Cultural Heritage and Archaeology: The Intersection of the Past and the Present
Abstract
Archaeological research is a critical part of the way we create history and generate stories about our past and the places from which we stem. As with all histories, an understanding of this past is framed within the present and includes all the complex contexts today that structure the nature of how we understand ourselves, our origins, and our identity in the twenty-first century.
The 2024 Kolb Society Senior Scholars Colloquium examines this complex connection of the past to the present and explores how the past is used in different ways to frame communities and construct their identity today. Speakers within the colloquium will discuss a wide variety of cultural heritage projects that are connected to modern-day communities as well as to an understanding of the past based upon archaeological work and interpretations.
Archaeology and cultural heritage are different intellectual disciplines but are tightly connected in the way that the archaeological past relates to the present, and the present to the past.
Program
2:00 PM Welcome
Holly Pittman, PhD, Bok Family Professor in the Humanities; Senior Fellow and Faculty Chair, Kolb Society
2:10 PM INTRODUCTION
Richard M. Leventhal, PhD, Professor, Department of Anthropology; Executive Director, Penn Cultural Heritage Center, Penn Museum; Kolb Senior Fellow
2:25 PM KEYNOTE LECTURE
Introduction of Keynote Speaker Matthew Reilly by Brian I. Daniels, PhD, Director of Research and Programs, Penn Cultural Heritage Center, Penn Museum
Archaeologies of Black Sovereignty: (Un)Making Archaeology and its Many Pasts
Matthew Reilly, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology and Interdisciplinary Programs, City College of New York
As Black migrants from the United States sought to establish a nation-state along the West African coast in the 1840s, some of their enslaved brethren were wielding shovels as some of first archaeologists in the United States. Pivoting between Liberia and the American South, this talk reflects on a particular nineteenth-century moment that, in the case of Liberia, is just beginning to be studied archaeologically and that, here in the United States, is simultaneously challenging the nature of how such knowledge about the past is produced. Liberia’s founding narrative, associated with Black American settlers in 1822, continues to play a central role in national identity in the post-conflict present. Building on research conducted through the Back-to-Africa Heritage and Archaeology (BAHA) project, I examine what is at stake for an archaeology of Black sovereignty in a context where the past is crucial, contested, and complex. Based on archival evidence mined at the Penn Museum, I then turn to early excavations of Indigenous mound sites in the American South conducted by enslaved Black Americans. Here, a denial of bodily sovereignty marks a troubling inheritance for the field of archaeology. Through these cases, I intend to outline the politics and promise for archaeologies of Black sovereignty, providing both a critique of archaeological knowledge production and optimism for archaeology’s power in making and unmaking the past.
2:55 PM: KEYNOTE Lecture Q & A
3:05 PM: BREAK
3:15 PM: Robert Vigar, PhD, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Pace University; Kolb Fellow
Looting Nubia: Archaeological Practice, Coloniality and Cultural Heritage Destruction in Southern Egypt
Archaeological site looting is a durable phenomenon that archaeologists globally encounter. It is a primary contributor to cultural heritage destruction. Scholarship on illicit antiquities – the spoils of archaeological site looting – often focus upon destination markets and the demand-side of the illicit antiquities trade. With some notable exceptions, there has been less of a focus given to understanding the dynamics of supply-side looting – that is the illicit digging clandestinely conducted at archaeological sites. This presentation examines supply-side archaeological site looting in southern Egypt – in particular the area around Aswan historically referred to as Nubia. Drawing upon interviews conducted with archaeologists, Nubian community members, and self-identified looters, I will examine the relationship between archaeological fieldwork and persistent incidents of archaeological site looting, as well as addressing the consequent ethical, legal, and moral responsibilities archaeologists assume when it comes to the mitigation of archaeological site looting. Disagreeing with recent policy papers which have sought to situate archaeologists as informants for state law enforcement, this presentation seeks to challenge the overcriminalization of supply-side looters, which has occurred in many jurisdictions including Egypt. Rather, I seek to argue that in order to develop an equitable and justice-oriented model for addressing archaeological site looting, archaeologists must confront the continued coloniality of their practice, necessitating changes in the conduct of archaeological fieldwork.
