TAG2019-UCL

Powerful artefacts, a category that often includes grave goods and monumental structures, take prime positions in archaeological research and literature. From popular films to museum displays, whether the Ark of the Covenant or the Sutton Hoo helmet, our views of artefacts influence both the primacy and direction of research, and interpretations for the public. Power in artefacts can be interpreted as having been economic, ritual or social in various ways. Through their component materials, their form, their places of origin and of deposition, and sometimes their curation in the case of demonstrably old objects, archaeologists build hierarchies of power relationships. Certain objects evoke a greater sense of importance than others. This session aims to be wide-ranging and to tease out these manifestations of power, and to challenge our interpretive frameworks. We invite papers from all periods that focus on artefacts and interpretations of power in the past. Power may relate to the individual artefact, to the person with whom it is associated, or to society as a whole; or more broadly as in social-religious and/or supernatural power. Papers may also focus on the extent of power in an artefact, and to what extent it is contagious or transferable.

Organisers: Anne Teather; British Women Archaeologists (BWA) • Tess Machling; Independent Researcher • Peter Wells; University of Minnesota

9:30 | Liv Nilsson Stutz, Linnaeus University, Sweden | The Power of the Illicit. The Memory and Identity Captured and Maintained in the Illicit Objects in the Ravensbrück Prison Camp

9:50 | David Bell, Queen’s University; Caroline McGrath, Queen's University Belfast | Irish Bronze Age Cinerary Urns: A Reevaluation

10:10 | Rachel Cartwright, University of Minnesota | Brooching Power in the Viking Age

10:30 | Matthew G. Knight, National Museums Scotland | The Destruction of Power and the Power of Destruction: Decommissioning Powerful Artefacts in Bronze Age Britain

10:50 | Tânia Casimiro, IHC-NOVA University of Lisbon; António Marques, Centro de Arqueologia de Lisboa | The Lisbon Devil: A Powerful Artefact in Portuguese Middle Ages

11:10 | - | BREAK

11:40 | Misha Enayat, University of Southampton | Hierarchies of Value? A Reassessment of Exotic and Indigenous Feasting Artefacts from Iron Age Britain

12:00 | Ellen Finn, Trinity College Dublin | Making Manuports: Unmanufactured Artefacts in Archaeological Interpretation

12:20 | Pallavee Gokhale, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune | Attribute OR Artefact OR Attribute of Intangible Artefacts – A Case of Indus (Harappan) Script

12:40 | Natalia Moragas Segura, University of Barcelona; Manuel Jesús González, Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo (Mexico) | This is not Prehispanic!!!! The Persistence of Archaeological Objects and Power Discourses in the Mass-Media

13:00 | - | END