NOTE: This Friday Seminar has been cancelled. 

Speaker: Dr. Jeremy Mumford, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Brown University

In 1558, in Spanish Peru, the Inka princess Cusi Huarcay married her brother, Sayri Thupa, with the blessing of the Catholic bishop of Cuzco, carrying the Inka tradition of sibling marriage into the colonial era. In 1570, King Philip V of Spain married his niece Anna of Austria, the daughter of his cousin and his sister. Each marriage reflected a royal practice of close-kin marriage forbidden to ordinary people, in Peru just as in Europe. Scholars have never seen them as comparable: on the one hand, the apparent magical thinking of the Inkas, who believed kings were descended from the Sun and should not pollute their blood with outsiders; on the other the apparent pragmatism of European monarchs, for whom endogamy was a tool in geopolitical strategy. In fact, there was pragmatism behind the magic and magic behind the pragmatism. In both kingdoms, close-kin marriage was a way that kings and queens sacralized themselves through breaking the most intimate and dangerous of laws. This research project, juxtaposing these two traditions of power and sexuality, opens a window into how entangled states create a shared political culture under colonialism.

Speaker: Dr. Nerissa Russell, Professor, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University

Ethnography shows us that every society has some form of food taboos, often focused on the meat of particular animals. While the pig taboo, in particular, has received considerable archaeological attention in the eastern Mediterranean, there is little discussion of taboo in prehistory. The obvious reason is that, lacking textual or direct ethnohistorical evidence, it is difficult to study absence. However, taboos are likely to have affected the composition of most zooarchaeological assemblages, so we cannot afford to ignore them. While specific beliefs cannot be applied from ethnography to deep prehistory, some of the structuring principles seen in ethnoarchaeological and ethnohistoric studies can help us to identify prehistoric animal taboos. I argue that the patterning of the animal bone assemblage from Neolithic Çatalhöyük has been shaped by taboo practices. These taboos involve multiple taxa and take several forms.

Connections

Archaeology is a collaborative field and archaeological teams always consist of specialists from many disciplines. This interconnectedness is an integral part of a holistic understanding of our past. Join us for an open house that illuminates the relationship between the Fowler Museum and archaeological research, beginning with two gallery talks in the Fowler Museum. These talks will be followed by a lecture, Connections Ancient and Modern: Reflections on Fieldwork in India by Dr. Monica L. Smith and will include a panel discussion with the audience. After the discussion the archaeological labs will be open to the public, giving visitors the chance to explore how archaeologists work together on many different levels to contribute to our appreciation of cultural heritage through interdisciplinary, cutting edge research.

For information call 310-209-8934. No reservation required.

Speaker: Dr. Lothar von Falkenhausen, Professor of Art History, UCLA

The Presidential Cultural Property Advisory Committee is charged with implementing the 1970 UNESCO convention in order to curb the illegal inflow of cultural property into the United States.  Lothar von Falkenhausen has served on this Committee since 2012.  He will report on the legal framework under which the Committee does its work, as well as on his experiences so far.