Assistant Professor Carol Redmount (Near Eastern Studies) received a Hellman Family Faculty Award for 1996. This fund supports the research of assistant professors at Berkeley, and Carol's project is "Of Silts and Marls: Analysis of Modern Egyptian Pottery and Implications for Ancient Egyptian Ceramics".

The American Association for the Advancement of Science recently awarded six Berkeley faculty members its prestigious designation of Fellow . Among these six is Class of 1954 Professor, Patrick Kirch (Anthropology). New Fellows were officially honored at the 1997 AAAS meetings in Seattle in February.

Pat Kirch has also been awarded the John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science by the National Academy of Science, which carries with it a bronze medal and a $25,000 cash prize for "noteworthy and distinguished accomplishments in any field of science within the scope of the Academy's charter (the 1997 field is Anthropology". This is indeed an honor!

In October 1996, Professor Stephen G. Miller (Classics) was awarded an honorary doctorate of philosophy in archaeology from the University of Athens. In presenting the honor, the University of Athens cited Miller's quarter century of excavations at Nemea and his efforts to make his work widely and easily available to the public. As well, Miller was cited for fostering cooperation between Greek and American scholars.

Another recipient of an honorary degree was Professor Margaret Conkey (Anthropology), Director of the Archaeological Research Facility, who was presented with a Doctor of Humane Letters from Mt. Holyoke College at the May 1996 Commencement. On the occasion of twenty-five years of Anthropology at Mt. Holyoke, Conkey was cited for her contributions to feminist archaeology, her excellence in teaching and for her family's long involvement with the College. Conkey received her BA from Mt. Holyoke in 1965.

Meg Conkey also received one of UC-Berkeley's awards for Distinguished Teaching in the Social Sciences in a May 1996 ceremony.

Professor J. Desmond Clark (Anthropology) was awarded the L.S.B. Leakey Prize in an elegant ceremonial banquet in 1996, hosted by the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation. This prize is for his outstanding and lifelong contributions to the study and understanding of human evolution. It is only the second time that this Medal has been awarded. Desmond is certainly a most worthy recipient!

Among the many research grants and awards for archaeology in 1996 from the National Science Foundation, (including one to Patrick Kirch and another to Meg Conkey), is the six year, $10.3 million grant for the Hawaii Scientific Drilling Program that will study the formation of volcanoes and mechanisms that operate within the Earth's mantle. The leader of the Berkeley team of this multi-University project, is Professor Don DiPaolo (Geology).

Assistant Professor Junko Habu (Anthropology), who just joined the Berkeley faculty and the ARF in July 1996, was awarded the prize for the most outstanding dissertation in the Social Sciences at McGill University. (See the welcome to Junko on page 4 in the Newsletter).