Mediterranean Archaeology Proseminar: Katie Kearns, University of Chicago

2023-24 Mediterranean Archaeology Proseminars
Presented by The Archaeology Centre

Resilient, More or Less: Approaching Livable Practices in Premodern Landscapes
Professor Katie Kearns, University of Chicago

About the Mediterranean Archaeology Collaborative Specialization (MACS)

MACS is a doctoral program at the University of Toronto designed for students engaging in graduate research in Mediterranean archaeology and ancient history. The Mediterranean offers unrivalled opportunities for exploring the complexities of economic, social, political and religious change over centuries and millennia, across a vast region that is at once a coherent unit and a region with incredible diversity. Students will be trained in the various methods required to undertake innovative research in the Mediterranean’s varied prehistoric and historic contexts.

MACS is an interdisciplinary venture spanning five departments: Art, Classics, Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, Anthropology, and The Study of Religion. In addition, significant support is provided by the Archaeology Centre.

Speaker Bio

Professor Kearns’ research examines the intersections between social and environmental change in Mediterranean landscapes during the Iron Age period. In her first book project, The Rural Landscapes of Archaic Cyprus: An Archaeology of Environmental and Social Change (Cambridge, 2022) she analyzes the emergence of Iron Age communities on the island of Cyprus through their land-use practices, rural economies, and experiences with changing climates. She is particularly interested in the political and social dimensions of landscape change and how modern conversations on human-environment relationships can engage with historical evidence. In addition to her work in landscape archaeology, she also studies environmental history, urbanism and ruralism, and concepts of space, place, and geography in antiquity. These themes recur throughout her course offerings, such as “The Greek Countryside,” which explores textual and material evidence for social and economic practices in the rural domains of the classical polis. In recent years she has co-directed fieldwork on Cyprus through the Kalavasos and Maroni Built Environments Project, using geophysics, field survey, excavation and geospatial analysis to identify Iron Age rural settlements, for which she has been awarded ACLS, Loeb Classical Library Foundation and university grants.