Spring 2013

April 4 – K. Paddayya (Professor Emeritus, Deccan College) – “The Anthropological Turn in Indian Archaeology.” 

April 11 – Gavin Lucas (Associatie Professor of Archaeology, University of Iceland) –  ”The Obscure Object of Archaeology.” *This event is co-sponsored by the 3CT (Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory)*

April 19-20 - Archaeologies of Frenchness Conference (Organized by the Department of Anthropology)

April 25 – Megan Edwards (Doctoral Candidate, Department of Anthropology) – “‘The Irish Appelation’: How and why whiskey became ‘Irish’ in the early modern British imaginary.” *This workshop is co-sponsored by the Semiotics Workshop*

May 2 - Rob Jennings (Doctoral Student, Department of Anthropology) – “Legitimacy, Force, and Consent: The Stranger-King in Early Mesopotamian Society.”

May 9-11 - TAG (Theoretical Archaeology Group) Conference (Co-organized by the University of Chicago). For more information, please visit: http://tag2013.uchicago.edu/

May 16 – Oya Topcuoglu (Doctoral Candidate, NELC) - Behind the Scenes:  A Look at Seal Carvers as Artists and Artisans in the Old Assyrian Period

Please join us this Thursday for:

Janelle Wade and Jonathan Winnerman 
PhD Candidate; PhD Student
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

“New Discoveries From the Tell-Edfu Block Yard Project”
Thursday, February 21st
4:30PM, Haskell Hall 315

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please contact

Christopher Grant at cgrant@uchicago.edu in advance.

Please join us for this Thursday

Anna Guengerich

Phd Candidate

Department of Anthropology

University of Chicago

“Everyday monuments: Residential architecture and built
environments of Chachapoya settlements”

Thursday, February 7, 2013

4:30 PM, Haskell Hall 315

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please contact

Christopher Grant at cgrant@uchicago.edu in advance.

The Interdisciplinary Archaeology Workshop

is pleased to present:

Annelise Morris

PhD Candidate

Department of Anthropology

University of California – Berkeley

“Excavating the Homeplace: Archaeology

and Histories on a Southern Illinois

Farmstead”

Thursday, December 6

4:30 PM, Haskell Hall 315

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please contact

Christopher Grant at cgrant@uchicago.edu in advance.

The Interdisciplinary Archaeology Workshop

is pleased to present:

Kathryn Franklin

Doctoral Candidate

Department of Anthropology

University of Chicago

Plain Wares and Powerful Words:

Late Medieval Globalism From the Gutters and

Walls of the Armenian Highlands.

Thursday, November 8

4:30 PM, Haskell Hall 315

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please contact

Christopher Grant at cgrant@uchicago.edu in advance.

The Interdisciplinary Archaeology Workshop

is pleased to present:

Maureen Marshall

PhD Candidate

Department of Anthropology

University of Chicago

 “Life and Death in the Late Bronze Age: Osteobiographies from the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia”

Thursday, October 25

4:30 PM, Haskell Hall 315

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please contact Christopher Grant at cgrant@uchicago.edu in advance.

Please join us for our first meeting of the 2012-13 Academic Year!

The Interdisciplinary Archaeology Workshop, the Workshop on Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Workshop on U.S. Locations

are pleased to present:

Jason De León

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

University of Michigan

Citizenship, Materiality, and Necroviolence along the U.S.-Mexico Border:

Recent Research from the Undocumented Migration Project

Thursday, October 11

4:30 PM, Haskell Hall 315

A reception will follow at the Pub

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please contact Christopher Grant at cgrant@uchicago.edu in advance.

The Interdisciplinary Archaeology Workshop

is pleased to invite everyone to a talk by

Yorke Rowan

The Oriental Institute

Houses of the Dead?

Ossuaries and Secondary Burials
in the Chalcolithic Period of the Southern Levant

The Chalcolithic of the southern Levant (4500-3700 BCE) is a period of iconographic florescence. Figurative depictions and abstracted imagery is more common than most periods before and after, much of it expressed in the realm of mortuary practices. The extended process of primary to secondary treatment of the body during the Chalcolithic includes the creation of modeled, decorated containers for the secondary remains, possibly with regional variations. Do these containers represent houses for the dead, as suggested when first discovered?

Thursday, May 10

4:30 PM, Haskell Hall Mezzanine 102

~ Chalcolithic fare will be provided! ~

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please contact Joe Bonni or Monique Vincent in advance at joebonni@uchicago.edu or moniquev@uchicago.edu

There will be no IAW meeting this week but we encourage you to head over to I-House for:

Webb Keane and Jonathan Lamb

The Lives of Things:

Interdisciplinary Conversations

May 3, 4:30 pm

International House Home Room

A reception will follow.

Webb Keane, Professor of Antropology at the University of Michigan, will be presenting “On Spirit Writing: Materialities of Language and the Religious Work of Transduction”

Jonathan Lamb, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, will be presenting “Things can drive you mad”

(more information)

The Interdisciplinary Archaeology Workshop

and

The Ancient Societies Workshop

are pleased to invite everyone to a talk by

Dimitri Nakassis

Assistant Professor of Classics
University of Toronto

Rethinking Mycenaean Society

The social and economic structures of Late Bronze Age (Mycenaean) Greece have been described in terms of strict hierarchy since the decipherment of the Mycenaean script, Linear B, in 1952. Traditional models consider palatial authority to be (nearly) absolute, and so have difficulty accounting for activities outside of direct palatial control and the internal heterogeneity of the socio-political order. I suggest that shifting the focus of study from administrative roles to individuals named in the administrative texts provides an alternative framework for understanding Mycenaean society. This work reveals a large number of individuals who, although they held no office, were important actors in activities monitored by the state as well as outside of it. Rather than seeing the social order as an effect of palatial centralization and hierarchy, then, with an elite composed of a small cadre of palatial officials, we can propose a more fluid model with a broad and heterogeneous elite. The palace in turn seems less of an agent in its own right that bends Mycenaean society to its will, and more of a product of various interactions between individuals and social groups.

Thursday, April 26

4:30 PM, Haskell Hall 315

~ Join us after the talk for a reception at The Pub ~

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please contact Joe Bonni or Monique Vincent in advance at joebonni@uchicago.edu or moniquev@uchicago.edu