Hybrid Keynote address of The Fourteenth Biennial Symposium titled "Timecraft. From Interpreting the Past to Shaping the Future", organized by Graduate Students in Archaeology, Classics, and History of Art at Bryn Mawr College Registration link: https://tinyurl.com/Symons-Keynote-Address

This conference asks how the concept of “the East” has shaped perceptions of Eastern Christianity generally and Eastern Christian Art more specifically, in Euro-American scholarship as well as in the popular view. Building on or dismantling such historical divisions as Western/Eastern Roman Empire, Latin/Orthodox, or simply East/West, speakers will explore what “East” and “East Christian” mean, how the boundaries of these concepts changed over time, and where exactly are the edges of the geographic, political, and religious “East.” This conference will offer a new understanding of the eastern Christian world by examining its cultural production in its own right and demonstrating that its rich, complex, and significant artistic production was not at the periphery of somewhere else, but rather at the center of an interconnected world. The conference will focus on the regions of medieval Syria, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe. These territories are often neglected in medieval and early modern scholarship as regions that are merely “East” of somewhere more important. The material culture produced in the regions “east” of Western Europe—such as modern-day Ukraine, Serbia or Romania, to mention only a few—has for a long time been considered of “lesser” value or importance compared to France or Italy; the Caucasus is often considered only in relation to Byzantium; and art produced in Armenia, Georgia and Anatolia has often been discussed in terms of a center/periphery dichotomy. Rarely is the visual production of these areas allowed to speak for itself.

Lunch will be available from 12:00-12:30pm, and the talk will be from 12:30-2:00pm. You can register to attend on Zoom via: https://brynmawr-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwpduisrT8sHtb_-DMuFTmdxV5PuUdVO68j

The evolution of human cooperation is described as one of biology’s great mysteries. How can natural selection favor traits that are disadvantageous to an individual? Numerous theories and models have been developed to answer this question and they all share the same fundamental solution: positive phenotypic assortment. Cooperation can only evolve if the benefits of cooperation preferentially flow between those who cooperate. Now, a central challenge is determining which theories best explain assortment using ecologically relevant data for the setting of human evolution. Here, I provide insight into the evolutionary origins of cooperation using data from one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer populations in existence – the Hadza of Northern Tanzania. The findings highlight the adaptive nature of human cooperative behavior—particularly its responsiveness to local social environments—as an feature important in generating the assortment necessary for cooperation to evolve.

Zoom Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_toGQ79mbQmeyckhluQyyqQ#/registration Imagine stepping into the shoes of an ancient Peruvian, tasting the flavors and savoring the meals of a time long past. In this talk, we'll journey into the rich culinary history of the Moche people, who thrived along the desertic northern Peruvian coast from AD 100-800. But it's not just about what was on the plate; it's about what those meals can tell us about the lives, struggles, and joys of two very different parts of Moche society. By exploring both a grand feast preparation area and a humble commoner's home, we'll dig into what food reveals about wealth, status, and daily life during a turbulent time marked by drought and political tension. How did food contribute to social unrest? Were the rich and poor eating the same meals or were there stark differences? What does a simple dish tell us about a person's identity? These questions and more will be served up in this delicious journey into the past, blending archaeology, technology, and a good pinch of culinary intrigue. Whether you're a foodie, history buff, or simply curious about how meals connect us to our ancestors, this talk is a feast for the mind you won't want to miss.

In recent years, the peoples, practices, and processes related to making and creative action in early Italy have taken a more central position in scholarship.  Multiple books and collected works on artisanal practice and on the mobilities and lifeways of those involved in craftwork have traced the subtleties of the many worlds of makers and their ways of making. This has included multiple aspects of the material contributions of, for example, decoration, fabrication, construction, sourcing, and many kinds of craft output, from weaving to metalworking and from building to fine carving.  This workshop brings together scholars working across materials and scales of making to think about these issues. Workshop events are in-person. Registration is free and required — links are below. Thursday, November 16 Columbia University Schermerhorn Hall 1190 Amsterdam Avenue, Room 807, New York, NY 10027 6:00 p.m. Keynote Address (co-sponsored by the AIA New York Society) Ways of Making Textiles in Early Italy: Archaeology of Lost Economies Margarita Gleba (Università di Padova) Register for Nov 16: https://t.e2ma.net/click/utxcuj/y4o0w0ob/edy5eu Friday, November 17 New York University Silver Center for Arts and Science 31 Washington Place, Jurow Lecture Hall, Room 101A, New York, NY 10003 9:30-9:45 a.m. Coffee and Check-in 9:45 a.m. Introduction John Hopkins (NYU) and Francesco de Angelis (Columbia) 10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. The Clay Economy in a Pre-Roman City: The Case of Falerii Maria Cristina Biella (La Sapienza) A Caeretan Workshop? About Some Unpublished Architectural Terracottas from Vigna Marini-Vitalini Laurent Haumesser (Louvre) Response Delphine Tonglet (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 12:00-1:30 p.m. Lunch 1:30-3:00 p.m. The Makers' Worlds: Exploring Landscape Experience and Quotidian Mobility in the Albegna Valley through Ceramic Production Anna Soifer (Brown) The Perception of the Foreigner in Hellenistic Etruria: The Bruschi Group Laura Ambrosini (Centro Nazionale delle Ricerche) 3:00-3:30 p.m. Coffee 3:30-5:30 p.m. Many Hands: Craft and Community of the Etruscan Interior Anthony Tuck (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) Response Francesco de Angelis (Columbia) Open Discussion Register for Nov 17: https://t.e2ma.net/click/utxcuj/y4o0w0ob/u5y5eu

