Rosemary A. Joyce - Memory
public guest lecture
Rosemary A. Joyce.
Dr. Joyce (http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/anth/joyce.html) is one of the leading archaeologists in gender, embodiment, and Mesoamerican studies.
Friday, October 24, 4:00 pm, MFAC 355
"Struggling with the memory of things."
Her Book:
Joyce, R. A. Ancient bodies, ancient lives: sex, gender, and archaeology. ISBN: 978-0-500-0515305.
The abstract: Archaeological excavations in a number of neighboring sites in the lower Ulua River Valley of Honduras have encountered structured deposits so dramatic that the intentionalities involved cannot be ignored. Understanding of the way the practices that produced these deposits were organized and reproduced, at times over a span of centuries, has suffered from limits on interpretive imagination imposed by dominant modes of analysis. In these, repeated material patterns are explained as the enactment of set scripts given by a cultural order or social evolutionary stage. The integration of approaches grounded in theories of practice produces especially dramatic changes of perspective in regard to these complex structured deposits. Rather than simply being encoded in a ritual system, the repetition of episodes of burning incense and deposition of ceramic incense-burning vessels at one of these sites, Mantecales, is viewed as the product of complex memory work in which humans and non-humans were mutually active. The understandings of this complex deposit are then used to illuminate other deposits, burials, caches, and architectural fills, as equally part of memory work with greater significance as evidence of the historicizing of practice in place.
Notes:
talk was also presented at TAG, Exeter, 2006. wasn't published
world archaeological congress
social memory - example - where were you when JFK died? What did you actually see/experience on 9/11? She was in California - woke up, TV news stations were presenting info like it was still happening, she called her brothers (living on east coast), they told her what it was like to live through it - but for her, it happened in the past, while she was asleep.
cognitive science, psychology - memory, learning. interdisciplinary work between psych and anthro/sociology.
our memories have locations. the people who say, "study in one place, the same place, all the time, every time = good study habit" are wrong - unless you'll be tested in that same spot. our memories are tied to what happened during it - example - study where people had to memorize things while smell of cookies was wafted through; they had better recall when they could smell cookies.
archaeological site: mantecales, near river ulua.
"platform" of raised earth. found broken bit of a green marble bowl.
*green* marble in mesoamerica - very rare, only have 2 bits. both are fragments of the same type of bowl, from 850-950 AD, found in this type of deposit
"platform" of raised earth. place for ritual activity - incense-burning place. alternating bands of ash and clay.
vertical stack of jar-necks. then, on top of that, a clay floor. then, on top of that, the fragment of green marble.
3 or 4 generations treating the stack of jar-necks as a focus
Incense - currently a symbol of veneration in mesoamerica. it *becomes* this symbol through enaction; people are raised doing this, making this memory. Incense isn't a symbol automatically.
thing that is the product of repeated action becomes a fact. transmission of knowledge of an invisible thing (the buried stack of jar necks). remember = memory. also, remember = re-member, or to re-put-together. comemoration = co-memory, to remember together
John monahan, coessence of humans and supernatural / animals in mesoamerica.
network of humans and nonhumans around these archaeological sites in mesoamerica
the persistence of things
persistent things - things that endure, don't disappear, memory work - make something in some place to help remember.
early figurines - were built to break easily. eradicating / rewriting the past, breaking with history. another way to break with history - pave over a site with clay
human psychology, neurobiology - when you remember, you're always creating something new. we think memory is linked with the past, but we're mistaken
can you measure oral tradition?
humans like to archaicize. say, "i'm really part of this tradition!" bring the past into the present. (but it is secretly an innovation!)
Rosemary A. Joyce.
Dr. Joyce (http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/anth/joyce.html) is one of the leading archaeologists in gender, embodiment, and Mesoamerican studies.
Friday, October 24, 4:00 pm, MFAC 355
"Struggling with the memory of things."
Her Book:
Joyce, R. A. Ancient bodies, ancient lives: sex, gender, and archaeology. ISBN: 978-0-500-0515305.
The abstract: Archaeological excavations in a number of neighboring sites in the lower Ulua River Valley of Honduras have encountered structured deposits so dramatic that the intentionalities involved cannot be ignored. Understanding of the way the practices that produced these deposits were organized and reproduced, at times over a span of centuries, has suffered from limits on interpretive imagination imposed by dominant modes of analysis. In these, repeated material patterns are explained as the enactment of set scripts given by a cultural order or social evolutionary stage. The integration of approaches grounded in theories of practice produces especially dramatic changes of perspective in regard to these complex structured deposits. Rather than simply being encoded in a ritual system, the repetition of episodes of burning incense and deposition of ceramic incense-burning vessels at one of these sites, Mantecales, is viewed as the product of complex memory work in which humans and non-humans were mutually active. The understandings of this complex deposit are then used to illuminate other deposits, burials, caches, and architectural fills, as equally part of memory work with greater significance as evidence of the historicizing of practice in place.
Notes:
talk was also presented at TAG, Exeter, 2006. wasn't published
world archaeological congress
social memory - example - where were you when JFK died? What did you actually see/experience on 9/11? She was in California - woke up, TV news stations were presenting info like it was still happening, she called her brothers (living on east coast), they told her what it was like to live through it - but for her, it happened in the past, while she was asleep.
cognitive science, psychology - memory, learning. interdisciplinary work between psych and anthro/sociology.
our memories have locations. the people who say, "study in one place, the same place, all the time, every time = good study habit" are wrong - unless you'll be tested in that same spot. our memories are tied to what happened during it - example - study where people had to memorize things while smell of cookies was wafted through; they had better recall when they could smell cookies.
archaeological site: mantecales, near river ulua.
"platform" of raised earth. found broken bit of a green marble bowl.
*green* marble in mesoamerica - very rare, only have 2 bits. both are fragments of the same type of bowl, from 850-950 AD, found in this type of deposit
"platform" of raised earth. place for ritual activity - incense-burning place. alternating bands of ash and clay.
vertical stack of jar-necks. then, on top of that, a clay floor. then, on top of that, the fragment of green marble.
3 or 4 generations treating the stack of jar-necks as a focus
Incense - currently a symbol of veneration in mesoamerica. it *becomes* this symbol through enaction; people are raised doing this, making this memory. Incense isn't a symbol automatically.
thing that is the product of repeated action becomes a fact. transmission of knowledge of an invisible thing (the buried stack of jar necks). remember = memory. also, remember = re-member, or to re-put-together. comemoration = co-memory, to remember together
John monahan, coessence of humans and supernatural / animals in mesoamerica.
network of humans and nonhumans around these archaeological sites in mesoamerica
the persistence of things
persistent things - things that endure, don't disappear, memory work - make something in some place to help remember.
early figurines - were built to break easily. eradicating / rewriting the past, breaking with history. another way to break with history - pave over a site with clay
human psychology, neurobiology - when you remember, you're always creating something new. we think memory is linked with the past, but we're mistaken
can you measure oral tradition?
humans like to archaicize. say, "i'm really part of this tradition!" bring the past into the present. (but it is secretly an innovation!)