IEMA events
Buffalo TAG 2012 International Conference website has been launched!
IEMA would like to announce the 2012 IEMA Research Scholarship!
Please click here for more information.
IEMA Lecture
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
"Not really Neolithisation? A Discussion of the Transformation of Third Millennium Western Scandinavia"
Christopher Prescott (IEMA Visiting Professor, Department of Archaeology, Oslo University)
Location: MFAC 354
Time: 12-1 pm
IEMA Brown Bag Talk
Wednesday March 28, 2012
"The Excavation of a Prehistoric Burial Mound near Hassloch, Germany."
Kali Grabel (Classics)
"Hazor: The Head of all those Kingdoms"
Daniel Griswold (Anthropology)
Location: MFAC 354
Time: 12-1 pm
IEMA Brown Bag Talk
Wednesday April 18, 2012
TBA (Classics)
Eugen Ruzi (Anthropology)
Location: MFAC 354
Time: 12-1 pm
IEMA Lecture
Monday, April 23, 2012
"Livestock for sale: market-driven developments in animal husbandry in the civitas Batavorum"
Maaike Groot (VU University Amsterdam)
Location: Goetz Library MFAC 320
Time: 4-5 pm
The civitas Batavorum offers great opportunities to study frontier markets. The settlement density is high, and there is a huge amount of archaeological data. Furthermore, the area has good preservation for zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical remains, which are of vital importance to understand the basis of the local economy: agriculture.
Whereas the local landscape used to be considered marginal, in recent years opinions have changed, and it is now considered to be fertile enough to sustain the hundreds of rural sites, as well as to produce food for the army and towns in the area. Some if not most of the staple food consumed by soldiers and urban people was produced by local farmers. The presence of imported goods in indigenous sites is a further indication that local people were active participants in economic networks.
In my research project, I aim to provide an overview of the current state of knowledge regarding animal husbandry in the Dutch River Area in general; more specifically, I am trying to assess the influence of the Roman markets on the agrarian economy. More and more, our data seem to suggest that it was not just the Roman authorities that determined what farmers produced and supplied; the local farmers made their own choices with regard to food production. Although farmers were limited to some extent by the restraints of their expertise and the landscape, differences between settlements indicate that it was not just technology and landscape that determined production; the farmers’ identity and life experience (e.g. did they have contacts in the army and towns?) also played a role.
What is lacking is a theoretical framework and economic model that allows for the complexity and variety that is visible in the data. The army and Roman authorities have traditionally been given the dominant and active role in economic relationships with local farmers. It is time to put more emphasis on the role of local people, and the choices they made in interacting with the military and urban consumers. This paper will use animal husbandry in the civitas Batavorum as a case study to explore these issues.
Times of Change:
The Turn from the 7th to the 6th Millennium BC in the Near East and Southeast Europe
International Conference of the Çatalhöyük West Mound Project
November 24th - 26th 2011
Free University Berlin
TOPOI-Building
Hittorfstraße 18
14195 Berlin-Dahlem
IEMA at the Global Fair during President Satish K. Tripathi's Inauguration September 22, 2011
Front Row (L to R): Aaron Chapnick, James Osborne; Back Row: Patrick Willett, Peter Biehl, Darren Poltorak
Douglas Levere | © 2011 University at Buffalo
A full schedule for IEMA talks and lectures will be posted soon!