Speaker: Debby Sneed, PhD Candidate, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA

In this talk, Debby will use literary and archaeological evidence to argue that ancient Greeks not
only tolerated the birth of deformed and disabled infants, but also expressed optimism about their futures and actively attempted to accommodate their needs. Modern studies tend to resolve this issue quickly, relying heavily on references by Plutarch, Aristotle, and Plato. These authors’ statements about the fate of deformed infants, however, bear no easy or straightforward relationship with the reality of the ancient world. If we situate these authors and their works within their appropriate contexts, we recognize that their presentations of infant exposure and infanticide are prescriptive, not descriptive. By expanding our analysis to the Hippocratic physicians, as well as to other works within the Aristotelian corpus, we find a wide range of evaluations of infants born with congenital deformities. What is more, the production of feeding bottles from the Late Bronze Age through the Roman period also demonstrates active efforts to accommodate infants (and sometimes children and adults) who were premature, weak, ill, or presented severe orofacial deformities such as cleft palate. Finally, an argument from absence: bioarchaeologists have produced no positive proof for the killing of deformed infants from any population in Greece. Taken together, the evidence demonstrates that the exposure of deformed and disabled infants was far from the rule in ancient Greece

Speaker: Dr. Sonali Gupta-Agarwal, UCLA 

Traditions are transmitted through teaching and learning. The manner in which knowledge relating to craft production gets transmitted can help us in understanding the causes behind cultural continuity and change. By using an anthropological approach to find teaching and learning patterns, I investigate the role of potters in
modern day pottery workshops of Egypt and India in the transmission of knowledge relating to pottery production. Employing video footage using a video annotation research tool, I discern subtle gestures and postures of potters engaged in the process of pottery production and statistically examine these to reveal patterns specific to each workshop. I transpose the method and understanding gained from the study of modern potters to the archaeological context in Karanis, Egypt. Teaching and learning of pottery making leaves recognizable markers on the vessel that can be traced metrically. My research suggests that one can trace ancient communities of practice, knowledge transfer and interpret continuity or change in material culture as part of an ongoing learning tradition.

NOTE: This Friday Seminar has been cancelled. 

Speaker: Dr. Jeremy Mumford, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Brown University

In 1558, in Spanish Peru, the Inka princess Cusi Huarcay married her brother, Sayri Thupa, with the blessing of the Catholic bishop of Cuzco, carrying the Inka tradition of sibling marriage into the colonial era. In 1570, King Philip V of Spain married his niece Anna of Austria, the daughter of his cousin and his sister. Each marriage reflected a royal practice of close-kin marriage forbidden to ordinary people, in Peru just as in Europe. Scholars have never seen them as comparable: on the one hand, the apparent magical thinking of the Inkas, who believed kings were descended from the Sun and should not pollute their blood with outsiders; on the other the apparent pragmatism of European monarchs, for whom endogamy was a tool in geopolitical strategy. In fact, there was pragmatism behind the magic and magic behind the pragmatism. In both kingdoms, close-kin marriage was a way that kings and queens sacralized themselves through breaking the most intimate and dangerous of laws. This research project, juxtaposing these two traditions of power and sexuality, opens a window into how entangled states create a shared political culture under colonialism.