[OR_Archaeology] Willamette CRA to host a special event Fri, Aug 6th: Darwinian Archaeology Lecture

[Susan White]

Special Event: Darwinian Archaeology Lecture

Where: WillametteCRA offices
               623 SE Mill Street
               Portland, OR 97214

When: Friday, August 6, 7:00 pm. 

Dr. Eric Bangs presents a Darwinian Archaeology Lecture

Frontiers are contact zones between cultures.  The upper Rhine River Valley was just such a contact zone when the Romans arrived in the first century BC.  Over the next 500 years, the Romans engaged in a complex cultural interaction with the non-Roman inhabitants that eventually resulted in a "creolized" frontier society.  A model derived from Roman authors suggests that this society was replaced by the arrival of the Alamanni in the late third century AD who, in turn, were replaced by the Merovingians in the sixth century. 

The replacement model of cultural interaction in the upper Rhine is tested using a methodology based in Darwinian and meme theory.  Seriations were created of stylistic elements from ceramic vessel assemblages from 14 archaeological sites in southwest Germany.  The seriations suggest that non-Roman inhabitants in the first century AD did adopt aspects of Roman culture but only in the realm of emotionally charged ritual.  For their day-to-day existence, the artifacts they used appear to have changed little and they maintained an identity adopted centuries before.  In evolutionary terms, these practices had a high fitness relative to the cost of learning
new ceramic manufacturing techniques.

Refreshments will be provided.

If you have any questions or need further information, please contact:

Roy Watters, MA
Cultural Anthropologist
Willamette Cultural Resources Associates, Ltd.
623 SE Mill Street
Portland, Oregon 97214
503-281-4576
roy at willamettecra.com 

Be sure to visit Willamette CRA web site at www.willamettecra.com