An Archaeologist's Face to Feet with King Taharqa

Caroline Rocheleau takes the stage at the North Carolina Museum of Art on Friday, November 20, for a talk titled An Archaeologist's Face to Feet with King Taharqa. She's a Nubiologist and the museum's Curator of Ancient Collections, and the evening is built around her own time in the field. She'll be sharing memories from her excavations in Nubia and the specific moment she came face to face with King Taharqa, the most famous king of Kush.

The talk is tied to the museum's Ancient Nubia exhibition, which brings the Kingdom of Kush into the light. It features materials excavated by the Harvard University - Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition more than a century ago, covering a span of nearly 3,000 years. Rocheleau's stories come from that same world, so the talk works as a companion to the gallery—one is the objects, the other is the person who worked to find them.

If you've spent any time with the exhibition, you've seen the scale of what they're talking about. The Kingdom of Kush was a powerhouse in its own right, and the Harvard-Boston expedition pulled a massive amount of material from its soil. Rocheleau's talk puts a human face on that history, moving from the broad sweep of the kingdom down to the personal experience of an archaeologist on the ground.

It runs from 7 PM to 8:30 PM in the East Building's SECU Auditorium. General admission is free with registration, so you'll want to sign up ahead of time if you're planning to go.