CANCELED - CJS Thursday Noon Lecture Series | Archaeology and the Question of “Japanese Origins”

We regret that we have had to cancel this event. We apologize for any inconvenience.

In this talk, Professor Kaner will raise a number of issues that have arisen from a couple of recent collaborative and comparative projects (including Circles of Stone: Stonehenge and Prehistoric Japan and Nara to Norwich: art and belief at the ends of the Silk Roads CE 500–1000) that question both received orthodoxies about “Japanese origins” and their associated critiques.

Professor Simon Kaner, MA (Cantab), Ph.D., is Director of the Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of East Anglia and Executive Director of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, where he is also Head of the Centre for Archaeology and Heritage. A Trustee of the Society of Antiquaries of London, he is an archaeologist specializing in the prehistory of Japan. His recent publications include An Illustrated Companion to Japanese Archaeology (2nd ed. 2020), The Archaeology of Medieval Towns: Case Studies from Europe and Japan (ed. 2021) and Japan and the World: artistic and cultural flows (ed. 2021). He is currently co-editing the Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Korea and Japan. He is Co-Editor of the Japanese Journal of Archaeology. He has undertaken archaeological fieldwork in the UK and many parts of Europe, as well as in Japan. Prior to joining the Sainsbury Institute, he was in charge of development-led archaeology for the county of Cambridgeshire. He has been Council Member of the Society for East Asian Archaeology and the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society. He has curated a number of exhibitions, including at the British Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich. His most recent exhibition was Circles of Stone: Stonehenge and Prehistoric Japan at the Stonehenge Visitor Centre in 2022–23. His current research projects include Global Perspectives on British Archaeology and Nara to Norwich: art and belief at the ends of the Silk Roads. In 2011, he was awarded the 10th Miyasaki Eiichi Togariishi Jōmon Prize.

This lecture is made possible with the generous support of the U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at [email protected]. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.