Review of Professor Arlene Rosen‘s Inaugural Lecture on 30 January by Dr Andrew Garrard (UCL Institute of Archaeology).

With increasing concern about global warming and climate change and its impact on future human generations, Arlene Rosen’s inaugural lecture as Professor of Environmental Archaeology was particularly pertinent.

In this elegantly structured and very well illustrated presentation, she discussed an archaeologist’s perspective on the impact of climate change on societies at various stages in the past, and their frequent social and technological resilience and adaptability to environmental change.

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David Wengrow on Stephen Quirke: ‘Object of Egypt: Outside the Time Frame’, held on 23 January.

In his inaugural lecture as Edwards Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology, Stephen Quirke – who is also Curator of UCL’s Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology – delivered a radical and highly personal vision of the future of Egyptology.

Invoking Walter Benjamin in On the Concept of History, Professor Quirke explained to a full auditorium how the collection, for him, is a problematic legacy of foreign (and often unwelcome) intervention in Egypt’s cultural past: an assemblage of unstable “monads”, overflowing with tensions and “waiting to explode”.

The talk began with the Arab Spring, moving back through the history of Egyptian archaeology, viewed not just from the standpoint of European scholars and explorers, but also through the eyes of Egyptian observers such as Al-Jabarti.

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Talk of psychics conjures up images of mad old ladies conducting séances and bringing forth spirits made of cheese cloth, but last night at the Petrie Museum, Dr Amara Thornton (UCL Institute of Archaeology) took us through evidence for psychical involvement in archaeological investigations.

Principally, she concentrated on the life of one woman, Agnes Conway, who in the early 20^th century was responsible for a series of archaeological investigations of Petra in Jordan. As well as being a respected archaeologist, Conway was also a member of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), a group that was involved in the scientific exploration of unexplained phenomena.

The society was comprised of some of the country’s leading figures in archaeology and edited two journals, one of which was available to members of the public and one, full of less ‘firm’ and more controversial results, that was for members only.

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Dean Sully, Lecturer in Conservation, UCL Institute of Archaeology.

Monday 16 January saw the latest event in the Institute of Archaeology’s popular 75th Anniversary programme with Liz Pye, Professor of Archaeological Conservation, providing an autobiographic picture of object biography, in her inaugural lecture.

This was a richly personal account of Liz’s intellectual journey from school girl archaeologist to what many consider to be conservation’s foremost teacher. This lecture centred on Liz’s joy of understanding objects and her pleasure in revealing the links between people and objects.

It was a long awaited opportunity for her colleagues, family and legion of past students to celebrate her achievements and her contribution to UCL and to the discipline of conservation.

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