CIAMS TV

Archaeological Science Group Lecture: Logan Kistler

"Ancient DNA perspectives on plant domestication"
December 2nd, 2021

CIAMS Lecture Series: Carlina de la Cova

"Restoring silenced identities: Care and ethical engagement with anatomical collections."
October 7th, 2021

Content warning: This presentation includes images of human remains.

To cite this talk: Carlina de la Cova. "Restoring silenced identities: Care and ethical engagement with anatomical collections." 7 Oct. 2021. CIAMS Lecture series. Cornell Institute of Archaeology & Material Studies.

CIAMS Lecture Series: Bénédicte Savoy

“Africa's Struggle for Its Art"
September 10th, 2021

CIAMS Lecture Series: Samuel Agbamu

“Imaginary Archaeologies: Italian literary representations of Libya and Tunisia, 1905-1912"
March 18th, 2021

CIAMS Lecture Series: Stephen Acabado

“Food, Plants, and Transoceanic Trade: The Making of the Filipino Identity"
February 18th, 2021

CIAMS Faculty Talk: Magnus Fiskesjö

“When They Come For Your Identity: The Ongoing Destruction of Living and Historical Heritage in the Uyghur Region, China"
December 10th, 2020

Archaeological Science Group Lecture: Keolu Fox

“Creating Accountability in Human Population Genetics using Base Editing Tools"
December 3rd, 2020

CIAMS Lecture Series: Rachel Watkins

“A Runner, Bioanthropologist and Accountant Walk into a Historical Narrative… Scientific Practice and Multiple Realities"
October 29th, 2020

CIAMS Lecture Series: Peggy Brunache

"Black Culinary Resistance in the French Caribbean during the Slavery Era"
October 1st, 2020

 

Special Functions Virtual Lecture: Benjamin Anderson

"Ancient Worlds Through Early Antiquarian Eyes"
April 6th, 2021

Stanford Archaeology Center workshop: Archaeology of Marginalized Peoples and Spaces, with Lori Khatchadourian

"Life Extempore: Archaeological Beginnings in the Twilight Zone of Soviet Industry"
February 10th, 2021
View recorded lecture here.

 

Bulletin of Near Eastern Excavations and Research Lecture, with Adam Smith

"Project ArAGATS: Two Decades of Archaeological Research in Central Armenia"
February 10th, 2021

 

A webinar series sponsored by the Society of Black Archaeologists, Indigenous Archaeology Collective, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies.

8) Black and Indigenous Futures

In this final webinar of the series, archaeologists, artists, and cultural theorists turn to questions of what’s next in the struggle for the recognition and promotion of Indigenous and Black life. They ask: How can archaeology, the study of material worlds past and present, help construct new futures? This work will include recognizing the ongoing experiences of cultural genocide and how to sustain ancestral homelands while cultivating new ones for diasporas always in the making. We will explore the intersection of Black and Indigenous communities in the continued fight for justice. Join the conversation to look back and to look ahead.

Panelists:
Mohamed Ali, PhD, Assistant Professor of Archaeology, International University of Africa, Sudan
Tao Leigh Goffe, PhD, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Cornell University
Keolu Fox (Kānaka Maoli), PhD, Assistant Professor, UC San Diego
Rae Gould (Nipmuc Nation), PhD, Associate Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative (NAISI), Brown University
Grace L. Dillon (Anishinaabe), PhD, Associate Professor of Indigenous Nations Studies, Portland State University
Moderated by Ayana Omilade Flewellen, PhD, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, UC Riverside

 

8) The Fire This Time: Black and Indigenous Ecologies

In the past year, the world witnessed devastating fire seasons in Australia and the U.S. West, an Atlantic hurricane season with a record thirty storms, and a global pandemic. In each of these cases, among the losses of many, marginalized communities have borne the brunt of cascading environmental catastrophes, experiencing loss of lands and significant costs to community health and wellness. This panel, composed of leading Black and Indigenous archaeologists and artists, considers what it means to confront the challenges of a changing climate alongside the legacies of environmental racism. How does our understanding of past and present ecologies allow us to imagine new ethics of care and responsibility for all of our relations? And what shared obligations do such ethics create for archaeological practice?

Panelists:
Dr. Isabel Rivera-Collazo, Assistant Professor on Biological, Ecological and Human Adaptation to Climate Change, Department of Anthropology and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego
Dr. Kristina Douglass, Joyce and Doug Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute and Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at Penn State University
Dr. Justin Hosbey, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Emory University
Jerrel Singer, Diné Artist
Moderated by Dr. Peter Nelson, Coast Miwok and citizen of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria; Assistant Professor of ESPM and Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

 

7) Fugitive Archaeological Spaces

Over the past year, we have seen renewed organizing amongst Black and Indigenous heritage professionals as well as the emergence of new collectives globally. These efforts have led to new initiatives around capacity building, community engagement, and decolonizing research methodologies. In this panel members of these new and emerging organizations will discuss their genesis, initiatives, as well as challenges and opportunities associated with empowering their communities in archaeology and heritage preservation.

