Peter Ucko Research Articles

Figurines in context

For 50 years, Peter Ucko's Anthropomorphic figurines (1968) has served as an entry-point for anyone approaching the study of figurines: this new Oxford handbook now provides a broader alternative, which conveniently summarises much current evidence and thinking. Following the standard format of this series, Tim Insoll has brought together a wide array of studies covering many different periods and places as well as diverse approaches to analysis.

Petroglyphs of Dampier—foreword. In Archaeology and Petroglyphs of Dampier (Western Australia), an Archaeological Investigation of Skew Valley and Gum Tree Valley, ed. Graeme K. Ward and Ken Mulvaney

[Excerpt] When Michel Lorblanchet began his substantive research at the Pilbara’s (then) Dampier Island, there were few professional rock art scholars in Australia. They were supported by a few enthusiastic private researchers, most of whom attended the memorable conference convened in 1974 by the imaginative, newly appointed Principal of the (then) Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Peter Ucko. This comprehensive and extended meeting reviewed the state of knowledge in various Aboriginal studies disciplines and suggested goals for future research within Aboriginal Australia. Several seminal publications resulted, most relevantly, the art volume edited by Ucko. These publications set Aboriginal studies within a global perspective and illuminated the potential for research. …

Peter Ucko Memorial Lecture, Decolonizing Archaeological Practice: Gazing into the Past to Transform the Future

Peter Ucko Memorial Lecture, Decolonizing Archaeological Practice: Gazing into the Past to Transform the Future

The International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology (ICCHA): After a Decade of Success

The International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology (ICCHA) is a centre formed jointly by the UCL Institute of Archaeology and the Peking University School of Archaeology and Museology, and launched in Beijing on 15th December 2003. It was very much an initiative promoted by the then Institute director Peter Ucko, who continued to run the ICCHA after his retirement from UCL, until 2007. Since its beginnings the ICCHA has fostered links between the UK’s largest archaeology department and the oldest and most prestigious university department of archaeology in China. It aims to enhance communication both ways, about Chinese archaeology and heritage issues for a UK audience, and about world archaeology and archaeological method and theory in the West for the Chinese archaeological community. The ICCHA fosters important joint research, organises significant international academic conferences, promotes interest in Chinese archaeology and heritage in London through its regular seminar series ‘China Night’ at the Institute of Archaeology, and facilitates scholarly exchanges, at the level of research students, postdoctoral researchers, and academic staff. For further information see www.ucl.ac.uk/iccha.

The Institute of Archeology in the late 1990s

Peter Ucko, who became Director in August 1996, describes some new developments at the Institute.

The Heritage Policy Group: Policy Development and Community Engagement at the UCL Institute of Archaeology

The Institute of Archaeology has a long history of involvement in policy and community engagement, dating back to the work of the Institute’s founding director, Mortimer Wheeler, and continuing since that time through the work of all subsequent directors and numerous staff and students. One needs only to consider the key role of W.F. Grimes in the rescue of much important archaeology in the City of London during the 1950s and 1960s for example, or of Peter Ucko’s political work surrounding the World Archaeological Congress in the 1980s and 1990s, to appreciate the consistent commitment to a sense of wider social responsibility that its directors have brought to the Institute. This includes engagement with a diverse crosssection of communities both far and wide from the physical location of the Institute and, in a broader sense, an ongoing role by the Institute in influencing and informing political policy-making in partnership with other London based organisations, such as the Society of Antiquaries of London and the British Academy. In mid-2011, as part of the planning for the Institute’s 75th anniversary celebrations, reported on elsewhere in this volume (pp. xx–x), this commitment to engage in and influence policy and community work was formalised through the creation of an Institute sub-committee, the Heritage Policy

