Dr. Alicia Ventresca-Miller will be giving the keynote at the 20th Annual Kolb Senior Scholars Colloquium at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Museum on Friday, Sept. 26 at 2 p.m. ET. This is a hybrid event; please see the Zoom info below.

Zoom Link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/92009448678?pwd=zKvS0fbLQE4n0HbMsBLBFgnjyuZbFY.1

Meeting ID: 920 0944 8678

Passcode: 970857

Celebrating Archaeological Science in the Penn Museum: On the Occasion of the Tenth Anniversary of CAAM

Friday, September 26, 2025, 2:00–5:00 pm in Widener Lecture Hall, Penn Museum

Archaeological science forms the core of any research into ancient societies, answering the what—along with the when, where, how, and sometimes who—of artifacts and discoveries. The Kolb Society Senior Scholars Colloquium is marking its twenty-year anniversary with a celebration of the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials at the Penn Museum. The program entitled “Celebrating Archaeological Science in the Penn Museum: On the Occasion of the Tenth Anniversary of CAAM” highlights the Kolb Society’s long history of graduating scholars specializing in archaeological analysis. Simultaneously, the colloquium commemorates the institution of the CAAM curriculum and research facilities—focusing on ceramic analysis, archaeobotany, archaeometallurgy, zooarchaeology, and digital archaeology—and its achievements at the museum over the last ten years.

Penn’s Dr. Tom Tartaron, Kolb Senior Fellow and Executive Director of the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials, will introduce the colloquium. This year’s keynote lecturer is Dr. Alicia Ventresca-Miller, Director of the Ancient Protein and Isotope Laboratory and Curator of Archaeological Sciences at the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Michigan. The program features talks by Kolb fellows specializing in the fields associated with CAAM and in some cases trained by CAAM as well: Dr. Reed Goodman, Dr. Christopher P. Thornton, Dr. Mark Van Horn, and current Anthropology graduate student Chelsea M. Cohen. Looking both within and outside the museum, the Kolb colloquium examines how laboratory-based analysis opens exciting new vistas onto the everyday lives of people in the past.