Past Events
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Collaboration with Anthropology Club
Discussion of informational interviews, networking, and how to use your network to find field school and internship opportunities
Contact
Phone
Dr. Glenn Wharton
Lore and Gerald Cunard Chair, UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA
Wednesday February 10th, 12:00pm (PT)
The community-based conservation of the Kamehameha I sculpture on the island of Hawai’i shows how
local residents can engage in negotiating the meaning of cultural heritage and affect how their past is represented. Professor Wharton will discuss his three-year collaboration with residents in a semi-rural Hawaiian community to research the material and social history of the sculpture, leading to a community decision about how to conserve it. The Kamehameha I sculpture was commissioned in 1878 to commemorate Captain Cook’s “discovery” of the Hawaiian Islands and promote a western style monarchy. Modeled in the image of a Roman emperor while wearing highly symbolic feathered garments, the figure has come to function as a spiritual, economic, educational, cultural, and political object. The participatory project aimed not only to conserve the painted brass sculpture, but also to enable a process of local control over narratives of the Native Hawaiian past. Wharton's ethnographic research reveals tensions that exist within the multicultural, post-plantation community, as local residents voiced notions of what it means to be Hawaiian and what stories should be told about the Native Hawaiian past.
Register for this Cotsen Virtual Pizza Talk here! You will receive instructions on viewing the talk after registering.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone
Presented by
Dr. Stephen Acabado
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, UCLA
Current research in Philippine archaeology is pushing back against the colonial foundations of the discipline and the hegemonic status of the Three Age System in the region, including the broader Southeast Asian archaeology. The Three-Age Model, developed for Scandinavia, was imposed on Southeast Asia through its application in Northeast Thailand archaeological record, particularly the reference to the Bronze Age and the farmer-led migration in island Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Recent archaeological data now refute these models. In the Philippines, the long-accepted Neolithic migration by rice farmers, is repudiated the absence of wet-rice in the archaeological record that predates the 16th century. Following the lead of recent scholars, Acabado stresses that Philippine archaeology, in particular, and Southeast Asian archaeology, in general, must reject these essentialist frameworks in favor of forward-facing “emergent” paradigms. Doing so allows Southeast Asian archaeologists to decolonize chronology building and devote less time to worrying about origins to focus instead on understanding process and to incorporating Indigenous perspectives in archaeological interpretation.
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMlf-2qpzIuGt02NbLgx-ULeGHi1lDJWNmC
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Stephen Acabado is associate professor of anthropology at UCLA. His research revolves around indigenous responses to colonialism, particularly in the Philippines. He is a strong advocate of an engaged archaeology where descendant communities are involved in the research process.
Grace Barretto-Tesoro is professor of archaeology at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Her archaeological work is focused on changing representation of various segments of society from the late precolonial period to the early Spanish period Philippines.
Contact Michelle Jacobson
Email mjacobson@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone
Anna Funke
Conservator, Warren Lasch Conservation Center, Clemson University
February 3rd, Wednesday 12:00pm (PT)
The Warren Lasch Conservation Center has been working on the H.L. Hunley submarine since it was 
raised from Charleston Harbor in 2000. Renown for being the first successful combat submarine, it was designed to break the blockade of Charleston, in the later years of the Civil War. The archaeological work on the submarine has provided fascinating insights into the military, social and technological history of the time. Now that the excavations are largely completed, the project is primarily focused on the complex conservation process to prepare the submarine for broader public display. This talk will give an overview of the history of the submarine itself as well as the interdisciplinary project that has been built up around it.
Register for this Cotsen Virtual Pizza Talk here! You will receive instructions on viewing the talk after registering.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone
Over Zoom
Panel featuring three Cotsen graduate student volunteers who described their subfields and path to graduate school followed by general Q&A
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Phone
Lylliam Posadas
Friday January 29th, 11:00am - 12:00pm (PT)
Conservators can play a significant role in the repatriation process and in addressing concerns in the care of sensitive collections. Conservators and repatriation staff can work together with tribal and community representatives to address some of the unjust histories of museum acquisitions and develop new approaches for collections stewardship. Professional ethics in the conservation field,as well as technical knowledge and skill sets, can be a source of support for repatriationand ethical stewardship. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEAI) policies and programs are critical in building systems that encourage considerate and conscientious professional practices that can support tribal and community ownership and control of collections.This program will discuss how conservators, both students and professionals, can support the repatriation of Indigenous belongings under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). It will also explore how conservators can address concerns beyond NAGPRA that are relevant to the repatriation process and experience and to the training of future generations of conservators.
