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The University of Chicago Eurasian Archaeology Conference
Beyond the Steppe and the Sown: Integrating Local and Global Visions
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NOTE TO PRESENTERS: Slide projectors, as well as a computer (with CD) and a digital projector will be available at the conference.

May 3 and May 4, 2002

Hosted by Graduate Students of The University of Chicago Anthropology Department
Since the era of détente, and increasingly since the collapse of the USSR, the area of the former Soviet Union has risen to the forefront of international collaboration in archaeological research. Despite this, opportunities for researchers and scholars in the U.S. to meet and discuss their preliminary investigations and theoretical priorities remain extremely limited. The University of Chicago Eurasian Archaeology Conference is being organized in order to provide a forum for archaeologists working in Eurasia to share their recent findings and to deliberate on the intellectual agenda for regional archaeological research.
Two seemingly opposed perspectives currently dominate Western research on the prehistory of Eurasia that are intimately connected to issues of international cooperation in archaeological research. The first favors an internationalist approach which is often described as a safeguard against the appropriation of archaeology by local forms of nativism and nationalism. The second, while sympathetic to aspects of the internationalist agenda, is more concerned to develop local perspectives on social transformations as the means of bringing greater depth and rigor to the archaeological understanding of material culture practices and sociocultural processes. Accordingly, the theme of this conference is “Beyond the Steppe and the Sown: Integrating Local and Global Visions,” in the hopes of generating stimulating and spirited discussion of these issues and of integrating the strengths of complementary viewpoints into new approaches.
The conference is scheduled for Friday, May 3 and Saturday, May 4, 2002. It will open Friday morning with a welcome and opening remarks from the hosts in the Department of Anthropology and will continue with introductory addresses from Philip L. Kohl (Professor, Anthropology, Wellesley College) and Leonid T. Yablonsky, senior archaeologist from the Russian Academy of Sciences. Friday afternoon will feature papers from 12 presenters in two sessions, the first on “Local and Global Perspectives,” the second “Current Research Projects.” There will be a dinner Friday evening with a keynote address from David W. Anthony (Professor, Anthropology, Hartwick College). A third session will be held Saturday morning on “New Directions in Theory and Practice.” The conference will conclude Saturday afternoon with a panel discussion entitled “Beyond the Steppe and the Sown: Integrating Local and Global Visions in Eurasian Archaeology in the 21st Century,” moderated by Adam T. Smith and featuring the conference’s three invited American and Russian speakers, and an additional three discussants from Anthropology and other departments in the Social Sciences and Humanities Divisions at the University of Chicago (to be announced).

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE (as of 04/16/02)
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
EURASIAN ARCHAEOLOGY CONFERENCE
Beyond the Steppe and the Sown: Integrating Local and Global Visions

May 3 and 4, 2002

PRELIMINARY PROGRAM

DAY 1: FRIDAY, MAY 3

9:00 - 12:20 Session 1
9:00 Susan Gal, Chair, Department of Anthropology - Welcome
9:10 Adam T. Smith - Introductory Notes
9:15 Philip L. Kohl – Introductory Lecture: The early integration of the Eurasian Steppes with the
ancient Near East: Movements and transformations in the Caucasus and Central Asia

10:15 Break

10:40 - 12:20 Session 2 (20 minute papers)
LOCAL AND GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
Session moderator: Kathleen Morrison

1. Karen S. Rubinson
Over the mountains and through the grass: Visual information as “text” for the “textless”
2. Laura Tedesco
Contexts of complexity: Metallurgy in Early Bronze Age Transcaucasia
3. Aynur Özfirat
Relationship between eastern Anatolian High Plateau and Transcaucasia during the Middle Bronze Age: In light of new evidences
4. Yuri Rassamakin
Cultural transformation in the Black Sea steppe between Eneolithic and Bronze Age: Migrations or economic changes?
5. Alexander Bauer
Between the steppe and sown: Signs of community in the prehistoric Black Sea
6. Alexander Leskov
The new research concerning the so-called Maikop treasure
7. Gregory E. Areshian
Sequences of signs: Eurasian archaeology from a perspective of cultural semiotics

12:30 - 1:30 Lunch
1:30 - 3:30 Session 3 (20 minute papers)
CURRENT RESEARCH I
Session moderator: Michael Dietler

