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
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
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
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
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
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