Seen on the Classicists list:
Ancient Mediterranean. 116th Annual Meeting
of the Archaeological Institute of America
USA, New Orleans, 8-11 January 2015
Deadline: 20 March 2014
Since the advent of ‘public archaeology’ in the 1970s, scholarship on
the topic has moved beyond public education as effective heritage
management and protection in the context of CRM work, to debating the
active or incidental role of archaeology in the shaping of community
identities and identity imaginaries, the ethics and economics of
managing the past on behalf of communities, and even the very meaning of
‘public’ and ‘community’ to be served by archaeology, recognizing the
inherently political nature of these terms. Today, ‘public
archaeologies’ vary considerably in approach and objectives, ranging
from essentially PR and fundraiser efforts in support of continuing
projects, to disseminating, humanizing and deciphering specialist work,
to tracing connections with the past as part of community service, to
educating the public on the benefits of the discipline as a service to
the discipline itself, and to democratizing archaeology at its core by
engaging the public in all stages of knowledge production (e.g.
constructivist, experiential, hands-on, inclusive, informationally open,
crowdsourced archaeologies) in keeping pace with the multivocal,
pluralistic, information-rich societies of today.
Despite intense writing and debate along these lines in the broader
realms of archaeological thought , especially from the late 1990s,
community-friendly archaeologies of the ancient Mediterranean have been
comparatively rare, small-scale or little publicized, with most projects
undertaken by museums and governmental entities typically deemed
responsible for serving and educating the communities where
archaeological research occurs. This colloquium intends to a) explore
the role of Mediterranean archaeologists as educators, mediators and
facilitators, and the locally specific resonances (as opposed to a
priori-determined benefits) of their work in the lives of local
inhabitants, b) take the pulse of ‘public archaeology’ thinking in the
Aegean, Greek, Cypriot, Roman, Etruscan, Near Eastern scholarly ambits
by entertaining ways to deal with multiple, excluded, overlooked,
silenced, undesirable pasts, and c) showcase projects that actively seek
to cultivate engagement of different contemporary stakeholders with the
past, including traditionally disenfranchised ‘others’, through
excavations, site-based initiatives, community-embedded efforts, media,
virtual, online projects etc.
Please send a 200-word abstract to publarch AT gmail.com by Thursday, March
20th, 5 pm EST, along with your contact address and affiliation.
rogueclassicism 