Zoe Crossland

(Professor of Anthropology)

“Rethinking Landscape”

Friday, May 8, 2026 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM

807 Schermerhorn Hall

Register Here

Please note that all non-Columbia University affiliates must register for a QR campus access code.

The seminar will also be available on Zoom

Abstract
This presentation reviews the history and aesthetics of landscape theory in archaeology. I explore the different inherited landscapes that we work and live within and explore the concept of landscape in the context of the historical reshaping of rice landscapes in highland Madagascar. I take my cue from the remembered speeches of the 18th century king of highland Madagascar who insisted that “rice is my friend and my equal”. This offers a different starting point from which to explore the politics and histories of place, with resonances that go well beyond highland Madagascar.

Biography

Zoë Crossland’s research deals with the historical archaeology of Madagascar, and with evidential practices around human remains. Her approach to historical inquiry is informed by Peircean “semeiotics,” which she uses to explore the imbrication of the material and the immaterial, the human and the nonhuman.

The research Crossland has undertaken in Madagascar has been concerned with archaeologies of encounter, including a consideration of how material traces in the landscape made the dead present as historical actors (2014). She is now working with colleagues Chantal Radilmilahay, Bako Rasoarifetra and Rafolo Andrianaivoarivony on the history of irrigated riziculture in the highlands, with a particular focus on the constitution of sovereignty through and with the partnership of rice plants, paddy fields and irrigation structures.

Tang Institute for Early China Special Lecture:

Paleoethnobotany in the Chinese Bronze Age:
Understanding Early Urbanization through
Plant Remains

A talk and discussion by Dr. Xuexiang Chen (陈雪香),
Professor of Archaeology, Shandong University (China)
Visiting Professor, Yale University

Wednesday, May 13 at 4:30pm

403 Kent Hall

RSVP by May 8, 2026

Abstract

Urbanization during the Chinese Bronze Age was not merely a demographic aggregation, but a profound transformation of social organization and lifestyle. Drawing on two decades of archaeobotanical findings from major urban centers and secondary sites in the Central Plains and the Shandong region, this report re-examines the life of early cities through paleoethnobotanical evidence.

As an archaeologist, Xuexiang Chen investigates the origin and spread of early agriculture and its role in the development of social complexity in early China. Her research focuses on the period from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age. She has conducted several fieldwork projects in the Haidai region of the lower Yellow River. Since 2007, she has served as a faculty member in the School of Archaeology at Shandong University. She is currently a visiting professor at the the Council on East Asian Studies, MacMillian Center, Yale University.