New Episode of Ask a Professor Now Available!

Ask A Professor! Ep. 2: The Life and Career of Archaeologist Robert Jeske is now available to view on our new Videos page! Or watch on YouTube by clicking here. In this episode we will ask Bob about how he… Read More

Alum Dr. Brooke Drew Presents Research on Historic Cemetery in Indiana

UWM Anthro is pleased to share the following presentation by Alum Dr. Brooke Drew on the Bethel Cemetery in Indiana. Dr. Brooke Drew, Indiana State University, uncovers the methodology a team of experts and students used to name unmarked burials… Read More

Dr. Bettina Arnold Weighs in on Nebra Disk Debate

Dr. Bettina Arnold, a Professor of Anthropology at UWM is an expert in European Prehistory. She has recently weighed in on the controversy surrounding the Nebra Disk, a now famous metal artifact thought to be the oldest representation of the… Read More

Virtual Colloquium: The Warrior that Wasn’t: Politics and the Archaeology of Gender presented by Dr. Bettina Arnold

Friday, November 13 2020 3:00 PM

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.

Join Zoom Meeting

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Meeting ID: 310 301 7900

Passcode: 9516145

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Virtual Colloquium: A Retrospective: Twenty-Eight Years of the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery Project presented by Dr. Patricia B. Richards

Friday, October 9 2020 2:30 PM

This event will take place virtually via Zoom.

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

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

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

Ashley Brennaman wins Lambda Alpha Graduate Research Grant Award

Congratulations to the doctoral student Ashley Brennaman for winning the Lambda Alpha Graduate Research Grant Award! Sponsored by Lambda Alpha — the national honor society for anthropology — this award is one of only six given nationwide each year. Ashley’s… Read More

Alum Nikita Sessler Werner featured in recent Discover Magazine article

UWM Anthropology is proud to share that Nikita Sessler Werner’s 2019 MS thesis on the archaeological evidence for child labor in prehistoric European mining contexts is featured in the June 2020 issue of Discover magazine. You can read the article… Read More

AIA Lecture Series: When Did Vesuvius Explode?

Sunday, February 9 2020 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Sabin Hall G90

Sunday, February 9, 2020, 3:00pm
Pedar Foss, Professor, Classical Studies, DePauw University, Indiana
Title: When Did Vesuvius Explode?

It has long been held, on the basis of a letter of Pliny the Younger, that Mt. Vesuvius erupted on 24 August, AD 79. But after excavators began to work at the sites of Herculaneum at Pompeii, some scholars expressed doubts, suggesting a date later in the autumn of that year. Debate has increased with recent paleo-environmental research and the find of an inscription last year. Scholars have divided over a topic that might appear trivial—after all, most archaeological sites never enjoy such a precise date. But it is an excellent case study for testing our methods of historical and archaeological research, and I will lift the lid on those methods.

Ruins at Pompeii with Mount Vesuvius in the background.

As part of a book project (Pliny and the Destruction of Vesuvius, Routledge 2021), I have collated, for the first time, every manuscript and printed edition of Pliny’s Letters 6.16 and 6.20, in order to track and analyze the literary tradition of the date through its surviving evidence. I have also compiled a reconstruction of the pre-eruption landscape and coastline, and collected all recent volcanological and archaeological research about the event. Having made a multidisciplinary reconstruction of what happened over the two terrifying days of the eruption, I can now offer an answer to the question of when Vesuvius exploded.

Pedar FossPedar W. Foss is Professor of Classical Studies at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, where he has worked since 1999. As a teacher, he conducts courses in Latin, ancient history and literature, and art and archaeology. He received his B.A. in Chemistry and Classics from Gustavus Adolphus College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; he subsequently taught at the University of Cincinnati and at Stanford. His research concerns domestic life at Pompeii, landscape archaeology, and Geographic Information Systems. He has edited for the Journal of Roman Archaeology and was co-editor of the book reviews for the American Journal of Archaeology from 2008-2011. He has lived, studied, and worked for extended periods in Greece, Italy, Tunisia, Turkey, and England. He is a fanatical follower of football/futbol/soccer.

https://aia-milwaukee.uwm.edu/lectures/

AIA Lecture: Andrew L. Goldman presents “Helmets from the Sea: Military Finds from the Battle of the Aegates Islands (241 BCE)”

Sunday, September 29 2019 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Sabin Hall G90
3413 N. Downer Ave, Milwaukee, WI

Professor Bettina Arnold and PhD Candidate Josh Driscoll participate in Ancient Beer Workshop in Germany

Anthropology Professor Bettina Arnold and PhD candidate Josh Driscoll were invited speakers at the University of Hohenheim in Germany in the European Research Council PLANTCULT Workshop “Ancient Beer: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Identification in the Archaeological Record”, February 7-9, 2019. Their talks were entitled, respectively, Tapping into the Past:… Read More