Elizabeth Anne Davis' book celebration of her most recent release, Artifactual Forensic and Documentary Knowing. In Artifactual, Elizabeth Anne Davis explores how Cypriot researchers, scientists, activists, and artists process and reckon with civil and state violence that led to the enduring division of the island, using forensic and documentary materials to retell and recontextualize conflicts between and within the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities. Davis follows forensic archaeologists and anthropologists who attempt to locate, identify, and return to relatives the remains of Cypriots killed in those conflicts. She turns to filmmakers who use archival photographs and footage to come to terms with political violence and its legacies. In both forensic science and documentary filmmaking, the dynamics of secrecy and revelation shape how material remains such as bones and archival images are given meaning. Throughout, Davis demonstrates how Cypriots navigate the tension between an ethics of knowledge, which valorizes truth as a prerequisite for recovery and reconciliation, and the politics of knowledge, which renders evidence as irremediably partial and perpetually falsifiable.

Plato famously defends the rule of knowledge. Knowledge, for him, is of the good. But what is rule? In her new study, which she will present and discuss with her colleague in Classics, Melissa Lane shows Plato to have been deeply concerned with the roles and relationships between rulers and ruled. Lane reveals how political office and rule were woven together in Greek vocabulary and practices that both connected and distinguished between rule in general and office as a constitutionally limited kind of rule in particular. Adopting a longstanding Greek expectation that a ruler should serve the good of the ruled, Plato’s major political dialogues—the Republic, the Statesman, and Laws—explore how different kinds of rule might best serve that good. With this book, Lane offers the first account of the clearly marked vocabulary of offices at the heart of all three of these dialogues, explaining how such offices fit within the broader organization and theorizing of rule. Taking Plato’s interest in rule and office seriously reveals tyranny as ultimately a kind of anarchy, lacking the order as well as the purpose of rule. When we think of tyranny in this way, we see how Plato invokes rule and office as underpinning freedom and friendship as political values, and how Greek slavery shaped Plato’s account of freedom. Reading Plato both in the Greek context and in dialogue with contemporary thinkers, Lane argues that rule and office belong to the center of Platonic, Greek, and contemporary political thought. Melissa Lane is Professor of Politics and a faculty member of the Program in Classical Philosophy at Princeton University. Her books include Eco-Republic: What the Ancients Can Teach Us about Ethics, Virtue, and Sustainable Living and The Birth of Politics: Eight Greek and Roman Political Ideas and Why They Matter. Benjamin Morison is Professor of Philosophy at Princeton. He is the author of On Location: Aristotle’s Concept of Place.

Art history has long emphasized the glories of the Byzantine Empire (circa 330–1453), but less known are the profound artistic contributions of North Africa, Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, and other powerful African kingdoms whose pivotal interactions with Byzantium had a lasting impact on the Mediterranean world. Bringing together a range of masterworks—from mosaic, sculpture, pottery, and metalwork to luxury objects, paintings, and religious manuscripts—The Met’s exhibition, Africa & Byzantium, recounts Africa’s central role in international trade and cultural exchange networks. With artworks rarely or never before seen in public, the exhibition sheds new light on the staggering artistic achievements of medieval Africa. In this lecture, Met Curator, Andrea Myers Achi, will present an overview of the main themes and key loans of her exhibition, which opens on November 19th, 2023. She will also share the process of developing a large-scale loan exhibition that builds on The Met’s legacy of groundbreaking exhibitions on Byzantium.