The UMMAA Brown Bag Lecture Series and Círculo Micaela Bastidas Phuyuqawa (Círculo Andino) are pleased to present Dr. Alexander Menaker, senior archaeologist at Stantec Consulting Services, Inc., who will speak on Friday, February 10, 12-1 p.m., as part of the UMMAA Brown Bag Lecture Series. His talk is entitled At the Intersections of History: Collaborative Archaeology across the Americas. 

This talk presents two collaborative and multidisciplinary research projects, one set in the Southern Peruvian Andes and the other in Northern Texas, each informed by Black feminist and decolonizing practice. Both projects attend to marginalized histories through colonial and postcolonial contexts, incorporating descendant communities and local stakeholders into the fabric of the research design. In the Andes, the Proyecto Arqueológico del Valle de Andagua studies social life in the Valley of Volcanoes, a place known for one of the latest cases of mummy worshipping in the Andes with ancestor veneration as a locus of resistance to the Spanish colonial state in the mid-eighteenth century. Today, residents identify the contemporary Peruvian State as the sharpest era of subjugation, noting the contradictions of the postcolonial state. In Denton County, Texas, as part of a road improvement project, the Texas Department of Transportation is supporting the Bolivar Archaeological Project in its investigation of a nineteenth-century blacksmith shop and neighboring hotel. The blacksmith shop belonged to Tom Cook, an African American Freedman, whose descendants became active participants in the project. These projects recognize history is an active process, demonstrating how collaborative projects and the process of co-laboring can co-produce knowledge and realize inclusive histories.

This is an in-person lecture. It will be held on central campus in the School of Education Building, Room 2327, 610 E. University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI. 

Food will be provided during the event by the generous sponsor of the Circulo Andino.

The Museum’s Brown Bag Lecture Series is free and open to the public.