Dennis Van Gerven, University of Colorado Boulder professor of anthropology, will share parts of his notorious collection of mummified, ancient human remains at 7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 29 at the Longmont Senior Services Center, 910 Longs Peak Avenue.
The program, “Life and Death in Ancient Nubia” is free an open to the public. Join Van Gerven for an evening of reading the clues and discovering the tales that the dead have to tell us about life and death in Ancient Nubia, an African region along the Nile River.
“For the past 30 years, my students and I have been studying the remains of some 400 Nubian mummies,” Van Gerven said. “I invite the public to spend an evening with me, examining these artifacts and learning fascinating lessons that the dead can illustrate about life and death in this ancient population.”
The mummies, which are housed at CU-Boulder, represent a population that lived in a tiny hamlet on the Nile in one of the driest deserts on earth, Van Gerven said. Theyrepresent a community that existed from the beginning of the Christian period in 550 AD to its end in the mid-15th century.
Van Gerven has been part of the Department of Anthropology at CU-Boulder since 1974. He is particularly committed to undergraduate teaching through his introductory courses as well as courses in the Arts and Sciences Honors Program.
The Sept. 29 event is part of a series called CU at the Library, which is jointly sponsored by the Longmont Public Library, Friends of the Longmont Library, and the CU-Boulder Office for University Outreach. This program is one of five fall 2011 programs offered through CU-Boulder partnerships with local libraries. For more information, visit http://conted.colorado.edu/library/.
-CU-Boulder-Office for University Outreach-