UWM Department of Anthropology Virtual Colloquium Series Presents:

The Warrior that Wasn’t: Politics and the Archaeology of Gender

Bettina Arnold, PhD

Professor, Department of Anthropology
University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee
Adjunct Curator of European Archaeology – Milwaukee Public Museum

Friday, November 13, 2020
3:00 PM
Held on Zoom (invitation at bottom)

Abstract:

The intersection between gender politics and nationalism in the interpretation of the prehistoric past in west-central Europe is a complex topic that includes the way the roles of men and women are perceived in contemporary society – as complementary or hierarchical, as supporting or competing entities. The history of the interpretation of two high status elite burials dating to the Iron Age in Burgundy, France discovered six decades apart will be used to illustrate how gender stereotypes and nationalism are intertwined in archaeological research in western Europe. The first of these burials was discovered in the 1950s at the site of Vix/Mont Lassois while the second was excavated in 2014 at the site of Lavau, about 72 km away. In both cases the grave good assemblages in these exceptionally richly outfitted graves have been interpreted through the lens of contemporary gender politics, reducing what a nuanced relationship between power, status and social role in Iron Age society to a binary categorization that emphasizes the association between masculinity and violence while ignoring the possibility of pathways to power that do not depend on the threat or application of force. These two burials illustrate how unexamined attitudes toward gender impact other aspects of archaeological interpretation and continue to hamper contemporary scholarship.

About the Speaker:

Professor Arnold studies the pre-Roman European Iron Age, and in the course of her career she has also participated in archaeological projects ranging from the Middle Bronze Age through the early medieval period in western Europe. Since 1999 she has co-directed a research project in southwest-Germany focused on the burial record of the early Iron Age Heuneburg hillfort and its environs. Finds from those excavations were featured in Die Welt der Kelten: Zentren der Macht – Kostbarkeiten der Kunst, a major exhibition in Stuttgart in 2012-2013. Dr. Arnold has published about the archaeological interpretation and analysis of complex societies, particularly as reflected in mortuary contexts; material culture as a symbolic system and a means of communicating social relationships; the archaeological interpretation of prehistoric gender configurations in burial contexts; and the socio-political history of archaeology and museum collecting, especially their involvement in identity construction in 19th and 20th century nationalist and ethnic movements in Europe and the United States. She published a ground-breaking and widely reprinted article on the use and abuse of archaeology for political purposes in Nazi Germany in Antiquity (1990). She is the founding Editor of the on-line peer-reviewed journal e-Keltoi and a member of numerous editorial boards, including the History of Archaeology series for Oxford University Press and the History of Archaeology Commission of the UISPP.

Zoom invitation:

Paul Brodwin is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Anthropology colloquium with Dr. Bettina Arnold
Time: Nov 13, 2020 3:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Please RSVP in advance to brodwin@uwm.edu in order to be admitted to this zoom event. Thank you.

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Come join us for our first-ever virtual colloquium presented by Dr. Patricia B. Richards on October 9th at 2:30 PM via Zoom!

A Retrospective: Twenty-Eight Years of the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery Project

From 1878 through 1974 Milwaukee County utilized four locations on the Milwaukee County Grounds in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin for the burial over 10,000 individuals, primarily paupers, the institutionalized, and the unidentified. Two archaeological excavations in 1991-1992 and again in 2013 resulted in the recovery of over 2,400 individuals from one of those cemetery locations. Curated by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Archaeological Research Laboratory, the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (MCPFC) individuals, artifacts, and associated archives represent one of the largest, if not the largest, archaeologically recovered, permanently curated skeletal collections in the United States. In addition to generating a substantial osteological data set, this project offers a model for crossing boundaries between cultural resource management, academic research, and social engagement at a time when the exhumation of the United States’ forgotten historic cemeteries has become increasingly common. As a project focused on a late 19th and early 20th century cemetery, the MCPFCP is situated not only within the history of historical archaeological research but is also influenced by the recent bioarchaeological trend of engaging with social theory to examine social identity and lived social experience. This talk summarizes the project to date within the overarching goal of returning a voice and an identity to individuals robbed of both by burial in the MCPFC.

Patricia Richards

Dr. Patricia B. Richards is a senior scientist in the Anthropology Department at UWM. She is also a Principal Investigator for UWM-CRM and has conducted cultural resource studies in Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois since 1973. Her specialties include mortuary analysis and historic period archaeology in the Great Lakes region. She has served as project director of the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery Project since the collection was permanently moved to UWM in 2008 and directed the original excavations in 1990s.

How to Attend Meeting:

This meeting will take place virtually via the web conferencing app, Zoom. Please follow the instructions below to attend on the day and time of the colloquium. Thank you.

Join Zoom Meeting at 2:30 PM on October 9th.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3103017900?pwd=TURnd1E4Z0s3bUhFUW5oQkVzOThVZz09

Meeting ID: 310 301 7900
Passcode: 9516145

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Meeting ID: 310 301 7900
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Come join us for our first-ever virtual colloquium presented by Dr. W. Warner Wood on September 18th at 3:00 PM via Zoom!

“Hearst Ginda Verde: Following a Textile Pattern, Unraveling a Global Mimetic Meshwork” 

This talk traces a textile pattern’s appearance in blankets currently being sold through Pendleton Wool Mills as “Hearst Ginda Verde.” Wood unravels the meandering story of this pattern from its origins in the late 1800s, to its reproduction by the business Santa Fe Interiors in the 1990s, and on to its more recent sale through Pendleton. The name of the pattern used in Pendleton marketing points to the well-known Navajo textile collection of William Randolph Hearst. Approaching the pattern ethnographically affords an exploration of the ways that indigenous weavers and others become entangled in global articulations and practices. Unraveling the story of the production, marketing, and sale of several textiles featuring this pattern points toward what Michael Taussig and Homi Bhabha have characterized as the disruptive capacities of mimetic practices and products and toward an emergent global mimetic “meshwork” of weavers, dealers, and consumers.

This talk is cosponsored with the UWM Center for 21^st Century Studies

Bill Wood is an associate professor in Anthropology at UWM. He was a C21 Faculty Fellow for the 2019-20 academic year. His research is focused on the cultural politics of heritage in global context. He is the author of Made in Mexico: Zapotec Weavers and the Global Ethnic Art Market (Indiana U. Press, 2008), an ethnographic account that follows weavers, designs, wool, and finished textiles primarily between Oaxaca, Mexico and the American Southwest.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3103017900?pwd=TURnd1E4Z0s3bUhFUW5oQkVzOThVZz09

Meeting ID: 310 301 7900
Passcode: 9516145
One tap mobile
+13017158592,,3103017900#,,,,,,0#,,9516145# US (Germantown)
+13126266799,,3103017900#,,,,,,0#,,9516145# US (Chicago)

Dial by your location
+1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown)
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
Meeting ID: 310 301 7900
Passcode: 9516145
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kbUEqcWZ6f