Public Lecture

Kathleen Sterling
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Binghampton SUNY

Learning and Lithics in the Ice Age

5th October 2020
11:40am -12:55pm

Please register here

NB. THIS PUBLIC LECTURE IS SCHEDULED AS PART OF OUR INTRODUCTORY COURSE THE ORIGINS OF HUMAN SOCIETY (ANTHV1007), TAUGHT BY PROF. CAMILLA STURM

Abstract: 
Stone tools are the most abundant materials in the archaeological record, but their analysis has primarily focused on “economic” concerns based on modern assumptions about efficiency of procurement, production, and use. This ignores the social dimensions of making and using materials, including how knowledge is shared within a community, a key aspect of all human cultures. Starting from the assumption that lithic tool-making is a social activity, it is possible to develop approaches that reveal difference is expertise and access, creating a richer understanding of so-called “cavemen.”

Seneca Village: Archaeology and After

Tuesday, October 6th
11:40am-12.55pm EDT

Register here 
(Open to those with a Columbia uni ID)

Historic Preservation GSAPP Public Lecture

Professor Brent Leggs

Executive Director, African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund

Out of Culture and Preservation,

a Racial and Economic Justice Movement

October 9th 2020
3:00pm EDT

Register Here

Brent Leggs is the executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. Envisioned as a social movement for justice, equity, and reconciliation, the Action Fund is promoting the role of cultural preservation in telling the nation’s full history, while also empowering activists, entrepreneurs, artists, and civic leaders to advocate on behalf of African American historic places.

This public lecture is taught in conjunction with a week long course in Historic Preservation

POWER & PRESERVATION
Adjunct Professor Brent Leggs, Columbia University
Course #: A6944
Call #: 12808
October 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21
Monday – Wednesday, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

As our nation comes to a reckoning with America’s racist and violent history and see long- simmering racial and ethnic tensions return to a boil, this intensity pervades every aspect of our politics, culture, society, and public spaces. This current conversation asks important questions.

What’s the role of contemporary preservation practice and historic African American sites in the fight for justice and equity? How should preservationists and activists reimagine practice through the lens of architecture and racial justice? This seminar will explore the role of cultural heritage sites that bring forward the African American narrative and how they serve a crucial role in redefining our collective history and, ultimately, reconstruct a national identity that reflects the country’s true diversity.

The students will be introduced to several ideas, case studies, and projects, including exploring the development and future vision of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Each student will conduct limited research and examine a range of Black heritage sites, stories, and programs to reinforce the notion that preservation comes in many different forms and can be used as a tool to empower Black communities and all Americans. Each seminar day will start with an introduction followed by a discussion. Students are expected to share their perspectives on these topics and the assignment is a written final project.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SEMINAR

ON THE ARTS OF AFRICA, OCEANIA, AND THE AMERICAS

Mary Weismantel

Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University

Playing with Things:

Engaging the Moche Sex Pots

Thursday, October 15, 2020

6.30pm, EDT (New York)

via ZOOM\

What happens if we consider Indigenous works of art from the ancient Americas as non-human persons who inhabit a different temporality than ours, rather than as (dead) artifacts that tell us about the (dead) past?  In this talk, I ask the question, “Can a pot tell a joke?” as a way to engage with some ceramic vessels that were made a thousand years ago by Moche artists in South America.

Despite their colonized status as objects in museum collections, these clay bodies with human genitalia are unruly things, capable of interacting with us in a variety of bodily, sensory and communicative modes.  Researchers who treat these vessels as passive resources to be mined for information are never going to ‘get the joke’, but we might get it (a little) if we recognize the pots’ potential to become our active, sometimes intimidating interlocutors.

Please fill out this form to register for the session:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeG0FVo28_vH5mT75zZs71KV9lP76JCPRBduTDnPG-XaM4qwg/viewform

Email km3522@columbia.edu with any questions.

