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.
The Thirty-sixth McDonald Annual Lecture
"Modernity and the end of globalization"
will be given by Professor Alfredo González-Ruibal, Institute of Heritage Studies of the Spanish National Research Council (Incipit-CSIC)
at 5.00pm on Wednesday 20th November
The Yusuf Hamied Centre, Christ's College
To join online, register on Zoom
Photo by Alfredo González-Ruibal
Abstract:
Western expansionism from the late fifteenth century onwards is most often described as a linear story of increased global integration. This is true both for celebratory and critical perspectives. It is also true for historical archaeology, which is largely predicated on notions of mobility and connectivity. In this talk, I would argue instead that these narratives misrepresent the complexity of Western capitalist and imperial expansion, as well as its local effects in different parts of the world. In many places, the onset of modernity implied the collapse of alternative globalizations or suprarregional networks and the isolation of communities that had been hitherto strongly connected, all of which is quite obvious in the archaeological record. I suggest that to better understand modern globalization it is necessary to approach it as a non-linear process and from the point of view of those societies that were cut off from the rest of the world after the fifteenth century. For that, it is necessary to bridge the divide between prehistoric, medieval and historical archaeologies. I will exemplify my points with case studies from the Indian Ocean world.
Biography:
Alfredo González-Ruibal is an archaeologist with the Institute of Heritage Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council. His research focuses on African archaeology and the archaeology of the contemporary past. He is particularly interested in the dark side of modernity, including colonialism, war, dictatorship and predatory capitalism, but also in different forms of social resistance. Recent projects include the study of nomadic societies and long-distance trade in the Horn of Africa and the excavation of a contemporary slum in Madrid. He is the author, among other books, of An archaeology of the contemporary era (Routledge, 2nd edition 2024).
* Please be aware that a photographer and filming team from or commissioned by the University of Cambridge will be taking photographs and a film of the Annual Lecture. The photographs and films may be published, transmitted or broadcast in official University publications and in University publicity materials included in University and others’ websites and social media.
Recent McDonald Annual Lecture speakers:
- 2023: Professor David Wengrow (University College London) - What might an archaeology of freedom look like?
- 2022: Professor Amy Bogaard (University of Oxford) - Prehistoric farming futures? Recent insights from western Asia and Europe
- 2021: Professor Alison Wylie (University of British Columbia) - Bearing Witness: Collaborative Archaeology in a Settler Colonial Context
- 2020: Professor Robert Foley (University of Cambridge) - The fourth handshake: selection, diversity and ecology in human evolutionary studies
- 2019: Professor Shadreck Chirikure (University of Cape Town, University of Oxford) - The Political Economy of Precolonial African States - Metals, Trinkets, Land, etc, etc
- 2018: Professor Roberta Gilchrist (University of Reading) - The Medieval Ritual Landscape: Archaeology and Folk Religion
- 2017: Jean-Jacques Hublin, (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig) - Modern Human Origins: In Search of a Garden of Eden
- 2016: Eske Willerslev, (University of Cambridge and University of Copenhagen) - Human migration and mega faunal extinctions
- 2015: Norman Yoffee (University of Michigan, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University) - Counternarratives of Early States in Mesopotamia (and Elsewhere)
- 2014: Graeme Barker, (University of Cambridge) - The archaeology of climate/people interactions: science or story telling?
- 2013: Christine Hastorf (University of Berkeley) - Houses, food and distributed people in the later Prehistory of the Central Andes (AD1000-1500)
