The Council of the Near Eastern Archaeology Foundation invite you to the Annual General Meeting followed by a public lecture.
The AGM and public lecture will be held in-person & online via Zoom.
AGM at 6.30pm | Lecture at 7.00pm
Wednesday 20 March
Public Lecture | Digging in the Desert : Life and Death in Ancient Arabia | Dr Melissa Kennedy
For the past six and a half years, a team from the University of Western Australia and now The University of Sydney has undertaken archaeological fieldwork in the hinterland of the desert oases of AlUla and Khaybar, Saudi Arabia.
Through a combination of remote sensing, helicopter aerial survey, ground survey, and excavation, the team has documented in excess of 180,000 archaeological sites and structures ranging in date from the Palaeolithic through to the present. This lecture will focus on some of the key findings of the two projects. It will cover the ‘mustatil’, monumental Neolithic ritual structures dating to ca. 5000 BCE, extending over an area the size of Poland, as well as the Bronze Age funerary landscape, which is composed of tens of thousands of structures, many of which flank ancient pathways connecting the major oases of the region. Dr Melissa Kennedy is a Lecturer at the University of Sydney and is the co-direct of PAKEP – Prehistoric AlUla and Khaybar Excavation Project. She has undertaken fieldwork in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Greece, and Australia. Her research interests lie in the Early–Middle Holocene archaeological landscapes of the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula.
This event is free, however, please register your intention to attend in-person or to receive the zoom link. Click here to register
More information
P: (02) 9351 4151
F: (02) 9114 0921
E: neaf.archaeology@sydney.edu.au