Archaeology Brown Bag Workshops provide an informal, interdisciplinary venue for presentations of work in progress by faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars, and discussion of developments in recent archaeological literature. Workshops convene four to five times per semester, on Fridays from 4:00-5:15 in the Brooks Hall Commons (1st floor) unless otherwise noted below.
Want to volunteer a talk or discussion topic? Email Adria LaViolette or Fraser Neiman.
For the archive of past Brown Bag Workshops, click HERE
Want to volunteer a talk or discussion topic? Email Adria LaViolette or Fraser Neiman.
For the archive of past Brown Bag Workshops, click HERE
Spring 2023
Jan. 27 4:00 - 5:15 pm | Brooks Hall Commons
Chris Motz, Visiting Assistant Professor of Classical Studies, University of Richmond
"Connecting Ecology, Economy, and Craft in the Roman Fish-Salting Industry"
People have salted fish as a means of preservation since prehistory, but the first and second centuries CE witnessed an explosion of fish-salting activity at an industrial scale that would not be seen again until at least the early modern period. In many ways, the story of this industry’s rise and fall exemplifies the complex transformations that characterized the Roman period. In this talk, I draw on a survey of 330 workshops from across Rome’s empire to explore how forces of the natural world and of human society—such as fish biology, physical and human geography, trade networks, social hierarchies, and modes of learning—interacted to shape the Roman fish-salting industry physically and socially at multiple scales, from the form and organization of vats, to the placement of factories, to the contours of the social networks that enabled the movement of people and knowledge.
Chris Motz, Visiting Assistant Professor of Classical Studies, University of Richmond
"Connecting Ecology, Economy, and Craft in the Roman Fish-Salting Industry"
People have salted fish as a means of preservation since prehistory, but the first and second centuries CE witnessed an explosion of fish-salting activity at an industrial scale that would not be seen again until at least the early modern period. In many ways, the story of this industry’s rise and fall exemplifies the complex transformations that characterized the Roman period. In this talk, I draw on a survey of 330 workshops from across Rome’s empire to explore how forces of the natural world and of human society—such as fish biology, physical and human geography, trade networks, social hierarchies, and modes of learning—interacted to shape the Roman fish-salting industry physically and socially at multiple scales, from the form and organization of vats, to the placement of factories, to the contours of the social networks that enabled the movement of people and knowledge.
Feb. 6 4:00 - 6:00 pm | 16/18 Bond House (Special Event!)
Book Talk & Discussion: Rhiannon Stephens, Associate Professor of History, Columbia University
Poverty and Wealth in East Africa: A Conceptual History
“Rhiannon Stephens offers a conceptual history of how people living in eastern Uganda have sustained and changed their ways of thinking about wealth and poverty over the past two thousand years. This history serves as a powerful reminder that colonialism and capitalism did not introduce economic thought to this region and demonstrates that even in contexts of relative material equality between households, people invested intellectual energy in creating new ways to talk about the poor and the rich. Stephens uses an interdisciplinary approach to write this history for societies without written records before the nineteenth century. She reconstructs the words people spoke in different eras using the methods of comparative historical linguistics, overlaid with evidence from archaeology, climate science, oral traditions, and ethnography. Demonstrating the dynamism of people’s thinking about poverty and wealth in East Africa long before colonial conquest, Stephens challenges much of the received wisdom about the nature and existence of economic and social inequality in the region’s deeper past.”
This event is co-sponsored by the Department of History, Department of Anthropology, Archaeology Interdisciplinary Program, and Karsh Institute of Democracy.
A reception will immediately follow the talk.
Book Talk & Discussion: Rhiannon Stephens, Associate Professor of History, Columbia University
Poverty and Wealth in East Africa: A Conceptual History
“Rhiannon Stephens offers a conceptual history of how people living in eastern Uganda have sustained and changed their ways of thinking about wealth and poverty over the past two thousand years. This history serves as a powerful reminder that colonialism and capitalism did not introduce economic thought to this region and demonstrates that even in contexts of relative material equality between households, people invested intellectual energy in creating new ways to talk about the poor and the rich. Stephens uses an interdisciplinary approach to write this history for societies without written records before the nineteenth century. She reconstructs the words people spoke in different eras using the methods of comparative historical linguistics, overlaid with evidence from archaeology, climate science, oral traditions, and ethnography. Demonstrating the dynamism of people’s thinking about poverty and wealth in East Africa long before colonial conquest, Stephens challenges much of the received wisdom about the nature and existence of economic and social inequality in the region’s deeper past.”
This event is co-sponsored by the Department of History, Department of Anthropology, Archaeology Interdisciplinary Program, and Karsh Institute of Democracy.
