Event: Wednesday Talks: Migration and burial in Classical Athens


Date & Time

February 15, 2023 - 12:00pm to 1:00pm
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Contact Information


sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169

Location

Fowler A222 (Seminar Room)

Event Type

Pizza Talk

Event Details

ABSTRACT: Migrants are thought to have facilitated the exchange of goods and ideas around the Mediterranean throughout Greek history, yet the lived experiences of these individuals, families, and communities remain relatively under-studied. The cultural identities of migrants are often fixed to their place of origin, perceived by scholars as “others” in the new societies in which they lived. Archaeological approaches to the burials of migrants assume that this “otherness” will be reflected in material culture, with imported grave goods and practices used as the basis for the identification of the grave of a migrant. This talk will challenge these assumptions through the analysis of the burial of a man from Chios in late 5th century BC Athens, not only by comparing the burial practices of Chios and Athens to identify which practices were maintained, abandoned, or altered, but also by contextualizing the burial through the deceased’s age, gender, status, occupation, and possible reasons for leaving home.

BIO: Camille Reiko Acosta is a PhD candidate at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. She received her BA from the University of Edinburgh and her MA from the University of Oxford. Her dissertation project focuses on the burial practices of migrants in Classical Athens, and additionally, she is a member of the British Museum’s Naukratis Project (Egypt) and UCLA’s Ancient Methone Archaeological Project (Greece), studying the Archaic and Classical Greek ceramic assemblages.