Willeke Wendrich, Joan Silsbee Chair of African Cultural Archaeology; Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Digital Humanities, University of California, Los Angeles

Archaeologists study stylistic and technological changes in excavated materials—especially pottery—to better understand developments in ancient Egyptian society. However, little attention has focused on using the archaeological record to understand the transfer of cultural knowledge. How did people learn the arts and crafts of potters, basket makers, metalworkers, and scribes? Willeke Wendrich explores the social history of learning in ancient Egypt and what it can teach us about the present.

About the Speaker
Willeke Wendrich (PhD, Leiden University, 1999) holds the Joan Silsbee Chair in African Cultural Archaeology and is Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Digital Humanities in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She has worked for thirty years in Egypt and currently directs an archaeological project in Ethiopia, with a strong focus on ethnoarchaeology and community archaeology. From 2012 to 2016 she was Director of the Center for Digital Humanities and presently she directs the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. She is also Editor-in-Chief of the online UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, board member of the Institute for Field Research, and academic board member of the Museo Egizio in Turin. She published widely on the social context of craft production and especially on basketry and basket makers. Some of her publications include: Egyptian Archaeology (Wiley Blackwell 2010), Archaeology and Apprenticeship (University of Arizona Press, 2012) and The Desert Fayum Reinvestigated (CIoA Press, 2017). Since 2019 she is President of the International Association of Egyptologists.