Welcome to the Washington Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.

The Washington Society is one of nearly 100 local societies in the United States and Canada of the Archaeological Institute of America.

This website is winner of the
Archaeological Institute of America award
for the best Society website for the year 2005 – 2006.

The Archaeological Institute of America
The Archaeological Institute of America, founded in Boston in 1879 by Charles Eliot Norton, is the oldest archaeological organization in North America, and with more than 11,000 members around the world, it is the largest. It is a non-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress and dedicated to the encouragement and support of archaeological research and publication and to the protection of the world's cultural heritage.

Members of the Institute have conducted fieldwork in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America. The AIA has further promoted archaeological studies by founding research centers and schools in seven countries, and it maintains close relations with these institutions, including the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, the School of Classical Studies at the American Academy in Rome, and others. It publishes the American Journal of Archaeology and Archaeology magazine. Institute headquarters is located at Boston University.

The Washington Society
The Washington Society, founded on 24 April 1895 by twenty-two members living in Washington, became the fourth local society of the AIA.

The Washington Society provides its members with between seven and nine lectures on archaeological topics each year presented by excavators and other experts in their field. The Society currently has nearly 300 members of widely varied interests, ages, and backgrounds that add depth and breadth to the intellectual interaction at lectures and at social events such as the Annual Dinner Lecture. New members are cordially welcomed (for membership information contact the Society's Secretary, Lucinda Conger).

The Washington Society's history is marked by innovative projects and independent actions. In 1921 it organized a subsidiary business company, Art and Archaeology Press with $50,000 of capital stock, to publish a new popular magazine, Art and Archaeology, and in 1934 the Society withdrew from the AIA because of disagreement over the magazine. In 1948, when the AIA began publication of Archaeology, the Washington Society rejoined the national organization on February 2. It then had eighty-nine members.

In 1979, the Society organized a symposium, "Pompeii and the Vesuvian Landscape," in recognition of the centennial year of the Institute and the 1900th anniversary of the eruption of Vesuvius. The Society also published a museum catalogue, Beyond the Shores of Tripoli, in conjuction with an archaeological exhibition at Harvard University.

In 1982 the Washington Society became the third largest local AIA society in North America, surpassed only by New York City and Southern California. In 1988 it established its first endowed lectureship, the Richard Hubbard Howland Lecture in Classical Archaeology, and in 1991, it added a second endowed lectureship in memory of Louise D. Davison.

On 24 April 1994, the Washington Society celebrated its 100th anniversary with a gala centenary dinner and a lecture by AIA past-president, Martha Joukowsky, at the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC. Most recently, in December 1998, it again played host to the joint Annual Meetings of the Archaeological Institute of America and the American Philological Association.

For more information and for membership
Lucinda Conger or
The Archaeological Institute of America.

This site is created and maintained by Professor Marjorie Venit

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Updated: September 24, 2006