Lam Announces Archaeology in the Americas Lecture Series
This fall semester, the Lam Museum is excited to present a series of free lectures about archaeology across the Americas featuring sites in Peru, Guatemala, and North Carolina.
On Monday, September 15, at 5:00pm, archaeologists Dr. Matthew Sayre and Dr. Silvana Rosenfeld of High Point University will present “Life Outside the Temple: Chavín de Huántar and its People.” The pair will discuss their project investigating the emergence of institutionalized social inequality through the lens of ritual practice at Chavín de Huántar, a major Formative Period site in the central Andes of Peru (ca. 1500–200 BCE). While the monumental core of Chavín has long been recognized as a ceremonial and political center, their research focuses on the domestic sector of La Banda. Their excavations suggest that La Banda residents were involved in crafting objects for use in the ceremonial core of the site, providing a unique opportunity to study bottom-up processes in early complex societies.
On Wednesday, October 22, at 6:00pm, Dr. Brent Woodfill, Professor of Anthropology at Winthrop University, will present “The Living Landscape of the Ancient Maya.” The ancient and modern Maya grant full agency and personhood over a wide range of other beings—from mountains and caves to houses and the dead. The Maya depended on their nonhuman neighbors to survive and thrive, just as those same neighbors depended on humans, resulting in a covenant between the different communities that is central to understanding most aspects of ancient Maya life. In this talk, Dr. Woodfill will discuss how the acknowledgment of this vastly different worldview transforms how we understand Maya economics, politics, and the ethics of conducting fieldwork itself. These two lectures are sponsored by the WFU Department of Anthropology, Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies, and Latin American and Latino Studies.
On Thursday, November 13, at 6:00pm, Dr. Alice Wright, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Appalachian State University, will present “The Upper New Archaeological Project: Uncovering Deep Histories of Appalachian Resilience.” On September 27, 2024, the floodwaters of Hurricane Helene transformed the landscape of the New River headwaters in northwestern North Carolina, and the lives of many of the people who call it home. Although the disaster was unprecedented in living memory, the archaeological record of the watershed attests to millennia of complex human interactions with the environment, including different responses to climate change. The Upper New Archaeological Project (UNAP) explores this deep history through analyses of legacy collections and geospatial data and targeted fieldwork at Native American sites in Watauga and Ashe Counties. In this talk, Dr. Wright will discuss some of UNAP’s preliminary findings and future plans, highlighting patterns of continuity and resilience among the diverse Appalachian communities who have lived along the Upper New River over the last 10,000 years.