Announcement of Gordon Childe Lecture 2019

The second of the special events associated with TAG2019 at UCL is announced - with the Gordon Childe Lecture 2019 scheduled to take place on 12 December.

This year's speaker is Matthew Johnson, Northwestern University, USA, who will give the Gordon Childe Lecture entitled 'On Writing the Past Backwards'.

lecture details

• Time: Thursday 12 December, 6.30-7.30pm
• Location: Harrie Massey Lecture Theatre, 25 Gordon Street, London WC1 followed by a reception in the A.G. Leventis Gallery, UCL Institute of Archaeology
• Registration: Eventbrite registration will open shortly

LECTURE Abstract

I am writing a book on English landscapes in the context of the north Atlantic.  It spans the 2nd millennium CE, and works backwards, from New World colonial encounters, to interactions with Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, back to medieval infrastructure and beyond.

I discuss two challenges for this project. First, while there is much written on how time is socially embedded, there is little on the reversal of time.  Such a theoretical gap is strange, given that working backwards, peeling off the layers, is so central to what archaeologists do. Second, identities are never essential, and are always in a state of becoming.  So there is no essence to ‘Englishness’; the English re-made themselves over and over again. 

Time and cultural identity come together in understanding the long term, and in reconciling enduring structures with the importance of human agency.  And they unavoidably speak to the populist nationalisms of recent and not-so-recent times.

Follow us on social media to keep up-to-date with TAG 2019-related announcements. Updates will also be posted on the dedicated TAG2019 conference website.

Any enquiries about TAG 2019 may be directed to Andrew Gardner.