Brown Bag Archive

Spring 2025

Feb 28, 4:00–5:30pm | 2nd-Floor Conference Room, Brooks Hall

Let Monuments Lie?  The Legal and Ethical Concerns of Monuments as Information Operations
Dr. Kate Harrell
University of Virginia School of Law
Curia Conflict Observatory

We have all experienced information operation (IO) campaigns, generally understood as mis- and disinformation spread online and in the news. But mis- and disinformation are not the only sources of IO, as scholars who have theorized so-called “dark heritage” are quick to point out. Charlottesville’s own recent history of racial confrontation, which spiked with the nefarious appropriation of civic spaces by Unite the Right and the murder of Heather Heyer, and ultimately led to the removal of Confederate statues, underscores the staggering capacity of monuments to perpetuate historical negations, as well as the hierarchy of social values that underpin these historical negations.
 

Ukraine similarly faces an onslaught of Russian monuments being built on Ukrainian territory that negate Ukrainian history and identity, replacing them with pro-Russian narratives. It is not difficult to imagine that Ukrainian officials could begin to consider new Russian monuments not as benign elements of culture but as important physical components in the hegemonic process known as Russification, designed to impose Russian language and assimilation on occupied Ukrainians while erasing all aspects of independent Ukrainian self identity. Moreover, in the context of an on-going full scale war in this region, these new monuments are literally under fire. The 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict outlines the protections on heritage, as well as the limits of these protections.  his talk will consider to what extent new Russian monuments in eastern Ukraine could be considered legitimate military targets and the ethical considerations and responsibilities of preservationists in light of these arguments.

Brown Bag Double-Header! ⛏️ Apr 18, 4:00–5:30pm | Brooks Hall 2nd-Floor Conference Room

Global Trade, Local People: Black Atlantic Archaeology in The Bight of Bonny (C. 1600-1900 CE)
Omokolade A. Omigbule
Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

Black Atlantic archaeology on the West African coast has contributed to understanding African participation in the transatlantic and global political economies in the last 500 years. While historical records attest to the Bight of Bonny's significant role in this economic system, its archaeology has the potential to contribute to current debates on African agency in the transatlantic economy. As a step toward exploring the material vestiges of the transatlantic economy in the Bight of Bonny, I present preliminary archaeological and ethnographic data from its major coastal entrepots: Bonny Island and Old Calabar. I discuss emergent Atlantic entanglements in the region through exotic architecture and accompanying material culture. Drawing on ideas within daily life archaeology, I examine household objects to foreground the role of African elites and non-elites in the Black Atlantic and the Bight of Bonny specifically.

3D Modeling as an Analytical Tool for the study of Rock-Cut Tombs across the Roman Empire
Dustin Thomas
Department of Art, University of Virginia
Program in Mediterranean Art and Archaeology

As a “tomb-type,” rock-cut tombs are distinctive yet understudied in present scholarship about death and burial in the Roman world. This funerary architecture was used almost exclusively in the provinces of the Roman Empire from the 1st century BCE through 4th century CE, especially in its eastern territories. During this period, rock-cut tombs were largely absent from the Italian Peninsula. Collectively, this geographic distribution suggests that the funerary customs associated with these tombs closely reflected the sociocultural dynamics of the imperial provinces. As a part of a broader doctoral dissertation project that uses these tombs as a springboard for examining the cultural complexity of the Roman Empire, this paper will discuss how 3D recording and modeling methodologies – principally handheld LiDAR and photogrammetry – can be a fundamental tool in conducting comparative analysis of tombs from disparate geographical regions. It will conclude with a showcase of models made of rock-cut tombs from Cyprus, Malta, and Spain demonstrating the advantages of 3D models as a means of examining and illustrating their nuanced details.

Fall 2024

Oct 18, 4:00–5:30pm | 2nd-Floor Conference Room, Brooks Hall

Inka Landscapes of Power: Sacred Places, Power, and Social Memory
Sonia Alconini
Department of Anthropology

Nov 8, 4:00–5:30pm | 2nd-Floor Conference Room, Brooks Hall

3D Archaeology of Archaeology: remote sensing and digital mapping to rediscover the ancient Greek city of Heloros (Sicily)
Davide Tanasi
Professor, Department of History, University of South Florida

Heloros, located on Sicily’s Ionian shore, is believed to be the first sub-colony of the Greek city of Syracuse. Despite its historical significance, it remains relatively obscure. The Heloros Advanced Digital Exploration and Surveying (HADES) project seeks to clarify the site’s architectural and topographical evolution from its uncertain foundation in the late 8th century BCE to its heyday, in the Late Hellenistic period, and beyond. By digitizing and verifying legacy data and integrating them with newly acquired 3D geospatial documentation—employing global positioning, digital photogrammetry, drones, LIDAR, and ground-penetrating radar—this project reveals new insights into Heloros' history, including its pre-Greek occupation and revised interpretations of key structures. Using Heloros as a case study, this talk illustrates how the 'digital excavation' approach can yield substantial archaeological knowledge without new physical digs. The process of datafication, which involves creating new data through the layered collection of natively digital and digitized legacy data, guided the efforts for virtual reconstruction and future planning. This methodology resurfaced unpublished or previously unknown information about the site, verified interpretative hypotheses, and generated significant new data to rewrite the history of this important yet little-known Greek city.

Spring 2024

Feb 2, 4:00-5:30pm | Fayerweather Hall Lounge

​A Scholarly Divide in Research in the Forum at Pompeii: Archaeological Basics Yield Dividends
John Dobbins
Professor Emeritus, Department of Art and Archaeology Interdisciplinary Program, UVA

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. 

Feb 16, 4:00-5:00pm | Brooks Hall Commons

The Valle de Mairana, Bolivia (c. 1000-1532 CE): Elucidating the Everyday
Sophia Marques
Department of Anthropology

Sometime during the Late Intermediate Period or the Late Horizon, the Valle de Mairana, Bolivia became part of the farthest reaches of the Inka empire, which at its height spanned the Andean Mountain range from Colombia to Argentina. However, relatively little is currently known about the people who lived in this valley during these centuries. How did the materiality of daily life respond to and shape people’s lived experiences of and within larger scale transformations surrounding Inka imperialism in the valley? This paper addresses this question with data from pedestrian survey, subsurface testing, and excavation in the valley. A focus on the small-scale realities of lived experience centers the agency of past peoples in shaping their world. What was important to people? How was that negotiated materially? How can we better understand the relations and choices that contributed en masse to large-scale socio-political trends? From this, we begin to explore power and agency in imperial processes, epistemologies of the mundane, and the materiality of relational ontologies.

Mar 15, 4:00-5:15pm | Brooks Hall Commons

Changing Social Relationships Between Plantation Owners and Their Laborers in the 17th-century Chesapeake: Evidence from Tobacco Pipe Assemblages from 44PG92, Flowerdew Hundred
Beth Bollwerk and Fraser Neiman
Department of Archaeology, Monticello

Enslaved Africans, indentured servants, and land-owning family members lived and worked together in close proximity at 44PG92, a mid- to late 17th-century occupation at Virginia’s Flowerdew Hundred. The artifact assemblages, carefully excavated by Dr. Ann Markell and cataloged into the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS), contain a wide variety of domestic refuse, including thousands of imported and locally made tobacco pipes. Using detailed contextual and artifact data, we track how these pipes were used across the site and what these patterns can tell us about who used them. We begin by developing a fine-grained, seriation-based chronology, which allows us to measure synchronic spatial patterning and change over time in multiple dimensions of variation among pipe assemblages. We discuss how the results clarify the extent to which locally made pipes were predominantly used by enslaved and indentured laborers or by landowners. 

Apr 12, 4:00-5:30pm | Brooks Hall Commons

Finding Community on the Frontier: The archaeology of village life in 2nd millennium western Zambia
Zachary McKeeby
Department of Anthropology

The Machile River and its surrounding tributaries in western Zambia formed a significant locus of Iron Age life in Zambia and served as a conduit for the localized movements of people, things, and ideas in south central Africa over much of the last two millennia. Within this dynamic corridor, the early 2nd-millennium CE Kanono site represents a short-lived but well defined Middle/Late Iron Age farming community that integrated local crafting practices with global and regional orientations, during a period of dramatic political and economic changes across southern, central, and eastern Africa. Combining high-resolution geophysical survey and the results of targeted excavations at Kanono, this talk traces the emergence, growth, and abandonment of the village between the mid-thirteenth and early fifteenth centuries CE. I argue that changes seen in the village relate to the formation of a bounded co-residential community built around unilineal descent, and that founding families may have leveraged prestige in iron working into other forms of prestige – namely wealth in people and access to exotic goods. Approaching the archaeological record at Kanono from the perspective of household archaeology and daily life allows for an evocative ‘peopling’ of south-central African political economies. 

Apr 26, 4:00-5:30pm | Brooks Hall Commons

A global history of insular worlds in the western Indian Ocean: the periodization of transfers and sociocultural changes over a millennium
Laurent Berger
Associate Professor of Anthropology, School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS, Paris) and Research Fellow at the Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale (Collège de France, Paris)

This talk presents the long-term connections and interdependent trajectories of settlement and development of the islands of Madagascar and the archipelagos of the Comoros, Mascarene Islands and Seychelles in the Western Indian Ocean, between the 8th and 19th centuries. These islands and archipelagos constitute a regional area of acculturation unique in the world, as an Afro-Eurasian civilizational melting pot, forged in one of the last inhabited places of the planet, at the crossroads of Bantu, Arab-Persian, Austronesian, Indian and Western influences, through the centuries-old relations maintained with the Indian Ocean rim, in the west (the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers, the Swahili islands: Zanzibar, Kilwa, Pemba, Mafia, Pate), as well as to the east (the India of Gujarat, Sindh and the Malabar coast; the Indonesia of Sumatra and Java, the Riau archipelago, Sulawesi and Borneo). The unity of these island worlds is based primarily on common climatic and geographical conditions, which, through deep-sea navigation and coastal shipping, until the advent in the 19th and 20th centuries of steamboats, roads with carriageways and air and sea container lines, created the framework and rhythm of exchanges with the overseas territories. The unity of these island worlds is based secondly on the marginal and then peripheral position that their populations occupy in the exchange networks and the interregional division of labor set up through the export, by their elites, of a servile workforce, foodstuffs (rice, sugar, cattle) and raw materials (wood, minerals, aromatic resins) in order to obtain, until the 19th century, textiles, pearls, precious metals, ceramics and weapons. The objective of this talk is to consider the criteria of historical periodization, highlighting the phases of convergence and divergence of the trajectories of settlement and development of these island worlds through the combined arrival of Bantu and Austronesian populations distinct from the Swahili rise, the regional propagation of Islam and long-distance maritime trade, the insular state formation process and the Indian-oceanic slave trade, the struggles for influence of the Western, Omani and island empires until their colonial annexation.

This talk is sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Archaeology Program and the Department of Anthropology.

Fall 2023

Oct 13, 4:00-5:30pm | 2nd-Floor Conference Room, Brooks Hall

An Introduction to Cultural Resource Management (CRM) and the Virginia Department of Historic Resources
Sean Tennant
Archaeology Data Manager, Survey and Information Management Division, Department of Historic Resources

This informal talk will discuss the state of CRM archaeology in Virginia and talk about the role of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources in managing Virginia's cultural heritage, as well as opportunities that DHR offers students and researchers.  These include DHR's archaeological collections, archaeological conservation lab, and the Virginia Cultural Resource Information System (VCRIS), an online database with over 50,000 archaeological site records and access to over 12,000 archaeological reports.

Oct 20, 1:00-2:30pm | Brooks Hall Commons

An Indigenous Hermeneutic Approach to the Archaeology of Potsherd Pavements in Yoruba Culture
Olanrewaju Lasisi
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Race, Place, and Equity, UVA School of Architecture

Through the lens of indigenous hermeneutics, this talk expands upon the previous interpretation of potsherd pavements in Yoruba culture, moving beyond their role as architectural floors. It emphasizes their multi-functional roles, serving as sundials, naturalistic art objects, and cartographic maps. By examining festival ceremonies associated with potsherd pavements in two Yoruba kingdoms— Ijebu and Ile-Ife— the presentation reveals that the newly identified functions of these pavements are integral to the Yoruba's systems of time-reckoning, ritual practices, power dynamics, and spatial politics, as well as to the broader fabric of their social organization. Therefore, this talk advocates for a nuanced approach to Yoruba archaeology, one that considers the 'unwritten documentations' found within this hermeneutical framework as a basis for locating sites, excavating units, and interpreting finds. Through this hermeneutical lens, we open new avenues for understanding social complexity in pre-colonial African societies.

Co-sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Archaeology Program and the Carter G. Woodson Institute

Nov 10, 4:00-5:30pm | Brooks Hall Commons

Colonoware Ceramics in the South Carolina Lowcountry
Corey Sattes
Curator of Archaeological Collections, Monticello

“Colonoware” is a form of hand-built earthenware pottery made by enslaved Africans and Native Americans between the 17th and 19th centuries. This type of pottery served as daily cooking, storage, and serving vessels for most enslaved people living in colonial-period settlements and plantations in early America. The distinctively “plain” appearance of this pottery is intriguing, as it is quite unlike the vibrantly decorated pottery made by contemporaneous societies in Africa and Native American groups. Sattes will discuss the study of colonoware in Charleston, SC and how current research explores its production and relationship to emerging colonial identities.

Spring 2023

Jan 27, 4:00-5:15pm | Brooks Hall Commons

Connecting Ecology, Economy, and Craft in the Roman Fish-Salting Industry
Chris Motz
Visiting Assistant Professor of Classical Studies, University of Richmond

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, 4:00-6:00pm | 16/18 Bond House (Special Event!)

Book Talk & Discussion | Poverty and Wealth in East Africa: A Conceptual History
Rhiannon Stephens
Associate Professor of History, Columbia University

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, 1:00-2:30pm | 116/118 Bond House (Special Event!)

The Paradoxes of Ancient Citizenship Working Group first spring guest
Dr. Jessica Paga
College of William & Mary

Dr. Paga will present and lead a discussion on her recent book, Building Democracy in Late Archaic Athens (OUP 2020).

Feb 24, 4:00-5:15pm | Brooks Hall Commons

Architectural innovation and metallurgy in early Etruria: evidence from Poggio Civitate
Kate Kreindler
Assistant Professor, Department of Art

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, 4:00-5:15pm | Brooks Hall Commons Double-Header!

“From ‘Enslavement’ to ‘Empowerment’” and What Comes After: Plantation Futures on a Palimpsestic Landscape
Jennifer Saunders
Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

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?

