Newsletter 20 – 26 November

Dear all,

Due to the fact that there was no PGF Seminar last week, we are pleased to announce that we have not one, not three, but two(!) seminars for you to enjoy this Wednesday! We hope to see you there, or at one of the other seminars being given this week!

Best wishes,

The PGF Committee

PGF SEMINARS:

Date/Time: Wednesday 22 November 2017, 13:00. Venue: Room 1.03, Armstrong Building.

BACKWATER ECONOMIES? A FOODWAY FRAMEWORK FOR EXAMINING WETLAND WORLDVIEWS IN THE PREHISTORIC PAST‘ BY PHD CANDIDATE FLOOR HUISMAN (DURHAM UNIVERSITY)

One of the major problems we face when trying to study past worldviews is the way in which our own, modern western worldview influences our research, from the questions we ask, to our final interpretations. Within the sub-discipline of wetland archaeology, for instance, we often ask why past communities chose to live in such marginal landscapes. We assume that wetlands were ‘special’ in some way, either as ‘ritual’ or ‘sacred’ places, or as resource rich environments. We assume a particular worldview amongst the wetland communities living there, one focussed on ‘the wild’, which sets them apart from contemporary, ‘domestic’ ‘dryland’ communities. Yet rather than assuming the presence of such opposing worldviews, we should assess to what extent the landscape or environment in which people lived truly affected their worldview and the formation of particular community identities. This paper will explore how we may be able to do this by considering prehistoric communities’ (inter)relation with the environment through a study of past foodways and environmental change. It will present the preliminary results of my PhD research which examines the use of domestic and wild plant and animals in relation to a changing environment in and around the later prehistoric East Anglian Fens (c. 4000 BC-40 AD). It asks if and when a wetland worldview and accompanying identities came into being as the East Anglian Fens changed from a dryland basin into Britain’s largest wetland. Thus, this paper explores a new approach to understanding past worldviews, by integrating archaeological with environmental data. It is hoped this will allow us to move beyond our modern worldviews and gain a better understanding of past worldviews and the way these shaped communities.

AND

A CONTROVERSIAL TRIBUNICIAN STATUTE: THE PLEBISCITUM CLAUDIANUM AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SECOND PUNIC WAR (218 BC)’ BY PHD CANDIDATE ROBERTO CIUCCIOVE (NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY)

The Plebiscitum Claudianum was controversial tribunician bill, which dealt with very significant economic matters especially related to sea-trade, involving also, at its very core, the political relations between the senatorial elite and the emerging equestrian order. The year 218 BC represented a crucial moment in the history of Rome and the whole Mediterranean world. We are at the very beginning of the Second Punic War, a conflict that will reshape the politicalmilitary order for many decades to come. In the same year a lex Claudia was proposed and passed. As usual, there will be refreshments in the form of tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided.

HISTORY SEMINAR: ‘THE SACRED AND THE SATIATED: HISTORY, ARCHAEOLOGY, AND THE LIMINAL SPACE OF BLACK RESISTANCE’ BY PEGGY BRUNACHE (UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE)

Date/Time: Wednesday 22 November 2017, 16:00. Venue: Room 1.05, Armstrong Building.

Traditional scholarship of the Black diaspora has predominantly focused on the examination of primary and secondary historical documents. Moreover, the historiography of slavery of the French Antilles, for example, has been weaker than other regions, especially when compared to British and American counterparts. More recent historical studies have shifted to critically engage larger questions as to how enslaved and free black communities actively participated in strategies to either escape or circumvent gendered and racialized systems of oppression. Since the late 1980s, historical archaeology has risen to the challenge to provide a unique contribution to further our understanding of past lifeways of the Black Atlantic via engendered methodological frameworks for studying artefact patterning and examining the nature of material culture. This presentation hopes to progress critical dialogue on Black agency and choices by engaging place, material culture, and space, through an alternative understanding of conceptual sites of conflict and resistance. I will consider two geographically disparate 19th century archaeological sites, one in the French Caribbean and the other in North America, associated with the slave economy to consider new transformative theories on Black resistance as liminal space for identity formation and societal transformation. This production of knowledge serves as an exploration for re-historicising the past through an intersectionality of structurally hierarchical categories of difference in the archaeological study of enslaved Africans and their descendants. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/hca/seminars/item/thesacredandthesatiated.html

CLASSICS AND ANCIENT HISTORY RESEARCH SEMINAR: ‘PHILOLOGICAL NETWORKS: EDITING THE CLASSICAL TEXT IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CAMBRIDGE’ BY DR KATHERINE EAST (NEWCASTLE)

