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Faculty Bio | |
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Zoe Crossland
Assistant Professor
Columbia University |
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Biography
I work in the field of historical archaeology and my primary interest is
in situations where divergent sets of beliefs and practices converge
upon one place, and the conflict that often ensues as a result. In
particular, I am interested in the ways in which negotiations and
conflict between people are mediated through material conditions. To
fully understand the extent to which archaeology may analyze such
conditions I work with two radically different areas of research.
*Madagascar*
My most recent research traces the introduction of Protestant
Christianity into Madagascar by British missionaries at the start of the
19th century. Here I focus on the potential dislocation that was
experienced when one way of living, learned through a lifetime’s
experience within specific material and social conditions, was
challenged in a confrontation with a radically different understanding
of how to act effectively and morally, the ways in which people
attempted to resolve and make sense of this dislocation, and the new and
unanticipated formations that were created as a result.
*Forensic Archaeology and Charles Sanders Peirce’s Semeiotic*
My second area of research focuses on the excavations of mass graves in
Argentina and the political controversy surrounding them. I am drawing
on the semeiotic of C. S. Peirce to explore the relationship between
object and interpretation, considering how we constitute ourselves and
others through embodied material engagement with the world we inhabit.
Through exploring the language and orientation of forensic archaeology
towards the excavation of human remains, this research works towards a
fuller appreciation of the situated relationships between ourselves as
archaeologists and the material conditions we inhabit, in order to
better understand how we construct meaning from excavated material remains.
*Selected publications*
2000 Buried lives: forensic archaeology and Argentina’s disappeared.
/Archaeological Dialogues/,/ /7(2): 146-159.
2001 Time and the ancestors: landscape survey in the Andrantsay region
of Madagascar. A/ntiquity/ 75(290): 825-836.
2002 Violent spaces: conflict over the reappearance of Argentina’s
disappeared. In /The Archaeology of 20th Century Conflict/, J.
Schofield, C. Beck, and W. G. Johnson (eds), pp. 115-131. One World
Archaeology, London: Routledge.
2003 Towards an archaeology of ‘empty’ space: the /efitra/ of the Middle
West of Madagascar. /Michigan// Discussions in Anthropology, /14: 18-36.
2006 Landscape and mission in Madagascar and Wales in the early 19th
century: ‘Sowing the seeds of knowledge’. /Landscapes /7(1): 93-121.
In prep. /The Outward Clash: Interpreting Forensic Anthropology/. Topics
in Contemporary Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
In prep. /Frontier Landscapes: Survey and Excavation in the Andrantsay
region of Madagascar/. Ann Arbor: Museum of Anthropology.
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