Archaeological Excavations at Huando B, a U-Shaped Complex on the Peruvian Central Coast
Christian Cancho Ruiz
Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

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 24, 4:00-5:15pm | Zoom Lecture

Approaches to the Archaeology of Resistance: A Case Study from the Colonial Andes
Di Hu
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, James Madison University

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 2022

Sep 9, 4:00-5:15pm | Fayerweather Hall Patio

Welcome and Introductory Reception

Sep 23, 4:00-5:15pm | Brooks Hall Commons

Archaeology of Monacan Mounds, Ancestral Territory and Survivance, A.D. 1000-2022
Jeffrey Hantman
Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology and the Interdisciplinary Archaeology Program, University of Virginia

In this talk I discuss the power of persistent places in consideration of Monacan Indian ancestral territory. I will briefly review the archaeological evidence for the distinctive Monacan ritual mound burial practice recorded in central and west-central Virginia since AD 1000. I will reconsider the idea of mounds as Indigenous monuments and stress the individual acts of burial at persistent places that resulted in large earthworks only after centuries of use. The talk then emphasizes the evidence for Monacan ‘survivance,’ a term redefined by Anishinaabe writer and critic Gerald Vizenor that refers to the active Indigenous presence in the context of settler colonialism and the rejection of narratives of dominance and historical absence. Archaeological methods and typologies, and the focus on mounds, have contributed to a long-standing narrative of Indigenous disappearance and loss. Critical and collaborative efforts to rethink archaeological and documentary data shed light on multiple strategies of survivance, and the practice of ‘(not) hiding in plain site(s)’ in the shatter zone of Monacan reorganization and resettlement in and beyond Virginia during the colonial era.

Oct 10, 5:00pm | Campbell 153 (Special Event)

Matthew Reeves
Director of Archaeology and Landscape Restoration at Montpelier

Matthew Reeves has been the Director of Archaeology and Landscape Restoration at Montpelier since 2000. Dr. Reeves’s research interests center on the archaeology of plantation life, African Americans (both enslaved and free), and the Civil War. His background includes more than two decades of directing research projects on plantations and freedman period sites in Jamaica, Maryland, and Virginia. A distinguished scholar, he has published numerous articles and monographs on his research on African American and Civil War sites and presented conference papers on these subjects.

Dec 2, 4:00-5:15pm | Brooks Hall Commons

The Kotroni Archaeological Survey Project (KASP): a Synthesis from Seasons 1-3 (2019, 2021)
Prof. Anastasia Dakouri-Hild, Associate Professor, Department of Art and Interdisciplinary Archaeology Program, University of Virginia

KASP is an international, interdisciplinary project that combines expertise across the Humanities, Sciences and Social Sciences (Earth and Environmental Sciences, Archaeology, Classics, History, Anthropology, Architectural Preservation). It utilizes a combination of historical research, architectural study, digital applications, and conventional and innovative field techniques (collection of surface artifacts, Geographic Information Systems, remote sensing, photogrammetry, geophysics, geological and geomorphological analysis), in order to evaluate the complex, multi-temporal cultural landscape at hand. KASP also seeks to highlight the relationship between the past, contemporary communities and academic practice in the framework of public archaeology by engaging communities at all scales (local, national and global/international).  The project operates under the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Culture (Ephorate of Antiquities of East Attica) and the Irish Institute for Hellenic Studies at Athens (IIHSA), with the participation of the University of Virginia and several other US and European academic institutions.

Spring 2022

Feb 24, 6:30pm | Campbell 160 (Special Event)

​Afghan Marbles: The Expanded Archaeological Archive
Martina Rigaldi
Metropolitan Museum

Join the UVA Department of Art and the Interdisciplinary Archaeology Program for a Lindner Lecture with Martina Rugiadi of the Metropolitan Museum! Martina Rugiadi is Associate Curator in the Islamic Art Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. The lecture will take place in Campbell Hall, Room 160.

Mar 18 4:00-5:15pm | Brooks Hall 2010

Disaster, Community, and the Ancestors: The Case of the Ceremonial Center of Tibes, Puerto Rico
Antonio Curet
Global Mentors Program

Antonio Curet is curator of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Originally from Puerto Rico, in this presentation Antonio will present his research on the ceremonial Center of Tibes. The center has been considered as evidence of incipient social stratification and monopolization of power in the Caribbean region. This paper takes a closer look at the complex interaction between social difference and monumentality. join us for this presentation hosted by the Archaeology Interdisciplinary Program and Anthropology at UVA.

Fall 2021

Sep 10, 4:00pm | Fayerweather Patio

Welcome and Introductory Reception

Sep 24, 4:00-5:30pm | Brooks Hall Conference Room

Textile Studies: Interdisciplinary Potentials
Amanda Phillips
Department of Art, University of Virginia

​​Textiles were, and are, a major object of exchange, traded at all levels of all markets around the world. This talk focuses on textiles in the Ottoman Empire, from about 1400 to about 1700, considering the objects themselves provide the basis for writing new kinds of history. A massive silk hanging made for Sultan Bāyezīd I (r. 1389-1402), a type of cotton sometimes worn by dervishes and guildsmen, velvet upholstery made for avid customers in towns and cities near and far, and garments found in Palace collections begin to suggest the many overlapping topographies of textiles in the Empire and beyond. Using these examples and others, I’ll also argue that textiles—haptic, somatic, ubiquitous; in an immense range of types; with a collective status as a major commodity—demand new kinds of scholarly treatment.

​​Oct 22, 4:00-5:30pm | Brooks Hall Conference Room

​Exiting Frank M. Snowden, Jr.’s Anthropological Gallery: Toward an Understanding of Visual Representations of Africans in Ancient Greek Vase-Painting
Najee Olya
Department of Art, UVa

A recurring theme in the iconography of ancient Greek vase-painting produced during the Archaic and Classical periods from the sixth through fourth centuries BCE is the non-Greek foreign “other”—a category that included Africans, Persians, Scythians, and Thracians. During the second half of the twentieth century, Greek vases and other artifacts with depictions of Africans were extensively studied by Frank M. Snowden, Jr., the most prominent Black classical scholar in the United States. Focusing on both written and visual portrayals of Africans, which he asserted were sympathetic, Snowden advanced the thesis that pervasive anti-Black racism characteristic of the contemporary United States was unknown in the ancient Mediterranean. Snowden, nevertheless, relied heavily on anthropological scholarship rooted in biological racial essentialism that was already being discredited when he began his career in the 1940s. Framing the artifacts as an “anthropological gallery,” his interest in the superficially realistic representations of Africans came at the expense of other important considerations—of production, function, distribution, audience, and context. Using these considerations as a point of departure, in this talk I reconsider two kinds of Greek vases studied by Snowden to offer a preliminary attempt at showing how archaeologists might interrogate his foundational research and, by adopting a more comprehensive approach, exit the “anthropological gallery.”

​Nov 5, 4:00-5:30pm | Zoom

Eating Local, Drinking Imported: Cuisine and Identity at 3000 BP in the Central Andes
Sadie Louise Weber
Harvard University

This study combines microbotanical, faunal, and stable isotope analyses to explore interregional interaction, cuisine, and identity formation during the Formative Period (ca. 1800-200 BCE) in the Central Andes at two sites: Chavín de Huántar and Atalla. Both sites comprise civic-ceremonial centers and affiliated settlements tied to the Chavín culture, a phenomenon that spread widely across the Central Andean Region between ca. 1300 – 400 BCE. While animal use at both sites appears to have been distinctly highland in tradition, a greater variety of plants were used, including cultigens that cannot grow within either sites’ immediate area. Moreover, evidence for grinding, boiling, and fermentation of maize, manioc, and algarrobo, point to specific beverage recipes that may have played a significant role in social cohesion. In this presentation, I explore the movement of foodstuffs, distinctive methods of food preparations, and ingredients as markers of identity during the Formative Period in the Ancient Andes.

Nov 12, 4:00-5:30pm | Brooks Hall Conference Room

Cities, Towns, and Country Stores: Enslaved Consumers and the Politics of Shopping in the Shenandoah Valley
Matthew Greer
Pre-Doctoral Fellow, Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies
PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, Syracuse University

Archaeologists routinely study the things enslaved Africans bought for themselves, using them to explore diverse research topics like identity and resistance. But we have not assessed how the power wielded by enslavers impacted enslaved people’s ability to acquire these goods. Addressing this is critically important because we cannot divorce enslaved people’s consumption practices from the politics of slavery if we wish to accurately portray the realities of enslaved life. In Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, for instance, enslavers passed laws that increasingly restricted enslaved people’s ability to buy things throughout the 19th century. But how did these laws affect enslaved people’s consumption practices? My talk attempts to answer this using merchants’ ledgers and an analysis of the decorative motifs and provenances of ceramic vessels from Belle Grove Plantation (Frederick County, Virginia), showing that the new laws severely impacted enslaved people’s ability to acquire a variety of goods.

Spring 2021

Feb 19

Remapping the Silk Roads from Prehistory to the Medieval Era
Michael Frachetti
Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis

Mar 5

Can Deep Learning Solve The Problems With Southwestern Prehistoric Decorated Ceramic Typologies?
Chris Downum and Leszek Pawlowicz
Northern Arizona University

Decorated ceramic typology plays an important role in dating archaeological sites in the American Southwest, as well as evaluating cultural affiliations and trade networks. Despite over 100 years of work in this field, substantial levels of disagreement on artifact type identifications can exist, even between archaeologists with decades of experience. We will review the history of Southwestern decorated ceramic typology, and the current problems associated with it. We will then present our research on the use of Convolutional Neural Network deep-learning methods as a potential tool for decorated ceramic classification, analysis and visualization.

Mar 22, 9:00am (Special Event)

The Ancient Amazon: Pre-Columbian Monumental Architecture and the Origins of Complex Societies in the Llanos de Mojos, Bolivia (Join HERE)
Carla Jaimes Betancourt
University of Bonn

Mar 25, 5:30pm | Virtual (Special event)

George M. A. Hanfmann Lecture | The Islamic-Byzantine Frontier: Interaction and Exchange among Muslim and Christian Communities
A. Asa Eger
University of North Carolina at Greensboro

The retreat of the Byzantine army from Syria in around 650 CE, in advance of the approaching Arab armies, is one that has resounded emphatically in the works of both Islamic and Christian writers, and created an enduring motif: that of the Islamic-Byzantine frontier. For centuries, Byzantine and Islamic scholars have evocatively sketched a contested border: the annual raids between the two, the line of fortified fortresses defending Islamic lands, the no-man's land in between and the birth of jihad. In their early representations of a Muslim-Christian encounter, accounts of the Islamic-Byzantine frontier are charged with significance for a future 'clash of civilizations' that often envisions a polarized world. I examine the two aspects of this frontier: its physical and ideological ones. By highlighting the archaeological study of the real and material frontier, as well as acknowledging its ideological military and religious implications, he offers a more complex vision of this dividing line than has been traditionally disseminated. With analysis grounded in archaeological evidence as well the relevant historical texts, Eger brings together a nuanced exploration of this vital element of medieval history.

Apr 9 

Seminar Discussion | Imagining a Maya Archaeology That Is Anthropological and Attuned to Indigenous Cultural Heritage
Patricia McAnany
Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Apr 23

Commanding the Sacred: Structures of Authority and the Sacred on the Byzantine Monastic Landscape
Justin Anthony Mann
Department of Art, University of Virginia

Recent scholarship portrays the Byzantine monastery as a cultural microcosm that embodied broader social structures. However, the view of such structures is often focused on the core monastic complex, and not on how monastic communities could greatly alter natural and cultural landscapes, or, on the other hand, be influenced by the same landscapes. The work presented here envisions the landscape created and maintained by monasteries (i.e., the monastic landscape) as a composite entity composed of interwoven cultural landscapes of authority, economy, the sacred, and natural topography. Using extensive archaeological survey and both art historical and textual evidence, seven case studies from Central Greece are used to push the boundaries of the monastery beyond the katholikon (central church), and onto a complex monastic landscape.

This talk will focus specifically on two components of the monastic landscape, the authoritative and the sacred, and their layering through the lens of Middle Byzantine monastic communities in Central Greece. The goal here is twofold: to highlight the importance of less commonly studied monastic sites, such as outlying chapels, towers, footpaths, and the natural landscape, and to furthermore emphasize the multivalent purposes of monastic sites. Churches, for example, can be used both to sacralize topography and as a means to delimit, navigate, and control. The last portion of this talk will be to present future directions for this research and to suggest other usages for monastic sites that will be explored in further depth in my dissertation project, “Assembling a Monastic Landscape: Structures of Authority, Economy, and the Sacred in Middle Byzantine Greece.”

May 3, 2:00pm | Special Event

Bodily Gender Politics in the Colonial Andes: Indigenous Sexuality under Class and Gender Transformations - The Case of the Colonial Tambarrias
Sofia Chacaltana Cortez
Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, Peru

When the Spaniards arrived at the Andean territory, they encountered diverse ethnic identities and a complex social hierarchy. They imposed racial hierarchies to indigenous populations that transformed class, ethnic and gender dynamics. In general, historical investigations have focused on studying elite indigenous women, and the strategies utilized in navigating the new colonial order. Although the experiences of non-privileged indigenous women are often overlooked or silenced, they also utilized a range of transcultural and hybrid strategies. How these new concepts of gender, class and race transformed the lives and sexual experiences of non-elite indigenous women? How these women navigated the new colonial condition? In this talk, I will focus on the institution of tambos (Inca waystations), which continued to function during the colonial period under the new market system and colonial requirements. Under this situation, tambos (tambarrias) opened new opportunities for non-elite indigenous women, although the female body was under suspicious in these institutions as demonstrated by emerging colonial laws. 

Fall 2020

Sept 11

Introductory meeting

Sept 18

Uniformity, Variability, and Genres in Tiwanaku Ceramic Iconography, A.D. 500-1100
Jonah Augustine
Dept. of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Tiwanaku, located in western Bolivia, was among the largest cities in the Americas during the Middle Horizon (c. AD 500 to 1100) and the capital of an eponymous Andean state. During the consolidation of Tiwanaku, people began to produce a variety of novel ceramic forms that were decorated with elaborate, polychrome iconography. These materials were ubiquitous throughout Tiwanaku, the city and state. Archaeologists today find them in a variety of contexts, ranging from offerings left on the steps of pyramids to household trash heaps. What types of images were depicted upon these key media? What forms of archaeological analysis are available to evaluate and compare iconographic conventions between social spaces at Tiwanaku? Importantly, how do the characteristics of the forms and iconography of Tiwanaku ceramics reflect their variable social roles and political significances within Tiwanaku? This talk will address these questions, presenting the results of an analysis of polychrome ceramics from Tiwanaku.

Oct 2

Water and Sensory Experience: Revisiting the Procession of the Eleusinian Mysteries in Roman Greece
Dylan Rogers
McIntire Dept. of Art, UVA

The Eleusinian Mysteries that took place at the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis (outside of Athens, Greece) were a mystery cult that stretched back as far as the Bronze Age. While we do not know the full details of what occurred when a pilgrim was initiated into the cult, we have been able to reconstruct the procession initiates took from Athens to Eleusis--a 22-km-long sensorial tour de force. In the Roman period, particularly in the second century CE, with the arrival of an aqueduct commissioned by the emperor Hadrian, the forecourt of the sanctuary, where the procession culminated before the initiation, was drastically altered with the addition of a fountain. Employing the tenants of sensory archaeology, this talk will revisit the procession of the Mysteries to emphasize the role of flowing water and its impact on past encounters in the space, not only illustrating the complex experience initiates had in the Roman period, but also the unique expressions of Greek and Roman identity.