Becoming a Visual Anthropologist

Histories are full of pitfalls, especially if written by those who have had a part in them.- David MacDougall1I have decided to use biography as the framework for this essay. Ethnographic film has been central to my engagement with anthropology since first coming from University College London to The Australian National University as a graduate student in 1973. My career as an anthropologist has been unusual in that I have always been in environments where ethnographic film was considered an integral part of at least some of my teachers' and colleagues' conception of anthropology.I came to University College London as an undergraduate to study social anthropology. My aim was to learn as much as I could about the ways of life of people of the 'developing' world as preparation for a career helping alleviate hunger and disadvantage. While I like to think I have never lost the motivation to work with people for the betterment of the world, I developed a specialist interest in the anthropology of art and material culture as a result of the courses I studied and the charismatic teaching of a young lecturer, Peter Ucko. The first ethnographic films that I watched were part of the courses that he taught. The films were made under the auspices of the Institut fur den Wissenschaftlichen at Gottingen in Germany. The emphasis of the institute was on scientific purity and the comparative method.2 The films selected focused on technical processes in the manufacture and use of material-culture objects. Science in this context often seemed too objectifying, looking at the technical processes of distant cultures as if they were disconnected from the overall life of the society. Nonetheless, while sitting in the darkened lecture theatre with the films in glistening black and white, I found the magic of film was not entirely absent.I was also able to experience films of a very different genre: John Marshall's The Hunters and Robert Gardner's Dead Birds.3 These films were gripping in their narrative structure and in the raw emotions they conveyed. Belonging to a genre of films influenced by Flaherty's pioneering feature Nanook of the North (1922), they sat on the borders between documentary and narrative cinema, opening up ethnography to a wider audience.4Peter Ucko had close links to the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI). In British anthropology the RAI has always had a dialogical relationship with the academy. The RAI has carried the history of anthropology forward by keeping alive interests that the university academics have left behind. Arguably the RAI maintained the interdisciplinarity of anthropology at times when social anthropologists, archaeologists and biological anthropologists felt they had little in common. Yet the RAI was also sensitive to emerging issues arising from the grassroots of popular interest in areas ranging from child abuse, race relations and human rights to the teaching of anthropology in schools. The RAI maintained close links to museums and libraries and built significant archives of its own. It is not surprising, given its role in British anthropology, that in the 1970s it created two speciahst research panels, one in art and the other in ethnographic film. The leading protagonists included Peter Ucko, Anthony Forge and James Woodburn. The two panels held regular meetings in London and, to an undergraduate student, they provided privileged access to two of the strands of the emerging discipline of visual anthropology. Sometimes they sat jointly as when Adriaan Gerbrands came to show his film Matjemosh.5I saw two films in the early 1970s that had a great impact on me: David and Judith MacDougall's To Live with Herds, on the pastoral Jie of Kenya,6 and Ian Dunlop's Towards Baruya Manhood.7 The MacDougalls' film was of almost transcendent beauty, attuned to the aesthetics of the Jie. More than that it allowed the viewer to see the world from the perspective of the Jie as it emerged in dialogue with the filmmaker - how they coped with the difficulties of life facing drought. …

The Predynastic Dancing Egyptian Figurine

Abstract In 1962, Peter Ucko wrote his landmark work, The Interpretation of Prehistoric Anthropomorphic Figurines, challenging and permanently changing the prevailing view of prehistoric figurines as representations of a universal great mother goddess. His work focused on the Predynastic figurines of Egypt, and concluded that there was nothing divine about them. They were probably dolls, ancestor figures, talismanic pregnancy aids, tools for sex instruction and puberty rites, twin substitutes in graves and concubine grave figurines. Since then, this group of figurines has received minimal attention. Using Ucko’s four-stage methodology, this study more closely examines these figurines in the context of Ancient Egyptian culture and religion, with specific attention to the contemporary Sudanese religious beliefs and practices, which may share roots with Predynastic Egyptian culture. This study concludes that some Dynastic religious beliefs and iconography relating to female deities can be recognised in many of these figurines, and can be traced back to prehistoric Nilotic rituals.

