The Archaeology Lecture Series Presents: Anne Hunnell Chen

Professor Anne Hunnell Chen's lecture is titled, ""Big Digs" and the Enduring Legacies of Disciplinary Frameworks and Taxonomies." The abstract reads:

The so-called blockbuster “Big Digs” of the interwar era in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region bear a complex legacy. On the one hand, those excavations filled museum displays and storerooms and sourced objects of inquiry that have stoked more than a century’s worth of research in Humanist disciplines like art history and ancient languages and literatures. On the other hand, imbalances of power and privilege at the time of excavation have had long-lasting repercussions not only with regard to who has access to the physical and intellectual products of such expeditions, but also whose perspectives are reflected in the grand narratives of scientific exploration and the interpretation of the ancient past. Using the case study of a painted dining room in a domestic context from the archaeologically rich site of Dura-Europos (Syria), this paper will explore how taxonomies imposed by early excavators and partage (division of finds) decisions aimed at building national and institutional collections seeded disciplinary, institutional, and linguistic (both ancient and modern) silos that continue to define access to the physical and intellectual products descending from important foreign-run excavations. Moving beyond identification of injustice to action, the talk will highlight how emerging digital methods, and especially flexible Linked Open Data (LOD) approaches, might be harnessed toward a collaboratively defined reparative practice.