Panelists:
Nathan Acebo, PhD, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Critical Mission Studies, University of California, Merced
Lewis Borck, PhD, Assistant Professor at New Mexico Highlands University and a founding member of the Black Trowel Collective
Patricia Marinho, PhD, Archaeologist, Technical Advisor for Quilombola community, and a member of Rede de Arqueologia Negra
Jeannette Plummer Sires, Curator of Archaeological Assemblages at the British Museum and a founding member of the European Society of Black and Allied Archaeologists
Moderated by Justin Dunnavant, PhD, Academic Pathways Postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University and Co-founder/President of the Society of Black Archaeologists

 

6) Unsettling the Past: Radically Reimagining Archaeological Knowledge

For decades Black and Indigenous archaeologists have rightfully called for a radical reimagining of how archaeologists interpret and understand the past. The formulation of archaeologies by, for, and with Indigenous peoples and informed by Black Feminist experiences are a testament to the desire of scholars to create a field rooted in decolonial and liberatory praxis. These decolonial interventions of knowledge formation work to unsettle the past--reveling in the human complexity of Indigenous and Black life. This panel, composed of leading Indigenous and Black archaeologists and artists, places our focus squarely on the continued work of scholars who are working to decolonize Black and Indigenous pasts by reshaping how archaeological knowledge is created.

Panelists:
Sara Gonzalez, PhD, Associate Professor at the University of Washington and Curator of Archaeology at the Burke Museum
Sven Haakanson (Alutiiq), PhD, Associate Professor at the University of Washington and Curator of North American Anthropology at the Burke Museum
Mateo Romero (Cochiti Pueblo), Contemporary Pueblo Painter and Dubin Fellow
Cheryl White, PhD, Archaeology Coordinator, Anton de Kom University of Suriname
Moderated by Whitney Battle-Baptiste, PhD, Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Center and Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst

 

5) “For the Welfare of the Whole People”: Heritage Stewardship in Indigenous and Black Communities

Local descendant communities and Indigenous nations continue to be at the center of heritage preservation efforts. While their methods are not always recognized by academic or governmental organizations, they employ innovative and culturally-appropriate ways of caring for and keeping alive their heritage in all its manifestations. This panel is composed of leading Indigenous and Black activists, scholars, and community organizers, providing a renewed focus on contemporary conservation practices, historytelling, and ways of being in the world.

Panelists:
Erik Denson, Board Member and Lead Instructor, Diving with a Purpose
Judy Dow (Winooski Abenaki), Executive Director, Gedakina
Frandelle Gerard, Executive Director, CHANT (Crucian Heritage and Nature Tourism Foundation)
Octavius Seowtewa (Zuni), Zuni Cultural Resources Advisory Team
Moderated by Reno Franklin (Kashia Band of Pomo Indians), Vice Chairperson, Sonoma County Indian Health Project

 

4) Black and Indigenous Storytelling as Counter-History

For untold centuries, storytelling has been foundational to the ways Black and Indigenous people understand and connect to the world around them. However, knowledge systems upheld in academic settings continually disavow these narratives and those who hold them as valid sites of intellectual production. For BIPOC heritage professionals, storytelling taps into historically marginalized ways of knowing. It offers ways to reclaim and retell histories that often counter the harmful and one-sided narratives told about Black and Indigenous peoples through archaeology, museums, and heritage sites. In this webinar, we explore storytelling through artifacts, cultural landscapes, comics, graphic novels, and video games as a means of counter-history, illuminating new ways of imagining pasts, presents, and futures for Black and Indigenous people. Panelists will discuss how they engage storytelling as an intellectual entryway to interpretations of the material evidence of Black and Indigenous histories.

Panelists:
Weshoyot Alvitre (Tongva), Comic Book Artist and Illustrator
Antoinette Jackson, PhD, Professor and Chair of the Anthropology Department, University of South Florida
John Jennings, Professor, University of California at Riverside
Ora Marek-Martinez (Diné, Nimiipuu, Hopi), PhD, Assistant Professor and Executive Director of the Native American Cultural Center, Northern Arizona University
Moderated by Dian Million (Tanana Athabascan), PhD, Associate Professor and Chair of the American Indian Studies Department, University of Washington

 

3) An Archaeology of Redress and Restorative Justice

Archaeologists and heritage professionals whose work overlays histories of colonialism, exploitation, collective violence, and genocide are increasingly aware that they cannot simply take refuge in prehistory to avoid troubling pasts; nor is it sufficient to merely acknowledge historical wrongs. And yet scholars often struggle to identify ways that archaeological and heritage work can make a meaningful impact. In this webinar, we explore how archaeology can not only identify the legacies of inequity, injustice, and violence that have shaped historical and contemporary communities, but also to open the possibility of redress for the continuing systemic inequities these legacies reveal (i.e. environmental racism, racialized disenfranchisement, heritage erasure). Panelists will discusshow they blend archaeology and heritage work with principles of redress and restorative justice.

