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Bodies in motion: Telling social stories of mobility with scientific data

24 January 2020, 6:00 pm–7:00 pm

Bodies in motion: Telling social stories of mobility with scientific data

The Archaeological Sciences Section will host a Guest Lecture given by Cate Frieman (ANU, Canberra) at the UCL Institute of Archaeology on 28 January.

This event is free.

Event Information

Open to

All

Availability

Yes

Cost

Free

Organiser

Dr Miljana Radivojevic

Location

Room 612
Institute of Archaeology
31-34 Gordon Square
London
WC1H 0PY
United Kingdom

The lecture will explore the issues of mobility and gender in the light of the increasing amount of genetic and isotopic data in later European prehistory.  All are welcome to attend.

Abstract

The last several decades have seen a revolution in methods for understanding human mobility. Between the increasing precision of isotopic data and the obvious power of ancient genetic information, we are seeing major narrative shifts in how we talk about the movement of people, ideas and technologies in the past. The scientific data emerging from these fields is rapidly diffused to the wider public through media and press releases and is playing a key role shaping non-specialist understanding of the archaeological past. These stories of past people’s movements catch the public interest because mobility in the present in highly politicised, regulated, and differentially accessible. Yet, our stories of mobility—driven as they are by scientific tools and laboratory analyses—often lack reflective interpretation. What does it mean for a person to have journeyed in the past or a migration to have occurred? How do we interpret patterns of mobility which appear to differ by biological sex? How might a past person or group’s experience of mobility impact their identity? In this paper I will reflect on these questions through a series of case studies drawn from later European prehistory. My intent is to explore the social construction of mobility, its role in identity formation and the assumptions we bring from the present and apply to the results of scientific mobility studies of human remains. Scientific mobility studies have an incredible power to animate and humanise the long-dead whose remains we are privileged to study, I argue that a social element is necessary if we are to reconstruct the lives of people, rather than just identify bodies in motion.

Speaker

Cate Frieman trained in Yale and Oxford, while holding a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. She is currently a lecturer at ANU in Canberra and holds a fellowship for the project Conservatism as a dynamic response to the diffusion of innovations. She is also a co-editor of the European Journal of Archaeology and a recipient of multiple excellence awards as a researcher and educator in Australia.