A reception will immediately follow the talk.
Feb. 10 1:00 - 2:30 pm | 116/118 Bond House (Special Event!)
The Paradoxes of Ancient Citizenship Working Group first spring guest: Dr. Jessica Paga (William & Mary)
Dr. Paga will present and lead a discussion on herecent book on Building Democracy in Late Archaic Athens (OUP 2020).
The Paradoxes of Ancient Citizenship Working Group first spring guest: Dr. Jessica Paga (William & Mary)
Dr. Paga will present and lead a discussion on herecent book on Building Democracy in Late Archaic Athens (OUP 2020).
Feb. 24 4:00 - 5:15 pm | Brooks Hall Commons
Kate Kreindler, Assistant Professor, Department of Art
"Architectural innovation and metallurgy in early Etruria: evidence from Poggio Civitate"
The site of Poggio Civitate preserves some of the earliest known examples of monumental domestic and industrial architecture in peninsular Italy; in the second half of the seventh century BCE, inhabitants of Poggio Civitate constructed a monumental elite residence, an early temple, and a large industrial workshop, all of which were covered with terracotta tiled roofs. These buildings were thought to be some of the earliest examples of structures with terracotta tiled roofs in the region. Classical archaeologists long have thought that terracotta roofing technology was developed in Corinth at the start of the seventh century BCE and later was exported to Etruria. However, the recent discovery of a new monumental residence at Poggio Civitate that was equipped with a tiled roof and dates to the start of the seventh century BCE challenges this narrative. Moreover, evidence from this same building indicates that Etruscans may have developed terracotta roofing technology independently of Greeks, through the seemingly unrelated activity of processing and refining metallic ores.
Mar. 17 4:00 - 5:15 pm | Brooks Hall Commons Double-Header!
Jennifer Saunders, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia
“From ‘Enslavement’ to ‘Empowerment’” and What Comes After: Plantation Futures on a Palimpsestic Landscape
The idea of the landscape as a palimpsest, where traces of a former version can be read under the present one, came out of Paleolithic archaeology, where thousands of years of human activity must be discerned through low-density artifact scatters. In 2013’s “Plantation Futures,” Black geographer Katherine McKittrick describes the plantation landscape as a “meaningful conceptual palimpsest” that underpins the association between Blackness, geographic othering, and dispossession. McKittrick’s “plantation futures,” however, are ultimately hopeful – or rather, McKittrick is hopeful about the potential to avoid what would seem to be an inevitable outcome of continued oppression. In Powhatan County, Virginia, St. Emma Military Academy and St. Francis de Sales School, two Catholic-run boarding schools for African American and Native American students, were housed on the former grounds of Belmead Plantation – what one stakeholder group described as going “from ‘enslavement’ to ‘empowerment.’” How did living on this palimpsestic landscape shape students’ experiences? Did lingering plantation logic inform their daily practices? And now that St. Emma and St Francis de Sales are closed and the property under private ownership, will plantation logic relegate them to obscurity based on their Blackness, or can archaeology help unbind this Black future from the plantation?
Christian Cancho Ruiz, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia
"Archaeological Excavations at Huando B, a U-Shaped Complex on the Peruvian Central coast."
During the Andean Formative Period (1200-800 BCE) the Peruvian central coast was the scene of intense construction of U-shaped complexes, whose pattern of monumental buildings has not been repeated in the cultural history of Peru.The archaeological excavations carried out on the mound complex at Huando B, located in the Chancay valley, allow us to elucidate the constructive nature of an important section of the right arm of the monument. Indeed, the excavations have managed to determine that the arms forming the U, generally perceived as unitary structures, are in fact the result of a set of accretional, aligned buildings. Each of these buildings would have been conceived independently, with its own trajectory in its construction and function. This work has it made it possible to recognize a superposition of ritual buildings that led to the growth of mound over time.
Kate Kreindler, Assistant Professor, Department of Art
"Architectural innovation and metallurgy in early Etruria: evidence from Poggio Civitate"
The site of Poggio Civitate preserves some of the earliest known examples of monumental domestic and industrial architecture in peninsular Italy; in the second half of the seventh century BCE, inhabitants of Poggio Civitate constructed a monumental elite residence, an early temple, and a large industrial workshop, all of which were covered with terracotta tiled roofs. These buildings were thought to be some of the earliest examples of structures with terracotta tiled roofs in the region. Classical archaeologists long have thought that terracotta roofing technology was developed in Corinth at the start of the seventh century BCE and later was exported to Etruria. However, the recent discovery of a new monumental residence at Poggio Civitate that was equipped with a tiled roof and dates to the start of the seventh century BCE challenges this narrative. Moreover, evidence from this same building indicates that Etruscans may have developed terracotta roofing technology independently of Greeks, through the seemingly unrelated activity of processing and refining metallic ores.
