The 6th Annual ToRS-Saxo PhD seminar
We are pleased to invite PhD fellows to participate in the Annual ToRS-Saxo PhD seminar, which will take place on Thursday December 20th at the University of Copenhagen (KUA-Amager). The idea behind the seminar is to offer PhD students and other Faculty members dealing with the subjects of ancient history, archaeology, cultural heritage and museology insight into the ongoing projects taking place at both institutes. We also encourage participation by PhD students from other institutions.
Programme
Morning Session
Chair: Sofie Schiødt
09:00 - 09:20 Coffee and Introductions
09:20 - 09:50 Micro-wear Analysis on Natufian and PPN As-semblages
– State of the Art, and How to Move Forward
Anne Jörgensen-Lindahl, PhD fellow at CSEAS/
Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
09:50 - 10:20 Inuulluni – To Live in an Animated Reality
Asta Mønsted, PhD fellow, Saxo Institute
10:20 - 10:40 Coffee
10:40 - 11:10 Land Reclaims as Technological Landscapes
Nina Toudal Jessen, PhD fellow, Saxo Institute
11:10 - 11:40 Ground Stone and Changing Foodways during
the Natufian-Early Neolithic in Eastern Jordan
Patrick Nørskov Pedersen, PhD fellow at CSEAS/
Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
11:40 - 13:00 Lunch
Afternoon Session
Chair: Nina Toudal Jessen
13:00 - 13:30 Analysing Floor Assemblages – A Puzzle
Nadia Maria Kristensen, PhD fellow, The Danish
National Museum and the Saxo Institute
13:30 - 14:00 Approaching Experience and Emotions as Essential
Sofie Heiberg Plovdrup, PhD fellow, Saxo Institute
14:00 - 14:20 Coffee and Cake
14:20 - 14:50 Understanding Ancient Egyptian Medicine
Sofie Schiødt, PhD fellow, Department of Cross-Cultural
and Regional Studies
14:50 - 15:20 Final Discussion and Evaluation
Coffee, tea and cake will be served during the seminar and lunch will be provided for the speakers.
If you have any questions or enquiries, please do not hesitate to contact Sofie Schiødt or Nina Toudal Jessen.
Abstracts
Micro-wear analysis on Natufian and PPN assemblages – State of the art, and how to move forward
Anne Jörgensen-Lindahl, PhD fellow at CSEAS/Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
The Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic transition in southwest Asia has been the focus of many decennia worth of research. Lithic artefacts have been one of the main sources of evidence, and micro-wear analysis has proved a valuable method in determining their function. However, to date, the focus of these micro-wear analysis has been on a very narrow range of tools. This has produced a skewed representation of the subsistence strategies, as well as failing to recognize the full range of activities performed on these sites.
My research will centre on a micro-wear analysis (supplemented by other methods of analysis) on a broad range of tool-types from the chipped stone assemblages of Shubayqa 1 (Early and Late Natufian, 14,500-11,500 cal BP) and 6 (Late Natufian to EPPNB, 12,300-10,500 cal BP). The aim of this interdisciplinary approach is to understand the role of these tools during the Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic transition in a more holistic manner, focusing on food related activities.
Inuulluni – to Live in an Animated Reality
Asta Mønsted, PhD fellow, Saxo Institute
The purpose of the project is to investigate the relationship between cosmology and prehistoric and historical architecture in Greenland in order to uncover the deep roots of modern people’s housing tradition and spatial understanding of the Arctic landscape. The study will contribute to an understanding of how the society of the past understood and structured their world and how this can be studied through the combination of material and intangible culture. As the study’s time horizon extends from prehistoric to recent times, the project will help to illustrate whether and in what way modern people’s housing tradition and spatial understanding in Greenland still reflect an animated world. Our understanding of how the relationship between man, material culture, and cosmology are embedded in architecture, is our possibility to inspire and affect future housing and infrastructure in Greenland on a foundation based on a cultural and scientific study.
