Speaker: Dr. Jorrit Kelder, University of Oxford

This presentation aims to provide an overview of the earliest contacts between the Greek (Mycenaean) world and Egypt, between ca. 1600 BC and 1100 BC. By highlighting a number of objects that have been found in Egypt and the Aegean, this paper proposes that the earliest contacts between these two regions may have started in the context of long-distance trade in precious metals (with silver coming from the Aegean, and gold exported from Egypt). From the 14th century BC onwards, these early trading encounters developed into a much closer, 'special relationship', which involved the exchange of goods, plants, and possibly mercenaries.

Speaker: Dr. Cathy Costin, California State University, Northridge

Although some have suggested that North Coast ceramics are characterized by a stable technological style over thousands of  years, evidence indicates that several aesthetic and technological styles "coexisted" with one another; they waxed and waned in popularity depending in large measure on the social and political environments in which ceramics were made and used. In this presentation, I consider how choices made in the production of decorated ceramics on the North Coast of Peru influenced and were influenced by the use of these vessels as information technology. Choices about forming, decorating, and firing processes conditioned how pottery looked and felt and affected the efficacy and efficiency of wares used to convey information about individual identity, social group affiliation, and important ideological concepts. I discuss those technological and aesthetic choices that relate specifically to appearance within their broader sociopolitical contexts, focusing on how pottery was used to encode symbolic messages and visually transmit significant messages. 

Speaker: Dr. Heather Miller, University of Toronto

Archaeological interest in technological change focuses on both invention and production by craftspeople, and on social issues related to adoption of new technologies. We recognize that technological change involves both motivations and mechanisms for change, with respect to both the invention and innovation/adoption ends of the spectrum. The possible motivations and mechanisms for the development and spread of the faience materials found across western Eurasia provides an excellent third millennium BCE case study.

A bewildering assortment of materials utilizing siliceous pastes were used to make small objects such as figures, beads and containers, in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, the Mediterranean, and regions beyond and between. From very early beginnings in the sixth millennium BCE or earlier in some regions, the assortment of these materials reached great diversity of production technique and material in the third and second millennia BCE, with much less diversity of appearance. In places where these materials have seen more analytical study, such as Egypt and the Indus Valley, similarities but also striking differences occur in the regional assortments of materials and techniques employed to produce quite similar appearing materials, used to make objects clearly belonging to the local corpus of style and topic. The Indus Valley case will be the special focus of my talk, where we must speak of it as a talc-faience complex due to the entwined nature of these materials in the Indus Civilization corpus.

What was involved in the spread of these materials and their manufacture? Technological change includes both new ideas or products, and the adoption of those new ideas or products, both invention and innovation (sensu Torrence and van der Leeuw 1989). For the example of the Indus case, can we find clues to the social process involved in the innovative development of these materials from analysis of the objects and their production?

Speaker:

Alexis Boutin, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Sonoma State University

Since 2008, the Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project has been studying and publishing the materials from Peter B. Cornwall’s 1940-41 expedition to Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia, which now reside in the Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. This multi-disciplinary team is adding to anthropologists’ understanding of how life was experienced and death commemorated in ancient Dilmun (ca. 2050-1800 BCE). In this talk, Dr. Boutin will explore how human skeletal remains and associated grave goods can reveal transformations in identity (e.g., gender, age, and physical ability) across the life course. She will also explain how experimenting with alternative modes of interpretation can improve bioarchaeological praxis and communicate effectively and accessibly with diverse audiences.