1. Francis Allard and Jean-Luc Houle
Recent archaeological research in the Khanuy River valley, central Mongolia
2. Adam T. Smith
Before Argishti: The roots of complex societies in Caucasia as seen from the Tsakahovit Plain, Armenia
3. Pedro Díaz-del-Rio, Jose Antonio López Sáez, Pilar López García, MaIsabel Martinez Navarrete, Angel L. Rodríguez Alcalde, Salvador Rovira Llorens, Juan M. Vicent García, and Ignacio de Zavala Morencos
Landscape, subsistence and metallurgical production during the Bronze Age in the mining and metallurgical complex of Kargaly (southern Urals, Orenburg, Russia)
4. Claudia Chang
The Saka/Scythian problem revisited: Lessons from southeastern Kazakhstan
5. Paola Demattè
Petroglyphs of the Chinese northwest: Between religion and territory

3:30 Break

4:00 - 6:00 Session 4 (20 minute papers)
NEW DIRECTIONS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
Session moderator: Tony Wilkinson

1. Mary Fran Heinsch
Xeroradiographic analysis of Kura-Araxes ceramics
2. Tugba Tanyeri-Erdemir
Innovation, change and continuity: Considering the agency of Rusa II in the production of 7th century Urartian art
3. Jane Rempel
Examining the landscape across divides: New approaches to the Greek colonization of the Black Sea
4. Laura Popova
Pastoral ecologies and economies during the Late Bronze Age in the Middle Volga Region, Russia
5. Alexander Popov
Maritime adaptation in the southern part of the Russian Far East during ancient times
6. Yuri E. Vostretsov
Changing of geographic environment and marine resources exploitation of Middle Holocene in the Peter the Great Bay
7. Rabadan Magomedov
Problems Concerning the Definition, Origin and Spatial-Temporal Correlation Between the Catacomb and Kuro-Araxes “Cultures”


Evening Reception
7:00 - 8:30 Dinner (Classics 10)
8:30 Plenary Lecture: David Anthony
Three Deadly Sins in Steppe Archaeology: Culture, Migration, and Aryans


DAY 2: SATURDAY, MAY 4

9:00 - 12:00 Session 5 (20 minute papers)
REVISITING TRADITIONAL VIEWS
Session moderator: Nicholas Kouchoukos

1. Irina Reznik Harris
Sensing the Shadow Empire: New light on the problem of the Khazar state
2. Belinda Monahan
Nomads and the state in the Tsakahovit Plain, Armenia
3. Jim Cassidy
Pan-regional interaction vs. ecologically induced local change: An examination of rapid transition from the Late Neolithic to that of Paleo-Metal among the maritime populations of the Primorye region of the Russian Far East
4. Carlos Cordova and Paul Lehman
Paleoecological research in southwestern Crimea
5. Lauren Zych
Perspectives in Chalcolithic Turkmenistan: The global and the local in the Kopet Dag
6. Irina Zhushchikovskaya
Russian Far East in cultural interactions process in Eurasia during the Neolithic and Bronze Age (in light of ceramic studies)
7. Tiffany Thompson
Resource movements on the Tsakahovit Plain: A new model of Late Bronze Age political organization in southern Transcaucasia (results from ceramic analysis, Project ArAGATS)
8. Evgenia I. Gelman
Trade ceramic from Bohao sites of Russian Primorye

12:00 Lunch

1:00 - 3:00 Session 6 (20 minute papers)
CURRENT RESEARCH II
Session moderator: Adam T. Smith

1. Sandra Olsen
Settlement patterns and social organization in the Copper Age of northern Kazakhstan
2. D. S. Adler, Nicholaz Tushabramishvili, and G. Bar-Oz
The latest Neandertals of the Southern Caucasus: New data from the recent re-excavation of Ortvale Klde, the Georgian Republic
3. Michael Frachetti (read by David Anthony)
The Djungar Mountains Archaeology Project
4. Katheryn M. Linduff
Why Were There Siberian Artifacts Inside the Ancient Dynastic Chinese Borders?
5. William Honeychurch and Chunag Amartuvshin
The megalithic landscape of the Mongolian steppe: Models for regional development during the Bronze and Early Iron Age
6. David Peterson, Pavel Kuznetsov, and Oleg Mochalov
Investigations of the technology and value of Bronze Age metalwork in Samara, Russia

3:00 - 3:30 Break

4:00 - 5:00 Closing Session
4:00 Closing Lecture: Leonid Yablonsky
General migration processes in the Aral Sea area in the Early Iron Age
5:00 Conference Concludes
QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? Email: ttt@uchicago.edu or atsmith@uchicago.edu

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