Chris Kim

From Ancestral Seat to Administrative Capital in Early China: The Archaeology of Linzi, ca. 1000–250 BCE

Friday, January 31, 5:10 PM – 7:00 PM

951 Schermerhorn Extension

Click Here To Register For This Talk

Join us for an engaging conversation with CU Alumnus Chris Kim, who will present his work on Chinese Archaeology.

Abstract
Ancient Linzi, capital of the state of Qi in northern Shandong, is one of the most well-explored archaeological sites in China, having been investigated since as early as the 1930s. From its small beginnings as the center of the Qi ruling lineage’s ancestral cult, the city grew into one of the largest metropolises of its time as the administrative and commercial center of the Qi state. This presentation investigates the dynamic relationship between the production of urban spaces and the organization of sociopolitical power in Qi history by examining the evidence for urban expansion and burial practices at Linzi. In doing so, it demonstrates how the fundamental reshaping of traditional lineage-based sociopolitical structures in Qi mirrored concomitant changes in the urban layout of Linzi. Moreover, it explores new approaches to thinking about the archaeology of urban landscapes in China by considering the relationship between the hinterlands and urban core of Linzi.

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.

Ayana Flewellen

(Assistant Professor, Stanford University)

Friday, February 21, 6:10 PM

951 Schermerhorn Extension

We are excited to announced Ayana Flewellen as our 2024-25 student-nominated speaker, co-sponsored with the Westchester Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Abstract

Amid the racialized servitude, sexual exploitation, and economic disenfranchisement, that marked the post-emancipation era in the United States, African American women were styling their hair with combs, lacing glass beads around their necks, dyeing coarse-cotton fabric with indigo-berry and sweetgum bark, and fastening garments to adorn their bodies and dress their social lives. We know so little about the everyday lives — tastes, preferences, decisions — of the African American women who lived through the post-emancipation era in the United States. Yet, the material remains of their everyday sartorial practices contain rich evidence of who these women were, who they wanted to be, and how they wanted to be seen. Focusing on Chapter 2 of Dr. Flewellen current book project The Will to Adorn This presentation explores what can be learned by studying the dress and adornment practices of Black women as practices of navigating the precarity of Black life post-enslavement. Starting at the twilight of the antebellum era in Tennessee, the chapter opens with the story of Nancy, an enslaved women at Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage Plantation, who in 1863 walked away from the estate with all her clothing and bedding. Focusing on Nancy’s choice to abscond the Hermitage Plantation with her clothing in hand, Flewellen explores the sartorial choices engaged by African American women in the southern United States at the precipice of emancipation. This chapter asks: questions about what women carried and what they left behind — both in their lives, and in the archive — at the dawn of “Surrender.” It threads together documentary sources detailing what formerly enslaved African Americans brought with them into Union controlled contraband camps, with the material culture recovered from excavations of the enslaved quarters at the plantation. Bringing these archives together, the chapter illuminates the quiet objects women kept and abandoned and how their choices ultimately demonstrated a skill in ascertaining and predicting their needs amidst social instability.

Author bio

Ayana Omilade Flewellen (they/she) is a Black Feminist, an archaeologist, a artist scholar and a storyteller. As a scholar of anthropology and African and African Diaspora Studies, Flewellen’s intellectual genealogy is shaped by critical theory rooted in Black feminist epistemology and pedagogy. This epistemological backdrop not only constructs the way they design, conduct and produce their scholarship but acts as foundational to how she advocates for greater diversity within the field of archaeology and within the broader scope of academia. Flewellen is the co-founder and current Board Chair of the Society of Black Archaeologists and sits on the Board of Diving With A Purpose. They are an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. Her research and teaching interests address Black Feminist Theory, historical archaeology, memory, maritime heritage conservation, public and community-engaged archaeology, processes of identity formations, and representations of slavery and its afterlives. Flewellen has been featured in National Geographic, Science Magazine, PBS and CNN; and regularly presents her work at institutions including The National Museum for Women in the Arts.

Dr. Kelly M. Britt

(Assistant Professor of Anthropology,
CUNY-Brooklyn College)

Activism and Archaeology: Present Realities and Future Possibilities

Friday, March 28, 5:10 PM – 7:00 PM

Click Here To Register For This Talk

Abstract

Archaeologists have a history of being agents of change, particularly in advocating for the protection and preservation of historical resources. The passage of many historic preservation laws and the development of the field of Cultural Resources Management in the mid-20^th century enabled archaeological groups, individual archaeologists, and those working with historic sites to be diligent advocates for heritage, particularly in urban centers as the fast-paced nature of urbanization threatened historical resources and a sense of place. Today, as more social issues, such as climate change, inequality, neoliberal development, and contestation of historical memory, intersect with archaeology and historical sites, we see archaeologists and others continuing to advocate not only for historic resources but also for the larger social justice challenges that threaten the communities in which these resources reside. This talk will be a conversation between the intersection of archaeology and activism and what it means to conduct activist archaeology. The many challenges that this work may entail will be highlighted, including the physical and ethical lines between activist and archaeologist and where we, as a discipline, can collectively imagine what a future activist archaeology may look like.