This Saturday, the two departments that are home to archaeology at UBC (Anthropology and Classics, Near Eastern and Religious Studies) come together to hear about each other’s work. This is the 2nd annual day of presentations, posters and conversations involving archaeology students from UBC programs as well as friends and colleagues from the Vancouver area.

When: Saturday, March 24, 2007 from 8:30am-5:00pm
Where: ANSO 205/207 (show me a map)

See the poster for this session here.

A reminder about the Dorothy Thompson Memorial Lecture tomorrow by Professor Colin Renfrew, Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn on:

The Indo-European Problem and the Origins of Linguistic Diversity

Lecture Abstract: “The Indo-European language family is one of the largest in the world in terms both of speakers and the great expanse of territory in which they live. The explanation for this large distribution takes one back to prehistoric times and poses archaeological problems which remain unresolved. In this lecture, the traditional view that the proto Indo-European language was dispersed through most of Europe by mounted warrior nomads from the steppe lands north of the Black Sea, at the beginning of the Bronze Age, is called into question. The alternative view that proto Indo-European speakers accompanied the spread of farming from Anatolia, the modern Turkey, some 3,000 years earlier is instead proposed. This is a specific case of the farming/language dispersal model which is of wider relevance. Current controversies concerning the origins of linguistic diversity will be reviewed.”

Thursday, March 15, 2007, 3:30 p.m.
Leonard S. Klinck (LSK) Building, Room 201

Lord Renfrew is an internationally renowned archaeologist. Among his many books, perhaps best known are his The Emergence of Civilisation (1972), Before Civilisation: the Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe (1973), Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo- European Origins (1987) , and Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice (with P. Bahn), the textbook for Anth 305.

The Center for India and South Asia Research is delighted to announce that Akhil Gupta, prominent anthropologist of development, modernity, and postcolonial South Asia, will be speaking here at UBC this week on the topic of:

“Literacy and Democracy: Notes from Anthropological Observations in Rural India”

Thursday, March 15, 2007, 11:30 – 1 PM
Room 120, C.K. Choi Building (1855 West Mall)

Akhil Gupta is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Red Tape: Corruption, Inscription and Governmentality in Rural India (forthcoming, Duke), and Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India (Duke, 1998), and has edited The Anthropology of the State (Blackwell, 2006), Caste and Outcast (2002), Culture, Power, Place (1997), and Anthropological Locations (1997).

Dr. Kelly Bannister (Director, POLIS Project on Ecological Governance, U Victoria) gives a talk in the ANSO building this Thursday on:

The Nexus of Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge

The role of traditional knowledge in biodiversity science and decision-making has peaked serious interest by governments, policy-makers, academics, Indigenous communities and others around the world. However, despite increasing agreement in principle that combining western scientific and traditional knowledge systems may better address some emergent human and ecosystem health problems, relatively little progress has been made in practice or in developing policies and infrastructure to support such practice. The role of ethical and quasi-legal instruments, such as research protocols and codes, are receiving significant attention at local to international levels for their potential to address a number of challenges that lie at this nexus of principle-policy-practice involving biodiversity and traditional knowledge. Are such instruments tools for building cross-cultural relationships, democratizing biodiversity science and empowering communities in decision-making, or do they serve to bureaucratize the research enterprise?

Thursday, March 8 2007 – 5:00 – 6:30 pm in ANSO 2107.

Forests and Oceans for the Future Speakers Series

Professor Kyoung-Mann Cho (Anthropology, Mokpo National University, Korea) gives a talk in the ANSO building this Thursday on:

What Does the River Mean for You? People’s Notions of Nature and Aboriginal Rights in Contemporary Chehalis, BC

This research is on notions of nature in Chehalis, BC. In preliminary fieldwork a simple question has been asked: “what does the river mean to you?” The ‘river’ not only represents the Harrison river itself, which the Chehalis depend on, but also the ecological, spiritual linkages of river, forest, earth, salmon and other livings including human beings. The river also symbolizes the Chehalis territory from the ancestors beyond the present administrative one, i.e. the reservation. This research focusses on Chehalis ways of explaining their notions of the ‘river’ and their ways of claiming aboriginal rights. The notion of ‘oneness’ or harmony between nature and culture, between natural surroundings and human existence will be reconsidered.

The interim report of this fieldwork will suggest some basic reflexive questions. Is there a discrepancy between ideal notions of oneness and practical, objective exploitation? How do Chehalis residents understand these issues?

Thursday, March 8, 2007 in ANSO 205

Dr. Nefissa Naguib (Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway) gives a talk this week called “Visitors: Armenian Orphans in Jerusalem” ( Tuesday March 6, 5pm, Green College).

A lecture on how genocide, loss and deportation are experienced, conceptualized and generated among Armenians in Jerusalem, based on Dr. Naguib’s fieldwork and ongoing research on the Armenian Diaspora. Her presentation will focus upon the deportation of Armenians from Eastern Anatolia/now Turkey in 1915 to the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. It will sketch a history of the arrival of orphans and the immediate relief efforts which followed in an attempt to get at the individual stories which will tell us more about impacts of relief efforts on individual lives and how wider forces of history, altered by moments of conflict, are brought to bear on the lives of this community today.

Jointly sponsored by Green College and the Department of Anthropology.

A reminder about the upcoming colloquium by Andrew Martindale, this Thursday, February 15, 11:30 am – 1:00 pm in AnSo 205 (show me a map)

Archaeological Uncertainty about Causality in Agency and Structure: Translation Between Anthropological and Ts’msyeen Worlds

My work in comparing archaeological and Ts’msyeen views of history embodies an essential teleology: translation across the fronts of science/anthropology/indigeneity is valid because it is possible. In this paper, I reflect on the parallel narratives of archaeology and oral tradition that I have constructed and address two apparent contradictions.

Although archaeological data and Ts’msyeen adawx frequently conjoin, they are the product of distinct epistemological, perhaps paradigmatic, traditions whose difference, though essential to the process, is obscured and perhaps obviated by the act of conjunction. Is the generation of and comparison between archaeological and indigenous histories translative or hegemonic, and if the former, what is the nature of data in oral records? Second, both views of history are predicated on the assumption of intergenerational continuity­that some kind of structured Ts’msyeen-ness remains despite, for example, changes in fundamental categories of identity through the colonial era. Given the expectation of volatile agency in history, where does our confidence in the persistence of structure originate? What significance to we attach to similarities in materiality and behaviour when oral records make claims of cultural continuity through periods of change in the archaeological record, and vice versa? Using recent data from ongoing research in the Dundas Islands region of Ts’msyeen territory, I explore whether the philosophical anthropology of Paul Ricouer and the model of the reflexive individual suggest a synthesis of causalities between historical structure and agency.

A Forests and Oceans for the Future lecture in collaboration with the Department of Anthropology. For additional information, please contact Felice Wyndham at fwyndham@interchange.ubc.ca or 604 822 2548