What's theoretical/ ethical/ political about writing people's life stories archaeologically?

UCL Institute of Archaeology Thematic Research Seminars Programme | Term I, 2024-25

The Term I seminar series will highlight thematic research looking at 'Life Histories' and 'Human Planetary Transformations'. These are scheduled to be in-person events.

Seminars on 'Life Histories' will explore research related to areas including transition from hunting to herding; demographic instabilities in early farming societies; diet; health and variation in past populations; death and burial.

Those seminars on 'Human Planetary Transformations' will highlight research related to environmental transformations and sustainability; early human archaeology and evolution; domestication of animals and plants, human demography and migration. 

Wednesdays, doors open 4pm for a 4.10pm start

• 9 October: Reassessing Kura-Araxes pastoral practices and mobility in the Caucasus & Levant using zooarchaeology, ZooMS and stable isotope analysis - Gwen Maurer (Cardiff University)
• 16 October: Combining Bioarchaeology and Immunology to explore the disease burden of past populations - Katie Hemer & Thomas McDonnell (UCL)
• 23 October:  Death and burial in ancient Egypt: the role of black goo - Kate Fulcher (UCL)
• 30 October: What's theoretical/ ethical/ political about writing people's life stories archaeologically?  - John Robb (University of Cambridge) 

[6 November: Reading Week - no seminar]

• 13 November: Who's transforming who? Nomads and metals at the dawn of the Silk Roads trade - Miljana Radivojevic (UCL)
• 20 November: Monumentality and Landscape: Case Studies in the Creation of Lineage and Genealogy from Early Medieval England - Andrew Reynolds (UCL)
• 27 November: The Archaeosphere - Matt Edgeworth (University of Leicester)
• 4 December: Low-density urbanism in Amazonia - Carla Jaimes Betancourt (Bonn University)