Convenors

Convenors

• Camila Alday (PhD Student, Department of Archaeology)
• Oliver Antczak (PhD Student, Department of Archaeology)
• Céline Erauw (Postdoctoral researcher,Wiener-Anspach Foundation Fellow)
• Joshua Fitzgerald (Rubinoff JRF, Churchill College, Department of History/Art History)
• Jimena Lobo Guerrero Arenas (Senior Curator of World Archeology at the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology)
• Chike Pilgrim (PhD student, Department of Archeology)
• Jasmine Vieri (PhD Student, Department of Archaeology)

About the convenors

Camila Alday is an archaeologist specialising in bast fibres and weaving technologies of Pre-Columbian South America. Camila is also interested in understanding how containers – mostly made of plants, and basketry were critical material culture for past human societies. Camila has received her BA in Anthropology with a major in Archaeology at University of Tarapaca, in northern Chile. She recently finished her PhD at Cambridge University. In her doctoral research, she studied bast fibre materials to understand how the production of nets, looped bags, mats and other fibre materials underpinned maritime subsistence strategies during the Andean Preceramic Period (10,000 – 3,500 BP).

Oliver Antczak is a Venezuelan and Polish anthropologist and archaeologist interested in the intersection between heritage and identity, particularly in the Caribbean. He received his B.A. in Anthropology and Archaeology from Leiden University College (2016) and an MPhil in Archaeology, Heritage and Museum Studies, at the University of Cambridge (2018). His current PhD research, supported by the ESRC and Gates Cambridge, focuses on understanding how heritage is used in the resurgence and maintenance of Indigenous identities in the Southern Caribbean, and his work is currently focusing on a collaborative and comparative approach to Trinidad, Margarita, and Bonaire.

Joshua Fitzgerald is the 2020-24 Rubinoff Junior Research Fellow in ‘art as a source of knowledge’ (Churchill College) researching the material culture of Mexico. As a trained ethnohistorian in Nahuatl Studies, Joshua has expertise in the archaeology, art and architecture, and cultural history of Mesoamerica. In 2019, he received his PhD (History) and Museum Studies certification from the University of Oregon, and has contributed as a content specialist with several museums, including the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the Getty Research Institute. His research has been sponsored by several foundations in the US, Mexico and UK, and, in Cambridge, he has enjoyed educating about all aspects of Mesoamerican and Colonial Latin American culture, from the Spanish Conquest in video games to Nahua sacred food-art. Joshua hopes his research projects and supervisions with Cambridge students will help foster the recovery of neglected voices and perspectives from the past to better our future.

Jimena Lobo Guerrero Arenas is Senior Curator of World Archeology at the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. She has a BA in Anthropology and History from the Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia and an MA in History from the same university. She completed her PhD at the University of Bristol and before coming to Cambridge, she was a Lecturer and Curator of Archeology at the Museum Centre of the Universidad de Caldas in Colombia. She is interested in working with material culture from historical periods in Spanish America looking at the interaction between indigenous people, Africans and Europeans. Her research spans the history and archeology of colonialism, practices of resistance, the continuity and change of pre-Columbian technological traditions, postcolonial theory, and sensory responses to the Encounter. More recently, her research has focused on the study of metallurgy in the Americas during the colonial period. She has also worked extensively on museums and cultural heritage. She is particularly interested in giving source communities a leading voice within the narratives that are created for displays and learning experiences. She is interested in research projects that address issues on the histories of collections, past technologies, provenance, the life of objects and repatriation.

Chike Pilgrim is a writer, historian and archaeologist. He holds degrees in History from the University of the West Indies and a Masters in Archaeology from the University of Oxford. He is a PhD student in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. His interests include: the Archaeology of the Caribbean and the Global South, Landscape Historical Ecology, Geoarchaeology, Bioarcheology and Stable Isotope Analysis, and Maritime Archaeology. His current studies are concerned with the earliest settlement of the Caribbean islands and the resultant effect of this settlement on the ecology of the islands during the early to mid-Holocene (circa 12000-4200 BP).

Jasmine Vieri is a PhD student at the Department of Archaeology in Cambridge. Her research interests include materials science and computational analysis in archaeology, particularly in relation to examining relationships between humans, their environments, material culture, and technologies – as well as the development of sustainable approaches to re-using legacy data in archaeology to produce large-scale, cross-comparative analysis. Her PhD research, funded by the AHRC, focuses on collating and synthesising the chemical compositions of pre-Columbian gold and copper alloys, with a focus on present-day Colombia, but extending into the area encompassing the Southern Central Andes to present-day Mexico. In order to seek and explain temporal and regional patterning in metallurgical practices, her work explores the role of culture, environmental constraints/affordances, and the selection of technological performance properties in alloy selection.

