UCL Institute of Archaeology

J Cameron Monroe (University of California, Santa Cruz) will give the first seminar in the African Peoples and Pasts series at the Institute on 25 September.

Dr Monroe's seminar is entitled Unsettling Cities: Landscapes of Power and Ambivalence in Dahomey and all are welcome. The seminar will be followed by a wine reception in the Staff Common Room.

His research broadly examines political, economic, and cultural transformation in West Africa and the Diaspora in the era of the slave trade. He has conducted research on the nature of African-American ethnic identity and household-level production in early colonial Virginia.

His current research project, the Abomey Plateau Archaeological Project, is located in the Republic of Bénin in West Africa. This project explores the dynamics of political transformation in West Africa in the era of the slave trade.

Please direct any enquiries about the event to Nick Gestrich.

African Peoples and Pasts Seminar Series 2012-13

• 25 September: Unsettling Cities: Landscapes of Power and Ambivalence in Dahomey (J Cameron Monroe (University of California, Santa Cruz))
• 11 October: The DGB sites: Monumental architecture and political power in the Lake Chad Basin (Scott MacEachern (Bowdoin College))
• 25 October: The carnivorous feeding behaviour of early Homo at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania (Michael Pante, UCL)
• 5 November: West-central African archaeology: Iron Age burials in Corisco Island, Equatorial Guinea (Manuel Sánchez-Elipe Lorente)
• 22 November: Learning from the Lari Massacres: Heritage and Conflict Resolution in Contemporary Kenya (Annie Coombes, Birkbeck)
• 17 January: The Healer's Tools: Broadening Archaeological Perspectives on 'Traditional' Healing through Contemporary Engagements with Migrant Practitioners in Accra, Ghana (Bryn Trevelyan James, University of Manchester)
• 31 January: Developing archaeology in the new South Sudan: General Gordon's fort at Laboré and other sites of interest (Matthew Davies, University of Cambridge/BIEA)
• 7 March: Becoming Creole: African-European cultural interaction and local tradition in Barbados, c. 1700-1900 (Niall Finneran, University of Winchester)
• 14 March: The Rise and Fall of the African Past: pursuing the 'pre-colonial' in Uganda (Richard Reid, SOAS)