In April 2014 the fourteenth Nordic Theoretical Archaeology Group conference will be hosted by the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies at Stockholm University.
Conference theme
The theme of the conference, Archaeology as a source of theory, takes as its starting point a well-known paradox in current archaeology. Our discipline has long been used in other fields as a metaphor for exploring the unconscious, uncovering an unknown past, or investigating origins. On the other hand, archaeology has a tradition of borrowing and applying theories from other fields, rather than developing theoretical approaches within archaeology itself. It is as if traces from the past are difficult to use in theory building. Only recently have some attempts been made to overcome this situation. Starting from this theoretical paradox, we invite colleagues to XIV Nordic TAG to explore the potential of archaeology as its own source of theory.
Paper abstract submission:
Paper abstracts should be sent by e-mail to session organizers before 15 December 2013. A list of sessions, paper guidelines and contact details of session organizers is available on the conference website:
www.archaeology.su.se/nordictag2014
Important dates:
• 15 December 2013 – Deadline for paper submissions.
• 1 March 2014 – Registration will close.
• 22 April 2014 – Opening of XIV Nordic TAG.
• 23-25 April 2014 – Parallel sessions at Aula Magna.
• 26 April 2014 – Excursions.
Contact:
nordictag@ark.su.se
www.archaeology.su.se/nordictag2014
Month: November 2013 (Page 1 of 2)
We have grown and now offer courses in five different countries in Europe; S pain, Italy, Greece, Croatia and Bosnia. For 2014 we are offering more than 20 different archaeological courses in six areas:
- Archaeological Film
- European Archaeological Tour
- Archaeology
- Anthropology
- GIS (Geographic Information System)
- Underwater School in Archaeology
If you don’t have much time and would like to get an idea about our 2014 courses in five minutes, you can download our Quick Guide which gives a brief summary of each course.
We hope that you are all still following us on Twitter and Facebook.
Thank you,
César González
Course Coordinator
The Sanisera Field School
International Archaeological C ourses
Webpage: www.ecomuseodecavalleria.com
Documentary Webpage: www.archaeologicaldreams.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ecomuseum.cavalleria
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ecomuseum
Email: sanisera@arrakis.es
New Phone: +1 347 8710963
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanisera
Columbia Summer Program in Italy:
Archaeological Fieldwork at Hadrian’s Villa
Information Session
Beginning in summer 2014, Columbia’s Advanced Program of Ancient History and Art (APAHA) will offer a four-week summer program that provides undergraduate and graduate students with the unique opportunity to excavate and learn together at Hadrian’s Villa, a UNESCO World Heritage site near Rome. Students will learn archaeological techniques and think critically about how excavation work allows for deeper insight into the social, political, economic, architectural and artistic history of classical antiquity.
Hadrian’s Villa is one of the most important archaeological sites of classical antiquity. Its visionary synthesis of Roman, Greek, and Egyptian architectural and artistic traditions has attracted scholarly attention ever since its rediscovery in the Renaissance and has inspired generations of artists, architects, and writers—from Palladio to Le Corbusier, and from Piranesi to Yourcenar.
APAHA is a program created under the joint aegis of Columbia’s Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America and H2CU, the Honors Center of Italian Universities of the Sapienza University in Rome. It is promoted by the Department of Art History and Archaeology, the Department of History, and the Classical Studies Graduate Program.
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Date: Wednesday, November 20th
Time: 4-5 p.m.
Place: The Italian Academy, Library – 1161 Amsterdam Avenue (between 116th and 118th Streets)
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Interested but can’t attend?
Visit Laura Schiff’s office hours in the Office of Global Programs Mondays (3:30-4:30 p.m.) & Tuesdays (2:30-3:30 p.m.) or e-mail her with questions or to make an appointment– lbp2123@columbia.edu.
The American Academy in Rome announces new Summer Skills Courses in Archaeology: http://aarome.org/news/features/aar-launches-summer-skills-courses-in-archaeology. This year’s course will be on the Documentation and Analysis of Ancient Architecture and will provide students the skills to produce plans, sections and structural analysis of ancient buildings, using a variety of methodologies. The course will involve hands-on study of a Roman temple – Temple A at the Largo Argentina in downtown Rome.
2015 will see the return of the Roman Pottery Summer School.
