9:30am EST., Friday February 10th

Presenting Live via Zoom

Boldly Going Where No Archaeologists Have Gone Before: The International Space Station Archaeological Project

Since 2015, Justin Walsh and Alice Gorman have been leading the first archaeological study of a human habitation site in space, the International Space Station. In that time, they have studied crew-created visual displays, processes for handling cargo returned to Earth, population distributions in the various ISS modules, the use of simple technologies as "gravity surrogates," and more. Recently, they performed the first archaeological work in space, with the Sampling Quadrangle Assemblages Research Experiment (SQuARE), which had the crew document six locations through daily photography. 

Justin Walsh is Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Chapman University. He has almost 25 years of archaeological experience in Spain, Jordan, Italy, the US, and now low Earth orbit. In Mediterranean archaeology, he specializes in intercultural exchange, especially of Greek pottery; he directs excavations at the site of Cástulo, Spain, and authored the book Consumerism in the Ancient World: Imports and Identity Construction (Routledge 2014). He is also a global leader in the field of space archaeology and heritage, having directed the International Space Station Archaeological Project since 2015. He has received numerous grants and awards, including a Fulbright, a Rome Prize, and a National Geographic Explorer grant.