Faculty advisors

• Elizabeth DeMarrais (Associate Professor in Archaeology; Senior Postgraduate Tutor, Churchill College; Director of Studies, Churchill and Murray Edwards Colleges, University of Cambridge)
• Hank Gonzalez (Assistant Professor in Caribbean History; Department of History; Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge)

For enquiries contact the Networks Programme Manager

Programme 2023 - 2024

Gender, endangered knowledge, museums, and digital humanities and the Americas 2023-24

Easter term 2024

Diverse narratives, inclusive spaces: embracing multivocality, creativity and  sustainability in Museums

Lent term 2024

Endangered technological and traditional knowledge: documenting, protecting and  reconnecting communities

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Michaelmas term 2023

En(d)gendered extractions: confronting the ends and means of gender in the Americas

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Termly themes

Termly themes for 2023 – 2024

Michaelmas term 2023 – En(d)gendered extractions: confronting the ends and means of gender in the Americas

Is it time to end the gendering of the past? This series tackles gender in the Social Sciences and Humanities at a critical moment in STEM and SHAPE studies when movements to disrupt and decolonise conceptual frameworks butt against prevailing wisdoms and status quo sentimentalities. Anchored in archaeological questions but pulling in the wider academic discourse, we will ask: how can continued Gender Studies reveal the multicultural past and affect new research outcomes? Organised into four sessions and featuring experts in current-wave Americas research, we will examine the triumphs and foibles of gendered binarity approaches, reductive modelling, social and ethnic inconsistencies, and transformative methodologies that have revealed the dynamic relationships among people, communities and objects. We begin with a round-table discussion in conversation with the provocative Black Trowel community, who are seeking to end misguided interpretations of gendered bodies and rituals. This will be followed by three focused sessions to deepen our comparative framing and lead to interdisciplinary approaches. The larger purpose is to enable and inspire collaboration among our invited specialists and the academic audience, and in so doing increase research network development and engagement. Comparative examples will showcase the topic’s significance and dataset sharing throughout will help foster publication and collaboration, furthering the discussion. As a constructive platform for deconstructing a variety of gender ideologies, diversifying perspectives and identifying meaning, we also hope to welcome dissident voices to check assumptions and the status quo, engendering further decolonial approaches to shape for Americas research.

Lent term 2024 – Endangered technological and traditional knowledge: documenting, protecting and  reconnecting communities

The second proposed theme of our series tackles endangered traditional knowledge across the  Americas. We reflect on how fewer indigenous languages and crafts are now being spoken and fabricated in the context of dominant manufacturing industries and languages, which are perceived to be socially and economically more valuable than minority languages and traditional ways of living. In this theme, we also discuss and offer recent cases of studies where digital media tools provide a new pathway for transmitting and conserving oral cultures and protecting everyday objects, traditional technological systems and other material cultures that are threatened by extinction.

Easter term 2024 – Diverse narratives, inclusive spaces: embracing multivocality, creativity and  sustainability in Museums

The final theme in the series seeks to explore how different museum experiences as well as  museum practitioners have challenged dominant historical narratives, given voice to  marginalised communities, created meaningful and sustainable environmental connections and  transformed the museum landscape by introducing novel digital approaches. We want to  highlight through different case studies from museums across the Americas, how this  commitment to multivocality, inclusivity, responsible sustainability and digital engagement  extends beyond representation alone; it encompasses the very fabric of museum spaces,  programs, and practices.

Termly themes in 2022 – 2023

Michaelmas term 2022 – Present

The aim of our Michaelmas series is to think about the relationships among ecologies, belief systems and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (‘TEK’) from past, present and future human experiences. The purpose is to provide an opportunity for collaboration among invited speakers, artists and our research network audience. Key highlights will come from dialoguing about the valuable lessons we learn from studying human and non-human ecologies significant to our uncertain future. We will explore an imagined future from non-Western and traditional lifeways, reflecting on how the Indigenous communities of the Americas can help us rethink sustainability, resilience and alternative strategies to respond to political ecologies and environmental challenges. Rounding out our first series will be an art exhibition featuring reflections on the theme (please see our call-for-participants).

Lent term 2023 – Sensory overload: soundscapes, scents, and visions that criss-crossed the Americas

For Lent Term we gather experts emphasising archaeologies of the Americas’ sensorial worlds: sound, scent, taste, sight, and touch to explore themes of human-environmental impact and agency. An opening social will launch the series and focus of the term’s mission.

The first dialogue, ‘Echoes of the Past,’ will highlight Sound Studies with research relating to in situ and object-based analysis. How can our science and interpretation of soundscapes act as a sounding board for the past, including the latest hi-tech spatial analysis to uncover lost voices and instrumentality?

‘Recovering Scents and Lingering Tastes,’ our second dialogue, churns around scent and taste research helping us rethink the past with experts in archaeologies relating to scents and flavours, residual chemistry that indicates lingering traditions, and iconographies of taste.