Oct 30

Rethinking the Prestige Economy in Trade and Exchange: The Dominance Economy in Contact-Era New Guinea
Paul Roscoe
Dept. of Anthropology, University of Maine

Archaeological discussion commonly links the trade and exchange of precious metals, shells, feathers, and other exotics to the demands of a prestige-goods economy. These claims are sometimes challenged, but attempts to investigate them run into difficulty because so many dimensions of prehistoric prestige economies are archaeologically invisible. In this talk, I try to shed ethnographic light on the functioning of prestige economies and their relation to trade and exchange in egalitarian and trans-egalitarian societies. Using data from contact-era New Guinea, I argue that, in these communities, prestige economies did not function as commonly imagined. Rather, prestige goods were embedded in conspicuous ceremonial displays that managed conflict by serving as honest signals of fighting strength. The system produced a dominance hierarchy that prescribed who should defer to whom when conflicts of interest arose, but it benefited everyone, even those obliged to defer, because they retained the benefits of sociality while avoiding the risk of physical harm or death. Prestige economies and prestige goods, in other words, are really dominance economies and dominance goods, a perspective that has implications for our understanding of leadership in small-scale societies, what constitutes valuables in a dominance economy, what gives them value, and why prestige (read “dominance”) economies are so often coupled to trade and exchange.

Spring 2020

Feb 7

Uncovering the Foundations of a Greek Colony: Ancient Selinus
Andrew Farinholt Ward
Classical Studies, College of William and Mary

Founded on the southwestern coast of Sicily by settlers from mainland Greece in the seventh century BCE, the ancient "colony" of Selinus (modern Selinunte) quickly became a wealthy and populous city-state, famed even in antiquity for its many monumental temples and its conflicts with Athens and Carthage. The early history of the settlement has remained controversial for much of the twentieth century, with the scant early remains used to support a variety of often opposing interpretations. This talk will highlight recent discoveries in the Selinus’ main urban sanctuary, sponsored by the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and the Università degli Studi di Milano, that have unearthed a wealth of new evidence for understanding the early history of this Greek settlement, and the importance of religion in ancient Mediterranean migration.

Apr 17

Understanding Variation in Internal Markets among Slave Societies in the British Caribbean
Fraser D. Neiman
Department of Archaeology, Monticello

Note: Thanks to the pandemic, this talk is being being given via Zoom. Please contact Adria LaViolette for information on how to connect.

This paper offers a simple model of the causes and consequences of variation in the subsistence strategies that evolved in British Caribbean slave societies and their implications for the shifting organization of internal markets and island economies. To evaluate the model, I analyze two independent sources of archaeological evidence: 1) data from the DAACS database on typological variation assemblages from St. Kitts, Nevis, Jamaica, and Dominica and 2) the chemical characterization of coarse earthenware pastes sampled from ceramic assmblages from St. Kitts, Nevis, and Jamaica.

Postponed

Roman Water and Sensory Experience: Revisiting the Processions of the Eleusinian Mysteries
Dylan Rogers
McIntire Department of Art, University of Virginia

Founded on approaches related to sensory archaeologies (particularly regarding the multisensory element of water), this paper explores the processions of the Eleusian Mysteries from Athens to Eleusis in the second century CE. While the Mysteries had been active since the Bronze Age, in the Roman period, with the addition of at least two fountains in the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore's Forecourt, the sensorial experience of an ancient pilgrim was drastically altered with the addition of flowing water at the end of the famous processions. Paying attention to ancient literary sources on water and fountians (especially in regard to the senses), the processions themselves, and the fountains themselves at Eleusis, this paper will argue for a more nuanced interpretation of the role of fountains at the ancient sanctuary--one that successfully straddled both Greek and Roman identities--while advocating for an increased use of sensory archaeology in Classical Archaeology.

Postponed

Iron production and Regional Variation in Machili: Recent Archaeological and Geophysical Survey in Western Zambia
Zachary McKeeby
Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

The Machili Valley in Western Zambia after 700CE is exemplary of the type of "in-between" places that made up large portions of the African continent where states did not develop, but which were anything but isolated and undifferentiated. Limited archaeological surveys in the late 1960s tentatively fit the Machili Valley into a larger context of Iron Age life in Zambia, and into south-central Africa more broadly. This paper details early results from recent survey work in Machili. A combination of geophysical and shovel-test survey methods were used to re-survey previously documented sites, identify new sites, and to study localized variations in iron production practices in the Machili Valley in the absence of, and on the periphery of, state-level control. Results suggest geographic and temporal changes in settlement patterns and iron production practices, and in the spatial relationships between domestic areas and iron smelting and smithing locations.

Fall 2019

Sept 20

Welcome meeting, introductions, and summer research updates

Sept 27

An Introduction to the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery's Latest Project -- The Origins of A Slave Society: Digitizing Flowerdew Hundred
Elizabeth Bollwerk
DAACS, Monticello

Oct 3, 5:30pm | 158 Campbell Hall (Special Event)

​New Fieldwork from Classical Olynthos (Greece): Towards an Archaeology of Identity
Lisa Nevett
University of Michigan

Joukowsky Lecture, sponsored by the Charlottesville Society of the Archaeological Institute of America

Oct 5, 10:00am - 4:00pm | Woodland Pavilion at Monticello

Archaeology Open House at Monticello

Help celebrate Virginia Archaeology Month! Monticello's Archaeology Department hosts its annual open house, featuring displays, exhibits on recent discoveries in the field and the lab, walking tours of the vanished Monticello Plantation landscape, lightening-talks about current research, and an interactive dig for children. Archaeology staff members will be on hand to answer questions. Displays and exhibits are found in the Woodland Pavilion and the Visitors Center. Lightning talks will happen at 10:30am, 12:30pm, and 2:30pm. Walking Tours leave the Woodland Pavilion at 11:00 am, 1:00 pm, and 3:00 pm.

For more information click here.

Oct 15

On the Move, In Place: Report on the First Seasons of the Bantu Mobility Project, Central Zambia, 2014-2018
Matthew Pawlowicz
Anthropology Program, School of World Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University

The Bantu Mobility Project is a multidisciplinary effort combining archaeology, historical linguistics, and paleoenvironmental studies to explore the Bantu Expansions, the extension of the hundreds of Bantu languages across central, eastern and southern Africa. The project focuses on the role of human agency in shaping the process of those expansions. We draw on the concepts of rootedness and mobility to consider how practices and ideas of movement and sedentariness would have informed, and in aggregate made up, the experience of the Bantu Expansions between the middle Kafue and middle Zambezi catchments, a crossroads for the diffusion of language and material culture in sub-Saharan Africa. This talk presents archaeological results from the preliminary field seasons, discussing the system of mounded settlements that developed in the Kafue floodplain and the broader patterns of mobility they anchored.

Nov 22

Preliminary results of the 2019 campaign of the Kotroni Archaeological Survey Project (KASP) at Ancient Afidna
Anastasia Dakouri-Hild
McIntire Department of Art, University of Virginia

KASP is an international, interdisciplinary project that combines expertise across the Humanities, Sciences, and Social Sciences (Earth and Environmental Sciences, Archaeology, Classics, History, Anthropology, Architectural Preservation). It utilizes a combination of historical research, architectural study, digital applications, and conventional and innovative field techniques (collection of surface artifacts, GIS, remote sensing, photogrammetry, geophysics, geological and geomorphological analysis), to evaluate the complex, multi-temporal cultural landscape at hand. The paper examines the results of the first season, in particular geoarchaeology and intensive survey, discussing preliminary evidence about the nature of habitation diachronically around the citadel of Aphidna.

Dec 6

The Garden as Sacred Space: Pompeii's Garden Dining Spaces
Janet Dunkelbarger
McIntire Department of Art, University of Virginia

The archaeological evidence of garden dining spaces in Pompeiians' houses, restaurants, and tombs challenges traditional scholarly narratives, demonstrating that reclined dining in the gardens of Pompeii was a religiously significant activity practiced by both the elite and non-elite of Pompeian society. These garden dining spaces were not part of formal temple or sanctuary architecture and environments, but nevertheless were an essential space for religious rites and rituals. Furthermore, the lack of concentrated evidence of these kinds of spaces elsewhere in the Roman world either indicates that the practice of dining in the garden later lost its significance or that its meaning was more important to the people of Pompeii than to peoples elsewhere. The evidence of Pompeiians' garden dining spaces, therefore, reveals complexities of both Roman dining practices and the meaning of the Roman garden, stressing the importance of context and local culture in the interpretation of the material evidence.

Spring 2019

Mar 22

Kerameikos.org: A Network Science Approach to the Study of Greek Pottery
Ethan Gruber, Director of Data Science, American Numismatic Society
Renee Gondek, Instructor, University of Mary Washington
Tyler Jo Smith (in absentia), Associate Professor, University of Virginia

Abstract
Our presentation will outline the NEH-funded project "Kerameikos.org." Kerameikos.org is an international effort to define the intellectual concepts of Archaic and Classical Greek pottery following the methodologies of Linked Open Data (LOD). These concepts include categories such as shapes, artists, styles, and production places. When linked externally to other LOD thesauri, such as the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus, Kerameikos.org allows for the normalization and aggregation of disparate museum and archaeological datasets into an information system that facilitates broader public access (e.g., Pelagios Commons). Beyond the definition of pottery concepts, following open web standards, Kerameikos.org will standardize and document an ontology and model for exchanging pottery data, provide easy-to-use interfaces to visualize geographic and quantitative distributions of Greek pottery, and publish a series of data manipulation web services enabling archaeologists and museum professionals to contribute data to this ecosystem.

Apr 5

An Anthropologist among the Archaeologists: My 45 Years with Archaeology Towards an Historical Understanding of the Kula Ring
Fred Damon, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

Apr 19

Land, Labor and Economic Power in Post-emancipation Dominica
Khadene Harris, Postdoctoral Fellow, DAACS, Monticello

Abstract
In this talk, I examine the social and economic life of the formerly enslaved in colonial Dominica. A watershed moment in Caribbean history, Emancipation ushered in a critical period of social and economic change that brought with it new and challenging opportunities for newly free laborers to redefine their relationship with the land and with each other. Still, despite the promise of freedom, the years after slavery did not result in immediate equality nor did it suddenly transform social and power relations. My work is an examination of the strategies employed by the newly free to (re)create and maintain socio-economic relationships despite coercive and exclusionary practices by colonial officials. To do this work, I combine archival documents, oral histories, and archaeological data to understand how Afro-descended laborers reorganized daily life as they moved between restrictive colonial practices and local realities. By exploring how free Dominicans laboring on the Bois Cotelette Estate utilized space and material objects in their everyday life, I demonstrate the contentious nature of postemancipation community building, and its uneasy trajectory.

Fall 2018

Sep 7

Organizational Meeting: Introductions, summer research updates, plans for the year

Sep 21

Houses for the Living, Houses for the Dead: Mortuary Feasts and Social Inequality at a Post-Collapse Andean Necropolis (AD 1000-1450)
Erika Brant, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

Abstract
The collapse of the highland state of Tiwanaku around AD 1000 was accompanied by a dramatic uprising against the ruling elite. Elite ancestor effigies placed in large open plazas were iconoclastically disfigured, while the Putuni Palace, home to Tiwanaku's ruling elite, was leveled. In the post-collapse period, Titicaca Basin people abandoned the symbols of Tiwanaku's authority. A 1500-year tradition of ritual architecture and craft goods disappeared, and ritual practice turned to the worship of ancestors placed in modest burial towers, or chullpas. Does such a transition in ritual architecture and the abandonment of state-affiliated material culture signal a reinvention or, conversely, a rejection of hierarchy in the post-collapse period? Excavations conducted at the post-collapse Colla necropolis of Sillustani revealed a series of kin-focused ritual compounds as well as a previously understudied domestic sector characterized by multiple elite houses. Ceramic, faunal and architectural findings indicate a more segmented, and possible situational, role of leadership during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000-1450).

Oct 5

Power, Honor, and Violence in Mycenaean Greece: The Archaeology and the Images
Dr. Katherine M. Harrell

Oct 20, 10:00am - 4:00pm | Monticello Woodland Pavilion

Archaeology at Monticello: Open House
Location: The Woodland Pavilion at the David M. Rubenstein Visitor Center, Monticello
Time: 10:00am to 4:00pm, Saturday, October 20, 2018

Monticello archaeologists host their annual Open House, as part of Virginia Archaeology Month. The Open House features exhibits on current research, including this summer's fieldwork at Site 6, an early-19th century domestic site that was home to enslaved field laborers. Walking tours to Site 6 leave the Woodland Pavilion at 11:00, 1:00, and 3:00.

For more information, see https://www.monticello.org/site/visit/events/archaeology-open-house

Nov 2

The Ismenion Hill in Thebes: Temples, Tombs, and Traditions
Professors Kevin Daly and Stephanie Larson, Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, Bucknell University

Abstract
Kevin Daly and Stephanie Larson will present some of the preliminary results from their excavations on the Ismenion Hill, Thebes, Greece, from 2011-2016. This multi-period site has revealed new facets of the ancient temple to Apollo, the early Byzantine cemetery, and late Byzantine neighborhood life in this area that offer new insights on aspects of healing, disease and death in the Eastern Mediterranean. [Our own Dr. Fotini Kondyli is the main Byzantine pottery specialist working on the medieval material from this excavation.]

Nov 16

Restoring the Constitutional Landscape at James Madison's Montpelier: Combining Landscape Archaeology, Social Justice, and Digital Technology
Dr. Matthew Reeves, Director of Archaeology and Landscape Restoration, Montpelier

Dec 7, 4:30-6:00pm

The Space Between: Sidewalks, Social Integration, and Economic Structure in Roman Italy
Dr. Claire Weiss, McIntire Department of Art, University of Virginia

Abstract
Sidewalks were central features of ancient Roman urban life and society. This study combines an analysis of textual, juridical, and physical evidence for the construction of sidewalks, or their absence, at four ancient Roman cities: Pompeii, Herculaneum, Ostia, and Minturnae. At Pompeii and Herculaneum, sidewalk construction, or curbing at least, seems to have been legally required of buildings with street frontages, since sidewalks were constructed against nearly every building fa?ade. In these cities, sidewalks existed, in part, to separate pedestrians from street traffic, keeping them removed from hazards, but they also facilitated social and economic interconnections that were characteristic of the late Republican and early Imperial periods. At Ostia and Minturnae, there were fewer sidewalks and curbs. Instead, corridors and alleys provided pedestrians with access routes through and between buildings, away from the view and the social display of the streets. These high-imperial cities seem to have no longer required sidewalks as a legal condition of construction, their fa?ades instead overwhelmingly dedicated to commercial endeavors. At these cities during the high empire, economic competition was no longer so indelibly tied to social connections, just as domestic and economic properties had been disentangled and resituated into more discretely defined buildings. The four cities examined in this study allow for the suggestion that there was diachronic change in Roman social and economic relationships evident from the differing construction arrangements of the four cities? frontages. The alteration in access and provisioning for pedestrians is suggestive of a larger shift in social and economic behavior that removed the focus of interaction from the public street to the privacy of indoors. Using Structure from Motion and GIS to record and analyze the fa?ades of these cities, this study determines that the way these cities provided for pedestrians reflected the prevailing urban social and economic culture, a culture that differed from city to city and transformed over time.

