IEMA FALL LECTURE SERIES 2012

IEMA FALL LECTURE SERIES 2012

Dr. William J. Meyer, Jr.
IEMA Postdoctoral Fellow 2012-13
Home of the Living, Land of the Dead: Dwelling with the Bronze and Iron Age Tombs of Southern Burgundy
Thursday, October 11, 2012
12-1 pm MFAC 354 (Location: http://www.buffalo.edu/buildings/building?id=fillmore)

Abstract:

The late Bronze and early Iron Age inhabitants of temperate Europe buried their dead in tumuli, many of which remain on the landscape long after their builders disappeared. In the Arroux and Somme River valleys of southern Burgundy (east-central France), more than 160 tumuli have been recorded since the mid-19th century. In this talk (adapted from my PhD dissertation of the same name), I explore “landscape syncretism”: the on-going process by which people make sense of inherited landscape elements. I focus on how the tumuli of the Arroux and Somme valleys (and others like them) were connected into a landscape by their initial architects and then re-connected into or disconnected from subsequent landscapes by later groups. Along the way, I examine folklore from the early Modern period, discuss the history of tumulus archaeology, and talk about contemporary interactions with mounds (including challenges to their preservation). This work underscores the importance of expanding the kinds of data and method considered properly “archaeological,” and highlights the possibility that different landscapes might co-exist within the same space at any given time. As many of us have observed during the course of our archaeological practice, this co-existence can generate conflict. Recognizing this, the responsibility of the landscape archaeologist or historical ecologist to translate the past to the present becomes coupled with a similar responsibility: to translate among these different landscapes and the people who dwell “with-in” them. 

AIA Lecture (co-sponsored by IEMA)
Dr. John Pollini
University of Southern California
Christian Destruction and Desecration of Images of Classical Antiquity
Monday, October 22, 2012
6.30-7.30 The Buffalo Museum of Science

Abstract: In popular culture Christianity is remembered for the art, architecture, customs, rituals, and myths that it preserved from the classical past.  It is rarely acknowledged, however, that Christianity also destroyed a great deal in its conversion of the Roman Empire.  The material evidence for Christian destruction has often been overlooked or gone unrecognized even by archaeologists. This lecture examines various forms of Christian destruction and desecration of images of classical antiquity during the fourth to seventh centuries, as well as some of the attendant problems in detecting and making sense of this phenomenon.  (This lecture is based on Professor Pollini’s present book project, “Christian Destruction and Desecration of Images of Classical Antiquity: A Study in Religious Intolerance and Violence in the Ancient World,” for which he received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies.)