The Wisdom of Ancient Egypt: Changing Visions through the Ages. Edited by Peter Ucko and Timothy Champion. Encounters with Ancient Egypt. London: UCL Press, 2003. Pp. xv + 225 + 27 figs. $47.50.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewThe Wisdom of Ancient Egypt: Changing Visions through the Ages. Edited by Peter Ucko and Timothy Champion. Encounters with Ancient Egypt. London: UCL Press, 2003. Pp. xv + 225 + 27 figs. $47.50.Susan J. AllenSusan J. AllenThe Metropolitan Museum of Art New York Search for more articles by this author The Metropolitan Museum of Art New YorkPDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Near Eastern Studies Volume 67, Number 2April 2008 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/589260 Views: 5Total views on this site * Permission to reprint a book review in this section may be obtained only from the author.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Appreciation for Peter Ucko, Emeritus Professor of Comparative Archaeology and former Director of the Institute of Archaeology, UCL (1996–2006)

Professor Peter Ucko, Director of the University College Institute of Archaeology (1996–2006), was one of the greatest archaeologists of his generation. His innovative thinking made him the initiator of many developments in archaeology. Peter began his career of editing and publishing with two books based on conferences held at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals (with G. W. Dimbleby, 1969) and Man, Settlement and Urbanism (with G. W. Dimbleby and Ruth Tringham, 1972), seminal Afr Archaeol Rev (2007) 24:95–97 DOI 10.1007/s10437-007-9017-6

Peter Ucko (1938–2007), Director of the Institute of Archaeology 1996–2005

Peter Ucko (1938–2007), Director of the Institute of Archaeology 1996–2005

The International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology (ICCHA): Interviews With Peter Ucko (UCL) and Qin Ling (University of Beijing)

The International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology (ICCHA): Interviews With Peter Ucko (UCL) and Qin Ling (University of Beijing)

The International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology (ICCHA): Interviews With Peter Ucko (UCL) and Qin Ling (University of Beijing)

The International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology (ICCHA): Interviews With Peter Ucko (UCL) and Qin Ling (University of Beijing)

Peter Ucko series ed. Encounters with Ancient Egypt. 8 vols. London: UCL Press, 2003. Distributed by Cavendish Publishing, c/o International Specialized Book Services, 5824 NE Hassalo St., Portland, Ore. 97213-3444. $47.50 each. Paper.

Peter Ucko series ed. Encounters with Ancient Egypt. 8 vols. London: UCL Press, 2003. Distributed by Cavendish Publishing, c/o International Specialized Book Services, 5824 NE Hassalo St., Portland, Ore. 97213-3444. $47.50 each. Paper. - Volume 48 Issue 1

Richard Borshay Lee: Selected Bibliography

Richard Borshay LeeFellow, The Royal Society of CanadaUniversity Professor, University of Toronto.Winner, 1980 Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association, for the best book of the year in English on Africa, for The!Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society.Books and MonographsJorgenson, Joseph B. and Richard Borshay Lee (eds.)1974 The New Native Resistance: Indigenous People's Struggles and the Responsibility of Scholars, New York: MSS Modular Publications, Module No. 6.Leacock, Eleanor and Richard Borshay Lee (eds.)1982 Politics and History in Band Societies, Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press and La Maison des Sciences de l'Homme.Lee, Richard Borshay1965 Subsistence Ecology of!Kung Bushmen, PhD Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. (Available from University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, MI, #66-3636: 1-209).1979 The!Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.2003 The Dobe Ju/'hoansi, 4th ed., Toronto: Thomson Learning/Wadsworth.Lee, Richard Borshay and Richard Daly (eds.)1999 The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Lee, Richard Borshay and Irven DeVore (eds.)1968 Man the Hunter, Chicago: Aldine.1976 Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers: Studies of the!Kung San and Their Neighbours, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Lee, Richard Borshay, Robert Hitchcock and Megan Biesele (guest eds.)2002 The Kalahari San: Self-Determination in the Desert, Cultural Survival Quarterly, Special Issue, 26(1).ArticlesLee, Richard Borshay1968 What Hunters Do for a Living, or, How to Make Out on Scarce Resources, Man the Hunter, Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore (eds.), Chicago, IL: Aldine.1969a!Kung Bushman Subsistence: An Input-Output Analysis, Ecological Essays: Proceedings of the Conferences on Cultural Ecology, D. Mamas (ed.), Ottawa: National Museum of Canada Bulletin 230: 73-94.1969b Eating Christmas in the Kalahari, Natural History, December 14-22, 1969: 60-63 (reprinted over 40 times).1972a Work Effort, Group Structure, and Land Use in Hunter-Gatherers, Man, Settlement, and Urbanism, Peter Ucko, Ruth Tringham and G.W. Dimbleby (eds.), London: Duckworth.1972b Population Growth and the Beginnings of Sedentary Life among the!Kung Bushmen, Population Growth: Anthropological Implications, Brian Spooner (ed.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.1972c The Intensification of Social Life among the!Kung Bushmen, Population Growth: Anthropological Implications, Brian Spooner (ed.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.1972d!Kung Spatial Organisation: An Ecological and Historical Perspective, Human Ecology, 1(2): 125-147.1973 Mongongo: The Ethnography of a Major Wild Food Resource, Ecology of Food and Nutrition, 2: 307-321.1978 Hunter-Gatherers in Process: The Kalahari Research Project, 1963-76, Long Term Field Research in Social Anthropology, G. Foster et al. (eds.), New York, NY: Academic Press.1980 Is There a Foraging Mode of Production? Anthropologie et societe. Reprinted in Canadian Journal of Anthropology, 2(1): 13-19. 1981.1982 Politics, Sexual and Non-Sexual, in an Egalitarian Society, Politics and History in Band Societies, Eleanor Leacock and Richard Lee (eds.), New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.1984 Ethnicity, Militarism and Human Rights in South Africa and Israel, Dialectical Anthropology, 10: 121-128.1985 Work, Sexuality and Aging among!Kung Women, In Her Prime: A New View of Middle-Aged Women, Judith Brown and Virginia Kerns (eds.), New York, NY: Bergin and Garvey. (Reprinted in 1990 by University of Illinois Press.)1986a!Kung Kinship, the Name Relationship and the Process of Discovery, Critical Reflections on!Kung Ethnography: Essays in Honour of Lorna Marshall, Megan Biesele (ed. …