Spring 2018

Feb 2

The Vital Dead: Making Meaning, Identity, and Community through Cemeteries
Alison Bell, Department of Anthropology, Washington and Lee University, and Virginia Foundation for the Humanities

Abstract
In the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and well beyond, profound changes are underway in cemeteries: grave markers are still etched with images of bibles and flowers, but motorcycles, monsters, cats, and footballs are also appearing. Inscriptions ("Gone Hunting for the Lord" or "Had a Good Ride") and objects lefts on grave sites ? bird feeders, whirligigs, letters to the deceased ? echo this florescence. The Vital Dead, a book VFH fellow Alison Bell is writing under contract with the University of Tennessee Press, interprets these movements largely as a struggle against alienation, with people weaving loved ones into social webs that transcend the grave. The dead are vital both because they?re often imagined as cognizant, lithe, and accessible (if invisible), and also because they?re central to the creation of identity and community among the living. Because these sites of memorialization allow the visible championing of particular cultural values, they are also windows into historic as well as contemporary claims and counterclaims to visions of the future. Bell, who teaches anthropology at Washington & Lee University, will provide an overview of the book manuscript generally, and then specifically discuss case studies of African American burying grounds in the Valley.

Mar 23

Archaeological Excavations in Monticello's First Kitchen
Beatrix Arendt and Crystal Ptacek, Archaeology Department, Monticello

Abstract
From about 1770 to 1809, when it was buried under three feet of fill, the basement room in Monticello's South Pavilion served as the mansion's first kitchen. Recent excavations in this space have produced exciting new discoveries about its layout and use, including the remains of a stew stove that was almost certainly used by enslaved chef James Hemings after four years of culinary training in Paris. We describe our findings and the ways in which they are advancing our understanding of the changing landscape of slavery at Monticello.

Apr 6

Ranching, Rendering, Hunting, and Hides: A Zooarchaeology of Colonialism
Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman, Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland

Apr 24, 5:30pm | Campbell 153 (Special Event)

​Religion and landscape in the Minoan and Recent Past
Evangelos Kyriakidis, Senior Lecturer, University of Kent

Sponsored by The Charlottesville Chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America
5:30 pm. Campbell 153 in the Architecture School Building (free parking available at nearby Culbreth Garage)

Apr 27

Archaeological Sites as Contested Landscapes: A case-study from Central Turkey
Sevil Baltali, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Istanbul Technical University

Abstract
Archaeological sites are often integral elements of everyday performance, imagination, history, memory, temporality and identity of local people living near them. They are part of the local people's landscape in a platial sense imbued with multiple meanings. For the local communities living near the archaeological excavations at Kerkenes (central Turkey), the presence of mostly foreign archaeologists, their scientific praxis, the knowledge they produce and the findings from non-Muslim periods have triggered the reflexive re-evaluation of the significance of the place's past, together with renewed engagement with the activity of counter-narrative and memory production. These engagements with the past become part of the process of present place and identity making, triggered by the archaeological project. The local community's questioning perception of the foreign archaeologists, and their critical engagement with archaeologists' scientific representations of the past, lead to conflicting political tension with their own more embodied and relational memory and experience of the place, turning the archaeological site into a contested landscape for the local struggle of representation.

Fall 2017

Sep 1

Organization Meeting: Introductions and summer research updates

Sep 22

The Most Discouraged Mycenaeans: Performing Emotion and Death Through Gesture in Late Bronze Age Tanagra, Greece
Dr. Anastasia Dakouri-Hild, McIntyre Department of Art, Assistant Professor, Aegean and Near Eastern Archaeology

Oct 13

The Archaeology of Indentured Labor in Nineteenth-Century Mauritius
Julia Haines, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

Oct 18-21 | Special Event

Universities, Slavery, Public Memory, and the Built Landscape
This three-day conference at UVA will highlight current research and memorialization projects that draw on documentary, architectural and archaeological evidence. A preliminary program can be found here. 

Oct 27, 1:00pm | Special Event

​The Phoenix Factor in Community Archaeology, NW Tanzania: Disease, Revitalization, and Heritage for the Future
Peter R. Schmidt, Department of Anthropology and Center for African Studies, University of Florida Department of Anthropology Proseminar, 1:00 p.m., with reception following

Abstract
If there is a common thread that weaves together different yet successful genres of community archaeology, it is an understanding by community members of archaeological principles and the capacity of archaeology to impact identity and historical representations. Communities without prior comprehension of archaeology or heritage research require the development of trust and reciprocal relationships as well as patient mentoring and exposure to the practices of archaeology. Heritage initiatives taken by communities in NW Tanzania built on four decades of familiarity with archaeology: first as hosts, participants, and interlocutors in archaeological and heritage research; then as archaeological supervisors in regional research, and as consumers and proponents of the power of archaeology to valorize local history; and finally as advocates of heritage and archaeological initiatives that built on these prior experiences. This background set the scene for a flowering of interest in reclaiming and revitalizing heritage sites and intangible heritage, leading to locally developed and managed projects designed to create enhanced economic and cultural well-being in a society devastated by HIV/AIDS over the last three decades.

Nov 17

Negative Archaeology and Political Violence in the Syrian Civil War
Fiona Greenland, Department of Sociology, University of Virginia

Dec 1

The Porticus Eumachiae in the Forum of Pompeii
Valerio Dario, McIntire Department of Art, Program in Mediterranean Art and Archaeology

Spring 2017

Jan 27

Late Holocene Resource Exploitation and Settlement in the Velondriake Marine Protected Area, Southwest Madagascar
Kristina G. Douglass, Buck Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History

Feb 24

The Facade of Frontages at Ostia
Claire Weiss, McIntire Department of Art, University of Virginia

Abstract
Ostia presents one of the largest areas of exposed ruins in Italy, making available an extensive, contiguous expanse of Roman urban construction. The city is often lumped together with Pompeii and Herculaneum as one of the handful of well-preserved Roman cities to which scholarship has returned time and again as a source of incomparably complete data. This is a misperception. The example set by the Vesuvian cities, their appearance very similar to that at the moment of their destruction in A.D. 79, has distorted the conceptualization of, approach to, and resulting discussion surrounding Ostia. This paper presents the results of a city-wide frontage and street survey conducted at Ostia in 2014 and 2016, proposing an identification of the portions of the streets that have been disturbed and re-laid, as well as the portions of the streets and sidewalks that are preserved in their original aspect. Without accounting for the degree of reconstruction, conclusions about urban activity at Ostia will remain as fanciful as the structures on which they are based.

Mar 17, 1:00pm | Brooks Hall, 2nd Floor (Special Event)

American Death, and Being
Shannon Lee Dawdy, Associate Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences, University of Chicago

Sponsored by the Department of Anthroplogy, Proseminar Series, and the Interdisciplinary Program in Archaeology
1:00 p.m., Brooks Hall, 2nd Floor Conference Room. Reception to follow in the Brooks Hall Commons.

Abstract
In the U.S. today, death practices are changing rapidly and creatively. Not only did the cremation rate double between 2000 and 2015, but there has been a proliferation of new things to do with ashes ? incorporating them into artificial reefs, making them into synthetic diamonds, or blending them into vinyl records. What do these new styles of death tell us about U.S. cosmology and values? What is the status of the subject/object divide in daily life? What is a ?person? before and after death? What does the secular afterlife look like? Using ethnographic interviews with funeral directors, death midwives, and object designers collected as part of a documentary film product, I will attempt to outline what a populist American theory of being might be. In so doing, I argue against some of the current trends in the anthropology of ontology.

Mar 31 | Fayerweather Hall 215

Burial, Landscape, and Memory in Early Iron Age Kavousi, Crete
Leslie Preston Day, Professor of Classics Emerita, Wabash College

Apr 7, 1:00pm | Brooks Hall, 2nd Floor (Special Event)

Connected Communities: Undocumented Migration and Material Practices in the West Mediterranean
Peter Van Dommelen, Joukowsky Family Professor of Archaeology and Professor of Anthropology, Brown University

Sponsored by the Department of Anthroplogy, Proseminar Series, and the Interdisciplinary Program in Archaeology
1:00 p.m., Brooks Hall, 2nd Floor Conference Room
Reception to follow in the Brooks Hall Commons. 

Abstract
Migration has long been a major topic in archaeology and as long as culture history has framed archaeological understandings of material culture and past societies, migrations have been seen as the stuff that (pre)history was made of. With the advent of the New, Processual and Post-Processual archaeologies, archaeological explanations and theoretical interests have shied away from migration, but a lack of interest among contemporary archaeologists does not mean that people in the past did not migrate. Migration was in all likelihood as common, recurrent and widespread a phenomenon in the ancient and distant past as it is today?it has indeed been argued that migration is arguably a fundamental part of being human. As new scientific techniques like DNA, isotope analyses and other biometric approaches have become available, migration has come back on the archaeological agenda, and there is widespread interest in tracing and tracking migration. Scientific evidence that certain individuals actually moved from A to B does not necessarily improve our archaeological understanding of migration as a process, however, and it is precisely this question that I intend to tackle in this lecture. Using prehistoric, Classical and recent archaeological and ethnographic evidence from around the West Mediterranean, I intend to take a fresh look at past migration. In doing so, it is not so much my aim to find ?hard evidence? for specific migratory movements but rather to examine the contexts and consequences of migration for both migrant and host societies.

Apr 7 | Fayerweather Hall 215

Craftsmanship in the Prehistoric Aegean: Investigating Technological Questions
Nikolas Papadimitriou, Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University

Abstract
Since the birth of Greek archaeology, Aegean artworks of the Bronze Age have been the subject of admiration for their high aesthetics and skilled craftsmanship. Scholars have examined in detail questions of style, establishing stages of evolution, identifying relations with the art of other regions, and proposing possible interpretations for everything from Cycladic figurines to Mycenaean frescoes. By contrast, the technology of Bronze Age artefacts has been less systematically studied, as a rule on the basis of macroscopic observations in the margin of broader stylistic studies. This talk will present the results of two ongoing research projects that focus on the technology of a) Early Cycladic figurines and b) Mycenaean gold jewelry. Discussion will begin with the analytical methodology employed in the investigation of manufacturing processes, stages of production, decorative techniques, and tools used. This will be followed by examples of experimental reconstructions made to test assumptions and provide comparative material for study. In conclusion, the wider implications of the findings for craft organization, movement of artists, and the question of technological transfer in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC will be discussed.

Apr 28

Recent archaeological research in Cahokia's West Plaza
Davide Domenici, Department of History and Cultures, University of Bologna

Abstract
This talk present the results of a recent archaeological project, organized jointly by the University of Bologna (Italy) and Washington University in St. Louis (US) located in the so-called Merrell Tract. The tract is an area within one of the four plazas which defined the epicenter of the Mississippian city of Cahokia, in Illinois. The excavation, expanding an area investigated in 1960 during a salvage archeological project, brought to light evidence of human occupation dating from pre-Cahokian, Emergent Mississippian times (10th century AD) to the Late Mississippian Moorehead and Sand Prairie phases (14th century), thus spanning the entire Cahokian sequence. The recovered evidence witnesses changing settlement dynamics that reflect the whole trajectory of Cahokia's history, from its birth to ultimate demise.

Fall 2016

Sep 2

Organizational Meeting: Updates on summer research and planning for this year's talks

Sep 9

Byzantine Buildings and Legacy Archaeology in Ottoman Istanbul: Sculptural Appropriation at the Kalenderhane Camii and Kariye Camii
Sarah Tyler Brooks, Associate Professor, School of Art, Design & History, James Madison University

Oct 7

A Reconsideration of Variation in Colonoware Ceramics from Virginia and South Carolina
Elizabeth Bollwerk and Leslie Cooper, DAACS, Monticello

Oct 21

Figured Capitals and Roman Archaeology: Where, When and Why
Amanda Sharp, Classical Archaeology, University of Oxford

Oct 28 | Double-Header!

​Understanding the Colonial Process through Changing Foodways in Bronze and Iron Age Sardinia
Susan Palazzo, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

Porcelain & Power: The Archaeological Landscape of Coffee, Ritual, and Status in Rural Cyprus Justin Mann, Program in Classical Art and Archaeology, University of Virginia

Spring 2016

Jan 29

New Date!
Context and Connectivity: Rethinking Italic Architectural Terracottas (3rd-1st cent. BCE)
Sophie Crawford Waters, Interdisciplinary Graduate Group in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World, University of Pennsylvania

Feb 26

Enslavement at Liberty Hall: Archaeology, History, and Silence at an 18th-Century College Campus and Ante-Bellum Slave Plantation in Virginia
Don Gaylord, Research Archaeologist and Instructor of Anthropology, Washington and Lee University

Abstract
Liberty Hall Academy, the forerunner of Washington and Lee University, operated outside of Lexington, Virginia from 1782 until 1803. When fire consumed the institution's academic building, the school relocated a half-mile closer to town. Following the move, Andrew Alexander and Samuel McDowell Reid, wealthy local residents and trustees of the school, operated their family farms at the site. Alexander owned between twelve and twenty-four slaves, and on the eve of the American Civil War, Reid owned sixty-one slaves. For over half a century, enslaved people lived and worked in the buildings erected by Liberty Hall Academy, yet generations of archaeological and historical research here make scant reference to slavery. Based on recent excavations and further archival research, this paper seeks to remember John Anderson, an enslaved blacksmith, and his peers whose labor formed the foundation of the workforce at this plantation, which later owners called, ironically, Liberty Hall Farm.

Mar 18

Heritage Matters: An Archaeology of Northern Appalachia and the New Migration
Paul Shackel, Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland

Mar 29, 5:30pm | Campbell 160 (Special Event)

Archaeology of Monastic Communities in Late Antique Egypt
Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom Professor of History; Department Chair; Director of Archaeology, Wittenberg University
Thursday, 5:30 pm, Campbell 160
Sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America Lecture Series.

Apr 7, 5:30 | Campbell 160 (Special Event)

​The Shape of Things Already Come: 3-D Imaging in a Late Roman Desert Settlement
Colleen Manassa Darnell, Associate Professor of Egyptology, Yale University
Thursday, 5:30 pm, Campbell 160
Sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America Lecture Series

Fall 2015

Sep 4

Organizational Meeting to welcome the new members of our community, introduce ourselves and our areas of interest, and discuss potential Brown Bags for the year

Sep 30, 5:30pm | Campbell 158 (Special Event)

Special Event: A Sicilian Greek Agora
Malcolm Bell III, Professor Emeritus, McIntire Department of Art, University of Virginia
Wednesday, 5:30 pm, Campbell 158
Reception following in Fayerweather Hall
Sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America Lecture Series.

Oct 9, 1:00pm | Brooks Hall, 2nd Floor (Special Event)

​Foundations of Andean State Formation
Charles Stanish, Professor, Department of Anthropology, UCLA, and Director, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
Friday, 1:00 pm, Brooks Hall Conference Room
Reception following in Brooks Hall
Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology Speakers Series.

