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Cotsen Institute hosting two conferences in November

by eric — last modified October 26, 2009 10:21 AM

By Eric Gardner | 10.26.09

This November, the Costen Institute of Archaeology will be hosting two major conferences. Both are free to attend and open to the public.

From November 13-15, the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology is proud to sponsor the Advanced Seminar on The Construction of Value in the Ancient World. This symposium (organized by John Papadopoulos and Gary Urton) seeks to bring together an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural group of scholars in the Humanities and Social Sciences (anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, economic historians, historians, linguists, philologists, sociologists) to investigate the meaning and construction of value in the ancient world. For more information about the event, please visit this page.

From November 21-22 the Cotsen Institute will host Beyond The Surface: Bronze Mirrors from the Cotsen Collection - an International Symposium. The symposium will focus on an extraordinary collection of 97 mirrors, all but five of which were made in China. The earliest mirror dates to the Qijia culture (ca. 2100–1700 BCE).  The latest Chinese mirror dates to the Jin dynasty (1115–1234 CE) though there are mirrors in the collection that were manufactured outside China that have a later date. For details, please visit the Symposium's page.

Attendees to both events are asked to RSVP by emailing rsvp@ioa.ucla.edu or by calling (310) 794-4837.

 

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The Construction of Value

Scholars from Aristotle to Marx and beyond have been fascinated by the question of what constitutes value. The Construction of Value in the Ancient World makes a significant contribution to this ongoing inquiry, bringing together in one comprehensive volume the perspectives of leading anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, philologists, and sociologists on how value was created, defined, and expressed in a number of ancient societies around the world. Based on the basic premise that value is a social construct defined by the cultural context in which it is situated, the volume explores four overarching but closely interrelated themes: place value, body value, object value, and number value. The questions raised and addressed are of central importance to archaeologists studying ancient civilizations: How can we understand the value that might have been accorded to materials, objects, people, places, and patterns of action by those who produced or used the things that compose the human material record? Taken as a whole, the contributions to this volume demonstrate how the concept of value lies at the intersection of individual and collective tastes, desires, sentiments, and attitudes that inform the ways people select, or give priority to, one thing over another.

Available now!

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