2024-2025 Schedule

Workshop meetings will be held Wednesdays 4:30 – 6:00 (see schedule below for exceptions). At present, we are planning for all meetings to be held in person, but this is subject to change depending on our presenters and the prevailing conditions. In-person meetings will be held in either Haskell 315 of the LaSalle Banks Room of the ISAC unless otherwise noted. In case of a virtual event, a Zoom link will be shared on our listserv prior to each session.

To be added to our mailing list, to request accommodations, and for copies of papers, please email the coordinators Will Shine (willshine@uchicago.edu) and Lucie Lollkova (llollkova@uchicago.edu).

 

IAW Autumn 2024 Schedule 

23 October 

Prof Sarah Newman 

Assistant Professor in Anthropology, University of Chicago

Invisible Landscapes: Infrastructure and Temporality in Amazonia and Arabia

4:30 – 6:00 Haskell 315

This paper examines the historical and ongoing impacts of large-scale pre-modern anthropogenic landscapes. We make two interrelated arguments, drawn from comparative and collaborative work in two historically, geographically, and environmentally distinct landscapes where we have conducted archaeological research: southwestern Amazonia and northwestern Arabia. First, we argue that the cultivated forests and curated soils of southwestern Amazonia and the hydrological and agricultural systems of northwestern Arabia are best understood (and analyzed) as multiscalar, multigenerational infrastructures. Secondly, we argue that these forms of ancient infrastructure are not only spatial interventions that alter the form and space of a particular landscape, but they are also temporal interventions that shape how the passage of time was and is experienced in that landscape.

 

30 October 

Aqiil Gopee 

PhD Student, Anthropology, University of Chicago

Aphasic Landscapes: An Archaeology of Non-Events in Colonial Mauritius

5:00 – 6:30 Haskell 315

Historical archaeologists tend to portray archaeology as history’s saving grace, serving as its more objective, “scientific” counterpart that erases discursive nuances and establishes the material truth of what has been. I would argue that there are cases where colonial archaeology fails to find that which historical records describe as having existed or as having come to pass. This is beyond a mere matter of archival inventiveness or fiction but rather relates to how archaeology as a practice is intimately entangled with the lay of the land, and how the land itself is subject to the modulations of those in power. In other words, colonizers do not shape historical narratives in their image, they also manipulate the landscapes that they invade to reflect the myths – racial or otherwise – that structure the societies they seek to build. This, by default, impacts the scope of what archaeology can find, even centuries after the fact of colonization, through a process akin to what Ann Stoler calls imperial “ruination” (Stoler 2005:2).

This experimental paper reflects on the troubled relationship between historical archaeology and the ruinations of colonial landscapes by theorizing about fieldwork conducted over the past two years on the uninhabited Flat and Gabriel Islands, north of Mauritius, once used as lazarettos or quarantine stations by the British administration in the age of pandemics. It will attempt to weave an argument regarding a phenomenon I venture to call an archaeological “non-event”, whereby an event that is said to have occurred in the archives – notably, the death and burials of hundreds of indentured immigrants on their way from India to British Mauritius – shows no signs of having occurred on the ground. This will lead me to question the epistemic inconsistencies inherent in colonial archaeology as a practice, and argue that the research conducted on the islands was marked by an archaeological manifestation of “colonial aphasia” (Stoler 2016:122), the landscape having been rendered illegible to conventional archaeological methods through the workings of colonization.

6 November  

Harrison Morin

PhD Student, NELC, University of Chicago

The Kushan Superposition: Approaching Empire and Imperialism in Kushan Central and South Asia

LaSalle Banks 3:30-5:00

“Is the Kushan Empire truly an empire?” This question casts an imposing veil over modern day archaeological and historical scholarship surrounding the Kushan period in Central and South Asia. While one might find that everyone has a vague notion of what the “Kushan Empire” was in a broad historical sense, few pieces of scholarship have come to analytical blows with the specifics of this concept. This paper examines current archaeological and historical evidence and arguments to approach an answer as to what the Kushan polity was. To aid in this endeavor I employ the use of a conceit, that of Schrödinger’s Cat, to act as a framework to structure the analysis of the paper. I first beginning by defining our metaphorical cat and the box it inhabits – exploring how scholars have defined the concept of “empire,” and how archaeologists and historians come to know such political structures. Then, through an analysis of existing archaeological and historical evidence, I lay out the various metaphorical keys that can be used to open this box. From this, I arrive at a working interpretation of what can and cannot be said about the Kushan polity, and how this can contribute to a more nuanced understanding as to what the Kushan polity truly was.

 

13 November 

Dr. Esther Rodríguez González

Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Archaeology in the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow
Earth Architecture as a Social Product: The Case Studies of Casas del Turuñuelo (Spain) and the M‘hamid Oasis (Morocco)

LaSalle Banks 4:30-6:00

Today, more than half of the world’s population live in houses built
with earth. Indeed, from the Neolithic to the present day, earth is
one of the most widely used materials in construction, due to its
versatility, availability, and low cost. In this presentation I will
present two research projects whose common point is earthen
architecture. On the one hand, the protohistoric building of Casas del
Turuñuelo (Guareña, Badajoz, Spain), dated between the 6th – 5th
centuries BCE; and, on the other, the oasis of M’hamid (Morocco),
currently still inhabited. The combination of both projects, involving
the analysis of two different construction models in different regions
and periods, has greatly expanded our knowledge about earth
construction. Thus, archaeology and ethnography have become excellent
tools to advance our knowledge of ancient constructive processes of
ancient societies.