These courses have been designed to be as affordable as possible, packing maximum information and field work into a three-week schedule.
SUMMER SKILLS COURSES IN ARCHAEOLOGY
These intensive courses are intended to provide graduate students and other professionals in archaeology, history, classics and historic preservation (plus occasional upper-level undergraduate students) with hands-on training in skills essential for contemporary practice. With opportunities to put into practice skills learned during the course, these courses are taught by specialists in the field and are offered in rotation in sequential years.
2014 Program
Documentation and Analysis of Ancient Buildings
2014 Dates
June 3-21, 2014
Application Deadline
January 17, 2014
Lead Instructor
Stephan Zink, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich
In collaboration with ETH Zurich (Institut für Denkmalpflege und Bauforschung, Prof. U. Hassler) and the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali.
Architectural remains represent the largest and most conspicuous body of material evidence for the study of Antiquity. At the same time, ancient buildings are fragmented and highly modified artifacts with long life cycles of construction, decay and reconstruction. The analysis and documentation of ancient buildings is thus an opportunity to understand buildings in time, to make sense of them as social and historical artifact and to address the issues of interpretative documentation and recording of the past.
This three-week course offers an intensive introduction to the documentation, analysis, and interpretation of ancient architecture. Designed for students from all backgrounds, the course will introduce students to buildings analysis through three types of experience. Students will carry out original fieldwork at a Roman temple (the so-called Temple A at Largo Argentina), where they will learn how to produce plans and sections of a complex site using a combination of digital surveying and hand drawings. Afternoon classroom lectures will introduce students to the basic principles of ancient design and construction, as well as to some theoretical questions related to the study and documentation of historical architecture. Finally, weekend field trips to architectural sites in and around Rome will provide an occasion to discuss examples of historical and modern preservation strategies and their approaches in creating ideas of the past through “designing” a ruin.
Instructor: Dr. Stephan Zink is a research fellow at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich where he teaches courses on building archaeology, documentation and construction. He has a PhD in classical archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania, and is the author of a forthcoming book on the architecture of the Palatine sanctuary of Apollo. He specializes in the architecture and design of Roman buildings of the Augustan age, and has worked for many years on the Palatine.
This course will be offered every other year.
Costs
Tuition: $3550
This includes tuition, a shared room, self-catering facilities, two AAR dinners/week and course trips.
Not included: airfare/travel to Rome, contribution to self-catered meals, lunches and weekend meals.
Lodging
Students will be housed at the American Academy in shared room, self-catering apartments, with some meals taken with the Academy community. Days will be hot, long and strenuous and all applicants should be prepared with the proper level of fitness and appropriate clothing.
Eligibility
Admission is competitive as the class size will be limited. The course is intended for graduate students and professionals from archaeology, history, architecture, historic conservation and preservation and other allied fields. Advanced undergraduates should consult the instructor before applying. Applicants from outside American universities are most welcome.
How to Apply
A complete application consists of a cover letter explaining why the program is of interest, a curriculum vitae and two letters of recommendation. Applications and all supporting materials, including recommendations, should be sent by email. The letters of recommendation must be sent directly by the individual referees.
Applications should be sent to Stephan Zink at zink@idb.arch.ethz.ch.
Call for participants – Study and Dig with the Apolline Project on the Slopes of Mt. Vesuvius
Call for participants – Winter, spring and summer intensive one- and two-week courses offered in specialized areas of archaeological research, in addition to summer fieldwork opportunities.
The Apolline Project is an open research network, which sheds light on the hitherto neglected past of the area to the north of Mt. Vesuvius, in the Bay of Naples. The project has run actively since 2004 and has several components, with current major work focusing on a Medieval church and a Roman villa with baths buried by the volcanoclastic debris of Vesuvius.
The Apolline Project is now accepting applications for its winter, spring, and summer lab courses as well as its summer 2014 field season. Offered lab courses include: human osteology, pottery, zooarchaeology, archaeobotany, Roman architecture and Roman marble. Selected participants will have the opportunity to spend additional time before and after their chosen program(s) at the project’s accommodations at no additional charge in order to better explore the region.
For further information, including course descriptions and fieldwork opportunities, visit: http://www.apollineproject.org/dig.html.
