The Interdisciplinary Archaeology Workshop is now accepting submissions for the 2024-2025 academic year

Fall quarter deadline: September 30, 2024

Proposals accepted on a rolling basis for the Winter and Spring.

Looking for feedback on a conference paper, MA thesis, or dissertation chapter you’ve been working on? Have you been catching up on field reports and archival research over the past few months? The Interdisciplinary Archaeology Workshop is now accepting submissions for the 2024-2025 academic year.

With this year’s IAW theme Old Data, New Possibilities we hope to encourage conversations that challenge the traditional boundaries of archaeology and re-examine established narratives. Through this, we would like to invite topics which revisit or engage with “old” data in new or innovative ways, both theoretically and methodologically, or aim to subvert the traditional view of excavation as the primary method of archaeological fieldwork. We are especially excited to welcome presentations drawing on archival materials, institutional collections, ethnographic work, remote sensing, or work that applies new methodologies to previously published reports and recorded materials to call attention to topics which are traditionally underrepresented or overlooked.

Students may opt for a presentation, pre-circulate a paper for discussion, or participate in the “Talking Behind Your Back” exercise created at the University of Minnesota. The “Talking Behind Your Back” exercise involves a discussion of the author’s work in which the presenter must listen without contributing, allowing them to understand the impact of their ideas on an interdisciplinary group of scholars. This format was introduced to IAW by previous coordinators and received positive feedback from presenters and attendees alike; we are excited to continue to offer it as an option in 2024-25! For more information, see the attached document.

If you are interested in presenting a paper, research questions, or ongoing work to IAW, please contact Will Shine (willshine@uchicago.edu) and Lucie Lollková (llollkova@uchicago.edu) with the following information:

Name
Department
Year in program
Paper title
Type of paper (e.g., dissertation chapter, MA paper, conference paper)
A short abstract or summary
The quarter(s) in which you are able to present (if more than one, please list your preferences in ranked order, and we will do our best to accommodate)
Preference for in-person or virtual setting

Additionally, please email us if you have suggestions for guest speakers for next year or would like to be added to the IAW listserv. Our website can be found at the following link: https://voices.uchicago.edu/interdisciplinaryarchaeology/

Best,
Lucie and Will

Dear IAW-istas,

I hope that this message finds all of you well, and that you are enjoying a restful and productive summer.

With apologies for the delay in this announcement, Harrison and I are very pleased to officially announce that Will Shine and Lucie Lollkova (both PhD students in the Department of Anthropology) will be taking over the reins as IAW coordinators for the 2024-2025 academic year. Going forward, Will (willshine@uchicago.edu) and Lucie (llollkova@uchicago.edu) will be serving as your points of contact for all things IAW-related; they will undoubtedly be excellent stewards for our workshop and intellectual community.

Many thanks to all of you for your engagement with and contributions to IAW over the past year. Harrison and I are looking forward to the exciting year of archaeological programming that Will and Lucie are organizing, and to seeing everyone around campus in the autumn.

Thank you again for the privilege of serving as workshop coordinators over the past year, and best wishes for a safe and productive summer!

Sincerely,

Henry and Harrison

WINTER QUARTER, 2024

Monday, January 8: Monday Seminar presentation by Lindsay Montgomery

Tuesday, January 16: ISAC exhibit event co-hosted with ASW and MEHAT and featuring Jane Gordon, Suzanne Paulus, et al.

3:30 – 5 pm

Classics 21

Wednesday, January 17 (Week 3): Matthew Rossi

Paper Title: Grave-Robber to Forensic Scientist: Modernism, Dispossession, and the Founding of ‘The Body Farm’

Confirmed discussant: Alaina Wibberly

Wednesday, February 7 (Week 6): Parker VanValkenburgh

Title: “Rethinking Settlement: Colonialism and Dwelling in the Cloud Forests of Northeastern Peru”

Tuesday, February 13 (Week 7): Alaina Wibberly

Joint session with Current Social Ethnography workshop

Tuesday, February 13, 4:30 – 6 pm in Haskell 315

Title: From Survey to Surveillance in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Wednesday, February 21 (Week 8), 4:30 – 6:00 pm, Haskell 315

Featuring Matthew Knisley, Catherine Kearns, Teagan Wolter

Panel Discussion: “Resources for dissertation fieldwork and post-fieldwork analyses”

Good afternoon, archaeologists and enthusiasts, 

The Interdisciplinary Archaeology Workshop will be following University protocol, and will be conducting meetings online. Due to this, we decided to postpone our guest speakers until the next academic year. 

