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Paper Information:
This paper may be of particular interest to:  Practicing and Applied Anthropologists     Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges     Students
Type: Paper
Paper Title: OBJECTS OF INQUIRY – INQUIRY INTO OBJECTS: LOCAL LOOTERS AND THE DEAD SEA EARLY BRONZE AGE MORTUARY LANDSCAPE
Author: MORAG KERSEL (DePaul University), MEREDITH CHESSON (University of Notrd Dame)   
Date/Time: Fri., 4:45 PM
Co-Author(s): MORAG KERSEL (DePaul University), MEREDITH CHESSON (University of Notrd Dame) 
Abstract: The “Follow the Pots” project is a richly textured case study of how humans valued and utilized material culture in the EBA, and modern looters’ and archaeologists’ re-use of these same objects today. As part of this project we seek to investigate how modern stakeholders view and impart meanings and values to the archaeological landscapes of the southeastern Dead Sea Plain and its material culture. By combining a groundtruthing survey of the landscape and ethnographies with the local stakeholders, we hope to provide a holistic and practical understanding of how local community members, including looters and their families, local and foreign archaeologists, and regional and national level heritage officers, may value the archaeological heritage in decidedly different ways. By offering all stakeholders a voice in this dialogue, we hope to cultivate greater possibilities for meaningful strategies to protect heritage resources while simultaneously developing locally-nuanced and practical programs for disentangling the links between poverty and looting, and fulfilling the promise of an engaged anthropology. In melding archaeological and ethnographic research methodologies to examine how materiality connects peoples’ uses of material culture in the past and present, Follow the Pots aims ultimately to demonstrate the efficacy in cross-disciplinary approaches in an engaged anthropology that contributes to anthropological understandings of the emergence of prehistoric urbanism and modern and prehistoric uses of material culture. This paper will investigate the rationale behind the study and the methodology for undertaking the proposed study.

Program Number: 3-0825
Session Title: NOT THE USUAL SUSPECTS: NEW DIRECTIONS IN COMMUNITY ARCHAEOLOGY
Session Sponsor: Archaeology Division
Session Date/Time: Fri., 1:45 PM-5:30 PM
Organizer(s): MORAG KERSEL (DePaul University), MEREDITH CHESSON (University of Notre Dame) 
Chair(s): MORAG KERSEL (DePaul University)  
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