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I am pleased to announce the Digital Domains workshop at Dartmouth College, scheduled for March 20 – 22, 2014. With support from the Neukom Institute of Computational Science, the workshop will bring together archaeologists, engineers, and computer scientists from the US, Mexico, and Europe to share research that reconstructs and engages archaeological landscapes through remote sensing and GIS. Attendance is free and open to the academic community, so please feel free to share information about the workshop with your students and colleagues. You can find more information about the conference and the speakers on the Digital Domains website:
http://sites.dartmouth.edu/digital-domains/
I am encouraging applications for poster presentations from students and scholars who use computing to reconstruct, visualize, and analyze past and present environments. Posters will be displayed during afternoon and evening receptions. Contact me directly before February 3rd to submit a poster abstract or to request more information.
Yours,
Jason
Jason T. Herrmann
Neukom Institute for Computational Science and Department of Anthropology
6047 Silsby Hall
Dartmouth College
(603) 646-8192
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DIGITAL DOMAINS: Remote Sensing of Past Human Landscapes http://sites.dartmouth.edu/digital-domains/
March 20-22, 2014
Dartmouth College
Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto
Call for Papers — Annual Graduate Symposium
April 24th – 25th, 2014
The Methods to Our Madness? An Inquiry into Methodology in the Study of Religion
The identity of the academic study of religion might be characterized paradoxically: first, the study of religions is a field of academic inquiry that is theoretically diverse and methodologically rich; second, lacking methodological orthodoxy, scholarly approaches to the study of religion are unpredictable and chaotic, or, as some may see it, mad. Underlying both descriptions is the problem of methodological variability in the study of religion. The spirit of diverse intellectual curiosity, arguably the chief strength of our field, is at times akin to “madness”—that is, characterized by chaos and disorder. And yet, many scholars have pointed out the generative and creative potential of that which is deemed chaotic. In this light, justifying our disciplinary existence is critical to discussions that reflect on the study of religion’s goals and limits, and is crucial for thinking about the future of the study of religions.
Several questions arise from these issues: is there something inherently diverse about “religion” which compels its study to be diverse in methodology? Does the image of order applied to chaos, or of method given to madness accurately reflect the task of scholars of religion? In what ways has the paradigm of “application” been replicated in our contemporary methodologies? How can we complicate this style of approach? What changes, either in method or in theory, when the study of religion appropriates the methods of other disciplines?
We invite papers that consider the following topics and related questions:
- madness, chaos, or disorder in philosophical, historical, or anthropological contexts.
- the use of philosophical concepts in the study of religion.
- complications of the natural scientific paradigm of “method” in the study of religions.
- area studies that address specific practices, rituals, or beliefs.
- critical reflections on “the material turn,” and its larger implications for method.
- the (im)possibility of knowledge given the difficulties of source transmission or collection.
- the historical development of the study of religion in general.
- questions about taxonomy and categorization.
- reflections on the discipline or “(un)discipline” of religious studies in light of the problems associated with method.
In order to be considered, interested applicants are to submit 250–300 word proposals including paper title, five keywords, author name, institutional affiliation, and contact information to Zoe Anthony at methodsofmadness2014@gmail.com by January 6th, 2014. Successful applicants will be notified by February 10th, 2014. The keynote speaker will be announced closer to the conference date.
CITYSCAPES & MONUMENTS
of remembrance in western Asia Minor
29-31 October 2014 – Aarhus University
Cityscapes are expressions of identity. They consist of houses, streets, temples, tombs and monuments left there by generations of inhabitants. Cityscapes are interpreted and reinter-preted as expressions of changing relations of power, of past lives and of present identity – they constitute places of remembrance.
This conference aims at exploring the cityscapes and their monuments as expressions of memories in the cities of western Asia Minor. They will be studied in four different, but not necessarily separable, spaces – private, public, sacred, and funerary. Chronologically the conference will cover the period c. 600 BCE to 500 CE, reflecting more than 1000 years of cultural diversity from the Lydian and Persian hegemony in the Archaic period over Athenian supremacy and Persian satrapal rule in the Classical period through auto-cratic kingship in Hellenistic times until finally more than half a millennium of Roman rule.
How did the inhabitants choose – deliberately or subconsciously – to commemorate their past and their ancestors, and how did they manage to maintain their identity under such changing political systems?