Oct 16

"Little necessaries or comforts": Enslaved Laborers' Access to Markets in the Anglophone Caribbean
Lynsey Bates, Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery, Monticello

Oct 30

Tattooed Princes and Smoking Ancestors: African Refigurings of Nineteenth-Century Mobile, Alabama
Neil Norman, Department of Anthropology, College of William & Mary

Nov 8, 5:30pm | Campbell 160 (Special Event)

Stars sparkling on the waters: The Temple of Baal 'Addir/Poseidon at Motya and the History of the Mediterranean
Lorenzo Nigro, Associated Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology and Coordinator of the Oriental Section, Department of Sciences of Antiquities at the Rome "La Sapienza" University
Sunday, 5:30 pm, Campbell 160
Sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America Lecture Series

Nov 20, 4:00pm | Fayerweather 215

Frontier Foodways: Inter-Cultural Interactions and Ethnic Identity at 12th and 13th-Dynasty Egyptian Fortresses in Nubia.
Jacqueline Huwyler, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia
Friday, 4:00 pm, Fayerweather 215

Spring 2015

Jan 23

Rejection or Reinvention: Rethinking social hierarchy in the post-collapse Colla polity (AD 1000-1450) of southern Peru
Erika Brant, University of Virginia Department of Anthropology

Abstract
The collapse of the highland state of Tiwanaku, around AD1000, was accompanied by a dramatic uprising against the ruling class. Elite ancestor effigies placed in large open plazas were iconoclastically disfigured, while the Putuni Palace, home to Tiwanaku?s ruling dynasty, was leveled. In the post-collapse period, Titicaca basin peoples abandoned the symbols of Tiwanaku?s authority. A 1000-year tradition of ritual architecture and craft goods disappeared, while ritual practice turned to the worship of ancestors placed in modest burial towers, or chullpas. Does such a transition in ritual architecture and the rejection of state-affiliated material culture signal a reinvention or, conversely, a rejection of hierarchy in the post-collapse period? Excavations conducted at the post-collapse Colla necropolis and pilgrimage center of Sillustani revealed a series of kin-focused ritual compounds as well as a previously understudied domestic sector characterized by multiple elite houses. Such findings suggest a more heterarchical, and possibly situational, role for leadership during the Late Intermediate Period (AD1000-1450). Additionally, mortuary rituals appear to have been decentralized rites that strengthened the interests of various kin-groups while simultaneously thwarting the reemergence of centralized authority in the post-collapse period.

Jan 30, 1:00pm | Special Event

Sex Pots of Ancient Peru: Are they Relevant??
Joan Gero, Associate Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology, American University Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology Speaker Series
Please note the special time: Friday, January 30, 1:00 p.m.

Feb 13

Obligation, Burden, and Sacrifice among the Classic Maya
Dr. Andrew Scherer, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology, Brown University

Abstract
Conquest era Spanish chronicles utilized human sacrifice as proof of the depravity of the Maya and other indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. Ancient sacrifice continues to serve as evidence of the "otherness" of the Maya; employed to thrill tourists or to suggest that violence is inherent to the people of Mexico and Central America. Classic period (AD 350-900) Maya human sacrifice was expressed in three general forms - offerings of the self, the defeated, and precious youths - as demonstrated in recent archaeological and bioarchaeological work in the kingdoms of Piedras Negras, Yaxchilan, and El Zotz. Comparison with the iconographic and epigraphic evidence indicates the practice is best understood within a framework of obligation and burden where pain and bodily violence were used to mediate relations between human actors, their ancestors, and supernatural beings (some of whom were quite capricious). Consideration of comparable acts of violence in other societies helps demystify Maya sacrifice.

Mar 30, 5:00pm | Monroe 130 (Special Event)

Tales of the City: Archaeology, Empire and the Muslim Conquest of North Africa
Corisande Fenwick, Department of Archaeology, University of Leicester
Please note the special day and time and place: Monday, March 30, 5:00 p.m., Monroe 130
Sponsored by the "Connective Cultures" Committee

Apr 13

TJ's Birthday Party!!

Boundaries and Networks in the 19th-Century Bras d'Eau Sugar Estate, Mauritius
Julia Haines, Department of Anthropology, UVA

Esnesv Stories: Muskogee Oral Traditions, "Trader-Diplomats," and Sacred Landscapes
Lee Bloch, Department of Anthropology, UVA

Please note the special day and time: Monday, April 13, 5:00 p.m.

Apr 24

The Micromorphology of Community Continuity and Discontinuity at an Israeli Neolithic site
Harris Greenberg, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Archaeology, Boston University

May 1

In Search of Peasant Communities in Late Byzantine Greece (13th -15th c.)
Dr. Fotini Kondyli, Assistant Professor, McIntyre Department of Art

Fall 2014

Sep 12

Predatory Commerce and Economic Disaster: A Cautionary Tale from the 17th-Century Indian Ocean Economy
Chapurukha Kusimba, Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, American University

Abstract
My presentation will model and demonstrate the negative effects of commercial deregulation on global economies using data on the Indian Ocean economy over the past 500 years. I will present a "trading system" model to show how predatory behaviors and agents are selected in a deregulatory climate. These agents work to further reduce regulation while simultaneously intensifying short-term maximization, leading to long-term collapse and disaster for small-scale economies. This change is a departure from traditional network-centric organizations common in ethnic trading groups that emphasize self-regulation and self-limiting behaviors as survival strategies. I use archival, archaeological and archaeometric data, to show that in the long run, deregulation of the macro-economy in the 17th-century Indian Ocean proved disastrous for Asia and Africa.

Oct 11 | Special Event

First-Ever University of Virginia Archaeology Fair
Campbell Hall, Ruffin Hall, at the Fralin Museum, 11:00 a.m.- 5:00 p.m.
For more information, click here

Oct 17

Black- and Red-figure Pottery from the Sanctuary of the Nymphs in Athens
Renee Gondek, Visiting Scholar, George Washington University. Adjunct Faculty, University of Virginia

Abstract
Located on the southern side of the Acropolis in Athens, the sanctuary of the Nymphe was a shrine established for the cult of a single Nymph whom some scholars believe was the personification of the Athenian bride. Finds from this sanctuary range from specialized nuptial vessels known as loutrophoroi, some of the oldest ever discovered, to perfume and oil vessels. Since the dates of these votive objects range from the seventh century BCE to the third, it is clear that the shrine had an important place in the Athenian religious sphere. Interestingly, along with its nuptial associations, the sanctuary may have had an additional chthonic aspect as well. Such an interpretation is based on a fourth century stele dedicated to Zeus Meilichios and showing the image of a snake. Ironically meaning "the gentle" or "the gracious one," Zeus Meilichios in the fifth century was Zeus in his underworld aspect.This presentation will investigate the black- and red-figure loutrophoroi discovered at this shrine. In addition to exploring the marital iconography on these vessels, we will also discuss the connection of marriage and death in Ancient Athens and examine fragments from the sanctuary that display Charon, the ferryman of the dead.

Oct 17 and 18 | Special Event

Monticello Archaeology Open House
In celebation of Virginia Archaeology Month, join the staff of Monticello's archaeology department for updates on their latest research, including walking tours of the the vanished Monticello Plantation landscape
The Woodland Pavilion at the Monticello Visitor's Center, 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
For more information, click here

Oct 31

The Language Ghost: Linguistic Heritage among the Monacan People of Central Virginia
Karenne Wood, University of Virginia Department of Anthropology and Virginia Foundation for the Humanities

Nov 7 | Special Event

The "dirty" material and symbolic work of "state" building in central Madagascar: A Powerful icon/index potentially lost to view among enticing, exotic symbols
Susan Kus, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Rhodes College
Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology Speaker Series
Please note the special time: Friday, Nov. 7, 1:00 p.m.

Abstract
The Malagasy poet, patriot and politician, Rabemananjara, wrote: "the virtue of the earth ceaselessly penetrates individuals as daily they walk the land with naked feet" (1970:56). "Earth" is and was a powerful icon/index of Malagasy identity and resistance to both indigenous and external exploitation and colonization. The term ny tany sy ny fanjakana ("the land and the rule") is the traditional designation for the "state" in Madagascar. I propose to examine the material, linguistic and conceptual attempts, in propaganda and (landscape) projects, to co-join the icon/index of "land" and the symbol of "rule" to meet the needs of one sovereign to reunite and reshape the polity of Imerina (central highlands of Madagascar), and to subsequently envision an expansionist polity. "Land" and "landscape" played not only a powerful role in the crafting of the Merina expansionist polity of the late century, but also in the physical and "visible" imposition of French colonial authority (with political 18th complicity on the part of some elite members of the earlier indigenous expansionist polity) at the end of the 19th century. "States" can beguile us with their material propaganda. The power of the indigenous concrete icon-index of a pinch or a handful of dirt, of "land", can get lost among brazen symbols of monumental proportion and bedazzling rare and exotic trappings of elite consumption. Nevertheless, "the land" intimately experienced and (be)labored with poetic and philosophical tropes in a society of primary orality, when it was "disarticulated" from "the rule" (ny fanjakana), served to incite and "ground" Malagasy resistance, for more than 60 years, to both corrupt indigenous "rule" and externally imposed colonial presence on the "the land" (ny tany). The examination of indigenous political concepts, when possible for archaeologists, helps call into question facile accession to abstract (and reified) vocabulary associated with "states". The Malagasy example discussed in this talk contributes to the argument that (1) the co-optation of local icons, indexes and symbols is essential to "state" propaganda when the "constellation of power" is still nascent, (2) however such co-optation is neither facile nor straightforward, and (3) in some cases co- opted symbols can be re-appropriated for critique and resistance at the local level.

Dec 2

A Landing Place for a New Country: BRIC Excavations at Aapravasi Ghat, UNESCO World Heritage Site, Mauritius: Heritage, Indentured Laborers, and Slaves
Dr. Diego Calaon, Marie Sklodowoska-Curie Fellow, IOF, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University and DAIS, Dept. Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics, University Ca'Foscari, Venice
Please note the special day and time: Tuesday, Dec. 2, 4:00 p.m.

Abstract

The Aapravasi Ghat World Heritage Site represents the remains of the Immigration Depot built in Port-Louis, Mauritius, in 1849. The site was chosen by the British Government for the "Great Experiment," aimed at replacing slaves with a new form of labour. It holds strong shared memories associated with almost half a million indentured laborers moving mostly from India to Mauritius to work on plantations or to be transshipped to other parts of the world.Between 2010-13 an archaeological excavation was carried out in a warehouse beside the site, where the new Beekrumsing Ramlallah Interpretation Centre on the Indenture Labour System (BRIC) has been established. In the 19th century, the warehouse was located near the hospital block and the immigrants' sheds of the depot. The site was connected with a landing place for immigrants, as shown in maps dated 1857, and with a "Patent Slip" (marine runway for hauling up ships and repairing them).

The excavation uncovered a series of harbour infrastructures dating from the mid-18th to second half of the 19th century. The area was initially equipped with a dock, the first French marina of the city, subsequently transformed into a ship slip and furnished with a motorized winch. In the 1860s the site was partially abandoned and used as a dump. The slipway was located behind the old hospital block and most likely the people who worked there disposed of their waste in the empty area. Many ceramic finds could be interpreted as medicinal containers, pharmaceutical bottles and ointment pots. Glass remains were invariably concluded to be small flasks such as chemical and druggist bottles. Among the metal finds, portions of scissors, usually one half, were recovered, and probably functioned as medical tools.

The western (French or British) / south-eastern (Indian and African) ratio among the ceramic objects uncovered is remarkable. Only 1% of the ceramic assemblage can be assigned to eastern (or Indian) production. Unsurprisingly, 99% of the artefacts refer to European productions, and to objects used by British officers and sailors. These data, in term of representation, do not fit the anticipated demographic, with thousands of immigrants and few Europeans. The reason for this skewed picture is clear: immigrants were in transit, and carried few material objects.
According to the archaeological data, it is possible to rewrite the history of the harbour area as an industrial and commercial zone. Docks, slipways, embankments, warehouses, hospital blocks, kitchens, privies, officers' areas and labourers' sheds were part of the same port and landing infrastructure. From this viewpoint the labourers were only perceived as one of the numerous western or eastern type of 'goods' traded in the harbour area.

The excavation's interpretation and narration stimulated an interesting debate around the way in which the archaeological narrative should be presented in the future interpretation centre. The centre, strongly desired and funded by the government, was designed as an "Indian" place for shared memory of the immigration period. The archaeological evidence, on the contrary, positioned the material indicators within a broader perspective, intensely connected with the previous slave trade and the colonial economy of the island. The site evidences an important opportunity to evaluate the complexity of negotiation processes around the "negative" memory of slavery and forced migration to Mauritius. The material memory of the Diaspora is obviously deeply connected to identity-making processes of the country. Through an archaeological perspective and the need to preserve memory, the artefacts are transformed into relics of a "positive" past, grounding the identity of present-day Mauritius.

Spring 2014

Feb 21

Scales of production and exchange for Afro Caribbean wares from slave villages on Nevis and St Kitts
Fraser D. Neiman, Archaeology Department, Monticello and Departments of Anthropology and Architectural History, UVA
Originally scheduled for the Feb 14, but postponed because of snowmaggedon

Abstract
My goal in this paper is to show how the statistical analysis of compositional data, derived from INAA, can advance our understanding of scales of production and exchange for Afro-Caribbean ceramics during the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries on Nevis and St Kitts. I use classical and newly developed multivariate methods to explore and evaluate the compositional distinctiveness of sherds recovered from recent STP surveys. Assemblages from two Nevis plantations are compositionally distinctive, a result compatible with low levels of specialization and limited movement of pots among villages within the island. Making further progress requires more and larger samples, data sharing, and serious engagement by historical archaeologists in quantitative data analysis.

Feb 28

Mapping Homer's Catalogue of Ships using GIS
Jenny Clay, Courtney Evans, and Ben Jasnow, Department of Classics, UVA
This talk will be held in Fayerweather Hall, Room 215

Abstract
This paper proposes original theories on Homer's use of landscape and travel routes in the Catalogue of Ships, while offering viewers a chance to preview the digital gazetteer being produced in conjunction with our project. Our research team is composed of Jenny Strauss Clay, who created the project, Courtney Evans and Ben Jasnow of the Department of Classics at the University of Virginia, as well as a number of partners from the Scholars' Lab at the University of Virginia. (For a full list of collaborators, please visit http://ships.lib.virginia.edu/ and click on "Credits.")

Apr 11

The Early 16th-Century European Artifact Assemblage from the Glass Site (Georgia) & An Exploratory Comparative Analysis of Related Regional Collections
Dennis Blanton, Department of Anthropology, James Madison University

Abstract
The Glass Site in south-central Georgia is a small, late prehistoric community that has yielded unusually robust evidence of Native-Spanish interaction during the first half of the sixteenth century. Results of investigations carried out since 2006 will be reviewed first, including the argument the Glass Site represents the location of a direct encounter between Native people and the entrada of Hernando de Soto. The balance of the presentation will summarize implications of an analysis of the site's European assemblage based on comparison with assemblages of similar age elsewhere in the Southeast, focusing on possible explanations of observed similarities and differences.

Apr 25

Recent work at Hacimusalar Hoyuk: Early Bronze Age Architecture and Society
Elizabeth Baughan, Department of Classical Studies, University of Richmond

Abstract
Bilkent University's excavations at Hacimusalar Hoyuk in southwestern Turkey have uncovered thousands of years of occupation history, from the Early Bronze Age through the Late Byzantine era. This presentation will offer a survey of the most significant results of the last five seasons, with special focus on the Early Bronze Age, when two closely superimposed building levels were both destroyed (and thus preserved) by intense fire. Fallen wall chunks and in situ architectural features shed new light on construction methods and urban design (with evidence for terracing and continuity from one phase to the next), while finds recovered from the burnt floors can help us understand the cultural affinities and social lives of the inhabitants.