Lylliam Posadas has experience with repatriation and collaborative and community-driven research within museums, universities, and community organizations. She is interested in how institutional policies support the development and sustainability of collaborative research and collections care practices. Lylliam focuses on systemic institutional change in support of repatriation, collections care and access, representation and diversity initiatives, and the use of non-destructive and non-invasive methods of investigating community-driven research questions. She received an MSc in the Technology and Analysis of Archaeological Materials from University College London and a double BA in Anthropology and Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Lylliam has participated in field research, including preservation efforts in Ghana, Peru, Louisiana, and California and also serves on several boards and committees, including the Mellon Opportunity for Diversity in Conservation. Lylliam is also involved in community-driven research, policy development, and advocacy in public health which informs her approach to heritage work
Contact Jennifer McGough
Email jenmcgough@g.ucla.edu
Phone
Dr. Tiffany Fryer
Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow, Princeton Society of Fellows, Princeton University
Wednesday January 27th, 12:00pm (PT)
Register for this Cotsen Virtual Pizza Talk here! You will receive instructions on viewing the talk after registering.
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone
Dr. Piphal Heng, ACLS Postdoctoral Fellow, Northern Illinois University
Tuesday, January 19, 2021 10:00 AM (Pacific Time) Zoom Webinar
“Compassion” was an instrumental state’s infrastructure in building, maintaining, and expanding Angkor’s power from the 9th through 15th centuries CE. Angkorian civilization is known for its intricately carved monumental architecture, large water reservoirs, and interconnected road and canal systems. The relative importance of religion in Angkorian state governance has been debated for more than a century: to what extent can we separate Angkorian “church” from Angkorian state? This lecture provides a background to Angkor and emphasizes two rulers. The first was Yaśovarman I (889-910 CE), who established religious foundations throughout his polity to support his population and nurture religious pluralism. Attention concentrates on Jayavarman VII (1181-1218 CE), whose embrace of Buddhism and state projects were undergirded by a commitment to compassion. His many religious foundations (temples with reservoirs, etc.) housed religious specialists, hosted universities, and served as community anchors. They also expressed state power, marked its territories, and provided myriad social services to Angkorian Khmers.
Dr. Piphal Heng is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University. He received his PhD degree in Anthropology from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Heng’s archaeological research themes include religious change, urbanism, settlement patterns, political economy, and sociopolitical organizational shift. He is also interested in the intersection between heritage management, collaborative/public archaeology, knowledge production, and urban development. His current project explores the transformation of urban and rural settlements in response to the demographic and political changes that took place with the adoption of Theravada Buddhism in Angkor (14th-18th century Cambodia).
Registration for Zoom Link:
Sponsored by the UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies
Contact UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies
Email cseas@international.ucla.edu
Phone
Brittany Cox
Horological Conservator, Memoria Technica
Friday December 18th, 11:00am - 12:00pm (PT)
In conservation there is always the question of tangible versus intangible qualities. Is one more important
than the other? Should form follow function, or function follow form? If a functional object is beautifully presented and preserved, but doesn’t actually work, is it successful? The conservation of dynamic objects, especially in the case of automata and mechanical magic, confront these questions head-on. We will examine these questions by looking at a number of objects and their treatments.
Brittany Nicole Cox founded her private conservation practice and studio Memoria Technica in 2015. Her lifelong passion for horology has seen her through nine years in higher education where she earned her WOSTEP, CW21, and SAWTA watchmaking certifications, two clockmaking certifications, and a Masters in the Conservation of Clocks and Related Dynamic Objects from West Dean College, UK. Her original work has been exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York and she is currently working on a series of bestiary automata inspired by illuminated texts and a manuscript to be published by Penguin Press.
Contact Jennifer McGough
Email jenmcgough@g.ucla.edu
Phone
Marci J. Burton, Mellon Conservation Fellow, Fowler Museum; Carlee Forbes, Mellon Curatorial Fellow, Fowler Museum; Erica P. Jones, Associate Curator of African Arts, Fowler Museum
Wednesday, December 9th, 12:00pm - 1:00pm PT
Akan-speaking communities on the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) have long been home to a vibrant brass-casting culture. From the 15th century, brass-casting focused on producing equipment for the local gold trade: boxes, scales, and weights. Weights cast from copper alloy, known colloquially as gold weights, were made in two varieties: smaller geometric ones seemingly used as the counterbalance for weighing gold, and figurative models that referenced Akan daily life, proverbs, and stories. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these weights were simultaneously used to weigh gold while also exchanged as tourist souvenirs.
This presentation considers a group of 449 copper-alloy objects in the Fowler’s Sir Henry Wellcome Collection. A Fowler team has been examining these weights, their histories, material compositions, and meanings. Central to the study of these objects has been analysis with Portable X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF) to determine their elemental compositions. Furthermore, measurements of mass and analysis of modifications (additions/reductions) contribute to ongoing efforts in the field to reconstruct Akan weight-systems. The collective results provide insights to address research questions of materiality, intended use, African art markets, and colonial-era collecting.
Register for this Cotsen Virtual Pizza Talk here! You will receive instructions on viewing the talk after registering.
Image courtesy of Fowler Wellcome Team
Contact Sumiji Takahashi
Email sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone
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