 

20 November 

Nikki Grigg 

PhD Candidate, Anthropology, University of Chicago
“Save the Past for the Future!”: Collections Research in Washington, D.C. 

LaSalle Banks 4:30 – 6:00

“Like in most U.S. cities, the majority of archaeology in Washington, DC, is conducted by the private sector. These compliance-driven cultural resource management excavations have produced a rich archaeological record maintained by the city as a public resource. However, after excavators complete their reports, most of these large collections remain out of sight in storage, sometimes for decades. The District’s lack of statehood and the political and material resources that come with it have required city archaeologists to implement a range of creative measures to preserve collections and make them accessible to researchers and the public. My dissertation project re-examines two legacy collections, originally excavated in the 1980s, alongside a recently excavated site to investigate citizenship in late 19th century DC. This draft dissertation chapter explores how returning to old collections allows for deeper comparison between households across a city. I also review the histories of urban planning, disinvestment, and displacement that shaped each site’s period of occupation and their excavation. I ask what it means for archaeological collections to belong to a city and what returning to them might reveal about present-day urban citizenship.”

 

IAW Winter2025 Schedule 

 

29 January 

 Ludivine Audebert

PhD Student, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne

Visiting Student, University of Chicago

Miniaturized Vessels, Maximized Expectations? Preliminary Thoughts on Interpretations of Miniature Vessels and Their Manufacturing Techniques Based on Material from Chogha Mish, South-Western Iran, Late Chalcolithic

“Often considered in between pottery vessels and figurines or models, rarely studied for themselves, miniature pottery vessels tend to crystallize archaeologists’ interpretations. As toys, models for potters, or ritual objects, they are used as a way to try and capture more intangible aspects of community life, such as transmission, identity or community rituals, which are of specific importance when studying the Late Chalcolithic period, a time of acceleration of craft specialization and population concentration. What image do the manufacturing processes of these miniaturized vessels offer? How does this image relate to these interpretations and expectations? This talk will be an opportunity to discuss a framework for how to study miniature pottery vessels in general, as well as developing some preliminary interpretations from my in-progress work about manufacturing chaînes opératoires at Late Chalcolithic Chogha Mish, (South-Western Iran).”

 

5 February

Harrison Morin

PhD Student, MES, University of Chicago

CAMEL Lab Workshop

Tech from the Field: A Practical Walkthrough of Total Stations, Emlid RTKs, and LiDAR Photogrammetry on Mobile Devices

“Total Stations, Real Time Kinematic (RTK) Positioning Technologies, and LiDAR Scanners have become part and parcel in archaeological excavation and survey projects around the world. These devices not only allow for the collection of precise positional measurements of specific finds and features, but also are fundamental in the construction of larger site plans and spatial databases. Yet when encountering these devices out in the field for the first time, many archaeologists are often left with the feeling of, “I get what it does, but how do I use it?” This IAW meeting is aimed at providing workshop members with practical experience of how to set up, use, and process data from these pieces of equipment. Please join Harrison Morin, PhD Student in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and Research Assistant at the Center for Ancient Middle Eastern Landscapes, as he takes us to the Midway and back for this interactive experience.”

 

19 February

Dr Jonathan Lim

Postdoctoral Fellow, Center For Advanced Spatial Technologies, University of Arkansas

Nalaquq/It is Found: Protecting Heritage and Co-Creating Knowledge With Technology in Southwest Alaska

“Alaska’s Yukon Kuskokwim Delta is the homeland of the Yup’ik (pl. Yupiit) people, who have lived here as their ancestors have done for generations. To live in this often climatically harsh environment, pre-contact Yupiit established a set of survival rules and strategies known collectively as Yuuyaraq (trans. ‘The Way We Genuinely Live’), which is still practiced to this day. Yuuyaraq follows a yearly cycle from frost-to-thaw along the Bering Sea coast that includes berry picking, hunting for caribou and sea mammals, driftwood gathering, trapping, and salmon fishing. Yuuyaraq remains a vital cultural practice that unites Yup’ik settlements across the Y-K Delta, even as the world they live in has seen dramatic change. One such place is Quinhagak, a village of around 700 people by the coast of the Bering Sea. In the face of a rapidly warming climate, they are proactively taking steps to ensure their community continues to survive and thrive, just as their ancestors did at the famed archaeological site of Nunalleq, an ancestral village occupied during the Little Ice Age. In 2021, Quinhagak worked closely with outside researchers to found a for-profit spatial technology company in the village called Nalaquq (trans. “it is found”) LLC, with the goal of carrying out research to protect Yup’ik heritage landscapes, and mitigate the effects of climate change on the village and neighbouring communities. Through the lens of a proposed project between Nalaquq and the University of Arkansas to model waterway changes and train a scientifically proficient local workforce, the author will discuss the many challenges and incredible benefits of striving towards equitable knowledge co-creation with Indigenous communities like Quinhagak.”
 
26 February

Daniel Hansen

PhD Candidate, Anthropology, University of Chicago

Heritage and the Structure of the Material Encounter at Pictish Places

 

 

5 March

Kelsey Rooney

PhD Candidate, Anthropology, University of Chicago

TBA