BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Memento EPFL//
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Neighbours Vol. 5: Origin Stories. An Archaeological Perspective o
 n Human Freedoms\, David Wengrow / HITAM\, TPOD\, THEMA
DTSTART:20250402T183000
DTEND:20250402T203000
DTSTAMP:20260916T065901Z
UID:b9990c4049cce359ae9b26ce4a4cb1434f0038ae48940ff9434e4f76
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:David Wengrow is Professor of Comparative Archaeology at the I
 nstitute of Archaeology.\n\nDavid trained in archaeology and anthropology 
 at the University of Oxford\, where he obtained his doctorate (DPhil) and 
 was Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church. Since joining UCL\, David has
  also held visiting professorships at New York University\, the University
  of Auckland\, and the universities of Freiburg and Cologne.\n\nHe has con
 ducted archaeological fieldwork in Africa and the Middle East\, and is the
  author of books including The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transfor
 mations in North-East Africa\, c. 10\,000 - 2650 BC (Cambridge UP)\; What 
 Makes Civilization? The Ancient Near East and the Future of the West (Oxfo
 rd UP)\; The Origins of the Monsters: Image & Cognition in the First Age o
 f Mechanical Reproduction (Princeton UP)\, as well as academic articles on
  topics such as the origins of writing\, ancient art\, Neolithic societies
 \, and the emergence of the first cities and states.\n\nDavid has contribu
 ted op-eds on climate change and inequality to The Guardian\, and The New 
 York Times\, and was ranked #10 in Art Review’s (2021) ‘Most influenti
 al people in the contemporary art world.’ He is co-author of the New Yor
 k Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (Peng
 uin)\, a finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing\n\nOrigin Sto
 ries: An Archaeological Perspective on Human Freedoms\nDavid Wengrow\, Pro
 fessor of Comparative Archaeology\, University College London\n \nThe his
 tory of human societies has often been conceptualised as a story about the
  “Origins of Inequality\,” and the loss of basic human freedoms as a r
 esult of innovations such as agriculture\, settled life\, and the rise of 
 cities. Such stories are therefore closely bound up with other stories con
 cerning the “Origins of Architecture.” In The Dawn of Everything\, D
 avid Graeber and I proposed an alternative framing of world history\, base
 d on three essential forms of human freedom: to move away\, to disobey\, a
 nd to transform the social order. Far from being a special achievement of 
 Western civilization\, these freedoms were available to a great many socie
 ties across the span of human history\, including some urban and other lar
 ge-scale social formations. Today\, such freedoms have been largely erased
  from the lives of most people\, such that it is difficult to even imagine
  a history of humanity based on those principles. My lecture will consider
  the challenge of recovering and visualising these forms of freedom in the
  archaeological record\, as an antidote to teleological understandings of 
 social evolution and the “Origins of Architecture.”\n\n\n 
LOCATION:CO-1
STATUS:CONFIRMED
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR