Archaeology Brown Bag Lecture

Zachary McKeeby, University of Virginia

"Crafting in the In-Between: Production and Political Economy across Zambian Socio-Economic Mosaics, 700 - 1700CE"

Friday, April 12, 4:00-5:15pm

Brooks Hall Commons

Abstract: In the 1st millennium CE, a region in what is now Zambia became home to diverse and slowly spreading communities of iron-using farmers; by the late 1st/early 2nd millennium CE, the area became encircled by large, emergent polities and spheres of influence, through which diverse goods, people, and ideas traveled. This paper brings together historical, ethnographic, metallurgical, archaeological, and geophysical data to reconstruct the work of craftspeople – particularly iron workers – over the longue durée in the Machile Valley, Western Zambia from the 8th-18th centuries. In doing so, I center the ways craftspeople effected, and were affected by, local and regional changes across southern Africa, and identify at least two periods when distinct communities of iron-working knowledge and practice co-existed within a stretch of the valley only c. 40km long. As changes in global and regional political economic systems intertwined with the increasing importance of kinship ties in village life and new conceptions of landscapes in the early 2nd millennium, craftspeople converted specialized knowledge into other symbols of status and prestige. Incorporation of oral and historical records explains dramatic increases in the scale and organization of production in Machile c.1600CE and shows how craftspeople were affected by the formation of the nearby Lozi state during the 16th-18th centuries. Archaeometallurgical and spatial comparisons of Machile iron smelting sites over the past thousand years suggest beliefs around secrecy and access to specialized knowledge fluctuated there, underscoring the historical specificity of the practices documented in 18th- 20th-century ethnographic texts. I show how frontier interactions in southern Africa are historical, dateable events rather than ahistorical abstractions, with discrete and localized archaeological traces.

As usual we’ll begin at 4 and end by about 5:15.  Please circulate to others who may want to join!  Light refreshments will be served.

Paradoxes of Ancient Citizenship Working Group 

lunch discussion 

Myles Lavan, University of St. Andrews

“Manumission in Roman Egypt"

Thursday, 11 April, 12:20pm 

Gibson hall 341

This lunch discussion - lunch will be served at noon, with discussion beginning around 12:20 pm. 

Paradoxes of Ancient Citizenship Working Group 

Public Lecture

Myles Lavan, University of St. Andrews

“Manumission and Ancient Citizenship in the Roman World”

Tuesday, 9 April, 5:00pm 

Gibson Room, Cocke Hall

UVa Slavic Languages and Literatures: 

A symposium on “Re-envisioning the Black Sea in Literature and Historiography: Backwater or oikoumenē?”

In this moment of Russia’s war against Ukraine, imperial ambitions are once again intruding on the Black Sea region. With the premise that imagining comes first in scripting and enacting a productive future, area cultural critics, writers, and historians diagnose and debate how the Black Sea has been imagined and how it is being envisioned anew in the 21st century.

29-30 March, 9:00am 

The Rotunda

Click HERE to register

29 March (Day 1): 09:00 – 20:00

Welcome and Introductions

Edith Clowes (she, USA): “Re-Envisioning the Black Sea, Finding Common Ground”

Panel: "Classical Narratives of the Black Sea"

John Dillery (he, USA): “Pontos Euxeinos: The Black Sea in the Early Greek Imagination” | Ivana Petrovic (she, USA): “The Representation of the Black Sea Region in Apollonius’ Argonautica”

Panel: "The Traditional Black Sea: Empire and Exile"

Sara Myers (she, USA), “Ovid at the End of the World: The Exilic Black Sea Region”

Panel: "Re-envisioning Empire and Exile on the Black Sea"

Roxana Doncu (she, Romania), “Hybridity and Osmosis: Recuperating the Multicultural Imaginary of the Black Sea after the 1989 Revolution” | Ivan Kozlenko (he, Ukraine/USA): “Decolonizing the Odesa Literary Myth”

Panel: Enacting the Black Sea

Saviana Stanescu (she, Romania/ USA): For a Barbarian Woman, readings from Black Sea poetry and drama | Moderated by Sara Myers and Edith Clowes

Paradoxes of Ancient Citizenship Working Group 

lunch discussion with Dr. Kevin Woram (Porter-Gaud School, UVa PhD 2023

"The History of Dishonor in Athens: Atimia in Athenian Tragedy,” 

Friday, 29 March 4:00-5:00pm 

Gibson hall 341

This lunch discussion - lunch will be served at noon, with discussion beginning around 12:20 pm. (For those also planning to attend the Black Sea Symposium, we will begin and end discussion well within the lunch hour).

Classics Job Search

Xavier Buxton, University of Warwick

Wednesday, 21 February, 5:00pm

Classics Perspective Graduate Students' visit

Sunday-Monday, 18-19 February

Classics Job Search

David Williams, University of Wisconsin Madison

Wednesday, 14 February, 5:00pm

Classics Job Search

Isabella Reinhardt, Vanderbilt University

Tuesday, 13 February, 5:00pm

Stocker Lecture

Michele Lowrie, University of Chicago

"The Caring Leader Perverted, Lucan's De Bello Civili"

Tuesday, 13 February, 5:00pm

Gibson Room, Cocke Hall

Reception to follow in the department of Classics

Paradoxes of Ancient Citizenship Working Group

Josine Blok, Utrecht University

Lunchtime discussion on Blok’s Citizenship in Classical Athens (CUP 2017), featuring Ivana Petrovic (UVA). 

Lunch will be available at noon; the conversation between Professors Petrovic and Blok will begin around 12:20, before opening to audience questions and discussion around 1:00 pm. This event will take place at Bond House 116-118.

Thursday, 1 February, 12:00-1:00pm

Bond House 116-118

Lunch provided for those who sign up for the lunch event and a free copy of Blok’s book at this link. (NB: book copies are limited to first-come first-serve).

Paradoxes of Ancient Citizenship Working Group

Public Lecture

Josine Blok, Utrecht University

"Citizenship Regimes: Laws, Rituals, and Values in Ancient Greek Citizenship"

Tuesday, 30 January, 5:00pm

Gibson Room, Cocke Hall

Reception to follow

Stephen Hinds, University of Washington

"Latin Poetry Across Languages: Micro-negotiating Classical Tradition, with Joachim Du Bellay and John Milton"

Friday, 3 November, 5:00pm

Gibson Room, Cocke Hall

Reception to follow

UVA Interdisciplinary Archaeology Program Annual Archaeology Event

Wednesday, 1 November, 6:30pm

Fayerweather Hall Lounge

Pizza will be served

Paradoxes of Ancient Citizenship: Working Group - Lecture

Craige Champion, Syracuse University

"Imperial Citizenship"

Tuesday, 24 October, 5:00pm

Gibson Room, Cocke Hall

Lauren Curtis, Bard College

"History in Ovid? Towards a New Approach to the Exile Poetry's Black Sea Context"

Thursday, 19 October, 5:00pm

Gibson Room, Cocke Hall

reception to follow

Lowe Classics Lecture

Bartolo Natoli, Randolph-Macon College

"Gender-Based Censorship: Silencing Female Voices from Ancient Rome"

Thursday, 12 October, 5:00pm

Rouss Hall 410

Archaeological Institute of America’s Kershaw Lecture in Near East Archaeology

Kathryn Grossman, North Carolina State University

“Human-animal-divine relationships in Cyprus: a social zooarchaeology of sacrifice” 

Thursday, 12 October, 6:30 pm 

Campbell 160

Abstract In recent years, archaeologists have shifted their attention away from animals as passive participants in their own fate and focused instead on animals as constitutive members of multispecies societies. The intertwined lives of humans, animals, things, and divinities come together dramatically in the case of religious sacrifice, where boundaries between worlds are broken down and rebuilt through ritual, death, and consumption. In a new project undertaken in collaboration with Erin Averett (Creighton Univ. and previous speaker here at UVA!) and David Reese (Yale), we consider the fates of people and animals as together they practice religious sacrifice in Cyprus in the Late Bronze and Iron Age. Cypriot religious and ritual iconography is rife with animal imagery, in votive offerings, depictions of deities, and zoomorphic masks, suggesting a broad role for animals in Cypriot religious life. This project considers animal remains from sanctuaries across Cyprus, along with art historical and archaeological evidence, and highlights the ways in which animals contributed to world-building (through the negotiation of earthly, liminal, and divine realms) and knowledge-creation (through prognostication and divination).