Changes [Apr 29, 2008]
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gathering by the water
Places in the landscape gather a vast range of things – both animate and inanimate entities, and associations that run deep in their temporality. They are maintained by localized spatial practices that continually generate hybrid materialities, while they act as nexuses of human interaction. On the fresh theoretical grounds of landscape archaeology, spatial theory, and ethnographies of place, fieldwork in archaeology is increasingly becoming aware of the temporal, spatial and material complexity of places, and has increasingly been adopting site-specific, locally nuanced surveying techniques. Studies of rock reliefs, sacred spring sites, river basins, mountain-top sanctuaries and the like increasingly challenge the traditional understandings of these places as boundary markers, road signs, imperial monuments or other such macro-scale territorial functions. Dissatisfied with the representational and epigraphic content of such landscape monuments, archaeologists are beginning to address the questions of long-term located practices whereby the significance of places in the collective imagination and social memory constantly shifts; the appropriation of particular human practices by the ruling elite introduces the sites monumentality and state spectacles; sites are used, reused and reconfigured by different cultural groups; and finally the sites gain various sorts of complex associations in relation to other similar sites, and their urban others. Site-specific inscriptions of human practices, performances and events are therefore coming to the fore of discussions of landscapes.
This workshop intends to bring scholars together who work on questions of archaeological landscapes and specifically focus on the making and unmaking of places of human interaction such as rock reliefs, sacred springs, and other meaningful places, and to provide a platform to discuss our experiences, fieldwork challenges and theoretical premises of approaching such sites and landscapes.
The format of the workshop will be as follows: Each participant will give 30-35 minute presentations of their own work, and each paper will follow a 10 minute response and a brief discussion (question-answer) afterwards. There will also be two one-hour open discussion panels, one after the third presentation in the morning, and one after the last one.
March 1, Saturday: The Morning Session
MacMillan Hall 115
| 8:45 am. | Welcome Remarks (Sue Alcock, Ömür Harmansah). |
| 9:00-9:35 am. | Lisa J. Lucero, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Andrew Kinkella, Doctoral Student in Anthropology, University of California Riverside |
| 9:35-9:45 am. | Response: Thomas G. Garrison, Postdoctoral Research Associate of Anthropology, Brown University. |
| 9:45-10:00 am. | Discussion |
| 10:00-10:15 am. | Break |
| 10:15-10:50 am. | Matthew Canepa, Assistant Professor of Art History, College of Charleston. |
| 10:50-11:00 am | Response: Ian Straughn, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Islamic Archaeology, Brown University. |
| 11:00-11:15 am. | Discussion |
| 11:15-11:50 am. | Christopher Witmore, Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University |
| 11:50 am-12:00 pm. | Response: Elliott Colla, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Brown University. |
| 12:00-12:15 pm. | Discussion |
| 12:15-1:45 pm. | Lunch |
| 2:00-2:35 pm. | Ben Marsh, Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies, Bucknell University |
| 2:35-2:45 pm. | Response: John F. Cherry, Professor of Classics and Anthropology, Brown University. |
| 2:45-3:00 pm. | Discussion |
| 3:00-3:35 pm. | Lee Ullmann, PhD Candidate, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University. |
| 3:35-3:45 pm. | Response: Betsey Robinson, Assistant Professor of the Classics and of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University. |
| 3:45-4:00 pm. | Discussion |
| 4:00-4:15 pm. | Break |
| 4:15-4:50 pm. | Ömür Harmansah, Assistant Professor of Archaeology and Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies, Brown University |
| 4:50-5:00 pm. | Response: Susan E. Alcock, Director, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Joukowsky Family Professor in Archaeology, Professor of Classics and Anthropology, Brown University. |
| 5:00 pm-5:30 pm. | Discussion |
| 5:30 pm-6:45 pm. | Reception at Joukowsky Institute, 70 Waterman Street |
| 7:00 pm. | Dinner for the participants |
March 2, Sunday
Joukowsky Institute, 70 Waterman St.
| 9:00 am. | Coffee and pastries at the Joukowsky Institute |
| 9:30-11:00 am. | Roundtable: New challenges to archaeological fieldwork at rock reliefs, sacred springs, and other meaningful places. (Streaming Video |
Afternoon: free time and departures
