COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SEMINAR ON THE ARTS OF AFRICA, OCEANIA, AND THE AMERICAS

DR. ROSEMARY A. JOYCE
Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley

AN ALCHEMY OF PRE-HISPANIC HONDURAS

832 Schermerhorn, Columbia University
Thursday, 5th December, 2019
6.30pm

Wine and Cheese 6.00-6.30pm

MADE POSSIBLE BY A GENEROUS GIFT FROM A MEMBER OF THE SEMINAR

Those wishing to join for dinner with the speaker after the presentation, please email oco2103@columbia.edu to RSVP

Rooted in the realist ontology of physicist Karen Barad, the geontology of ethnographer Elizabeth Povinelli, and the discussion of animacy hierarchies by Mel Chen, this presentation reconsiders materials usually treated as inert or inactive, geological substances that some recent New Materialist thought excludes from an otherwise all-embracing concept of liveliness of things.
Concentrating on four geological or inorganic substances—clay, obsidian, marble, and copper—which came into use over the course of the long history of Pre-Hispanic Honduras, from before 8000 BC to the sixteenth century AD, this lecture will consider whether it is possible to reinstate a sense of the way that ancient Hondurans viewed, recognized, and tested the properties of these substances. The presentation will also address how the vitality inherent to these materials created the conditions for human relationships with them, as well as relationships among them: an indigenous alchemy parallel to that of their European contemporaries