public lectures

Archaeologists have a nuanced understanding of the past that desperately needs to be communicated with the broader public. Good public archaeology is good storytelling.

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INDIGENOUS CARTOGRAPHY & the Lewis & Clark Expedition

This lecture, given at the 55th Annual Meeting of the Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, addresses how alternative sources of evidence, such as place names, indigenous maps, and the archaeological record allow us to shift our historical focus from the individual personalities that made up the Lewis & Clark Expedition to the world the Expedition members were seeing and experiencing, the landscapes they were moving through in 1805-06, and who or what inhabited and shaped those landscapes.

 

From engineered landscapes to agriculture

This film addresses the complex interrelationships between the first peoples in North America and the plants, animals, and landscapes they managed from an archaeological perspective. How did those relationships intensify over time and result in agricultural systems? Given the interdependence between humans and nature, where does one draw the line between wild and domesticated spaces?

This lecture was organized for Feral: A Nearly Carbon-Neutral Conference
co-hosted by Massey University Political Ecology Research Centre (PERC) and Wageningen University Centre for Space, Place and Society (CSPS), in November 2018.

Landscape & memory

This lecture is part of the “Winter Storytelling” series at Travelers’ Rest State Park in Lolo, Montana, where  a diverse group of scholars and storytellers spoke to the theme of “Reimagining America”, drawn from the exhibit Reimagining America: The Maps of Lewis and Clark  organized by the Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Foundation.

 

in this talk, Kevin discusses indigenous cartography, the Lewis & Clark Trail as a “cultural landscape”, and how memory is encoded in landscapes.