3:35 PM: Justin Leidwanger, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Classics, Stanford University; Kolb Fellow
A Heritage of Connectivity in Southeast Sicily
The shores of southeast Sicily bear the mark of millennia of diverse maritime activities. The long tradition of tuna trap fishing dominated local life from antiquity into the 20th century. Its visibility today is widespread, from local cuisine to the boats and repurposed infrastructure that dot the coast and seabed. Most venerated, however, are the shipwrecks that attest to ancient Greek and Roman connections between east and west, south and north: their discovery is covered by the media, their finds are incorporated into museums, and their sites are promoted as dive trails. Yet southeast Sicily’s maritime centrality continues today, as the island finds itself a focal point for Mediterranean migration. Such movements, despite sharing routes and even vessels with more celebrated forms of mobility, are viewed as difficult disruptions rather than connections. In this presentation, I bring together archaeological approaches to a series of different boats as material markers—some viewed as ancient treasure, others as timeless historical tradition, and still others as politicized debris—in an effort to help mobilize a heritage of “connectivity.” Through pop-up exhibits, walking trails, and other programming, this multivalent approach challenges consideration of the politics, disconnections, and unfinished histories that define movement in these waters, and the entangled realities of its past and present.
3:55 PM: Stephennie Mulder, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin; Kolb Fellow
Gaming and Critical Heritage
In her 2006 book The Uses of Heritage, anthropologist Laurajane Smith defined the “authorized heritage discourse” as a set of assumptions about the definition and meanings of heritage that promote a certain group of Western elite values as if they were universally applicable. Over the past 20 years, the field of critical heritage studies has enabled a reassessment of the nature and purpose of the field, bringing attention to the often-colonial norms inherent in many heritage projects. While the discipline of critical heritage studies has recently engaged a critique of the digital realm – for example the nature and purpose of digital archival initiatives or virtual heritage reconstruction projects – it has not trained attention on the possibility of gaming as an area of critique or as a strategy for heritage engagement, empowerment, and remediation. Yet some 3 billion people around the world regularly play digital games, and gaming is a multi-billion-dollar industry, with an annual revenue that surpasses that of the film industry four times over. Even though digital games have long drawn on themes derived from history and archaeology, scholars have only recently begun to realize their potential for teaching and for facilitating an immersive engagement with the past.
This paper will present one recent effort in that direction: the creation of a game based on the 1998-2010 excavation of an early Islamic palatial mansion in Syria by a Syrian-American team. In 2015, the area of the site was damaged and looted by the militant group ISIS. The game, titled The White Banner, was created as a demo in the summer of 2024, and was collaboratively produced in consultation with Syrian colleagues, many of whom worked for years at the site and who have deep, affective relationships to the area and its heritage. This presentation explores the possibilities and limitations of this ongoing project.
4:15 PM: Tiffany Fryer, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology; Assistant Curator of Historical and Contemporary Archaeology, Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Kolb Fellow
Embracing Archaeology as a Substantive Anchor for Heritage Work
In this talk I discuss the tensions between archaeology and heritage with respect to archaeology’s status as a heritage practice. I argue that, contrary to some popular opinions, archaeology ought not be divorced from heritage, positioned instead as an objective science or historical pursuit. Arguments to take archaeology out of heritage often hinge on the fact that archaeological discourse (and by extension, remains) often dominated conceptions of heritage to the detriment of other more ephemeral heritage practices. I agree with this sentiment. But I also feel that archaeology is too powerful a practice to not be put to work. Archaeology can be a substantive anchor for heritage practice that can amplify the work being done in communities to recognize and honor the power of the past in the present. I offer examples drawn from on-the-ground heritage work in a Maya community in Quintana Roo, Mexico, as well as a variety of projects that are actualizing the kinds of substantive heritage work I think archaeology is capable of.
4:35 PM: lecture Q & A and Conclusions
Richard M. Leventhal moderator
Location: Widener Lecture Hall, Penn Museum
This year’s Kolb Society’s Senior Scholars Colloquium will be a hybrid event held in person and virtually. Please join us Friday, September 20, 2024, at 2:00 pm (Eastern Time) for lectures by our guest speaker and Kolb Fellows.
Zoom Details
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