Shannon L. Dawdy In Conversation with Jason Nesbitt
Shannon Lee Dawdy will discuss political ecology as a framework to think about material flows within the Gulf of Mexico over the longue durée, particularly as it relates to trade, fishing, and oil extraction. She argues that human history can be more accurately mapped through connective waters than through porous national borders. The Gulf's key role in the Earth system and its rich ecology have overridden imperial designs time and time again. The Gulf is not only a force of nature but a force of history.
Shannon L. Dawdy’s fieldwork research combines archival, ethnographic, and archaeological methods, primarily in the U.S. and Gulf of Mexico. She is especially interested in how landscapes and material objects mediate human relationships and how shared cultural experiences affect our perceptions of time (past, present, future). Dawdy’s research has focused on death, disaster, sensuality, and histories of colonialism and capitalism. Also, pirates.
Dawdy wrote the book (American Afterlives) and co-directed a short documentary film (I Like Dirt.) that explore rapidly changing death practices in the U.S. She served as special liaison between the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Louisiana State Historic Preservation Office to ensure that recovery efforts in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina remained cognizant of the city’s singular archaeological heritage. Dawdy has received support from the MacArthur Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the ACLS, among others.
Jason Nesbitt specializes in the archaeology of the central Andes, with a focus on the Initial Period (1700-800 BC) and Early Horizon (ca. 800-300 BC) of Peru. Prior to coming to Tulane, he conducted archaeological research on early monumental architecture on the central and north coast of Peru. Currently Jason is working on the "Chavin Hinterlands Project" (2014-present). Co-directed with Bebel Ibarra (PhD student, Tulane University), this project examines the nature of hinterland communities in the Huari region of the north-central highlands of Peru during the time of urban growth at the site of Chavín de Huántar. Nesbitt also participates in the Campanayuq Rumi Project (2013-present) in the Department of Ayacucho, in collaboration with Yuichi Matsumoto (Yamagata University), Yuri Cavero (Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos), and Edison Mendoza (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Perú). This project is aimed at understanding exchange and interaction and the role that it played in both local and regional socioeconomic and religious transformations during the late second and early first millennia BC. Recent research has employed pXRF in order to study obsidian interregional obsidian exchange systems between Campanayuq Rumi and contemporary centers during the Early Horizon.