The third dialogue, ‘Archaeologies in Sight’ will explore visual cues and optical tools employed by experts to reveal the macro and micro aspects of human-visual traces. How do researchers interpret the observable surfaces of objects and grander landscapes that, in turn, inform today’s studies of human-environmental relationships in the Americas?

‘Articulating the Senses’, the final session of the series, draws together three experts in the crafting of archaeologies of art, opening up a conversation about the senseworlds of expression and critical material culture study. Amplifying themes and topics from our earlier dialogues, our participants and the community will also seek to round out the thematic approaches encountered and situate the enduring insights garnered from the term’s entanglements in the Americas.

Easter term 2023 – Technological knowledge, frameworks and sustainability through time in the Americas

This series will focus on examining the role of technology in past, present and future societies throughout the continent. The aim is to bridge together lessons from archaeology and present-day Indigenous and other local stakeholder groups in building more sustainable approaches to the adoption, use and advancement of technologies in the globalised, capitalist economies of the present day. The first seminar in Easter term will examine the ingenuity of selected pre-Hispanic technologies across the varied environments of the continent. Some of the showcased examples will highlight how technological advancement, innovation and knowledge was embedded in a non-capitalist worldview, while others will evidence human resilience and adaptation at the face of environmental degradation or processes of socio-political re-organisation. The second seminar will examine the concerns and needs of different groups relating to present-day environmental and social issues that are brought upon by the quest for raw materials (such as metals), and the building of industry for modern-day technologies. At the same time, we will ask in what ways these communities can see technological advancement benefiting themselves. The third talk will then examine sustainable technological practices of present-day populations across the Americas, some of which have continued since pre-Columbian times, as an alternative framework for the future. The fourth seminar rounds the previous discourse with dialogues relating to the first three meetings of the term. Discussants will engage critically with actionable technologies and sustainability as a core theme, and draw upon indigenous knowledge and archaeological research to ask how technological development in the Americas can occur in a more balanced manner, and take into account the interests of all involved stakeholders.

Past programme

Entangling the Americas’ Pasts, Presents and Futures [2022-23]

Multidimensional Dialogues: Entangling the Americas’ Pasts, Presents and Futures CRASSH Research Network 2022-2023 seeking to introduce a set of topical and thematic approaches to Archaeology by targeting Science, Technology, and the Arts programming. Our trans-hemispheric framework will enable increased diversity of opinions, widen participation, and help discussants rethink studies of the Americas’ past, present and future.

Cambridge researchers have an invested interest in all geographic reaches of the Americas with many temporal foci that matter beyond a particular space-time. Our distinct interdisciplinary approach fosters original thinking about North and South America, two macro-geographic and conceptual places that are too often divided or distanced from one another, and we launch this research network at an unparalleled time in the study of the Americas with increasing calls for more accurate and responsive analyses of non-European epistemologies that come from the descendants of Indigenous and mixed-heritage communities.

We envision that Multidimensional Dialogues will help lead academics and museum professionals in a productive discourse that engages in disrupting colonial and neo-colonial legacies that linger in the present, re-writing narratives, rethinking the roots of imperialism, slavery and economic inequalities on a global scale.

To this regard, we promote critical thinking about three grand dimensions of Americas research: the Past, Present and Future, but critically add a fourth framing dimension called ‘Action’. Highlighting this last dimension will open up conversations on the realm of advocacy and impact. Our encourages an engagement with descendant communities, Heritage research, and public education. In doing so, we expect to provide spaces for the sharing and discussion of insights and ideas pertaining to legacies and lessons from the Americas’ pre-colonial, early-modern pasts and up to the present day, as well as environmental and cultural legacies across times and geographies.

The Multidimensional Dialogues Research Network will be an exciting expansion of Americas-based scholarly endeavours in Cambridge. We welcome anyone interested in these topics to join us this year in dialoguing about all aspects of the Americas’ past, presents and futures.

Download the term poster

Easter Term 2023

Lent Term 2023

Michaelmas Term 2022

Workshop

2023 Multicoloured and melodious dimensions of the Americas: music, colour and craft playshop

Summary

The Multicoloured and Melodious Dimensions of the Americas: Music, Colour and Craft Playshop July 2023 welcomes internationally recognised artist and ethnomusicologist Christopher García for a moving workshop featuring instruments and musical performances resonating with Mexico’s heritage. A life-long advocate for musicology about Mesoamerica and Indigenous traditions, García will introduce participants to several instruments to incite interest in the history of art, archaeology, and ethnolinguistics of the Americas. The workshop is part of the Multidimensional Dialogues research network programming with Cambridge Research Arts Social Studies and Humanities (CRASSH).

The event is free and open to the public and will take place at Churchill College in the Chapel.

Workshop reports for Part 1 and Part 2