The Kintampo Archaeological Research Project (KARP): academic collaboration and field research in Ghana

The Kintampo Archaeological Research Project is the first venture conducted under the auspices of the academic collaboration established between the Department of Archaeology, University of Ghana (UG) and the Institute of Archaeology, University College London (UCL). KARP is a field-based project designed around two separate areas of research, encon~passingth e Late Stone Age (LSA) Punpun (hunter–gatherers) and Kintampo Cultures (agropastoralists) and development and change within iron metallurgical technology in the region. These studies aim to elucidate the social, economic and technological dynamics of prehistoric Ghana and to generate material that will be made available to researchers from both Universities. The direct responsibility for supervision of the project on the British side is Dr Kevin MacDonald (UCL), Dr Yaw Bredwa-Mensah (UG) supervises and co-ordinates the research collaboration, and overall responsibility for the project lies with Professor Peter Ucko (UCL). To date the project has undertaken three field seasons: an initial survey of the study area, followed by the excavation of several suitable sites during the second season and this year. An additional season will be conducted during summer 2002, completing the first phase of KARP. However, continuing joint collaborations are envisaged.

Intersubjectivity and understanding rock art

Intersubjectivity and understanding rock art

An interview with Prof. Peter Ucko, the next Director of the Institute

An interview with Prof. Peter Ucko, the next Director of the Institute

An interview with Prof. Peter Ucko, the next Director of the Institute

An interview with Prof. Peter Ucko, the next Director of the Institute

The Meanings of Things: Material Culture and Symbolic Expression

review. The present volume is more in the way of a reviewer's nightmare, and the responsibility lies with Hodder for deliberately eschewing the conventional role of editor, his aim being to alert the reader to the power of text and, perhaps more important, to the power of editors in controlling the presentation of text. Hodder's device for achieving this end is simple enough; he took the logical structure of the text-Chapters 1 through 25, with introduction preceding sections organized around coherent themes-and scrambled it so that the chapters appear in random order (e.g., 18, 25, 13, 6, etc.; Hodder's introduction ends up embedded in the text, beginning on page 64). Series editor Peter Ucko points out in his preface to the volume that Hodder runs the risk of being accused of editorial neglect [p. xv], but rightly concludes that this is not the case. Hodder's introduction, Post-modernism, Post-structuralism and Post-processual Archaeology, is a thoughtful and provocative review of recent developments in the field and a responsible discussion of the contents of the volume