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DTSTAMP:20260615T165947Z
DESCRIPTION:David Fontijn will present at the Archeological Encounters Semi
 nar on\nTuesday\, February 5\, at 6 pm. His talk is entitled “Economies of
  Destruction? Creating Value by Destroying\nValuables.”The accumulation of
 \nwealth is generally regarded as a universal way of achieving power and\n
 prestige\, but how can a society function when its members systematically 
 destroy wealth? This happened in the\nBronze Age and Iron Age of Europe\, 
 when communities deliberately discarded prestigious\nmetalwork on a massiv
 e scale. The resulting deposits include not only scarce\nand useful materi
 als\, but also objects of outstanding quality. In this talk\, Fontijn will
  present intriguing examples from the European Bronze Age and Early\nIron 
 Age (c. 2000–500 BC)\, contexts in which beautiful objects were\nintention
 ally destroyed\, or placed in bogs and rivers from where they could\nnever
  be retrieved again. He will show that this “destruction” was not as\nirra
 tional as it seems. Archaeology can demonstrate that the “destructive” beh
 avior\nwas in fact highly structured\, and related to the creation and dis
 solution of\nsocial identities. Fontijn will argue that the subject confro
 nts us with\ncrucial questions that also matter today: why do we sometimes
  give up those\nthings that are dear to us? How “rational” is economy anyw
 ay?David Fontijn is professor in the Archaeology of Early Europe at the\nF
 aculty of Archaeology\, Leiden University\, the Netherlands. His research 
 deals\nwith the early agrarian societies of Europe from prehistory up unti
 l the early\nhistorical period\, with special attention to the Bronze Age 
 and (early) Iron\nAge. He is a leading authority in the archaeology of rit
 ual landscapes\, and\nso-called ritual economies. His research applies the
 ories from cognitive and\ndata sciences with social anthropology and mater
 ial culture to shed new light\non the deep history of Europe. He carries o
 ut archaeological fieldwork in\ndifferent parts of Europe\, with a focus o
 n prehistoric barrow landscapes and\nancient sacrificial sites. He is an a
 ffiliated member of the German Archaeological\nInstitute and he has been v
 ice-dean and director of Research of the Faculty of\nArchaeology at Leiden
  University (2013–16). Fontijn is the author of the award-winning monograp
 h Sacrificial Landscapes (2003)\, and co-author/editor of several\nother b
 ooks including Transformation through\nDestruction (2013)\, on the constru
 ction of personhood in Early Iron Age\nelite graves. His project 'Ancestra
 l Mounds' received\nthe SIKB Prize for best archaeological research team i
 n 2009 and a book\nresulting from it was received by Her Majesty Queen Bea
 trix of the Netherlands.
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190205T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190205T193000
SUMMARY:Bard Graduate Center: Economies of Destruction?
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