Date/Time: Wednesday 22 November 2017, 17:00. Venue: Room 2.50, Armstrong Building. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/hca/seminars/item/philologicalnetworks.html

ARCHAEOLOGY SEMINAR: ‘TEXTILES AND TRADE IN THE ATLANTIC IN THE 18TH CENTURY’ BY PROFESSOR GIORGIO RIELLO (WARWICK)

Date/Time: Thursday 23 November 2017, 16:00. Venue: Room 2.16, Armstrong Building. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/hca/seminars/item/textilesandtradeintheatlanticinthe18thcentury.html

EVENT: ‘MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. AND THE POOR PEOPLE’S CAMPAIGN AT FIFTY’ BY DR KERRY TAYLOR (ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, THE CITADEL, CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, USA)

Date/Time: Tuesday 21 November 2017, 18:00. Venue: Room G.33, Barbara Strang Teaching Centre.

A specialist in twentieth-century US, labour, African American and oral history, Dr Kerry Taylor came to the Citadel after serving as the Associate Director of the Southern Oral History Program in Chapel Hill. He co-edited volume 4 and volume 5 of the Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. (University of California Press, 2000 and 2005) and American Labor and the Cold War (Rutgers University Press, 2004). In addition to directing The Citadel Oral History Program, Taylor has been extensively involved in grassroots organising in Charleston and across the South, particularly in the “Fight for 15” movement to organise fast food workers for a $15-an-hour minimum wage and union recognition. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/hca/events/item/martinlutherkingjrandthepoorpeoplescampaignatfifty.html

EXHIBITION: ‘PATHS ACROSS WATER: LOST STORIES OF TYNESIDE AND THE CARIBBEAN

Until 26 November. Venue: Old Low Light in North Shields

Come for the history, the poetry table, the oral stories, a video artwork reacting to shifts in the wind outside, a story-telling booth that will create both an oral archive and a digitally mixed soundscape exploring people’s responses to the sea and to the paths of migration connecting the North East with not only the Caribbean but also the rest of the world. And so much more.

MUSEUM EXHIBITION: ‘FRONTIER FASHION: GLASS BANGLES OF THE ROMAN NORTH

Until 3 January 2018. Venue: Great North Museum

A mini exhibition Frontier Fashion: Glass Bangles of the Roman North that focuses on Newcastle University archaeologist Dr Tatiana Ivleva’s research on Roman glass bangles in Britain. Tatiana is particularly interested in the popularity of glass bangles in Northern Britain, on both sides of Hadrian’s Wall. A small number of fascinating artefacts are on show in the display which is taking place in the new temporary exhibition space, formerly the Mithraeum. Further details can be found here.

Newsletter 30th October – 5th November

Hi everyone!

With the days getting shorter, the temperature dropping, and clouds gathering, we can truly say: ‘Winter is coming’. The PGF Committee, however, wants to stay in denial for a little while more, so our very own History PhD candidate Ayshah Johnston will take us to the warm, tropical island of Barbados during the second PGF Seminar of this semester! We hope to see you there (we have hot drinks to keep you warm!) or at one of the other seminars this week!

Best wishes,

The PGF Committee

PGF SEMINAR: ‘”PITY MY DISTRESS”: PAUPER WOMEN’S APPEALS FOR AID UNDER THE 1880 POOR RELIEF ACT IN BARBADOS’ BY AYSHAH JOHNSTON (HISTORY PHD CANDIDATE NEWCASTLE)

Date/Time: Wednesday 01 November 2017, 13:00. Venue: Room 1.03, Armstrong Building.

The historiography of Poor Relief has focused largely on the oppressive laws to which the poor were subjected for over a century after emancipation, and on the evolution of relief practices from meagre allowances and compulsory almshouse admittance to developed social assistance policies and modern medical care. This paper moves away from these discussions towards an illumination of the experiences of people living in poverty through a selection of letters written by paupers to the Inspector of Poor in St. Philip, Barbados, seeking relief for themselves or their families. In a parish where, according to contemporary observation, the Poor Law Guardians applied the harshest criteria in determining suitability for relief, these rare surviving letters are a poignant window onto the hardships, fears and hopes of the poor in late nineteenth century Barbados. By presenting these touching vignettes this paper seeks to reveal a level of care and advocacy within families and communities which challenges the official notion that abandonment and weak kinship ties were the root causes of destitution. While they could not influence the law, the writers did their utmost to plead their cases and persuade the Poor Law Guardians to assist them. Ayshah is in her third year of a PhD on Poor Relief in the Anglophone Caribbean, a collaborative doctoral award from Newcastle University and The National Archives. She is a museum educator and specialises in fusing academic research with public engagement. Her passion besides history is literature and she is a three-time winner of the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission’s annual short story competition, with two of the stories subsequently published in an anthology of winning entries. Refreshments in the form of tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided!