Fall 2013

Nov 15

Phytoliths as Social Proxies at Songo Mnara: a microbotanical approach to reconstructing hinterland environments in southern Tanzania since AD 1300
Jack Stoetzel, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

Abstract
This presentation represents a first attempt at reconstructing the relationship between residents of a Swahili stonetown and the ecologies they inhabited. The research is set at Songo Mnara, a formerly urban community located on an island off the southern coast of Tanzania. Material evidence demonstrates that, between AD 1300 and 1600, residents of Songo Mnara built extensive permanent domestic and religious structures, engaged in the Indian Ocean commercial system, and demonstrated a cosmopolitan worldview shared between Swahili settlements across the East African Coastline (Fleisher & Wynne-Jones 2012; LaViolette 2008). Researchers at Songo Mnara situate the social, economic, religious, and domestic activities undertaken at Songo Mnara within the overarching compendium of Swahili archaeology; however, attention to material residues largely excludes a diachronic appreciation of environmental conditions from the discussion of social action. Following advances in Historical Ecology (Bal?e 2006; R. McIntosh 2005), I propose that researchers consider Songo Mnara as a community engaged in an ongoing relationship with local bio-physical conditions. The dialectic relationship presents itself at Songo Mnara in situations including the construction and maintenance of lime-laden stone structures, the creation of an export economy predicated on cotton cloth and mangrove poles, local subsistence agriculture, and consumption of woodfuel. In each instance, social decisions impact ecologies while simultaneously being influenced by the bio-physical conditions. Phytoliths represent a class of ecofact able to capture such interaction. Phytoliths from contexts adjacent to the archaeological site provide the evidence necessary to reconstruct a diachronic view of the socio-ecologic dialectic at Songo Mnara.

Dec 6

A Well Trodden Path: Taking The Next Step With Pompeian Sidewalk Data
Claire Weiss, Program in Classical Art & Archaeology, McIntire Department of Art, University of Virginia

Abstract
Claire will be presenting data from her MA research and is especially interested in discussing and exploring some new approaches to them. Snacks and sodas will be provided.

Spring 2013

Feb 7 | Special Event

Weaving as Worship: Reconstructing Ritual at the Etruscan Site of Poggio Colla (Vicchio)
Gretchen Meyers, Franklin and Marshall College
6:30 p.m. 160 Campbell Hall
Sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America, Charlottesville Society

Feb 15

Contextualizing the Domestic Sphere in Roman Africa
Karim Mata, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago

Feb 19 | Special Event

"The landscape cannot be said to be really perfect": A Comparative Investigation of Plantation Spatial Organization on Two British Colonial Sugar Estates
Lynsey Bates, Department of Anthropology University of Pennsylvania and DAACS, Department of Archaeology, Monticello
12:00 noon. Berkeley Room, Jefferson Library, 1048 Thomas Jefferson Parkway (on the right, just past Monticello - directions are here)

Feb 27 | Special Event

The Terrace Houses at Ephesos
Dr. Hilke Thur, Institut fur Kulturgeschichte der Antike, Vienna
5:30 p.m. 153 Campbell Hall
Sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America, Charlottesville Society, the American Friends of Turkey and the McIntire Department of Art

Mar 5

A Dragon Kiln in the Americas: 19th-Century Innovations in Edgefield, South Carolina
Christopher C. Fennell, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois

Abstract
The first innovation and development of alkaline-glazed stoneware pottery in America occurred in Edgefield, South Carolina, in the early 1800s. These potteries employed enslaved and free African Americans, and stoneware forms also show evidence of likely African cultural influence on stylistic designs. The first Edgefield kiln, built circa 1815, also appears to have been based on the up-hill, dragon kiln design utilized successfully for centuries in southeast China. Edgefield thus represents "a crossroads of clay" where the influences of Asia, Africa, and Europe were combined. This presentation reviews kiln designs over time in Asia and Edgefield, and methods for examining the cultural landscape of pottery production sites and residential districts of free and enslaved laborers in these South Carolina pottery communities. Approaches including LiDAR and remote sensing offer promising strategies for effective reconnaissance and analysis. More information on the project is available at http://www.histarch.uiuc.edu/Edgefield/.

Mar 22

Human Ecodynamics: Long-Term Trends of Vulnerability and Resilience in Socio-Ecosystems of French Polynesia
Jennifer Kahn, Department of Anthropology, College of William & Mary
N.B.: 4:30 p.m., Second Floor Conference Room, Brooks Hall

Abstract
In this talk I will examine two islands in Eastern Polynesia and cultural responses to ecosystem change which led to radically transformed landscapes and emergent sociopolitical formations (known as chiefdoms). Using a comparative approach, I will discuss recent archaeological and paleo-ecological research on socio-ecosystems of Mo'orea, and Maupiti. These islands exhibit critical contrasts in island geology and age, geomorphology, size, climate and marine resources and vary significantly in their degree of socio-political hierarchy and integration. Applying the concept of islands as model systems, my project seeks to understand both the vulnerability of island ecosystems and their resilience to long-term human interactions with the landscape. I will present new archaeological and paleoecological data to outline the available resources at Polynesian settlement, and how these were transformed through time due to Polynesian subsistence activities and socio-political systems. The long-term goal is to understand how dynamic interactions between island populations and island environments allowed some Polynesian cultures to develop substantial resilience, and led others into states of high instability and vulnerability

Apr 8 | Special Event

Recutting Portraits of Roman Emperors: Problems in Interpretation and the Use of New Technology in Finding Possible Solutions
Professor John Pollini, University of Southern California
5:30 p.m. 160 Campbell Hall
Sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America, Charlottesville Society

Apr 16

Becoming Farmers and Herders: The First Ancient DNA Evidence for the Origins of Southern Africa's Domestic Cattle
K. Ann Horsburgh, Research Fellow, Department of Anatomy, University of Otago, New Zealand

Apr 26

​Heating Roman Baths at Ostia
Ismini Miliaresis, Department of Art History, Program in Classical Art and Archaeology, University of Virginia

Fall 2012

Sep 21

Dacians and Romans: Areas of Operation and Influence
Dan Weiss, Department of Art History, Program in Classical Art and Archaeology, University of Virginia

Abstract
In AD 106, immediately following the Roman success in the Dacian Wars, several strongholds were established in the new province which is roughly the area of modern Transylvania. The research reported here extends the study of Roman Dacia beyond its borders. I examine the systems of interconnection in a region that straddles the Roman border in an effort to determine the nature and range of communication and the patterns thereof as well as determining the level of porosity of the limes in northwestern Dacia. In the absence of written accounts and epigraphy, a topographical examination, combined with the material record, is the best way to determine the nature of provincial response to the Roman occupation. The material record tells us what was exchanged between the two entities, but the topographical model provides a more refined idea concerning the origins and quantities of goods and how the Romans and the provincials interacted on a quotidian, rather than general, level.

Oct 5

Towards a Historical Archaeology of Reformation and Reform in the South Pacific
James L. Flexner, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Washington and Lee University

Abstract
The Protestant Reformation had wide-reaching effects, not only in religious life, but across all aspects of Western cultural experience. As Weber argued over a century ago, these events would be instrumental in shaping the "spirit of capitalism", and arguably these same ideas would shape the various reform movements of the 19th century, which were often an integral part of Protestant charitable works. Historical archaeology has a unique role to play in exploring these dynamics, by examining the material detritus left over by modern projects of reform. While still in its early stages, recent archaeological research on the earliest Presbyterian missions to the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) hints at the potential of such an approach, by examining the ways that both missionary and indigenous lives were transformed in the Pacific Islands context. The primacy of material and spatial relationships in the interactions of missionaries and Melanesians is expressed in the archaeological record of mission sites. Comparing this material with other places of reform in Hawaii and New Zealand, a historical archaeology of reform derived from Reformation ideologies might be used beneficially to understand the underlying motivations of colonial pursuits, the material expression of these motivations, and the ways that such projects were experienced on a local scale.

Nov 2

Producer Models in Swift Creek Paddle Art
Karen Y. Smith, Curator of Archaeological Collections, Monticello, and Vernon J. Knight, Department of Anthropology, University of Alabama

Abstract
The Swift Creek tradition, which flourished in the first millenium A.D. across a broad area centered on what is today Georgia, is famous for its intricately decorated paddle-stamped ceramics. This paper reconstructs the procedural sequences ("producer models") behind early Swift Creek designs. It highlights the importance of guide points, guidelines, and reduplication to the final product, as well as the hierarchal nature of the production sequence. The producer models offer an avenue for researchers to begin to make objective inferences about the relationships among designs separated in time and space. We begin to examine these relationships by comparing procedural similarities in some early, middle, and late Swift Creek designs and by discovering creative departures within certain design families are marked by a strong spatial component.
A Swift Creek Complcated Stamped bowl from the Leake Site, Cartersville, Georgia.

Nov 30

​Consuming Bacon and Theorizing Thrift: A Reading of Early 19th-Century Rural Virginians' Indifference to Conspicuous Display
Alison Bell, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Washington and Lee University

Abstract
Models of costly signaling fall short in explicating practices salient during the late 18th and early 19th-century among Virginia's "middling," including tenant farmers, overseers, farm managers and their families. Although one front of my research has illustrated this point on a substantive level, only recently have compelling theoretical underpinnings for middling Virginians' lack of conspicuous consumption come into view. This presentation draws on the work of several anthropologists and particularly Daniel Miller's theorizing of thrift as sacrifice: a process - involving not the delay but the refutation of consumption - through which agents imagined and constituted "the house," ancestral line, or heirs as transcendent entities. This relationship to materiality casts doubt on assumptions that, even in a time and place as proximate as turn-of-the-19th-century Virginia, the socio-economically middling conceptualized persons as individuals striving to exhibit hidden qualities through the consumption of costly objects. To understand local constructions of personhood, this paper summarizes documentary research on hundreds of middling Virginians and then follows the archaeological/archival lead of Monticello farm manager Edmund Bacon (c. 1802-1866) for finer-grained insight, ultimately suggesting that relationships among things and people - nexuses of labor, kin, livestock, and land - rather than ambitious individualism were constitutive of "the person."

Spring 2012

Feb 17

Art, Archaeology, and Advanced Technology: the Case of the Alexander Mosaic in Pompeii
John Dobbins and Ethan Gruber, Department of Art History, University of Virginia

Mar 3

Who Sweeps Here? Site Maintenance and Cultural Tradition in Historic Contexts
Sara Bon-Harper, Archaeology Department, Monticello

Mar 15 | Special Event

Argilos: A Geeek Colony in Tracian Territory
Jacques Y. Perreault, Department of Classical Studies, University of Montreal
Sponsored by The Archaeological Institute of America's Charlottesville Society
Note time and place: 5:30 p.m., Campbell Hall, Room 160

Mar 17 | Special Event

The Jeffersons at Shadwell
Susan Kern, Department of History, College of William & Mary
Note the time and place: 5:00 p.m. at the Thomas Jefferson Visitor Center, Monticello, Route 53, Charlottesville VA
For more information click here

Mar 24 | Special Event

Comparative Approaches to Interpreting Archaeological Data from the Cabrits Garrison, Dominica
Zach Beier, Department of Anthropology, Syracuse University and DAACS Fellow, International Center for Jefferson Studies
Note the time and place: 12:00 pm in the Berkeley Room of the Jefferson Library, Kenwood, Route 53, Charlottesville, VA

Abstract
Historical archaeologies of the African Diaspora in Caribbean colonial history have focused predominately on the economic, social and cultural aspects of the plantation system, while the military sites integral to the defense of the Caribbean plantocracy have received far less attention. This paper explores how the everyday lives of non-Europeans and Europeans intersected at the Cabrits Garrison on the island of Dominica in the eastern Caribbean. Using datasets collected from eighteenth and nineteenth century residential quarters occupied by the British military including enslaved laborers and soldiers of African descent I demonstrate how interactions within military fortifications were critical in the development of new forms of colonial identities during a period of continuous military conflict and economic volatility across the Atlantic World. Intra-site comparisons and analytical approaches to reconstructing occupational histories are described along with inter-site comparisons made possible through cooperation with the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery.

Mar 24

Predynastic Egyptian Houses and Households in Relation to Urbanism
Beth Hart, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

Apr 7

How can INAA, STPs, and post-Walrasian Economics Help Us Understand Historical Dynamics of Market Participation by Slaves on Nevis?
Fraser Neiman, Archaeology Department, Monticello

Apr 14

Multiscalar Archaeology and Institutional Enclaves in a Hawaiian Leprosy Village
James L. Flexner, Washington and Lee University

Abstract
The question of scale is an important aspect of spatial analysis in archaeology. In this talk, I will explore some of the ramifications of scale for understanding social dynamics in Hawaii's earliest experiment with a total institution. In 1866, the Hawaiian Kingdom passed An Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy. Included in the act was a provision for the establishment of a quarantine settlement for people diagnosed with the disease on Kalaupapa peninsula, Moloka?i. In the archaeology of the 19th century leprosarium, different scales of analysis represent aspects of the place that appear more institutional while others reflect patterns more typical of post-contact village life in the islands. I interpret this not as a simple methodological issue, but as a reflection of the tensions between planning and physical reality in modern institutional spaces, as well as the incomplete, conflicted nature of long-term colonial encounters.

Apr 21

​Analyze This: Ceramic Production in Late Bronze Age Thebes, Greece
Anastasia Dakouri-Hild, Department of Art History, University of Virginia

Spring 2010

Mar 22

The earliest stages in Rapa Nui's (Easter Island) Polynesian Settlement: Hanga 'Anakena re-interpreted using a geo-archaeological, chronological and landscape approach
Dr. Simon Bickler, Clough and Associates Ltd., and Instructor, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

Abstract
This seminar describes one aspect of work in progress within the late Roger Green's research programme in the construction of scenarios for the early developments in Polynesian religious structures within Eastern Polynesian. The focus in this seminar is Rapa Nui or Easter Island. In our view what is missing for Rapa Nui is documentation bearing on the earlier colonisation portion of its cultural historical sequence. To capture and date this interval requires the application of Bayesian methods in the interpretation of multiple sets of radiocarbon determinations documenting the colonisation process for all of southeastern Polynesia. That starts with the Mangareva/Pitcairn/Henderson two-way zone of intense interaction that began during an interval before cal. AD 1000. In our model an initial landfall is deemed to have occurred sometime before cal. AD 1100, rather than during the century after AD 1200 along the lines proposed in the model by Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo in several recent publications beginning in 2006. The chronological refinements to interpreting a database of around 100 14C determinations having a conventional radiocarbon age (CRA) of 500 years or more. The radiocarbon dates are combined with a re-evaluation of the stratigraphy of excavations in Anakena to create a coherent framework for continual change in the landscape of the island from its initial occupation through to the 13th to 14th century AD. In this period the erection of the first ahu platforms associated with anthropomorphic statues also start to document developments within the island's religious structures. Thus various earlier and simpler forms among ahu platforms first occur along most coastal zones on the island between cal. AD 1280-1415.

For Hunt and Lipo's piece in Science click here.