Please send a preliminary TITLE and an ABSTRACT (of max. 250 words) no later than 1 January 2014 to klaem@hum.au.dk
FOCUS
The significance of memory in ancient societies and how it was promoted, con-tested and even attempted destroyed will be the main focus of the conference. We invite papers focusing on aspects of re-membrance in the ancient cityscapes of western Asia Minor.
LOCATION
The conference will take place over three days at Aarhus University, and travel and accommodation expenses will have to be met by the participants.
LANGUAGE
English and German are the preferred languages of the conference.
CONTACT
For further information, please contact Eva Mortensen (klaem@hum.au.dk).
The 4th Biennial Ancient Borderlands International Graduate Student Conference
Innovation in Borderland Regions
April 4-6, 2014
The Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara invites graduate scholars of any discipline to submit abstracts of papers addressing the theme of Innovation in Borderland Regions. Borderlands, broadly defined, are spaces where people of disparate ethnicities, cultures, religions, political systems, or linguistic traditions come into close contact. These contacts, which often occur in the context of imperial center/periphery relations, can be either violent or peaceful. They may center on either physical borders or mental categories of difference. In all cases, however, they require both individuals and societies to adapt culturally, politically, economically, or technologically to encounters with other ways of life.
The Ancient Borderlands Graduate Conference seeks papers that address the ways that interactions in borderlands inspire innovation and adaptation. We welcome proposals for individual papers, or full panels involving scholars from several departments or universities, that focus on borderlands and regions of interaction in any geographic or cultural context. Although we are a research group focused on premodern borderlands, we encourage papers that address this theme in any geographic region or period.
As the nature of borderlands involves the meeting and mixing of a variety of viewpoints, the study of borderlands calls for – even demands – an interdisciplinary approach. With this in mind, the conference aims to include a wide variety of perspectives and specialties from across disciplinary boundaries. We encourage, but do not require, papers that engage with the ideas and themes raised by theorists whose work has relevance for borderlands processes, such as: Gloria Anzaldúa, Fredrick Barth, Daniel Boyarin, Bradley Parker, Pierre Bourdieu, Gayatri Charkravorty Spivak, Thomas Tweed, and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen.
Please send a 500 word abstract to ggoalwin@umail.ucsb.edu by January 31, 2014 and include “UCSB Borderlands Conference” in the subject of the e-mail. If accepted, paper presentations will be 15 minutes long. Limited travel funds may be available for those who cannot procure funding from their home institution.
The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, will appoint two post-doctoral scholars for 2014-2015 in the fields of Archaeology, Ancient Israel Studies, or Ancient Near Eastern Cultures.
The highly competitive fellowships are offered to researchers across many disciplines, and will be awarded on the basis of academic excellence.
Applicants should have received their Ph.D. in a relevant field within the last five years from an institution other than Tel Aviv University. While appropriate training in archaeology, biblical
studies, ancient Near Eastern cultures and/or biblical history is required, the nature of an applicant’s specific research interests and areas of expertise is open.
Successful candidates are expected to make substantive contributions to the ongoing development of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology by organizing a colloquium on a subject to be decided at the beginning of the academic year that will stimulate an intellectual environment in which research and new interdisciplinary connections are pursued and developed.
In addition to engaging in their own research, the successful candidates will be expected to teach one two-hour graduate level seminar during one of the two semesters (interdisciplinary offerings are desirable).
The fellowship period will begin October 1, 2014, and is for a period of one academic year. The appointment carries an NIS 85,000 (= approximately $24,000) stipend and teaching salary for each candidate.
Applicants are requested to submit a cover letter, a CV, a detailed statement of current research interests (up to 2000 words), and two letters of reference (to be submitted directly by the recommenders). In addition, post-doctoral fellows must state if they are applying for other sources of funding for the fellowship period.
The scientific committee includes Prof. Oded Lipschits, Prof. Israel Finkelstein, Prof. Ran Barkai, Prof. Rafi Greenberg and Dr. Erez Ben Yosef..
Application materials should be sent to: Professor Oded Lipschits (lipschit@post.tau.ac.il) with a copy to Mrs. Sara Lev (saralev@post.tau.ac.il). Subject heading should read: Post-Doctoral Application.
Last date for acceptance of material: March 2, 2014.
Results will be published on April 4, 2014.
