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TITLE: Revealing Arab and Trans-Eurasian Cultural Heritage from Museums-Based Materials
ARF Brownbag | November 3 | 12:10-1 p.m. | Virtual event
Speaker: Sara Ann Knutson, UC Berkeley, Dept. of Anthropology
Sponsor: Archaeological Research Facility
Abstract: In this talk, I will examine case studies of Islamic coinage from the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate that are today housed in dispersed museum collections around the world, not least in the Arab World and Europe. Islamic coins are more than simply curiosities in museum collections: they contain a variety of complex cultural, social, and political meanings to people around the world that would otherwise remain intelligible to anthropologists and other researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences. I will discuss the results from my cultural heritage survey of people connected to the MENA region and its implications for archaeological research. This survey contains individual-reported information about how people today understand their relationship to museums, Islamic museum materials, and the construction of Arab cultural heritage. The values of these stakeholders inform my project and reveal the understated importance of museum-based assemblages for cultural heritage, not least those that span across national borders, languages, and far distances.
About the Speaker: Sara Ann Knutson is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology, UC Berkeley and a visiting researcher at the Freie-Universität Berlin, Germany. She conducts archaeological and museums research in Europe and the Middle East and has published on archaeological networks and assemblages, diaspora archaeology, the Silk Road, and Islam and medieval religious practice. She received the Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) in 2021.