ARCHAEOLOGY RESEARCH SEMINAR: ‘THE NORTHERN PICTS PROJECT: LATE ROMAN AND POST-ROMAN SOCIETIES IN NORTHERN BRITAIN C.300-900 AD’ BY DR GORDON NOBLE (ABERDEEN).

Date/Time: Wednesday 01 November 2017, 16:00. Venue: Room 1.04, Armstrong Building.

The Picts are a ‘lost people of Europe’ and a past society of enduring public fascination. First mentioned in late Roman writings as a collection of troublesome social groupings north of the Roman frontier, the Picts went on to dominate northern and eastern Scotland until late first millennium AD. Northern Picts is a project that aims to uncover the archaeological traces of Pictish society in northern Scotland.

Read more about the project here. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/hca/seminars/item/thenorthernpictsproject.html

CLASSICS AND ANCIENT HISTORY RESEARCH SEMINAR: ‘THUCYDIDES’ PERICLEAN SPEECHES’ BY PROFESSOR ELIZABETH IRWIN (COLUMBIA).

Date/Time: Wednesday 01 November 2017, 17:00. Venue: Room 2.50, Armstrong Building.

Find more information here http://www.ncl.ac.uk/hca/seminars/item/thucydidespericleanspeeches.html

ARCHAEOLOGY TALK: ‘THE EXTENDED LIFE COURSE AND PREHISTORIC EUROPEAN MORTUARY PRACTISES’ BY CHRIS FOWLER

Date/Time: Thursday 2 November, 15:00. Venue: Room 2.49, Armstrong Building (one off room change to the usual strand schedule).

Chris Fowler will be presenting (part 2) of his talk on “The Extended Life Course and Prehistoric European Mortuary Practises”. Feedback from different periods and disciplines welcome.

Postgraduate Forum Seminars – Semester 1 Timetable

This year we have scheduled many exciting seminars and talks. It was absolute pleasure to get such a good turnout for our first proper seminar last week. Don’t worry if you’ve missed it, here is the timetable for what else is on this semester. Make sure to write the dates down in your calendars and be there (or be square!).

We are looking forward to seeing all your lovely faces!

Wednesday 18th October, 1-2pm, Armstrong 1.03

Tom Whitfield, Archaeology PhD candidate, Newcastle University

‘It’s Always Sunny in Colonial Williamsburg’ – The Virginian Gentry have an Identity Crisis [1764-1775]

Wednesday 1st November, 1-2pm, Armstrong 1.03

Ayshah Johnston, History PhD candidate, Newcastle University

‘”Pity My Distress”: Pauper women’s appeals for aid under the 1880 Poor Relief Act in Barbados’

Wednesday 8th November, 1-2pm, Armstrong 1.03

Thomas Stewart, History PhD candidate, Edinburgh University

‘The impact of the 1973 Dundee East by-election on the SNP in Dundee’.

Wednesday 22nd November, 1-2pm, Armstrong 1.03

Roberto Ciucciove, Classics & Ancient History, Newcastle University

‘A controversial tribunician statute: the plebiscitum Claudianum at the beginning of the Second Punic War (218 BC)’

&

Floor Huisman, Archaeology PhD candidate, Durham University

Backwater economies? A foodway framework for examining wetland worldviews in the prehistoric past

Wednesday 8th December, 1-2pm, Armstrong 1.03

Christopher Whittaker, Archaeology Masters, Newcastle University

Breedon Hill, Leicestershire: an archaeological investigation at a multi-period hilltop site.

&

Rowan Thompson, History PhD candidate, Northumbria University

‘England expects every man will do his duty’: Trafalgar Day, Naval Commemoration and National Identity, 1895-1939

Wednesday 13th December, 1-2, Armstrong 1.03

Madeleine Pelling, History of Art PhD candidate, University of York

Writing the Museum: Mary Hamilton’s A Catalogue of Curiosities at Bulstrode and Horace Walpole’s The Duchess of Portland’s Museum