Released: September 27, 2009
Contact: Prof. Michael Hoff, UNL Professor of Art History (402) 472-5342, mhoff1@unl.edu
What: Archaeological Institute of America, Public Lecture
Presenter: Dr. Naomi J. Norman, University of Georgia
Lecture Title: From Sea to Sahara: The Romans in North Africa
Date: Sunday, Sept. 27, 2009
Where: Joslyn Art Museum, 2201 Dodge Street, Omaha
Time: 2:00 PM
The Lincoln-Omaha Society of the Archaeological Institute of America announces the first of six lectures on archaeology for the 2009-2010 season. Professor Naomi Norman, from the University of Georgia, will be speaking on recent archaeological discoveries in several of the Roman cities of North Africa.
This lecture will include a general survey of the cities, villages and farms established in North Africa (in particular in the area of modern Tunisia) in the Roman period. Of particular importance and interest are the monuments of Carthage (the capital of the Roman province Africa Proconsularis) and Dougga (the ³Pompeii² of North Africa); the lecture will look at these two sites in some detail. The lecture will also include an examination of the rituals of death and burial in the Yasmina cemetery, an important cemetery in Carthage that was excavated by the lecturer and a team from the University of Georgia. Excavation in this cemetery uncovered two magnificent funerary portrait statues, several tomb monuments with figured reliefs and funerary inscriptions and a number of interesting children's burials. The focus of the lecture will be the process of Romanization of the province and will include an examination of some of the evidence for continued and strong indigenous influence on the Romans living in the area.
Naomi Norman, a native of Omaha, is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Georgia. Professor Norman received her degrees from Bryn Mawr and the University of Michigan (Ph.D.). Her areas of specialization are field archaeology, Romans in North Africa, mortuary archaeology, and Greek art and architecture. She has received numerous awards for her work, has presented over sixty lectures, workshops and papers on a variety of archaeological topics, and has published extensively. Since 1992 Dr. Norman has directed the University of Georgia project at Carthage. In addition to her teaching and research, Prof. Norman serves as Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Archaeology, this country's most prestigious archaeological research journal.