The UMMAA Brown Bag Lecture Series is pleased to present a lecture by Drosos Kardulias, PhD candidate in anthropological archaeology at the University of Michigan. His lecture, "Gilded Towns in a Dead Land: Water, Warfare, and the Natural World on Kalymnos," will be held on Friday, February 28, 12:00-1:00pm p.m. in the School of Education Building, Room 1322.
In the dry eastern Aegean, control of water often corresponds with control of entire economies and populations. Across millennia, imperial powers have leveraged such control to their advantage, often dramatically transforming landscapes and social relations as a result. On Kalymnos, fieldwork continues to find indications of these processes in action. This deforested, dry island has been subject to many empires, and, it appears, many episodes of ecological devastation. Kardulias suggests that Early Medieval Kalymnos can be understood as a "post-apocalyptic" landscape, in which new resources, new landscapes, and new social organizations were shaped from a dry and dying earth.
The Museum's Brown Bag Lecture Series is free and open to the public.