Columbia Center for Archaeology Online Salon

Rebecca Graff
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Lake Forest College 

in conversation with Cassie Fennell
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University 

about Prof. Graff's new book:

Disposing of Modernity: 
The Archaeology of Garbage and Consumerism during Chicago's 1893 World's Fair

Friday October 16th
4.10pm-6pm EDT

Please register here

The proofs of two chapters of Prof. Graff’s book can be accessed at this link. These are the introductory chapter and Chapter 5 (Conspicuous Disposal), combined in one pdf.

 “Understanding Hongshan Core-Zone Households and Communities”
Christian E. Peterson, University of Hawaii at Manoa
October 23, 2020 (4:30-6:30 PM EST)

Abstract: Hongshan period (4500-3000 BCE) societies of northeastern China’s Western Liao River Valley are well known for their ritual architecture and burials accompanied by jade artifacts carved in supernatural themes. Over the past two decades, systematic regional-scale settlement surveys and intensive surface collection of ancient household garbage have provided new information about the social, economic, and ritual organization of the Neolithic communities that made and used Hongshan ritual monuments and paraphernalia. In this presentation, I will summarize and compare the results of these surveys, surface collections, and other research, and discuss its relevance to understanding the emergence, organization, and development of early complex society during Hongshan times.

Request Pre-circulated Paper

Biology & Paleo Environment Seminars,

Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory

Kristina Douglass
Joyce and Doug Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute 
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African Studies, Pennsylvania State University 

Integrative and inclusive approaches to investigating human-environment dynamics in southwest Madagascar

Monday, October 26th 2020

1pm EDT

FOR ZOOM LINK, PLEASE CONTACT: kailani.acosta@columbia.edu

Abstract: Madagascar figures prominently in debates over contemporary and past human exploitation of island biomes. It has long been argued that initial human arrival on Madagascar precipitated catastrophic changes in local ecologies, including, famously, the extinction of a suite of megafauna. Despite this starkly portrayed shift from an uninhabited island to one devastated by human settlement, our diachronic understanding of Madagascar’s coupled human-natural systems remains limited. For example, despite intense debate over the anthropogenic drivers of faunal extinctions, little work has attempted to provide fine-grained and holistic datasets on natural resource use by Malagasy communities through time. The result is a dramatic narrative of the devastating onset of Madagascar’s Anthropocene, devoid of an understanding of the lives and ecological entanglements of its people. On Madagascar today, a lot of attention is paid to the critical losses of biodiversity observed island-wide. Limited attention, however, is given to rapid losses of traditional knowledge, particularly related to landscape and ecology. This dichotomy presents a challenge for long-term preservation of Madagascar’s human and other biotic communities, but also highlights the opportunity to investigate the intertwined nature of peoples and environment through close collaboration with local, indigenous, and descendent Malagasy communities. I propose that environmental archaeologists must make particular efforts to include local, Indigenous, and descendent communities as research collaborators, if we are to more meaningfully investigate past human-environment dynamics and apply archaeological knowledge toward planning a more sustainable and just future.

Live event Thursday 29 October 14:00-16:00 EDT (New York) 18:00-20:00 GMT (London)

In this session, part of *Festival Chat*, we’ll be presenting flash fictions and nano-histories that reflect on time’s interconnectivities.

With every passing moment we see how the world around us shapes and is shaped by history. In this event authors will consider how the contemporary and historical are juxtaposed at particular locales. These stories will narrate the clash of pasts and presents and explore how new meanings and associations accumulate in different places.

Authors will show images of different historical sites and read their 150 word (or less) stories in response to them. There’ll be time for audience questions and discussion. If all tickets are taken on eventbrite it will be possible to watch the livestream and submit questions on the *Columbia Center for Archaeology Facebook page*.

*To register for the event please go to our eventbrite page*. If all tickets are taken it will be possible to *watch the livestream of the event on our facebook page* and submit questions there.

To submit work for the session, please *follow this link* for more information. Submissions accepted until 27th October.

Any questions, please contact timeclash2020@gmail.com

The Writing Archaeology Collective, Columbia University:

Amanda Althoff, Madison Aubey, Rudy Banny, Annarubenia Capellin Ortega, Zoë Crossland, Katherine McCarthy, Brendon Murray, Jenny Ni, Cleo Payne, Nikki Vellidis (US)