Panelists:
Mary Elliott, Curator of Slavery, Smithsonian's NMAAHC
Sada Mire, PhD, Director, Horn Heritage Foundation
Kisha Supernant, PhD, Director, Institue of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology, University of Alberta
Michael Wilcox, PhD, Associate Professor, Stanford University
Moderated by Marge Bruchac, PhD, Coordinator, Native American & Indigenous Studies, University of Pennsylvania

 

2) Reclaiming the Ancestors: Indigenous and Black Perspectives on Repatriation, Human Rights, and Justice

Over the last several centuries, Indigenous, Black, and other colonized peoples' remains have been turned into objects of study for archaeologists, anthropologists, and other scientists. This can be seen most clearly in the collection of their ancestors, often excavated from cemeteries and burial grounds and taken to museums around the world. Today, more than 100,000 Native American ancestral remains are still held in U.S. public museums alone, while an unknown number of remains of people of African descent are stored in museum collections. What does it mean to turn human beings into artifacts? What happens to the living communities who lose control and ownership over their own ancestors and heritage? In exploring these questions, this panel will discuss how repatriation--the process of reclaiming and returning ancestral and human remains--can address inequality. The discussion will further ask how repatriation might encourage a reckoning with the colonial violence experienced by Native and Black Americans in the past, which still reverberates in the injustice their descendants face today. Bringing together Indigenous and Black voices, this panel discussion finds common ground in the struggle for repatriation and assertion of sovereignty and human rights.

Panelists:
Michael Blakey, PhD, NEH Professor, College of William and Mary
Dorothy Lippert (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), PhD, Tribal Liaison, National Museum of Natural History
Shannon Martin (Gun Lake Pottawatomi/Ojibwe), Director, Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture & Lifeways
Rachel Watkins, PhD, Associate Professor, American University
Moderated by Sonya Atalay (Anishinabe-Ojibwe), PhD, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst

 

1) As the Statues Fall: A Conversation about Monuments and the Power of Memory

In the wake of global civil unrest following the brutal killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Atatiana Jefferson, Aura Rosser, Elijah McClain, and countless others at the hands of police in the United States, Black Lives Matter protestors and their allies have critiqued the anti-Black racism imbued in the erection and maintenance of Confederate historical monuments. The legacy of social movements seeking to remove Confederate statues is longstanding. However, unlike in previous moments, what began as the forced removal of Confederate statues during protests has rippled to the removal of colonialist, imperialist, and enslaver monuments all over the world. In this webinar, scholars and artists share their insights on the power of monumentality and the work they are doing to reconfigure historical markers.

Featuring:
LaVaughn Belle, Visual Artist
Nicholas Galanin, Tlingit/Unangax Multi-Disciplinary Artist
Dell Upton, PhD, Professor and Chair of Art History, UCLA
Tsione Wolde-Michael, Curator, Smithsonian-National Museum of American History
Moderated by Tiffany Cain, PhD, Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Princeton Society of Fellows

Dr. Fred Gleach, Department of Anthropology, has created a series of videos on Youtube about the Cornell Anthropology Collections, for which he serves as curator. Interested viewers can learn about the history of the Collections as well as their contents and their ongoing role in educating and promoting research for Cornell students. The first video in the series can be watched directly below, and the remainder can be accessed on Dr. Gleach's Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoRKFlYF_ATeWlxV0cO9O0O--EjX5b5VH.  For additional information regarding the Anthropology Collections, please contact Dr. Fred Gleach fwg1@cornell.edu

Introduction to the Anthropology Collections

Public engagement in archaeology can take different forms. Lori Khatchadourian of the Department of Near Eastern Studies recently partnered with an all-female Armenian media platform called Urbanista (Ուրբանիստա), whose mission is to foster public debate on matters of urban planning, urban development, architecture, and other urban issues. Urbanista asked Professor Khatchadourian to share her research on Armenia’s industrial ruins for an 8-part educational series called Let’s Read the City (Կարդանք քաղաքը). In three installments, Dr. Khatchadourian speaks for a general audience on ‘ruin economics’, post-socialist industrial heritage, and the lifeways and lifeforms that are taking shape in Armenia’s decaying Soviet factories.

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3