The Columbia University Seminars on the Ancient Near East (#479) invites you to attend the second meeting of our 2024-2025 series:

Francesca Rochberg, University of California, Berkeley “The Anthropology of the Distant Sciences of Mesopotamia”
Columbia University Seminar on the Ancient Near East

November 14, 2024 (Thursday) via Zoom at 12 noon (Eastern Standard Time, GMT-5)

You can find an abstract of Francesca Rochberg’s talk on our website, https://universityseminars.columbia.edu/seminars/the-ancient-near-east/ together with further information on this event and on the 2024-2025 Columbia Seminar on the Ancient Near East series.

The event will take place by Zoom: to receive the Zoom link, please rsvp to gilbert@fordham.edu. For any questions, feel free to get in touch with me at gilbert@fordham.edu. The seminar rapporteur, Shannon O. White (sw3857@columbia.edu) will send a Zoom link to all email addresses on the RSVP list the day before the meeting so that you can log in. Once the meeting has started, please email the rapporteur for assistance

Lisa J. Lucero Book Talk

“Maya Wisdom and the Survival of Our Planet (Oxford University Press)”

February 6, 2025, 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Location TBA

Professor Lisa Lucero recent work looks at lessons we can learn for future planning by examine the techniques used long ago in her paper on, Ancient Maya Reservoirs, Constructed Wetlands, and Future Water Needs.”

Join us for an insightful discussion with Professor Lisa J. Lucero, an esteemed expert in Anthropology and Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, as she delves into her latest work “Maya Wisdom and the Survival of Our Planet” from Oxford University Press. Drawing from 35 years of archaeology projects in Belize, Central America, Professor Lucero brings practical solutions to the forefront, inspired by her profound understanding of Maya history and its relevance to addressing climate change.

Abstract

In Maya Wisdom and the Survival of Our Planet, I present the Maya inclusive or non-anthropocentric worldview that focuses on co-existence with nonhumans since humans are part of the world, not separate from it. I highlight how the ancestral Maya collaborated with nonhumans resulting in a tropical landscape with green cities, rural farmsteads, gardens, fields, biodiverse forests, and sacred places. The Maya sustainably farmed for millennia without destroying their environment and provided tribute to their kings in 100’s of cities. In return, kings performed vital ceremonies and maintained reservoirs through the annual dry season—a balancing act that succeeded for over 1,000 years. Maya insights are vital for the survival of our planet and call for collaborating with rather than dominating the nonhuman world, and their traditional knowledge provides concrete solutions to sustainably address climate change and environmental degradation. Maya resilience is a testament for how to move forward, and my book provides a roadmap for families to global corporations on how to do so.

Fan Zhang, Tulane University

“Staging the Corpse: Performativity and Materiality in Northern Wei Mortuary Art”

Friday, February 7, 2025

4:30 PM – 6:30 PM EST

Faculty House

To RSVP, please visit the Tang Center for Early China’s website for further information.

This talk, deriving from one chapter of my current book project, examines an innovative mortuary practice developed during the Northern Wei period. Rather than concealing corpses in coffins, which was the predominant way of burying the dead in early China, residents at Northern Wei capital Pingcheng experimented with something unconventional— exposing the body on a funerary bed and placing the bed inside an architectonic chamber. I argue that this new way of burying the dead is a performative enactment of the idealized portraiture of the deceased, functioning as a token of status. I address the issue of materiality in funerary architecture by examining the skeuomorphic transformation from wood to stone as the dominant material to produce the funerary bed-and-chamber set. Lastly, this talk investigates the identities of the tomb occupants. I suggest that this new mortuary practice, which first appeared in a Xianbei woman’s tomb, later became widely adopted by Pingcheng residents of different ethnicities, contributing to forming a shared identity in the capital.