World Heritage Lecture Series
Sites designated by UNESCO highlight masterpieces of human creative genius, such as great archaeological sites, sublime works of religious architecture, monumental sculpture and painting, classic urban landscapes, and masterworks of architecture and engineering. Similarly, UNESCO also notes our planet’s most magnificent natural features, physical and biological formations, and areas of noteworthy beauty and scientific value.
Length: 1:16:28
The Birthplace of the Buddha and Other Failures
This talk looks at five major Buddhist sites in Japan, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, built over 2,500 years, that reveal a variety of strategies for memorializing Buddhist relics and historical moments. These massive projects range from ...
Length: 55:24
Becoming an UNESCO World Heritage Site
During the last 35 years Dr. C Brian Rose has had the good fortune to direct or co-direct excavations at two legendary sites in Turkey–-Troy and Gordion. Troy was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site List in 1998; Gordion is being considered by ...
Length: 54:14
Histories of Historic Preservation in the United States
Historic preservation has rarely been a subject taken up by historians. In an effort to address this ironic situation, this talk recounts some of the main themes and critiques shaping the development of built heritage and its preservation in the U.S....
Length: 53:48
World Heritage in South Africa's Cradle of Humankind
South Africa's Cradle of Humankind has long been a hotbed of discovery for human ancestor fossils. Just 45 minutes north of Johannesburg, this protected region must balance multiple interests in research, development, and human rights. This talk will...
Length: 1:06:00
Teotihuacan: Rome of the Ancient Americas
Around 100 CE, a huge metropolis began to emerge in the Basin of Mexico, one the Aztecs would later call Teotihuacan, or “Birthplace of the Gods.” It quickly came to dominate the region, and, with its completely new urban grid-plan, contained as ...
Length: 48:13
Our Mountains Are Made By Hand: North American Mounds as World Heritage
A millennium ago, Native people constructed over 120 earthen mounds at the site of Cahokia, a World Heritage site in Illinois. Built entirely by hand, the largest of these constructions towered 100 feet over a city that was more densely populated tha...
Length: 54:37
Marshland of Cities: Lagash and its Neighbors ca. 2500 BCE
Howard C. and Elizabeth Watts Petersen Annual Lecture The earliest cities in the world arose in a dynamic wetland environment at the intersection of the Tigris-Euphrates delta and the shore of the Persian Gulf during the 4th- and 3rd-millennia BCE. ...