Mar. 17 4:00 - 5:15 pm | Brooks Hall Commons Double-Header!
Jennifer Saunders, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia
“From ‘Enslavement’ to ‘Empowerment’” and What Comes After: Plantation Futures on a Palimpsestic Landscape
The idea of the landscape as a palimpsest, where traces of a former version can be read under the present one, came out of Paleolithic archaeology, where thousands of years of human activity must be discerned through low-density artifact scatters. In 2013’s “Plantation Futures,” Black geographer Katherine McKittrick describes the plantation landscape as a “meaningful conceptual palimpsest” that underpins the association between Blackness, geographic othering, and dispossession. McKittrick’s “plantation futures,” however, are ultimately hopeful – or rather, McKittrick is hopeful about the potential to avoid what would seem to be an inevitable outcome of continued oppression. In Powhatan County, Virginia, St. Emma Military Academy and St. Francis de Sales School, two Catholic-run boarding schools for African American and Native American students, were housed on the former grounds of Belmead Plantation – what one stakeholder group described as going “from ‘enslavement’ to ‘empowerment.’” How did living on this palimpsestic landscape shape students’ experiences? Did lingering plantation logic inform their daily practices? And now that St. Emma and St Francis de Sales are closed and the property under private ownership, will plantation logic relegate them to obscurity based on their Blackness, or can archaeology help unbind this Black future from the plantation?
Christian Cancho Ruiz, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia
"Archaeological Excavations at Huando B, a U-Shaped Complex on the Peruvian Central coast."
During the Andean Formative Period (1200-800 BCE) the Peruvian central coast was the scene of intense construction of U-shaped complexes, whose pattern of monumental buildings has not been repeated in the cultural history of Peru.The archaeological excavations carried out on the mound complex at Huando B, located in the Chancay valley, allow us to elucidate the constructive nature of an important section of the right arm of the monument. Indeed, the excavations have managed to determine that the arms forming the U, generally perceived as unitary structures, are in fact the result of a set of accretional, aligned buildings. Each of these buildings would have been conceived independently, with its own trajectory in its construction and function. This work has it made it possible to recognize a superposition of ritual buildings that led to the growth of mound over time.
Mar. 25, 4:00 - 5:15 | Brooks Hall Commons
Di Hu, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, James Madison University
"Approaches to the Archaeology of Resistance: A Case Study from the Colonial Andes"
What does an archaeology of resistance look like? While battlefield archaeology zooms in on the specific conditions and movements of particular battles, how does one study the invisible social forces that underpinned revolts and rebellions from long ago? In this talk, I draw from anthropological and sociological theories to demonstrate how historical archaeology can contribute unique insights into why and how people resist. Specifically, I look at how historical archaeology can reveal hidden social landscapes that enabled the general rebellions of the Andes during the "Age of Revolutions" in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Doing so can help us draw larger lessons concerning the conditions for social movements to be successful.
Di Hu, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, James Madison University
"Approaches to the Archaeology of Resistance: A Case Study from the Colonial Andes"
What does an archaeology of resistance look like? While battlefield archaeology zooms in on the specific conditions and movements of particular battles, how does one study the invisible social forces that underpinned revolts and rebellions from long ago? In this talk, I draw from anthropological and sociological theories to demonstrate how historical archaeology can contribute unique insights into why and how people resist. Specifically, I look at how historical archaeology can reveal hidden social landscapes that enabled the general rebellions of the Andes during the "Age of Revolutions" in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Doing so can help us draw larger lessons concerning the conditions for social movements to be successful.
Fall 2023
Sept 22 | Brooks Hall Commons
John Dobbins, Professor Emeritus, Department of Art and Archaeology Interdisciplinary Program, University of Virginia
"A Scholarly Divide in Research in the Forum at Pompeii: Archaeological Basics Yield Dividends."
This talk presents the clash between archaeologists who adhere tenaciously to nineteenth-century views on the Forum at Pompeii and the Pompeii Forum Project (UVA), a late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century project that sees things differently because we use evidence.
John Dobbins, Professor Emeritus, Department of Art and Archaeology Interdisciplinary Program, University of Virginia
"A Scholarly Divide in Research in the Forum at Pompeii: Archaeological Basics Yield Dividends."
This talk presents the clash between archaeologists who adhere tenaciously to nineteenth-century views on the Forum at Pompeii and the Pompeii Forum Project (UVA), a late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century project that sees things differently because we use evidence.