UNC Asheville will host a talk by Lynn Rainville, noted micro-archaeologist, at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 12, at UNC Asheville’s Whitman Room, Ramsey Library. In her talk, Rainville will discuss her most recent micro-archaeological investigations at Ziyaret Tepe, an Iron Age city situated along the edge of the Tigris River in Turkey. The event is free and open to the public.

Rainville's field, micro-archaeology, focuses on collecting and analyzing artifacts under 10 millimeters in size. These smaller artifacts are more likely than larger ones to remain where they were dropped or lost. For information on micro-archaeology, visit www.faculty.sbc.edu/lrainville.

Rainville currently teaches anthropology and archaeology at Sweet Briar College in Sweet Briar, Va. She has conducted fieldwork on complex societies in Turkey, Syria, India, Mexico and North America. Rainville has published articles and monographs on Mesopotamian cities and households, New England mortuary ideology, antebellum plantations in Virginia and slave cemeteries. Her recent research on Near Eastern urbanism and enslaved communities in Virginia is supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Wenner-Gren, the National Science Foundation, the American Research Institute in Turkey and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. In 2005, Rainville published "Investigating Upper Mesopotamian Households Using Micro-Archaeological Techniques" in which she developed an innovative model for applying micro-archaeological techniques to urban sites.

The talk is co-sponsored by UNC Asheville’s Classics Department and the Archaeological Institute of America.

For more information contact Laurel Taylor, UNC Asheville adjunct lecturer of classics, at 828/251-6290 or ltaylor@unca.edu.