Apr 12

Artifacts versus Ecofacts: Redefining Material Culture in the Ancient Mediterranean
Carrie Murray, Visiting Research Scholar, Department of Art History, University of Virginia.

Apr 22

Evolution or Devolution?: Searching for Chiefs in the Archaeological "Dark Ages" of Polynesian Prehistory
Erika Brant and Rebecca Schumann, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia
Note: Thursday at 2:00 p.m.

Abstract
Polynesia has always had chiefs. At least this has long been the consensus amongst scholars of Polynesian prehistory and one reason why anthropologists and archaeologists, particularly those working under neo-evolutionary paradigms, often turn to the literature on Polynesian societies to demonstrate what exactly is meant by the term "chiefdom." Yet, the archaeological record is more equivocal regarding the role of chiefs in Polynesia's prehistory. The spread of finely decorated Lapita pottery during the initial settling of the region indicates chiefly individuals may have arrived with colonizing populations. However, Lapita pottery disappears at around 700 B.C. and it is not until approximately A.D. 1000, with the construction of monumental stone complexes and intensification of agricultural production, that there is once again compelling evidence for the existence of a chiefly class. Material correlates of chiefly power are absent from roughly 1700 years of Polynesian's chronology - a period which includes the Ancestral Polynesian Period and the archaeological "Dark Ages." Such a dearth of evidence must at least partially stem from the fact that archaeological research has tended to focus on periods characterized by monumental architecture and for which ethnographic data is readily available. Being as such, our current understanding of Polynesian prehistory has privileged, and been uncritically shaped by, the last 500 years of the region's prehistory. Given uncertainty surrounding the Polynesian developmental trajectory, this paper also questions the degree to which Polynesian societies exemplify neo-evolutionary models.

Apr 29

​The Agricultural Transition in the Southwest: A Case of Forager Adoption and Continuity or Farmer Migration?
Phil R. Geib, Instructor, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia
Note: Thursday at 4:00 p.m.

Fall 2009

Sep 7

Organizational Meeting

Nov 16

​Sliding Scales and Memory Trails: Explorations of Continuity, Change, and Collaboration in Native New England
Steve Silliman, Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Boston
4:00 p.m., Cabell 138

Spring 2009

Jan 26

Organizational Meeting

Feb 9

Starved Pythons and Sated Ancestors: Archaeological Perspectives on the Rise and Collapse of the Hueda Kingdom, 1650-1727 AD
Neil Norman, Department of Anthropology, College of William & Mary

Mar 9

Black-Figure On the Black Sea: Athenian Pottery from Berezan (Ukraine)
Tyler Jo Smith, McIntire Department of Art, University of Virginia

Mar 16

Finding their Place in the Swahili World: Archaeology around Mikindani, Tanzania
Matt Pawlowicz, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

Mar 23

​Cow Bones, Quahogs, and Colonialism: Food Choice as a Venue for Collaborative Archaeological Research
Mike Fedore, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

AND...

Anxiety in Town and Country: Struggles for Power and the Transformation of Systems of Food Production in Third Millennium B.C. Upper Mesopotamia
Phil Trella, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

Fall 2008

Sep 2

Organizational Meeting

Sep 16

Technologies of Power: Ritual Economy and Ceramic Production in the Terminal Preclassic Period Holmul Region, Guatemala
Michael G. Callaghan, Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University

Sep 30

Spatial Structure and Community at Andean Hillforts
Liz Arkush, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

Oct 3 | Special Event

Modeling Bronze Age Political Economies
Tim Earle, Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University
Location: Third Floor (Kaleidoscope), Newcomb Hall
Time: 1:00 p.m
Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology's Speaker Series

Oct 14

Fall Break

Oct 21

Reconstructing the population history of San Marcos Pueblo, New Mexico, from surface collections
Fraser Neiman, Department of Archaeology, Monticello
Based on a collaboration with Ann Ramenofsky, University of New Mexico

Nov 11

The Economic Organization and Cultural Cohesion of Fugitive Slave Communities in 19th-Century Kenya
Lydia Wilson, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia
Click here for an abstract

Nov 18

Animistic Ecology and Emergent Complexity in the Bolivian Andes
John Janusek, Dumbarton Oaks
Location: Third Floor (Kaleidoscope), Newcomb Hall
Time: 4:00 p.m.

Dec 2

​Jades as Inalienable Possessions in Ancient Mesoamerica
Brigitte Kovacevich, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

Spring 2008

Jan 24

Organizational Meeting

Feb 2 | Special Event

A Symposium Celebrating the Repatriation to Italy of Acrolithic Sculptures from Morgantina
Organized by Mac Bell, Professor, Department of Art, UVA
Auditorium of the Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia
The program is here

Feb 7

Feasting Archaeologists: A Roundtable

Feb 21

Headless Ancestors and Wild Barley: Thinking about the Forager-Farmer Transition and Neolithic "Inequality" from the Ground Up
Ian Kuijt, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Notre Dame
Note: 158 Campbell, 4:30 p.m.

Background reading:

• The Regeneration of Life: Neolithic Structures of Symbolic Remembering and Forgetting
• The Cultural Landscape of the Irish Coast (CLIC): Report on the 2007 Season

Mar 6

Spring Vacation

Mar 20

Architectural Counterpoint: Gentry Houses, Violence, and the Evolution of Race in the Chesapeake and Jamaica
Fraser Neiman, Monticello
Based on a collaboration with Louis Nelson (UVA), Jillian Galle (DAACS), and Edward Chappell (CWF)

Apr 3

Post-SAA Passa-Passa
Catch up on posters and talks by fellow Brown-Baggers you might have missed!

Apr 17

​More Post-SAA Passa-Passa
Catch up on posters and talks by fellow Brown-Baggers you might have missed!

Fall 2007

Sep 6

Organizational Meeting

Sep 20

Current literature discussion. Bring a discussion question!
"Climate, history and human action" by Roderick J. McIntosh, Joseph A. Tainter and Susan Keech McIntosh. In The way the wind blows: climate, history and human action, edited by Roderick J. McIntosh, Joseph A. Tainter and Susan Keech McIntosh, pp.1-44. Columbia University Press, New York (2000). Click here to download the article.

Sep 28 | Special Event

Ancient America's Big Bang and the Archaeology of Citationality and Conjuncture
Tim Pauketat, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department of Anthropology Colloquium Series
Friday,1-2:45 p.m., Brooks Hall Library

Abstract
Tim Pauketat has written on the relationships between agency, materiality,identity, and power in ancient North America, particularly the pre-Columbian developments in the upper Midwest down through the Mid-South and Southeast. He has advocated an archaeology that emphasizes studying how the past was constructed, practiced, and commemorated. This lecture explores a dramatic historical rupture, Cahokia?s Big Bang, which altered for all practical purposes the histories of Native Americans across half the continent more than nine centuries ago. The archaeological story hinges on a supernova, trans-regional peace-making, migrations, and human sacrifice.

Nov 8

Expanding Ethnoarchaeology: Historical Evidence and Model-Building in the Study of Technological Change
Michael Schiffer, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona

Nov 29

​TBA
Dell Upton, Shea Professor, Department of Architectural History, University of Virginia

Spring 2007

Jan 25

Organizational Meeting

Feb 8 

Current literature discussion. Bring a discussion question!
Matthew H. Johnson, 2006. "On the nature of theoretical archaeology and archaeological theory." Archaeological Dialogues, 13(2):117-132. Click here to download the article.

Feb 9 | Special Event

Exploring an Early Greek City: Five Seasons of Excavation at Azoria in Eastern Crete
Professor Margaret Mook, Iowa State University
5:00 P.M., Campbell 160
Sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America

Feb 22

Influence of German Missionary Trade on Labrador Inuit: Analysis of Historical and Archaeological Records
Beatrix Arendt, Department of Anthropology, UVA

Mar 22

A Plaza-ble Conjecture: the Origins of Complex Group Identities in the Salinas Pueblo District, New Mexico
Matthew Chamberlin, Deptartment of Sociology/Anthropology and International Beliefs and Values Institute, James Madison University, and Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University

Apr 5

"Now the God of the Spaniards is Dead': The Archaeology of Pueblo Revolution and Revitalization in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico
Matthew J. Liebmann, Department of Anthropology, College of William & Mary
222 Cabell Hall

Apr 19

Negotiating with Nicotiana: An Investigation of the Role of Tobacco Smoking and Pipes in Native and European Relations in the Middle Atlantic
Beth Bollwerk, Department of Anthropology, UVA

Fall 2006

Aug 31

Organizational Meeting: summer research updates and speakers for the Fall

Sep 12 | Special Event

Recent Archaeological Fieldwork in Thebes, Greece
Anastasia Dakouri-Hild, Visiting Assistant Professor in Prehistoric Art and Archaeology, McIntire Department of Art, University of Virginia, Assistant Director for Research, IATH
5:30 pm, 160 Campbell Hall
Sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America

Sep 14

Current literature discussion. Bring a discussion question!
"Genes versus agents. A discussion of the widening theoretical gap in archaeology" by Kristian Kristiansen, with comments by Ulrich Viet, John Robb, Stephen Shennan, and rejoinder by Kristiansen. Archaeological Dialogues Volume 11(2): 77-132, 2004. Click here to download the article.

Sep 28

Enter the Countryside: Regional Approaches to Palace Settlement Systems in Coastal Benin West African 1600-1750AD
Neil Norman, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

Oct 12

Current literature discussion. Bring a discussion question!

"Public Archaeology and Indigenous Communities," by Mike Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina, in Nick Merriman (ed). Public Archaeology. London: Routledge, 2004, pp. 224-39. Click here to download the article.

"Reconstruction as Ideology: The Open-Air Museum at Oerlinghausen, Germany," by Martin Schmidt. In Peter Stone G. and Philippe G. Planel (eds). The Constructed Past: Experimental Archaeology, Education and the Public. London: Routledge, 1999, pp.146-56. Click here to download the article.

Oct 13 | Special Event

Archives and Ancestors: Reinterpreting Death and Demography in Chaco Canyon
Stephen Plog and Carrie Heitman, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia
1:00-1:45 p.m. Brooks Hall Library
Sponsored by Anthropology Department Friday Speakers Series

Oct 17 | Special Event

The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) Expands into the Caribbean
Jillian Galle, DAACS Project Manager, Monticello Department of Archaeology
Tea at 3:30, talk at 4:00, Berkeley Room, Jefferson Library, Kenwood
Sponsored by the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, Monticello
For directions click here

Oct 20 | Special Event

Cana of the Galilee: from Jewish Village to Christian Pilgrimage Site
Professor Douglas R. Edwards, University of Puget Sound
5:00 pm, 160 Campbell Hall
Sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America.

Oct 20-21 | Special Event

Monticello Archaeology Lab Open House
Walking tours of the the Monticello Plantation Archaeological Survey
Location: Archaeology Lab, Monticello
For more information, click here

Oct 26

Creolization and Ethnogenic Bricolage in African Diasporas
Chris Fennell, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois

Nov 9

State-Sanctioned Violence in the Prehispanic Andes
Tiffiny Tung, Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University
Location: Cabell 311
Click here for the abstract

Nov 30

​The Seal Impressions from Gilund: Evidence of Administration and Contact in Chalcolithic Western India
Marta Ameri, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and Research Associate, Metropolitan Museum of Art University
Click here for the abstract

Spring 2006

Jan 26

A Multiscalar Approach to Understanding Ceramic Assemblage Variation among Woodland-Period sites on the Lower Chattahoochee and Apalachicola Rivers
Karen Smith, Archaeology Department, Monticello and Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia

Feb 9

Status, Gender and Memory in Third Millennium Syria: A "Royal" Cemetery a Tell Umm el-Marra
Glenn Schwartz, Whiting Professor of Archaeology, Department of Near Eastern Studies, The Johns Hopkins University

Feb 24 | Special Event

From the Bottom Up: Socio-politico Organization at an Ancient Maya Urban Center
Scott Hutson, fellow in Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections
1 p.m., Brooks Hall Library

Mar 1 | Special Event

Hilltop Forts and Regional Politics in the Late Prehispanic Titicaca Basin, Peru
Elizabeth Arkush, Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Wayne State University
12:15 p.m., Brooks Hall Library

Mar 16

Powhatan's Werowocomoco: Constructing Polity, Place, and Personhood in the Chesapeake, A.D. 1200 - 1609
Martin Gallivan, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, College of William & Mary

Mar 30

Remains of a Day: Molluscs, Palaeodiet and Elite Consumption in Late Bronze Age Thebes
Anastasia Dakouri-Hild, Department of Art, University of Virginia
Brooks Hall Library -- on the third floor

Apr 6

Houses and House Estates in Early Hohokam Society
Douglas B. Craig, Principal Investigator, Northland Research
Brooks Hall Library -- on the third floor

Fall 2005

Sep 1

Organizational Meeting: summer research updates and speakers for the Fall

Sep 14 | Special Event

The Hellenistic City at Morgantina, 1955-2005
Malcolm Bell, III Professor of Art History, University of Virginia
Department of Art, McIntire Lecture Series
6:00 p.m., 153 Campbell Hall

Sep 15

Assyrian Urbanism: an ethnoarchaeological approach
Lynn Rainville, Sweetbriar College

Sep 29

Collapse as Social Process: Case Studies from AD 1150 Chaco Canyon, N.M., and Third Millennium B.C. Southeast Anatolia
Phil Trella, Department of Anthropology, UVA

Oct 11 | Special Event

Cult, Continuity, and Cultural Identity at the Etruscan Settlement of Poggio Colla (Florence)
Professor Gregory Warden, Southern Methodist University
Sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America
5:30 p.m., 160 Campbell Hall

Oct 13

Abnormal as the Norm: Variability in the Treatment of Human Remains in the pre-Columbian Southwest
Kerriann Marden, Smithsonian Institution

Oct 27

Doing Prehistory with Language: Semantic Change and Borrowing in the Proto-Yucatecan (Mayan) Kinship Lexicon
Eve Danzinger, Department of Anthropology, UVA

Nov 10 | Special Event

The First City at Morgantina, 1955-2005
Carla Antonaccio Professor of Classical Studies, Duke University, Co-Director of the Excavations at Morgantina
Department of Art, McIntire Lecture Series
6:00 p.m., 160 Campbell Hall

Nov 15 | Special Event

Colonial Afro-Caribbean Vernacular Architecture
Grant Gilmore, Island Archaeologist and Director of the St. Eustatius Center for Archaeological Research
Sponsored by the Thomas Jefferson Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians
5:00 p.m., 158 Campbell Hall

Nov 16 | Special Event

The Search for the Battle of Actium
Professor William M. Murray, University of South Florida
Sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America
5:30 p.m., 160 Campbell Hall 

Spring 2005

Jan 27

Fallen through the cracks: Reconsidering Houses in Chacoan Prehistory, Chaco Canyon, NM, AD 850-1200
Carrie Heitman, Department of Anthropology, Universityof Virginia

Feb 10 | Special Event

Gating Union: The Politics of Making a Historically Black Community
Mieka Brand Woodson Predoctoral Fellow, and Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia
NOTE: 4:00 p.m., Berkeley Room, Jefferson Library, Kenwood
Sponsored by the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, Monticello
For directions click here

Feb 15 | Special Event

Islamizing the Berbers: Excavations at Volubilis and the First Centuries of Arab Conquest of North Africa
ProfElizabeth Fentress Institute of Archaeology University of London
NOTE: 5:30 p.m., Campbell Hall
Sponsored by the Charlottesville Chapter of the American Institute for Archaeology

Feb 17

Toilet, Temple and Topography: Social Meaning in Pompeii's Built Environment
Kevin Cole, Department of Art History, University of Virginia

Mar 3

Kakasbos 'Protector of Frontiers': Rock-cut Votive Reliefs from Southwest Anatolia
Tyler Jo Smith, Department of Art History, University of Virginia

Mar 17 | Special Event

Investigating Chesapeake slavery at Fairfield Plantation, Gloucester County, Virginia
Dave Brown, Department of History, College of William & Mary
NOTE: 4:00 p.m., Berkeley Room, Jefferson Library, Kenwood
A DAACS fellowship talk, sponsored by the Digital Archaeological Archive of Chesapeake Slavery and the Robert H. SmithInternational Center for Jefferson Studies, Monticello
For directions click here

Mar 24

"And they took away the stones from Ramah": Lithic Raw Material Sourcing and Eastern Arctic Archaeology
Stephen Loring, Arctic Studies Program, Smithsonian Institution

Apr 14

SAA Presentation Potluck: A sample of the cool stuff you missed.

