Speaker: Dr. Tamara L. Bray, Professor, Department of Anthropology, Wayne State University

New understandings of matter and materiality are being driven by recent theoretical developments in the realm of science, particularly physics and ecology. These evolving orientations are, in turn, contributing to new philosophical thinking on the nature of being and reality. The trickle-down effects of these developments are, in part, responsible for what has been termed “the ontological turn,” a trend clearly visible in recent archaeological discourse. In combination with new relational and symmetrical approaches guiding investigations into constitution of “the social,” the door has been opened to imagining logics and ontologies different from our own in our studies of past peoples. In this paper, I work from the basis of the imperial Inca ceramic assemblage to consider how these distinctive objects were deployed in the task of
empire-building and what insights they provide into native Andean and Inca ontology during the late pre-Columbian period. I develop the argument that imperial pots were construed as animate bodies and agents of the State based on an analysis of vessel morphology and iconography. The study brings to the fore the mutually constituted nature of the imperial Inca project, which I contend involved armies of both people and things working collectively in the construction of a new social order

Speakers: Noemi Mafrici and Michela Mezzano, Ph.D. Candidates, Architecture and Landscape Heritage, Politecnico di Torino

This talk will present the first outcomes of the ongoing joint research project between POLITO and UCLA. The project "Cultural Heritage in context: digital technologies for the humanities" concerns the UNESCO campaign of the 1960s for the rescue of the Nubian temples that risked being flooded .The aim of the project is to reconstruct the lost context of the Nubia heritage and to visualize the relocation of the temples involved in the salvage campaign .The case of the temple of Dendur will be presented through its three contexts: the lost original Nubian landscape, the relocated space at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and  the Virtual Reality reconstruction context.

Speakers: Dr. Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati, Visiting Professor, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology; Giorgio Buccellati, Professor Emeritus, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA

"These forty years now I've been speaking in prose without knowing it!" Unlike Moliere 's Monsieur Jourdain, we knew we were "speaking prose" ... Our "prose" was community archaeology, which we undertook to implement since the beginning of our excavation projects in Syria. Having embarked on an effort that relied on a common sense type of approach, very much down to earth as it befits an archaeological endeavor, we have come to reflect more and more on its theoretical implications. And the current war in Syria has put to a severe test our presuppositions . We will first review the main aspects of our specific case of "community archaeology" at Tell Mozan, ancient Urkesh, and we will then share our reflections on its theoretical import. This is particularly meaningful now, at a moment when the concept is beginning to gain traction on the one hand, while on the other we find ourselves physically separated from our "community."

Speaker: Dr. Annelou van Gijn, Professor of Archaeological Material Culture and Artefact Studies, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University