Archaeology Lecture with Zach Silvia

Zach Siliva (Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University) will join us to speak on "Post-Hellenistic Palimpsests: archaeological remote sensing in Uzbekistan in the wake of the Anthropocene". Refreshments will be available from 12-12:30. Recent debates over the human impact on the global Earth System, collectively known as the Anthropocene, have transitioned from identifying anthropogenic, geological chronostratigraphic markers to more generalized archaeological temporalities and epistemologies. One useful consideration has been Bruno Latour’s identification of the technological and social limits of communities of scale to act in the face of existential environmental crisis. This talk considers archaeological aspects of Anthropocene discourse through the lens of recent fieldwork in western Uzbekistan. From 2023-24, a systematic and integrated field-based remote sensing and geophysical survey was undertaken in the southern Kyzylkum Desert west of modern Bukhara – a rare archaeological case in which single-period sites ranging from the late Bronze Age through post-Hellenistic (“Kangju”) periods conclude with the rapid abandonment of rural life. Here some preliminary results from the survey are put into conversation with the long-term processes of human affect and inaffect in water politics, rural land management, and colonialism that result in the palimpsest relict Kyzlkum landscape that presents itself to us today.