Release Date: March 26, 2007

MONMOUTH, Ill. — Independent scholar Donald Easton will present two archaeology lectures at Monmouth College on April 2 and April 3.

Free and open to the public, both lectures will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the lower level classrooms of the Huff Athletic Center. They are sponsored by the Western Illinois Society of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and the MC Classics Department.

Easton specializes in the archaeology, history and languages of pre-classical Anatolia, as well as articles pertaining to Troy and 19th-century archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who claimed he discovered the real site of Troy, including the cache of gold and other artifacts known as Priam’s gold. Easton was educated in England and earned his master’s degree with distinction in Western Asiatic archaeology and his Ph.D. in archaeology. In 1990, he was honored with the Schliemann Medal by the Berlin Academy of Sciences.

Easton’s first lecture is titled “Priam’s Gold” and his second talk is “Troy: New Reflections on an Old Site.” The 3,000-year-old Priam’s gold – also known as “Priam’s treasure” – disappeared without trace in the confusion that followed the fall of Berlin in 1945 and then reappeared in 1990 in Moscow’s Pushkin Museum.

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