Land reclaims as technological landscapes
Nina Toudal Jessen, PhD fellow, Saxo Institute
This talk concerns the inlet Saltbæk Vig, which was reclaimed between 1866 and 1930. The shallow waters were drained in order to create new agricultural land. However, both large parts of the draining as well as most attempts at growing crops failed. During the second half of the twentieth century, the land owners in Saltbæk directed their attention away from crops and to bird and wildlife protection. As a result, the area is under the EU habitats directive, as well as protected under the Ramsar-convention. The wetland, waterfowl, and rare species are all consequences of the former land reclamation.
I will argue that Saltbæk Vig should be understood as a technological landscape, in the sense that it has only been made viable through active technological inputs. The transformation of the inlet over time therefore reveals much about technological ideals, as well as the changing ideas of nature and land use during the twentieth century. The Saltbæk Vig area serves as a starting point for my analysis of nature conservation and its relation to knowledge making, management plans and the development of international conservation directives during this period.
Ground Stone and Changing Foodways during the Natufian-Early Neolithic in Eastern Jordan
Patrick Nørskov Pedersen, PhD fellow at CSEAS/Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
I am a new PhD-fellow on the research project “Changing Foodways” at ToRS. Our project examines how humans changed their ways of procuring, processing, cooking and eating food when we went from being mobile hunter-gatherers to sedentary agriculturalists. My part of this project aims to elucidate the use of ground stone tools, such as querns and mortars in processing plant and animal matter for consumption. These types of tools were generally used for pulverizing matter into, for instance flour, and predate our shift to an agricultural lifestyle. Tools from two sites are being examined, one site belonging to the Natufian culture and one from the Early Neolithic, both located in the Qa’ Shubayqa of Eastern Jordan. The Natufians are thought to be some of the last hunter-gatherers in Southwest Asia and this data will provide us with a unique insight into how food processing strategies changed at the dawn of the Neolithic. This presentation will introduce some of the research completed so far and also show how I will address this question of “Change” during my PhD-project. By conducting residue and use-wear analysis of these tools, I aim to determine what the used surfaces of these tools were in contact with. These methods will be combined with studies of movements and tool morphology, along with experiments and will help us determine how the tools were involved in food production during the transition from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists.
Analysing Floor Assemblages – A Puzzle
Nadia Maria Kristensen, PhD fellow, The Danish National Museum and the Saxo Institute
This talk will address my research on the abandonment processes of Sikyon by analysing ceramic finds in contexts. The major methods applied in this is the size effect: how larger objects are left behind in unplanned abandonment. And the refit sequence: clarifies the distribution of sherds from one single pot or roof tile. My PhD project in general focuses on the relocation and abandonment of Sikyon in 303 BCE and the depositional processes and formation processes – how the objects are deposited in the excavated trenches.
Approaching Experience and Emotions as Essential
Sofie Heiberg Plovdrup, PhD fellow, Saxo Institute
My project deals with Etruscan and Roman portraiture. I am looking at the strategies that were employed by these two cultures with regard to portraiture, i.e. where it was placed, how it functioned and, not least, how it was perceived. As archaeologists we deal in facts and evidence, we like to be able to precisely pinpoint a date for certain events and the discipline from the beginning placed weight on categorizing objects in extensive typologies. As a whole we tend to shy away from some very important facets of the embodied lives of the past, such as experience and emotions. My presentation today will tentatively try to explore the ways we might approach experience and emotions when dealing with portraits, focusing on the specific topic of funeral portraiture.
Understanding Ancient Egyptian Medicine
Sofie Schiødt, PhD fellow, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
Ancient Egyptian medical texts provide a unique opportunity for the study of ancient conceptions of the human body, its illnesses, and treatments of these. Unfortunately, the corpus of Egyptian medical texts is extremely small, which has hindered study into these aspects of ancient culture. Recently, however, an unpublished papyrus was acquired by the Papyrus Carlsberg Collection, which contains the second-longest treatise on Egyptian medicine and medical practice preserved to us today. The aim of my PhD project is to provide a text edition of this document which serves as an important addition to the miniscule corpus of Egyptian medical texts.
In this talk I will focus on some of the difficulties presented by the text, which at times is extremely obscure, even tending towards the genre of the mythological handbook rather than a treatise on medical practice. The difficulties in understanding the manuscript range from the lexicographical character of the text to the overall contextual framework. As such, the text is widely open to interpretation, which demonstrates the problems faced by all philologists.