But don’t fret! We still have ways to connect with each other, even from our own desks. We still have three workshops scheduled, all of which promise to be interesting conversations. These will be held online, and information on how to join will be sent in advance of each workshop. 7

As always, should you have any other questions or have concerns about accessibility, please email either me (karooney@uchicago.edu) or Suay Erkusoz (serkusoz@uchicago.edu). 

See you all through our laptop cameras!

Wednesday, April 15: 4:30 – 6:00 PM

Alice Diaz Chauvigné and Daniel Hansen

(PhD Students, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago)

‘Living in a Material World: How to deal with “intangibles” in archaeology.’

Wednesday, May 13: 4:30 – 6:00 PM

Harrison Morin (MAPSS Student, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago)

‘The Kingdom of 1000 Cities: Trade, Transportation, and Territoriality in Ancient Bactria from 330 BCE to 75 CE.’

Tuesday, May 26: 5:30 – 7:00 PM

Co-hosted by the African Studies Workshop

Matthew Knisley (PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago)

Title TBD

Schedule for Spring 2019

April 4: Sandy Hunter (PhD Candidate, Anthropology), “Periodizing Andean Colonialism: Working Across Epistemologies in the Sacred Valley”

April 18: Mike Johnson (PhD Candidate, NELC), “The Arts and Crafts of Not Being Governed: Can Technological Style Inform on Population Relations? A case study from Tell Atchana, Ancient Alalakh”

May 2: Günther Schörner (Faculty Member, Institut für Klassische Archäologie, Universität Wien), Title TBA

co-sponsored with the Ancient Societies Workshop

May 16: Margaret Andrews (Assistant Professor, History), Title TBA

Please note that all meetings will be held at 4:30pm in Haskell 315 unless otherwise specified.

Interdisciplinary Archaeology Workshop: 2017-2018

Call for Papers: Materiality

The Interdisciplinary Archaeology Workshop is now accepting submissions for the 2017-2018 academic year. This workshop was founded as the primary point of substantive intellectual engagement for scholars interested in the method and practice of archaeology, and the nature of archaeological knowledge. The theme for the IAW this year is “Materiality”.

The IAW welcomes papers that broadly explore the theme of materiality: epistemologically, conceptually, or methodologically.  Recently, the concept of materiality has gained has found its way into much of contemporary archaeological literature, but its meanings are multiple and multiply contentious. “Material” and its capacities to serve as evidence of and create the conditions for human life of various sorts can be said to be an object of study for all archaeologists.  The ways in which the particular properties of material objects, created through the affordances of different materials, and processes of production, use and decay, interact with one another and shape human life is perhaps the most common appeal to this concept in recent literature.  The IAW invites case studies of this sort from scholars from various disciplines.  In other appeals to this concept, a more holistic reconsideration of the relationships between people and things is attempted.  In this vein, the IAW seeks to be a space where we can discuss all that “materiality” or “materiality studies” makes possible or forecloses: questions of agency, ethics, politics, co-constitutedness and “concreteness”, actor networks, infrastructure and decay, are all tangled up in questions of materiality.  Through readings of contemporary and foundational literature and case studies provided by our speakers, we hope to open constructive and direct conversations about this topic over the course of a year of shared investigation and collective thought.

How does using materiality as an analytic allow us to make the strange familiar or the familiar strange? How do “new” materialisms transform or reaffirm “old” materialisms? Where are lines drawn between materials, material culture, and materiality? What archaeological methods can be productive for thinking through these questions? What unconventional methodologies or practices can be generative in these considerations?  How can materiality figure into the ways in which we understand the written word and the writing of human history?  How does the analytic use of materiality redefine what it means to be a human in the world, particularly with regards to anything we might say is uniquely human?  How does it redefine the ideas of causality, intention, motivation, and choice?  Are these redefinitions that we would like to see and is materiality a viable and productive tool without them?

Scholars from any and all disciplines are encouraged to submit papers. Please also note that we embrace papers that touch on materiality peripherally, unconventionally, or experimentally.

If you would like to workshop a paper with us sometime next year, please send an email to Emma Gilheany (Gilheany@uchicago.edu) and Akiva Sanders (Sandersa@uchicago.edu) with the following information:

• Paper title
• Type of paper (e.g., dissertation chapter, MA paper)
• An abstract of no more than 250 words
• The quarter(s) in which you are able to present (if more than one, please list your preferences in ranked order).