Launched in Fall 2009, the LSA Lecture Series brings some of the top archaeologists in the country to UF to spend time with students and faculty and to present a public lecture on their latest research. Brown Endowment funds defray the costs of travel and subsistence and provide an honorarium to visiting scholars.
2016-2017 Brown Lecture: Michael S. Nassaney, Professor of Anthropology, Western Michigan University
Shifting Contours of Archaeological Knowledge in Colonial Contexts
Abstract
The narratives we construct are never divorced from the social contexts in which they are created. Colonial contexts have been especially subject to political influence since they involve descendant communities, directly or tangentially. Archaeology at Fort St. Joseph, an 18th century mission-garrison-trading post complex in southwest Michigan, illustrates recent changes in our understanding of colonial relations.
2011-2012 Brown Lecture: Shannon Lee Dawdy, Associate Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences, The University of Chicago
Fancy Assemblages: An Archaeology of the Dandy, the Madame, and Other Urban Players
Abstract
In New Orleans, as in other colonial ports and tourist destinations, an orientalist aesthetic drives economic desires and it is one that both natives and visitors participate in creating. Through a combination of textual and material sources, Professor Dawdy explores ways in which to analyze an urban society as an assemblage of actors taking on aesthetic personages. People-watching in the streets, markets, and establishments of the city, both historically and contemporarily, helps us see the prostitutes, merchant women, slaves, dandies, and flneurs of the Atlantic World. Archaeology helps us see how their roles necessitated certain artifacts for props and certain urban spaces for stages. Without this aesthetic articulation with a material assemblage, their intentions were more likely to be misread and it would be more difficult to effect matches between buyers and sellers, hosts and guests.
2010-2011 Brown Lecture: Thomas J. Pluckhahn, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of South Florida
The Ends of Weeden Island
Abstract
The nearly 2000-year-old Weeden Island tradition of Florida was a watershed of cultural integration and complexity in the American Southeast. In its ancestor veneration and mound construction, Weeden Island embodies beliefs and practices that link it to native ceremonialism spanning much of eastern North America. Through the perspective of new research at the Kolomoki (GA) and Crystal River (FL) sites, Tom Pluckhahn illustrates how Weeden Island is best understood as a historical process that elapsed over many centuries and across vast geographies.
2009-2010 Brown Lecture: Charles R. Cobb, Director, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology and Professor of Anthropology, University of South Carolina
Enlightenment Ideals, Sexual Politics, and Economic Realities on the Carolina Frontier
Abstract
Ethnohistoric and archaeological studies at an Apalachicola village and English Fort on the Savannah River highlight the cultural, political, and geographic chasm between colonial frontier and imperial metropole. The Carolina colony was conceived by the Lords Proprietors in London as an experiment in Enlightenment ideals. Yet progressive notions in England quickly fell prey to concerns over policing boundaries of race, sex, and “civilization” by officials in Charleston. In turn, the edicts of colonial officials were frustrated on the frontier, as seen in the results of recent investigations at Palachacolas Town and Fort Moore, which emphasize the importance of local politics, alliances, and cultural intersections.