John Walsh and Gabriela Figuereo

Mortar Analysis in Historical Archaeology: What We Can Learn

Wednesday 4th December at 6 pm

Fordham’s Lincoln Center Campus, Lowenstein Building, Room 902

(Enter through the main campus entrance on Columbus and 60th)

Please join the Met Chapter of the NY State Archaeological Association for our next event on Wednesday, December 4th. Petrographer John Walsh and Historic Preservationist Gabriela Figuereo will show us what we can learn from analyzing mortar, that ubiquitous building material that holds together bricks and stones.

Sponsored by The Metropolitan Chapter of the New York State Archaeological Association,  with Professional Archaeologists of New York City (PANYC) and the Fordham University Department of Anthropology

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

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SEMINAR ON IRANIAN STUDIES

Henry Colburn (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Drinking like a Persian: The Archaeology of Achaemenid Drinking: From Egypt to Gandhara

Thursday, December 12, 2019 @5 PM

Faculty House

Abstract

Herodotus famously remarked that the Persians reconsidered while sober every decisions they made while drunk, and vice versa. While this comment was intended to illustrate the differences between Greeks and Persians, it also suggests the social and cultural importance of drinking in the Achaemenid Empire. Notably, the Great King used the royal table as a venue for displaying his unique position in Persian society and as an opportunity for creating dependent relationships with subordinates. He accomplished by this by giving gifts of drinking vessels, especially rhyta and phialai, resulting in these types of vessels becoming markers of prestige. This in turn led to the creation of local imitations of such vessels across the empire. Another distinctive drinking vessel, the ‘Achaemenid bowl,’ was used as a marker of imperial unity in the reliefs of the Apadana at Persepolis. The discovery of rhyta, phialai and Achaemenid bowls in such far flung regions as Egypt and Gandhara indicates the extent to which people in these areas participated in a social hierarchy centered on the royal court and how, in some respects, they even aspired to be ‘Persian.’

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Dr. Henry Colburn is Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The talk will begin at 5:00 pm sharp. Dinner will follow the talk at 6:45 in Faculty House. If you would like to join us for dinner, please contact the seminar’s rapporteur, Navid Zarrinnal (nz2254@columbia.edu) to reserve a place no later than Friday December 6, 2019.

Dinner is a fixed menu buffet, $30 per person, payable by check made out to “Columbia University.”

Faculty House is accessed through the Wien courtyard gates on 116 Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive. View map and directions at
https://facultyhouse.columbia.edu/content/directions

(Please consult the notice posted at the entrance for the room number)

Tang Special Lecture

RSVP

Solving the Mystery of the State of Zeng of the Zhou Dynasty: In Light of the Recent Archaeological Discoveries in Suizhou, Hubei Province, China

Guodong Fan, Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology

December 12, 2019

10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
403 Kent Hall

The mystery of the Zeng state of Zhou Dynasty (or the mystery of Zeng or Sui) is a tantalizing archaeological problem. This hypothesis that Zeng and Sui were the same state was proposed based earlier on accidental discoveries of bronze inscriptions relating to Zeng, but it was not substantiated until the numerous archaeological discoveries were made in recent years. Over the past half century, with the gradual accumulation of archaeological data, the mystery of the state of Zeng in the Western Zhou period, known very little before, has been gradually unveiled. Some scholars had even said that the history of Zeng should be written completely through archaeological materials. This lecture will start with the latest archaeological discoveries, and especially focus on the bronze vessels that bear inscriptions to introduce the past of the Zeng.