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The Anthropology of History

The Anthropology of History

Scholars brought together insights from postcolonial studies, indigenous archaeology, and archaeological anthropology to locate an emerging understanding of how we come to know the past.

Current trends in postcolonial studies, indigenous archaeology, archaeological ethnography, and in the anthropology/history border-zone, indicate the emergence of an as-yet unarticulated new research orientation: the anthropology of history. This project, conceived in collaboration with Charles Stewart (University College London) engaged faculty and visitors in Anthropology, History, Philosophy, and Divinity to synthesize and theorize the comparative ethnographic and historical study of the diverse means by which people gain knowledge of the past. These are matters of concern not only for numerous social science and humanities disciplines, but also for society more generally as the West begins to reflect upon the circumscribed operating sphere of its putatively universal truths and the concrete policy, legal, and cultural implications of acknowledging both non-Western historicizing practices and Western ways of relating to the past that do not conform to the standards or concerns of disciplinary history.

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Curses in Context

Curses in Context

This project brought together an international cohort of archaeologists, historians, and philologists for comprehensive study of ancient curses in their local and archaeological context.

Small lead tablets inscribed primarily in Greek or Latin with private curses against rivals or wrongdoers reveal a darker side of ancient life that is often hidden from us in our sources for ancient history. This project aimed at a more intensive and contextualized study of these texts found throughout the Mediterranean basin and beyond. In the past these texts have generally been studied as a unified epigraphic corpus with little emphasis on the local context of their deposit in tombs, sanctuaries, and bodies of water, or on the local features of dialect and paleography. Recently excavated hoards from Greece, Italy, and Roman Germany allow us new opportunities to study these curses as material objects in their specific archeological and historical contexts. This project required a combination of technical skills: restoration, imaging, paleography, archaeology, and historical and religious studies. A series of four international conferences provided a platform for discussing and generating new editions of texts and collected volumes of essays focused on important aspects never considered in the past.

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Deep History

Deep History

This project supported the Visiting Fellowship of Daniel Lord Smail, whose innovative research on the material culture of the later Middle Ages operates at the intersection of history, anthropology, archaeology, and evolutionary biology.

Professor Dan Smail (Department of History, Harvard University) took up residence as a Neubauer Visiting Fellow in the Fall Quarter of 2015. Smail, who is a medievalist by training, has played a central role in pioneering a new scholarly approach known as Deep History, which operates at the intersection of history, anthropology, archeology, and evolutionary biology. This research program integrates the evolutionary history of the brain and the distant past of the human species into historical scholarship; it also seeks to embrace an array of sources and methodologies that are not conventionally used by historians. Deep History is part of a larger intellectual turn towards problems of environment, evolution, and climate, and it poses significant challenges to the discipline of history, as well as to other humanistic and social scientific modes of inquiry. At the Neubauer, Smail worked on a book on the deep history of humans and things, and the ecological or environmental consequences of those relationships. Moving beyond simple claims about the connection of modernity to material acquisitiveness, Smail sought to develop a wider perspective on the interactions of human beings with objects and, in particular, on the ways that objects are used, re-used and discarded.

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Genomes, Migrations, and Culture in the Early Civilizations of the Middle East

A double helix superimposed over a satellite image of an archaeological site

Genomes, Migrations, and Culture in the Early Civilizations of the Middle East

This collaboration between archaeologists and geneticists will analyze DNA from ancient human remains excavated in the Middle East in order to reconstruct population movements and assess the prevailing explanations for cultural change in the Bronze Age civilizations of this region.

This interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeologists and geneticists will enhance ancient DNA research at the University of Chicago and spur the development of a curriculum in archaeogenetics to bridge the gap between these two disciplines. An “ancient DNA revolution” is occurring in archaeology and ancient history because of new laboratory and statistical methods for extracting and analyzing DNA from ancient skeletal remains. These new methods have enabled the reconstruction of thousands of complete genomes from ancient specimens found in a wide range of geographical and chronological contexts. These genomes provide striking evidence of ancient population migrations, often challenging archaeologists’ long-held ideas about cultural change. The project will analyze DNA from ancient human remains excavated in the Middle East in order to reconstruct population movements and assess the prevailing explanations for cultural change in the Bronze Age civilizations of this region. This requires close collaboration and frequent discussions between geneticists and archaeologists of the kind the research team intends to demonstrate in this project. A series of workshops and an international conference will foster discussions of how ancient DNA results can best contribute to the construction of historical narratives. In light of concerns about biological reductionism and what some see as the implied racism of genetic studies, the project will seek viable ways of conceptualizing the relationship between genetic variation, cultural and linguistic similarities and differences, and the social construction of ethnicity and group solidarity.

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The Geological Foundation for Human Evolution

Ethiopian landscape courtesy Zeray Alemseged

The Geological Foundation for Human Evolution

Deeper understanding of Ethiopian geology and geotectonic history will inform the research team’s interpretation of the ways the changing landscape shaped the evolution of our ancestors.

