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Phone (678) 839-6464, FAX (678) 839-6645
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Archaeologist Hodder to lecture
January 29, 2003
CARROLLTON, GA - Archaeologist Dr. Ian Hodder, professor of anthropology at Stanford University, will visit the University of West Georgia as Waring Distinguished Lecturer in Anthropology on Friday, March 7.
Hodder
will lecture on “Life in Prehistoric Turkey: 9000 Years Ago”
at 7 p.m. in the Kathy Cashen Hall on the first floor of the Humanities
Building. He will share his experience working in Çatalhöyük,
a 9,000-year-old Neolithic site in Central Turkey. His visit is sponsored
by Antonio J. Waring Jr., Anthropology Endowment and organized by the
UWG Anthropology Program.
Hodder has work as Çatalhöyük project director for the past 10 years. The remarkably well-preserved site offers exciting archaeology: the strata are clear and well defined, allowing a slow descent towards another time in history.
This project promises outstanding discoveries surrounding the emergence of complex societies and the rise of population, as well as more significant advances in archaeological theory and methodology. The new results from this project cover issues such as the role of women, the domestication of cattle, the invention of pottery, and site location at this time.
Hodder said “one of the most interesting contributions is that Çatalhöyük shows that very large communities could be created within a ‘village-type’ organization. It shows that large communities can be held together through the absorption of beliefs and daily practices rather than through the wielding of centralized power.”
Hodder was born in Bristol, England. He attended the University of London where he earned his B.A. degree in Prehistoric Archaeology and he earned his Ph. D. at Cambridge University. Following a period of being a professor at Leeds University, he became a professor of archaeology at Cambridge in 1977.
He has also been a visiting professor at the Van Giffen Institute of Amsterdam, the Sorbonne in Paris, The State University of New York at Binghamton, and the University of California at Berkley. Currently he serves as professor of anthropology at Stanford University and as co-director of the Archaeology Center. He has been involved in fieldwork for over 30 years in such countries as Kenya, Italy, England, the Sudan and now Turkey.
Hodder has been a leader in theoretical advances in interpretative archaeology during more than two decades, creating an approach which argues that context-specific meaning, interpretation, and agency are the foundations of how archaeologists should approach the study of the past. His “anti-positivistic” methodology has helped create a fusion between contemporary theory in cultural anthropology and archaeology by emphasizing the central role that symbolism plays in the creation of human identities.
Perhaps more than any other contemporary archaeologist, Hodder has shifted the study of archeology into a rather new universe where the past can be seen in a particularly revealing light. Functional approaches to materialism, seeing the material object primarily as a use object, have long been primary theories in archaeology.
Now, through the contributions of post-processual archaeology, a non-western understanding can emerge, leaving objects as much for thinking as for using.
Hodder is the author of numerous book on archaeology, including Symbols in Action (1982), The Present Past (1982), Reading the Past (1986), The Domestications of Europe (1990), Theory and Practice in Archaeology (1992), and The Archaeological Process (1999), as well as numerous journal articles and monographs.
The lecture is free and is open the public. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend a public reception in Pafford Building (Room 305) immediately after the lecture. For more information, contact the Anthropology Program at 770-836-6455.
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