Programa:
18.04 – Online
Lisboa 15h – Paris 16h – Albuquerque NM 9.00 am – Brasília 11h
15h – INTERVENÇÃO DE ABERTURA DA UAL
15h10 – INTERVENÇÃO DE ABERTURA DO IPT
15h20 – APRESENTAÇÃO DO DOUTORAMENTO E DOCENTES (Coordenadores do curso)
15h30 – RAMO DE PATRIMÓNIO E PAISAGENS CULTURAIS: Controlling the Past, Controlling the Future. Some Orwellian Thoughts
on Sustainability – John Crowley
Chairman & CEO of the PHGD Group, formerly Chief of Section for Research, Policy and Foresight in the UNESCO Sector for Social and Human Sciences.
16h15 – RAMO DE ARQUEOLOGIA, CULTURA MATERIAL E COMPORTAMENTO HUMANO: Competing Perspectives and Agendas in Stone Age Archeological Research – Lawrence Straus
Leslie Spier Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico
Controlling the Past, Controlling the Future; Some Orwellian Thoughts on Sustainability
John Crowley
Chairman & CEO of the PHGD Group, formerly Chief of Section for Research, Policy and Foresight in the UNESCO Sector for Social and Human Sciences.
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” This is one of many famous quotes from George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. But what does it mean, and what does it imply today, at a time when the connection between past, present and future is at the heart of articulating heritage and sustainability? By reflecting on Orwell’s satirical style and purpose, the lecture will show in what way the Party’s slogan is fundamentally wrong. This in turn opens up relations to past and future, creating spaces of imagination, co-construction and emergence, notably with respect to technologies and their deployment
Competing Perspectives and Agendas in Stone Age Archeological Research
Lawrence Straus
Leslie Spier Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emeritus.
Research and researchers in Stone Age archeology are being pulled in many, often conflicting directions. We increasingly realize how much can be learned and how many specialized analyses should be applied in the study of archeological sites. We also realize that only large-scale excavations and years of relevant lab work can reasonably pretend to meaningfully sample the diverse kinds of activities once conducted at prehistoric sites. Such research requires much time, long-term, substantial funding, well-trained, securely employed experts in a growing diversity of highly technical archeological, bio– and geo-archeological specialties. However significant research funding and secure academic positions are increasingly difficult to obtain. Thus a “hit-and-run”approach to the limited testing and dating of sites for quick publication is very tempting for those who are seeking quick notoriety. While “big” questions about human evolution and adaptations drive both public and academic interest in Stone Age studies, doctoral and post-doctoral research is becoming ever-more narrowly focused and specialized. The “impact factor”-driven journal model dominated by for-profit, multinational publishing companies (at the expense of traditional local, regional and national outlets) has been adopted by university administrations and government ministries/agencies worldwide, promoting and rewarding “high productivity” that often translates into the publication of methodologically “cutting-edge”, highly specialized articles, especially those that may lend themselves to near-“sensationalist” publicity, while the traditional model of archeological site monographs and extended, broadly generalizing articles that take a long time to prepare and publish are seen as not conducive to professional advancement. The current reward system does not favor classic, large-scale archeological excavation, artifact classification and the thorough, thoughtful publication of the basic record. However, a growing list of hyper-specialists are coming to archeologists to sample their site sediments or finds for particular kinds of data, such as DNA, stable isotopes, residues, cementum. At times, the archeology—fruit of years of difficult proposal-writing, fund-raising, painstaking excavation, traditional labwork, and basic descriptive and comparative studies of artifacts—can seem eclipsed by the latest analytical “miracle”.
The current emphasis by many politicians on the economic value of archeological sites as cultural heritage assets for rural sustainability may come at the expense of genuine, long-term, sustained support for archeological research, whose ultimate goal should be our increase in knowledge about past human cultures & adaptations through the course of Quaternary environmental vicissitudes.
Museums, the traditional repository of archeological materials, are also torn between their roles as developers of new, highly detailed knowledge about the past through lab-based research, as conservators of finds, and as interpreters of the that past for the general public. In the first two roles, curators often stress preservation over even the most minimally “destructive” analyses, thereby impeding the increase in knowledge. On the other hand, in order to help justify their existence and budgets, there is sometimes a tendency to over-simplify the archeological record or to stress “showmanship” in popular exhibitions. Even more so, the popular media (and especially the internet) often promote simplistic or even totally erroneous views of the archeological record—sometimes with dangerous implications reminiscent of the misuse of archeology by totalitarian regimes.
The current generation of advanced students of Stone Age archeology must be aware of and prepare to deal with the conflicting perspectives and agendas of the field for which they represent the future, as they balance their desire for a successful career with the forces that seek to take advantage of their scholarship.
Oradores
John Crowley
John Crowley is Chairman & CEO of the PHGD Group, which brings together a cluster of companies addressing the various dimensions of consultancy on social transformations as well as a range of renewable energy solutions. Before founding the Group, he spent 18 years at UNESCO, leading the Section for Research, Policy and Foresight from 2014 to 2021. He was previously responsible for ethics of science and technology and for global environmental change. Before joining UNESCO, he worked as an economist in the oil industry (1988-95) and as a research fellow at the French National Political Science Foundation (1995-2002). From 2002 to 2015, he was editor of the UNESCO-published International Social Science Journal. He is the author of Sans épines, la rose. Tony Blair : un modèle pour l’Europe ? (Paris: La Découverte, 1999) and editor of Tony Blair, le nouveau travaillisme et la troisième voie (Paris: La Documentation française, 1999), Pacifications, réconciliations (special issue of the journal Cultures & Conflits, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), and Rethinking Human Security (Paris/Oxford: UNESCO / Wiley-Blackwell, 2008, with Moufida Goucha). He has published a further 100 academic articles and book chapters, mainly on political theory and comparative politics.
Leslie Spier
Leslie Spier Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emeritus.
Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico; Editor Emeritus of the Journal of Anthropological Research; Grupo EvoAdapta, Depto.de Ciencias Historicas, Universidad de Cantabria, Santander, Spain