The study of human evolution is one of the most exciting and intriguing scientific topics and is of great interest to scientists and the public at large. Research in paleoanthropology aims to unravel the tempo and mode of the main events in our evolutionary history that led to the emergence of Homo sapiens and how we became one of the most widespread and successful animals on earth. Knowing how and when this occurred is inherently relevant to our understanding of the human condition today. In order to address some of the fundamental questions in human evolution, this research project will undertake transdisciplinary fieldwork in Ethiopia aimed at garnering much-needed geological and paleontological data. Documenting the geological and geotectonic history of the sites, where the researchers collect fossils from, is one major research agenda. Our understanding of the geology of the region and the specific sites is the foundation for the interpretation of the history of the sedimentary basin and how the ancient landscape changed through time, shaping the evolution of our ancestors. Our collaborative endeavor with geologists is therefore crucial. This fellowship will enable a collaborator and senior geologist, Dr. Mulugeta Alene Araya, from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, who takes part in our field activities, to visit the University of Chicago in order to collaboratively produce manuscripts for publication. His stay here will provide him with a stimulating research environment and access to resources that are lacking in his institution in Ethiopia while enriching our collaborative research endeavor at the University of Chicago.

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Invisible Landscapes

Aerial image of Ras al-Silaysil, Jordan

Invisible Landscapes

A team of archaeologists, scholars, scientists, architects and artists are combining field research with collaborative dialogue to consider the theoretical implications of unseen landscapes.

This project seeks to uncover “invisible landscapes”—massive, multi-scalar, and multi-temporal human manipulations of the environment that archaeologists have long struggled to visualize, document, and understand. Since the advent of their discipline, archaeologists have occasionally caught glimpses of scattered anthropogenic interventions on otherwise seemingly undisturbed landscapes. Recent technological and methodological advances have revealed the previously unimagined scale and complexity of human impacts on those landscapes: enormous cities hidden beneath jungle canopies in the Americas and Southeast Asia, ubiquitous networks of sophisticated water management features that facilitated agriculture in Arabia, meticulously curated gardens in the “pristine” Amazonian rainforest. Bringing together a core team of three archaeologists and a dozen scholars, scientists, architects, and artists, this project investigates the causes behind the “invisibility” of such landscapes and offers potential ways to reimagine archaeologists' “sight.” More importantly, it also incites discussions about the theoretical implications of these previously unseen landscapes and about the new forms of disciplinary collaborations that their inspection demands. Combining field research with collaborative dialogue, the researchers aim not only to capture and analyze hitherto unseen complex anthropogenic assemblages, but to question what the objects of archaeology are and suggest possibilities regarding what they can be.

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Long-Term Environmental and Social Change in Mesopotamia

Long-Term Environmental and Social Change in Mesopotamia

Marshaling texts, archaeological evidence, natural science findings, information on environmental processes, and satellite imagery, researchers shed light on the impact of the environment on cultural development in Mesopotamia.

The archaeological landscape of Mesopotamia (much of modern Iraq and parts of Iran and Syria) is unique because it is a record of thousands of years of human-environment interactions involving large, complex societies. But trying to reconstruct environmental conditions and geographic distribution of features from only ancient texts and archaeological evidence leads to broad generalizations. We can now combine texts with archaeological evidence, natural science findings, information on environmental processes, and satellite imagery to delve deeper into the physical changes that occurred in Mesopotamian history.

The project used this information to assess the role of environment on the development of culture in Mesopotamia from prehistory to early modern times. It supplied and integrated data on the environmental and human interactions that were factors in the development of early urbanism, state formation, the first empires, and the subsequent fragmentation and coalescence of polities that has characterized ancient Mesopotamia and modern Iraq. The project brought together an interdisciplinary team of international scholars, including epigraphers, archaeologists, and natural scientists, to collaborate closely, through field work, data analysis and a conference, on new and better organized information on the development of the Mesopotamian landscape and the interaction of humans and nature there. This contributed to development of an overview of changing environmental conditions through time and their relationship to the cultural history of Mesopotamia. The resulting data and analyses will be made available through a variety of sources and serve as the basis for further specialized studies.

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NigerHeritage: Novel Solutions for Ancient and Historical Heritage

NigerHeritage: Novel Solutions for Ancient and Historical Heritage

An international group of scientists, social scientists, architects, and planners developed proposals for the design and function of three sites in Niger—a museum, a cultural center for nomadic peoples, and a fossil field site.

The NigerHeritage project involved rethinking the design and function of two cultural facilities and one paleontological site—a museum, a cultural center for nomadic peoples, and a fossil field site—for preservation of Niger’s paleontological, archaeological, and cultural heritage. Research, discussion, and forums held in the U.S. and Niger—involving scientists, social scientists, architects, planners, and the public—aimed to forge consensus plans for these cultural initiatives, the ultimate goals of which include long-term preservation and celebration of unique cultural heritage, engagement of surrounding communities, and novel architectural solutions that are sustainable and environmentally sensitive.

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NigerHeritage: Research, Development, and Planning for Novel Museum, Cultural Center, and Field Station

NigerHeritage: Research, Development, and Planning for Novel Museum, Cultural Center, and Field Station

This collaborative effort developed designs for a museum, a cultural center for nomadic peoples, and a fossil field site—each with a distinct role in the preservation of Niger’s paleontological, archaeological and cultural heritage.

This project involved rethinking the design and function of a museum, a cultural center for nomadic peoples, and local field stations—each with a distinct role in the preservation of Niger’s unique paleontological, archaeological and cultural heritage. Scientists, social scientists, architects, planners and the public in Niger collaborated to develop the mission and plans for these innovative, energy-efficient cultural initiatives, which will shepherd the repatriation and long-term stewardship of priceless artifacts originating from the region.

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