Veranstaltungen

The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research hosts a keynote Annual Lecture delivered by eminent, international scholars on a wide range of archaeological research which crosses continents, periods and approaches in its exploration of the diversity of the human past.

We’re living in a world in which historic landscapes are being destroyed and remade at an unprecedented scale. Landscape aesthetics are also implicated in modernity’s destructions, emerging alongside and underwritten by the European colonial project, enclosure, and the plantation. 

What might happen to the archaeological study of place if we take up postcolonial critiques of landscape's provincialism, and posthumanist challenges to its centering of human subjectivity? What questions and perspectives might this open up for contemporary research?

Zoë Crossland explores this question in the context of the historical reshaping of rice landscapes in highland Madagascar, taking her cue from the remembered speeches of the 18th century king of highland Madagascar who insisted that “rice is my friend and my equal”. This offers a different starting point from which to explore the politics and histories of place, with resonances that go well beyond highland Madagascar.

UK time 17:00, CH time 18:00