaken research into the history of mining and metallurgy and the history of archaeology. Prior to retirement, Chris had a professional career initially as a mining engineer at Broken Hill, and then as a mines inspector, a contract engineer, a university lecturer and finally as an international project financier. Chris is coming to UNE by courtesy of the Ingram-Moore Bequest administered by the AIA.

All are welcome to his lecture, which will be held in The Gallery at Earle Page College. The public is also welcome to attend a research seminar held the following day, Friday August 26  at 9.30 in the University’s Arts Building Lecture Theatre 3. At this seminar, Mr. Davey will present a paper entitled “Jim Stewart and Walter Beasley: the beginnings of Near Eastern Archaeology in Australia”.

This seminar will deal with the connection between the two men, which began in 1935, and the consequences for both the AIA and Australian archaeological work in the Mediterranean after Stewart returned to Australia after the War.

In view of UNE being the repository for Stewart’s private collection of archaeological items (in the Museum of Antiquities), copies of his published books with his and his wife Eve’s annotations (in the Dixson Library), and some of his private papers (in the UNE Archives), this seminar should be of exceptional interest. It is Stewart’s material (above all the Cypriot items) which has put our Museum on the international map.

The University of New England has had excellent relations with the AIA for a considerable number of years, and this has been considerably to the benefit of the university. The late Mary Dolan had a long-time association with the Institute; another person at the university is a Life Member of the AIA, on the editorial board of its journal, and a member of its council. Some years ago, the institute lent to the UNE Museum of Antiquities a number of Garstang’s finds from Jericho, together with some of Kathleen Kenyon’s material excavated at Jerusalem. This display was exhibited in the Dixson Library for an extended period.

Enquiries: Greg Horsley 6773 2390 or 6773 2555.

The University of New England will soon offer ancient history enthusiasts a rare opportunity: to view and hear about 50,000 fragments of wall paintings more than 3000 years old from the so-called “Palace of Nestor” at Pylos in Western Greece.

The speaker at the University of New England’s next Aspects of Antiquity lecture on Thursday, August 11 at 5.30pm is a specialist on this site which dates to before 1200 BC.

Professor Jack Davis, the Carl W. Blegen Professor of Greek Archaeology at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, will be the speaker. He is an acknowledged expert on this site, and in this he follows in the footsteps of Carl Blegen who dug at Pylos and (among much else) found wall frescoes there.

The title of the lecture is, “Reconstructing an Iconographical Program of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos: New Wall-Paintings and their Interpretation.”

Professor Davis, accompanied by his wife Dr Sharon Stocker, who is also an archaeologist, is visiting UNE and Armidale as the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens 2011 Visiting Professor. Currently Prof Davis and his wife reside in Athens where he is the Director of the American School of Classical Studies.

All are welcome to his lecture on Thursday evening, which will be held in the Junior Common Room (above the Dining Hall) at Earle Page College. The next morning, Friday 12 August at 9.30 in the University’s Arts Building lecture Theatre 3, Professor Davis will speak at the School of Humanities weekly Research Seminar series. His paper is entitled, “Dateline 1180 BC: The Palace of Nestor after the Collapse of Mycenaean Society”, and concerns who lived in Messenia in W. Greece, and what level of lifestyle and affluence there was before the coming of the Spartans in the 8th century BC.

Enquiries: Greg Horsley on 6773 2390 or 6773 2555.

James Joyce’s Ulysses and Virgil’s Aeneid will come under the microscope at a lecture at the University of New England next month.

The lecture will be held at at Earle Page College (in the Gallery) on Thursday, April 7 at 5.30 pm.

The speaker will be Dr Randall Pogorzelski, the University’s first Charles Tesoriero Lecturer in Latin. With degrees from the University of Southern California, Pennsylvania, and UC Santa Barbara, Dr Pogorzelski has specialised in Latin Literature and combines with this an active interdisciplinary interest in comparative literature.

Dr Pogorzelski’s lecture is entitled ‘Tyrants and Terrorists: Cacus and Political Identity in Virgil’s Aeneid and Joyce’s Ulysses, and draws on material he is preparing for a book which revises his PhD from a few years ago. The lecture will deal with the construction of political identity in book 8 of Virgil’s Aeneid and in the “Cyclops” episode of Joyce’s Ulysses.

Dr Pogorzelski recently was awarded the Gildersleeve prize for the best article to appear in 2009 in the American Journal of Philology, and he is working on a new project on representations of space and geography in the Neronian and Flavian periods.

This may prove the last opportunity to hear Dr Pogorzelski speak in a public forum in Armidale, as he has accepted a post at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, and leave UNE at the end of June. Don’t miss out on hearing this very able young scholar on April 7.

Media Contact: Greg Horsley on 6773 2390 or 6773 2555.