Materialities of Time: Ritual, death and the practice of archaeology

Aims

This course focuses on the topic of time in archaeology, exploring how archaeology recognises, explains and interprets time in the past, and it scrutinises how the methodologies and interpretative frameworks of archaeological practice affect the understanding of temporal issues in the study of past societies. Archaeological approaches to time will be explored primarily – but by no means exclusively – through rituals and death practices, which may offer particularly concrete ways of scrutinising understandings of time in the past as well as in the archaeological practice. The course is open to PhD students enrolled under The Nordic Graduate School in Archaeology. Keynote speakers are chosen to represent a variety of theoretical and empirical points of departure, and will be able to offer diverse and wide-ranging angles on the themes of the course, based on their excellent and abundant research in the field.

In archaeology, time is often reduced to a matter of chronology and dating, and Nordic archaeology has a long tradition for developing increasingly fine-grained chronologies of the remains of past societies. This course seeks to expand on these insights, turning the focus towards time as a cultural occurrence and a social experience. It does, however, not exclude PhD students working with chronology and dating, yet it asks of all participants that they reflect on the social dimension of time.

PhD students are invited to explore time through ritual, mortuary practices and/or the archaeological methodologies. The course does not proceed from a solid statement of what time or ritual is, or how death should be conceptualised in archaeology, but offers a forum for exploring how time, death and ritual materialise in various archaeological contexts and case studies.

The course asks the crucial question how archaeology can observe time, how ritual can be recognised in the material record, and how deathways and commemoration may be linked to time and ritual as social phenomena. Do ritual and mortuary practices offer a glimpse into past notions of time? How does commemorative practices reflect experiences of time? Does time have a material dimension? How does the pronounced emphasis in archaeology on chronology, dating and the long term affect the discipline's ability to conceptualise social or experienced time? Can archaeology study the moment and events or only the long term? And has archaeology got anything to offer in the study of present-day societies or does the discipline have to see things at a temporal distance? These are some of the questions that will be brought up in the course, and they will be supplemented by the no less important issues and problems raised by the PhD students on the basis of their research projects.

 

Course work

The course will consist of both seminars and lectures. Before the course starts, each PhD student will prepare a paper for pre-circulation, addressing her or his research project in relation to the course theme. In the course seminars, each paper will be allotted ca. 45 minutes, beginning with the student presenting a 15-minute summary of its contents. One of the other PhD students will be selected in advance as a discussant and comment for about 10 minutes, after which she or he will then chair an open discussion on the paper for approximately 20 minutes. The keynote speakers will each give a lecture of circa one hour, presenting different perspectives on time, ritual practice and death based on their field of expertise, as well as participating as prime movers in the discussion of PhD presentations.

 

List of lecturers

Liv Nilsson Stutz, Emory University  

John Robb, University of Cambridge

Howard Williams, University of Chester

                                                                                                           

Organiser

University of Aarhus, Department of Anthropology, Archaeology & Linguistics

 

Credits

1 month or 7 ECTS

Location, travel and costs

The course will take place at Moesgård in Århus, Denmark. The Graduate School will support travel and accommodation for all participating PhD students. Air tickets must be arranged by the graduate student her-/himself. We encourage you to buy the cheapest fare. Accommodation will be arranged by the School, and two PhD students will share a room.

Registration

The Graduate school invites all registered PhD students to apply for participation. The application (in English) should include information on the individual PhD project, and how the project will benefit from the planned PhD course. Please use this application form. From these applications the board of the Graduate School will select c. 20 PhD students for the course. Interested PhD students should apply for the course to: Lene Melheim, Administrative Officer, Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, Box 1008 Blindern, N-0315 Oslo, Norway. Email: a.l.melheim@iakh.uio.no. Phone: (+47) 99755435, Fax: (+47) 22841901
 

Information

Lene Melheim, Administrative Officer, Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, Box 1008 Blindern, N-0315 Oslo, Norway.
Email: a.l.melheim@iakh.uio.no. Phone: (+47) 99755435, Fax: (+47) 22841901
 

Deadlines

Application for participation: March 12. Confirmation on your participation will be sent out shortly after this date together with a reading list.
Abstracts of ½ page: April 10.
Submission of working papers (10 pages, Times New Roman 12, Spacing 1,5): May 7.
Distribution of papers and appointment of opponents: May 21.