• Of Parsimony and Patrimony in the Eastern United States . Jeff Hantman.
• Road Rooms and Ritual Features of the Bluff Great House in Regional Context. Carrie Heitman and Phil Geib.
• The Bluff Great House Mounds: Intensional Creations or Simply Disposal Areas?Emily Cubbon, Phil Geib, and Carrie Heitman.
• Site Characterization: the Definition of Archaeological Sites using Survey and Excavation Data. Sara Bon-Harper and Derek Wheeler. 

April 28

Ancestors and Origins: Configuring Social Organization Through the Built Environment in Northern Mexico
Abby Holeman, Department of Anthropology, UVA

Fall 2004

Sep 9

Organizational Meeting: summer research updates and speakers for the Fall.

Sep 14 | Special Event

Jamestown Rediscovered: The Buried Truth about America's Birthplace
William Kelso, Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities
Sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
Tuesday, 4:00-5:00, VFH, Basement Conference Room
For directions click here

Sep 23

Domestic Assemblages from Morgantina: Some Preliminary Observations
Justin Walsh, Department of Art History, UVA
NOTE: Start time for Justin's talk is 6:00 p.m

Oct 1 | Special Event

Archaeology of New Philadelphia: Multivalent Histories of a Diverse Frontier Town
Chris Fennell, University of Illnois
UVA Department of Anthropology Friday Speaker Series, co-sponored by the Interdisciplinary Program in Archaeology
Friday, 1:00-3:00, Brooks Hall Library

Oct 7

Celts - Ancient, Modern, Postmodern: Archaeology and the Politics of Identity
Micheal Dietler, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
Berkeley Room, Jefferson Library, International Center for Jefferson Studies, Monticello
For directions click here

Oct 8 | Special Event

The Archaeology of Colonization and the Colonization of Archaeology: Theoretical Challenges from an Ancient Mediterranean Colonial Encounter
Micheal Dietler, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
UVA Department of Anthropology Friday Speaker Series
Friday, 1:00-3:00, Brooks Hall Library

Oct 21 | Special Event

Under the Roots of the Oak Tree: Archaeology in Britain's National Trust
Mark Newman, Head Archaeologist in the Northern Territory of the National Trust of Britain
4:00pm, Jefferson Library,International Center for Jefferson Studies, Monticello
For directions click here

Nov 4

Archaeology and the National Park Service Terry Childs, National Park Service.

Nov 18

Seriation and Costly Signals: the Case of Pipestem Bore Diameters from 17th-century Jamestown
Fraser Neiman, Monticello

Dec 2

Stable isotopes and determining dietary preferences in ancient humans
Steve Macko, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia

Spring 2004

Jan 22

Kinship and the Dynamics of the House: Rediscovering Dualism in the Pueblo Past
Carrie Heitman and Steve Plog, Department of Anthropology, UVA
Click on the title to download a copy of Carrie's and Steve's paper
Special added attraction ... An Update on the Chaco Digital Initiative, Steve Plog

Feb 5

The Future of Archaeology in Anthropology
Discussion led by Adria LaViolette, Department of Anthropology, UVA

Feb 19

Reading the Walls of Pompeii: the Interaction of Public and Private Space on the South Side of the Forum
Kevin Cole, Department of Art History, UVA

Mar 4

Side-by-Side and Back-to-Front: Exploring Intra-Regional Latitudinal and Longitudinal Comparability in Survey Data. Three Case Studies from Metaponto, Southern Italy
Steve Thompson
Click on the title to download a copy of Steve's paper

March 19

Unpretentious goods: ceramic production and consumption at the interface of large and small scales of analysis. An ethnoarchaeological study from Ghana.
Maria das Dores Cruz, Department of Anthropology, William & Mary
Friday, 4:30 p.m.
Click here for an abstract

Apr 8

After the Chaco Collapse: Exploring the Post-Chaco Era in Southeastern Utah
Cathy Cameron, Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado
Thursday, 12:00 Noon
Archaeology Lab, Brooks Hall

New Persepctives on Chesapeake Pipes
Anna Agbe-Davies. Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania and Department of Archaeological Research, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Thursday, 5:00 p.m. Archaeology Lab, Brooks Hall

Apr 22

Galatian Gordion: A Celtic Town in Central Anatolia
Mary Voigt, Department of Anthropology, College of William & Mary
Wednesday, 5:00 p.m.
Click here for an abstract

Fall 2003

Sep 4

Fall Organizational Meeting: Summer research updates, speakers for the Fall
Thursday, 5:00 p.m.

Sep 18

The Chaco Digital Initiative
Steve Plog, Department of Anthropology, UVA
Thursday, 5:00 p.m. NOTE: Cancelled because of Isabel and rescheduled for second semester

Oct 9

Memory Capture in American Cemeteries
David Small, Lehigh University
Thursday, 5:00 p.m.

Oct 16

Early Urbanism in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, Mexico
Chris Glew, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan
Thursday, 5:00 p.m.

Oct 17-18 | Special Event

Annual Archaeology Month Open House at the Monticello Archaeology Lab

• walking tours of the Plantation Archaeological Survey.
• demonstrations of the new DAACS Web site.
• overviews of current research projects.

Department of Archaeology, Monticello
Friday, 10:00-4:00, Saturday 10:00-4:00

Oct 23 | Special Event

Writing Collaborative History: UVA and the Monacan Indian Nation
Chief Kenneth Branham, Karenne Wood, Daniel Red Elk Gear and George Whitewolf, Monacan Indian Nation; and Professor Jeff Hantman, Department of Anthropology, UVA
Thursday, 4:00-6:00 p.m. Dome Room, The Rotunda
For reservations, visit http://www.virginia.edu/outreachvirginia

Oct 30

Historical and Archaeological Investigations of a Confederate Encampment and a Freedman's Home at James Madison's Montpelier
Matt Reeves, Archaeology Department, Montpelier
Thursday, 5:00 p.m.

Nov 12

Recent Research at the Foster Family - Venable Lane Site
Ben Ford, Rivanna Archaeology
Wednesday, 5:00 p.m.

Nov 27

Thanksgiving

Dec 4

Underwater Excavations at Alexandria, Egypt
Jean Yves Empereur, Director of Research, CNRS and the Director of the French Center for Alexandrian Studies in Alexandria, Egypt
Dr. Empereur's work was recently featured on PBS's Nova
Thursday, 5:00 p.m. 

Spring 2003

Jan 23

A Wooden Nickel: Idealized Depictions of Monticello's West Front
Sara Bon-Harper, Department of Archaeology, Monticello
Thursday, 4:30 p.m.

Feb 6

Cultural Contact, Integration, and Material Style: Arslantepe and Kazane, Upper Mesopotamia
Sevil Baltali, Department of Anthrpology, UVA
Thursday, 5:00 p.m.

Feb 20

"A Wild and Romantic Country": Human Interactions and Perceptions of the Forests at Montpelier
Dan Druckenbrod, Department of Environmental Sciences, UVA
Thursday, 4:30 p.m.

Feb 21 | Special Event

Corporate Aspects of Personhood and Embodiment among the Classic Maya
Susan Gillespie, Department of Anthropology University of Florida
Friday, 1:00 p.m.
Anthropology Library, Third Floor, Brooks Hall
Department of Anthropology Colloquium Series

Mar 20

The Diversity of Countries: Anglican churches in Virginia, South Carolina, and Jamaica
Louis Nelson, Department of Architectural History, UVA
Thursday, 4:30p.m
Click here to download a draft of Louis's paper
Louis will offer a brief illustrated synopsis of his paper, but the bulk of this session will be devoted to discussion of the written version

Mar 27

Still making history in Banda
Ann Stahl, Department of Anthropology, SUNY, Binghampton
Thursday, 5:00 p.m.

Mar 28 | Special Event

Altered States: Political economic dislocation and its effects in the Central Volta Basin, AD1500-1750
Ann Stahl, Department of Anthropology, SUNY, Binghampton
Friday, 1:00p.m. Anthropology Library, Third Floor, Brooks Hall

Apr 3

Ceramics and Cosmology: Exploring Color Symbolism in Prehispanic Pueblo Pottery
Steve Plog, Department of Anthropology, UVA
Thursday, 4:30 p.m.

Apr 17

From Pig Bones to Palaces: Investigating Urbanism in Upper Mesopotamia
Pati Wattenmaker, Department of Anthropology, UVA
Thursday, 5:15 p.m.

May 1

Architecture and Empire: An Inca Imperial Estate and the Conquest of the Ayamarka Homeland
Stella Nair, Samuel Cress Curatorial Fellow, National Gallery of Art
Thursday, 4:30 p.m.

Fall 2002

Aug 29

Organizational Meeting
Our first session features brief (5-minute) updates from all on current research projects. We'll also draft a roster of speakers for the Fall Semester. Jeff Hantman has volunteered to supply the Brown Bag contents.

Sep 9 | Special Event

Burnt Corn Pueblo: Landscape and Conflict in the Pre-Columbian American Southwest
James Snead, Department of Anthropology, George Mason University
Monday, 4:30 p.m.

Sep 24

Palatial Workshops in Late Bronze-Age Greece
Natasha Dakouri-Hild, Department of Art History, UVA
Tuesday, 4:30 p.m.

Oct 10

Slave Daily Life & Mortuary Practices on a Piedmont Plantation: an archaeological and historical investigation of the enslaved African Americans on the Sweet Briar Plantation
Lynn Rainville, Department of Anthropology, Sweet Briar College
Thursday, 5:00 p.m.

Oct 15 | Special Event

Lyrical Indian Words and Arrow Points: Archaeology and the Encounter of Monacansand Colonists in Albemarle County
Jeff Hantman, Department of Anthropology
Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., Room 153, Campbell Hall
Sponsored by the Virginia Museum of Natural History

Oct 19 | Special Event

Open House at the Monticello Archaeology Lab
Walking tours, featuring the Department's ongoing research into Monticello's vanished argricultural landscape, leave the lab at 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, and 3:00.
Saturday, 10:00a.m.-4:00 p.m., Archaeology Lab, Monticello

Oct 24

Subfloor pits and the social dynamics of 18th-century Chesapeake Slavery: a game-theoretic approach
Fraser Neiman, Department of Archaeology, Monticello
Thursday, 4:30 p.m.

Nov 7

Face Time: Making Sense of a Remarkable Prehistoric Wooden Mask from the Virginia Piedmont
Dennis Blanton, Department of Anthropology UVA and William and Mary, Center for Archaeological Research
Thursday, 5:00 p.m. Jefferson Library at Kenwood
DIRECTIONS: Head up Route 53 towards Monticello. Go past the Monticello entrance. Continue one quarter mile. You'll see the entrance to Kenwood -- the International Center for Jefferson Studies -- on your right.

Nov 21

Discussion of "The Ascendence of Hunting in the Califormnia Middle Archaic", William R. Hildebrandt and Kelly R. McGuire, 2002, American Antiquity 67(2): 231-256
Thursday, 4:30 p.m. 

Spring 2002

Jan 17

The Nanticoke Indians and Chicone Indian Town: Group Identity, Persistence, and Change in the Context of European Contact and Colonization
Virginia Busby. Department of Anthropology, UVA

Jan 31

Agencyfest I
Discussion of "Agency in archaeology: paradigm or platitude." Marcia-Anne Dobres and John E.Robb, 2000. In Agency in Archaeology, edited by Marcia-Anne Dobres and John Robb, pp. 3-17. Routledge London. Click here to download this article. To read it, you will need a copy of Adobe's Acrobat Reader.

Feb 14

Rocking the Boat in Pompeian Archaeology: the Pompeii Forum Project
John Dobbins, Department of Art History, UVA

Feb 28

Mythical Giants of the Chesapeake: An Evaluation of the Archaeological Construction of "Susquehannock"
Lisa Lauria, Department of Anthropology, UVA

Mar 28

Micro-Matters: An Assessment of Micro-Archaeological Techniques and Results from Four Upper Mesopotamian Sites
Lynne Rainville, Department of Anthropology, UVA

Apr 11 | Special Event

The prehistoric art of the Chauvet Cave in France
Dr. Jean Clottes, Scientific Advisor Ministry of Culture, Conservateur General of French Heritage
Time: 8:00 p.m.
Place: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
For more information click here

Apr 25

The Dimensions of War: Understanding Prehistoric Conflict in East-Central Arizona
Julie Solometo, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

May 8

Agencyfest II
Note the day and time change: WEDNESDAY, 4:00 p.m.
Place: Brooks Hall
Discussion of two archaeological case studies:

"Agents of change in hunter-gatherer technology", Ken Sassaman. Click here to download it.

"Craft to wage labor: agency and resistance in American historical archaeology", Paul Shackel. Click here to download it.

In Agency in Archaeology, edited by Marcia-Anne Dobres and John Robb, pp. 148-168 and 232-246. Routledge, London.

Fall 2001

Oct 10 | Special Event

The Dead Have No Rights?: Jefferson's Conflicted Legacy in American Archaeology
David Hurst Thomas, Curator of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History
TIME: 5:30
PLACE: Room 153, Campbell Hall

Oct 18

Building Tensions: Architecture and Slavery at Andrew Jackson's Hermitage
Jillian Galle, Department of Anthropology, UVA and DAACS, Monticello

Oct 20 | Special Event

Open House at the Monticello Archaeology Lab
Walking tours, featuring the Department's ongoing research into Monticello's vanished argricultural landscape, leave the lab at 11:00, 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, and 3:00
TIME: 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
PLACE: Archaeology Lab, Monticello

Nov 1

Demography and Regional Organization in the Virginia Interior: AD 1000 - 1700
Jeff Hantman, Department of Anthropology, UVA

Nov 15

Doing a Poster Session at the SAA's: Why and How (with a couple of award winning examples)
Fraser Neiman, Monticello

Dec 13

Evaluating Collapse from the Endpoints of Power: Consumption and Exchange in Third Millennium B.C.E. Southeast Turkey
Phil Trella, Department of Anthropology, UVA