Place: Marietta-Blau-Saal, Hauptgebäude der Universität Wien, Hochparterre, Stiege 10, Universitätsring 1, 1010 Wien or online via Zoom
The reciprocal dynamics between humans and their environments in socio-natural sites, or “industryscapes,” call out for interdisciplinary study. Natural sciences can provide an understanding of the physical landscape, while the social sciences can illuminate the human landscape of relations to the land and its materials, especially in decisions about value, risk, ownership, and use. Historians of science/knowledge can chart the varied systems of knowledge that structured geo-anthropic interactions and relations as they were rooted over the longue durée in diverse social and cultural settings. This talk will introduce perspectives, methodologies, and insights such socio-natural sites can yield.
Pamela H. Smith, Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University, is founding Director of the Center for Science and Society and its cluster project the Making and Knowing Project (www.makingandknowing.org). Her books, including The Business of Alchemy (1994), The Body of the Artisan (2004), and From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World (2022), investigate craft and practice as a way of knowing. She is now collaborating on a new project on longue durée histories of socio-natural sites of pre-industrial industry.
Hilary Becker is an Etruscan and Roman archaeologist and Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Binghamton University (State University of New York). Her work on pigments began with the rediscovery of the only surviving pigment shop in ancient Rome. She regularly uses archaeometry, experimental archaeology, and ancient texts to explore the use and economy of materials in the ancient Mediterranean world. Her current book project is entitled, “Commerce in color: the mechanics of the Roman pigment trade.”
Please sign up for the event. [click here to register for the event]
You can follow the lecture via Zoom. [click here for the Zoom link]
