The Faunal Interest Group
The group has convened by-weekly (Fridays from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm in the Archaeology Centre boardroom AP140 at 19 Ursula Franklin Street) since September 2007. The group discusses new and old issues of zoo archaeological method and theory. For more information, please contact Genevieve Dewar genevieve.dewar@utoronto.ca.
September Events
Join us for the Archaeology Centre’s Welcome Back Party! September 22nd at 5:30 pm, at the Prenup Pub (191 College St, Toronto, ON, M5T 1P9).
September Events
The Archaeology Centre presents: a Book Launch and Talk by Dr. Seth Bernard of Classics. Friday, September 22, 4:00 – 5:30 pm in AP 130 (Anthropology Building, 19 Ursula Franklin St / Russell St, Toronto, ON, M5S 2S2). to join virtually, please click here. Seth will lecture on his recently published book “Historical Culture in Iron Age Italy: Archaeology, History, and the Use of the Past, 900-300 BCE” (Oxford University Press). Questions and book signing will follow. A little bit about the book: Long before the emergence of Roman historical writing, the societies of Iron Age Italy were actively engaged in transmitting and using their past. This book provides a first account of this early historical interest, providing a sort of prehistory of historical thought in Italy leading down to the first encounters with Roman expansion. From the Early Iron Age to the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, Italian communities can be seen actively using burial practices, images, special objects, calendars, and various other media to record and transmit history. Drawing from current anthropological and archaeological theory, the book argues for collecting this material together under the broad rubric of “historical culture,” as the socialized mode of engagement with the past.
The prevailing mode of historical culture in Italy develops alongside the wider structures of society, from the Early Iron Age to the early stages of urbanization, to the first encounters with Rome. Throughout the period, Italy’s many communities possessed a far more extensive interest in history than scholarship has previously acknowledged. The book’s fresh account of this historical culture also includes accessible presentation of several recent and important archaeological discoveries. Historical Culture in Iron Age Italy will be of wide interest to historians and archaeologists of Early Rome and Italy, as well as all those thinking broadly about modes of historical transmission, and the intersections between archaeology and history.
September Events
The Faculty of Arts and Science, Dean’s Office; the Department of Antrhopology; the Centre for Indigenous Studies; and New College, present: Orange Shirt Day talk by Professor Kisha Supernant (Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Director, Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology), “Truth First: Indigenous Archaeology as Restorative Justice”. Friday, September 29th 2023, 2 – 4 pm, at the William Doo Auditorium (New College, 45 Willcocks Street). Reception to follow; please register here. Award-winning teacher, and writer, Professor Kisha Supernant (Metis/Papaschase/British) will discuss her research using ground-penetrating radar to identify the sites of potential unmarked graves at former residential schools and her work with Indigenous communities to preserve the sites.
October Events
Jada Ko (Harvard University). Friday, October 20th, 2023, 3 – 5 pm in AP 140 (Anthropology Building, 19 Ursula Franklin St / Russell St, Toronto, ON, M5S 2S2). To join us virtually, please click here. More information to follow.
October Events
Gary M. Feinman (MacArthur Curator of Anthropology, Field Museum of Natural History), also sponsored by the Royal Ontario Museum, “Reframing the Precolonial Mesoamerican Past through an Obsidian Lens.” Friday, November 10th, 2023, 3 – 5 pm. To join us virtually, please click here. “More than four decades ago, when I began my studies in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, the predominant conceptual perspectives framed the precolonial world as largely local, relatively static, dominated by closed socio-spatial units, and economically organized through top-down redistribution. Early on, as a participant in Valley of Oaxaca regional surveys, these perspectives never really squared with what we empirically recorded, a dissonant implication that only magnified with decades of excavations in domestic contexts in the region. Nevertheless, it was only later with the application of broadened technological tools focused on obsidian sourcing and the building of a comparative archive that we could more systematically assess and document the dynamic and multi-scalar character of Precolonial Mesoamerica. For this talk [Here], drawing on a sample of more than 500,000 pieces of sourced obsidian, I outline some of the key findings of that research and how it underpins a necessary politico-economic reconceptualization of this premodern world.”
November Events
Nicholas Laluk (Berkeley). Friday, November 17th, 2023, 3 – 5 pm in AP246 (Anthropology Building, 19 Ursula Franklin St / Russell St, Toronto, ON, M5S 2S2). More information to follow.
January 2024 Events
Don Butler. More information to follow.
Archaeology Centre Debates Conference 2024
2024 Theme: The Archaeology of Fire, sponsored by Michael Chazan. More information to follow.
**NEW** Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Resources at the Archaeology Centre
