An evening lecture will be given by Assoc. Prof. Emma Baysal (DTCF, Ankara University)
“Small things, big stories: re-writing prehistory from new perspectives”
On Thursday 21st March 2024 at 17:30 in H-232 (Faculty of Humanities and Letters)
GE points will be given.
Abstract
Prehistory is generally characterised in terms of grand narratives of human development – technology, symbolism, domestication and sedentary life among others. However, the human experience is often lost in the vast scales of time and space that are being discussed in this macro picture of important changes. This lecture considers how archaeologists can approach the people of prehistory by using their material culture to paint a new picture of life in the past. Both personal and group identities can be understood through the artefacts that were closely associated with the human body, especially ornaments. Here, prehistoric identity is characterised using big data and artefact biographies to structure new understandings of what age, sex, community and social roles might have meant to people in the earliest settled communities of the Neolithic in Türkiye.
Bio
Emma L Baysal is an archaeologist who researches the prehistoric archaeology of Türkiye with a particular focus on past identities and the material culture of ornamentation. She received her PhD from the University of Liverpool in 2010 and has since become Associate Professor of Prehistory at Ankara University. She is a National Geographic Explorer, currently working on a project called ‘Small things, big stories’ which aims to document prehistoric identities at the dawn of settled life. She has active field research at many sites across Türkiye ranging from the Epipalaeolithic to the Bronze Age. She is also active in education, using her research to inform the creation of learning resources for the promotion of archaeology and in international development at university level for which she was awarded a Newton Advanced Fellowship.