Past Forward: Engaging with Deep Time in the 21st Century

A series of lectures and workshops funded by the Charles K. Colver Lectureships & Publications Fund.

How can knowledge of the deep past inform our contemporary moment, and how can our experiences today help us research the deep past?

As part of our year-long launch of the Center for Global Antiquity, we have invited six leading researchers to visit Brown. Each will deliver a public lecture and a seminar-style workshop focused on expanding the possibilities for the study of Global Antiquity and creating links between disciplines, chronologies, and geographies we represent.

Past Forward Lecture & Workshop Schedule 

Fall 2025

September 18, 2025: Kimberly Bowes (University of Pennsylvania), “The Economic Lives of the Roman 90%”

September 19, 2025: Kimberly Bowes (University of Pennsylvania), “Human skeletons, human labor: Ethics and identity”

October 23, 2025: Anne Austin (University of Missouri, St. Louis), “Marking the Flesh: Revealing the Tattoo Practices of the Nile Valley”

October 24, 2025: Anne Austin (University of Missouri, St. Louis), "The Archaeology of Body Modification: New Methods and Theories”

November 13, 2025: Solange Ashby (University of California, Los Angeles), “She’s a Brickhouse’: Fear of the Black Body in Egyptology”

November 14, 2025: Solange Ashby (University of California, Los Angeles), “The Milk of Resurrection" 

Spring 2026

February 25, 2026: Eduardo Góes Neves (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia), Lecture Title TBA

February 26, 2026: Eduardo Góes Neves (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia), Workshop Title TBA

March 19, 2026: Xin Wen (Princeton University), “An Envoy State: Turfan and the Integration of Late Antique Eurasia”

March 20, 2026: Xin Wen (Princeton University), “A Palimpsest of Empires: Living with the Deep Time in China’s Ancient Capital”

April 2026: Mudit Trivedi (Stanford University), Exact Dates and Titles TBA