A message from Caroline recommending a book. Thanks Caroline

Hi Mammad, 

You can post this book recommendation to the BLOG site too, if
you like. I just thought I'd suggest a book for the 'The Site is a Stage' group. I
beleve Louise did mention it at the first meeting.

It is 'Theatre/Archaeology' by Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks and is
available as a free download from Michael Shanks' website here:
http://documents.stanford.edu/michaelshanks/64

He has lots of his books available there.

OK, back to working on my abstract now.

~Caroline.

Abstract for the Symposium by Associate Professor Louise A. Hitchcock

Archaeology and Sedimented Identities:
Trauma, Migration, and Performativity in the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean
While we tend to think practically of distance as something that can be measured in time and space, distance can also be conceptual in terms of the time and obstacles actually encountered in transcending it, and it can be cultural through the confrontation with ‘Otherness.’ I plan to explore conceptual and cultural distance in the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1700-1180 BCE), in terms of how identity was acted out through performativity, as well as how identity was affected by violence, migration, and diaspora. Although this period is frequently treated as a seamless progression, it was punctuated by moments of violence and destruction, both natural and cultural. Little work has been done on the human toll taken by these events, which are frequently treated as stylistic categories of art that signal the passage of time.  Thus, such events have not been adequately explored as moments or sites of human trauma and identity formation.  As a preliminary exploration of these issues, I will consider destructions caused by the volcanic eruption of Thera (ca. 1614 BCE), and the violent destructions of the Minoan (ca. 1470/1450 BCE. Crete) and the Mycenaean civilisations (ca. 1180 BCE, Greece). In this pilot study, I will engage with modern ethnohistory and ethnography as an analog for raising questions about how ancient events affected individuals who can only speak to us through the material and spatial residues of their culture.

Louise Hitchcock is Associate Professor of Aegean Bronze Age Archaeology and Chair of the Classics and Archaeology Program at the University of Melbourne. Louise also has a minor in social theory and she has written many books and articles exploring the relationship between archaeology and theory. Her current research deals with Aegean, Cypriot, and Levantine connections, particularly Philistine identity and its Aegean connections. The Australian Research Council funds her excavations at the Philistine site of Tell es-Safi/Gath.

> I'm just taking notes for my Abstract for 'The Site is a Stage'
> conference, which I hope to have finished and sent to you either Monday or
> Tuesday this week, and I'm reading through the blog from the beginning.
> Seeing as there are excursions planned to places around Melbourne, I
> thought I would recomend the Chinese "See Yup Temple" in South Melbourne.
> It is situated right near where I worked for 14 years at the Australian
> Tapestry Workshop and many people do not know about it. It is very
> interesting though. Here is some info.
>
> See Yup Temple, South Melbourne (Victoria) (1856 - )
>
> http://www.chia.chinesemuseum.com.au/biogs/CH00027b.htm
>
> From 1856
>
> Details
>
> The Chinese temple in South Melbourne (then called Emerald Hill) was built
> in 1856 by the See Yup Society. In 1866 it was rebuilt and enlarged. The
> temple cost over four thousand pounds to construct and was funded by
> compulsory donations from Society members. The names of more than a
> thousand donors are inscribed on two stone tablets at the Temple. As the
> Society is legally a non-entity the six titles covering the temple land
> are held in the names of six individual trustees. The remainder of the
> donated money was invested in two properties in Little Bourke Street.
>
> Still standing today, it was built as a meeting place for members but also
> includes two altars for worship and three memorial halls. The memorial
> halls hold over 13,000 tablets in commemoration of members who died and
> are buried somewhere in Victoria between 1850 to the present day. The
> Society held at least eight major religious services with offerings each
> year and the temple was open for all to visit or worship at all times.
> Although a temple it was not granted any rate exemptions for being a place
> of worship despite attempts in 1860 and 1912 until the early 1960s.
>
> The financial organisation of the See Yup temples in Ballarat, Bendigo,
> Castlemaine, Beechworth and a number of other country towns were modelled
> on the South Melbourne temple. Each local See Yup society bought land
> whose title was held under the name of one or more trustees and built the
> temple.
>
>
> ~Caroline.

Notes from Joy - Lyn

Dear Mammad,

Thank you for the email and reading. I have been through it with interest
as I am familiar with the area involved and knew it well before it became
'gentrified'. It is interesting not only from the indigenous perspective
but also from the white observations and involvement. The areas
surrounding Fitzroy,that comprise of Victoria Park, Clifton Hill,East
Melbourne, Carlton and Brunswick were classified and defined by certain
streets, and it was these streets that defined the socio-economic profile
of the residents.It should also be pointed out that within the heartland
of these areas was a large factory area producing shoes and cigarettes, an
industrial part,townhouses for country gentry and city professionals.
Running through the centre, Gertrude street that formed the centrepiece of
a man called Wren's betting and gambling places. Reviled by some and
embraced by others, the Archbishop of the Roman Catholic church, Dr.Daniel
Mannix of Raheen fame was one who apparently was endowed from some of the
proceeds! The court case involving Wren's sons lingers on after the book
written by Frank Hardy about the exploits was deemed to be defamatory.
The gardens at the exhibition building site at the end of Gertrude Street
was home to the methylated spirits drinkers, and Nicholoson Street had
many Chinese herbalists as well as rooming houses for people of limited
means.Smith Street had the major department stores and catered for all
means levels.
The community housing has gone from poor whites to aboriginals to
Vietnamese to Russians over the decades, and the left leaning were the
trade unionists who were not part of the Carlton intelligentsia.
So you can see that the area has a rich  and varied history.
I do not think that I will be able to come to the dinner as I have my
confirmation meeting for transfer to PhD papers to be delivered on Monday,
and I have had my head down.
Let me know if you want any further information and all the best for the
dinner, if I can make it I will, otherwise give my apologies.

Best regards, Joy-lyn

Dr Sara Wills' Proposal for the Conference

The Vague Terrains of Our Otherness: Hostels as Sites (or Stages?) of Migrant Memory in Australia

This paper is about migrant hostels: about the accommodation, training, reception and holding centres set up by the government in the post-war years in Australia as a crucial feature of the post-war migration program.  Intended to provide temporary accommodation during an acute housing shortage, hostels provided a first home in Australia for hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, migrants and refugees in over 30 hostels and centres around the nation.  More particularly, however, this is a paper about ways of remembering migrant hostels and how some in particular have become sites of fascination, holding centres themselves of all sorts of displaced migrant memories, and sites that can perhaps put us in touch with repressed cultures of migrant memory in Australia - the ‘vague terrains of our otherness’.  Abandoned hostel sites in particular 'stage' migrant memories in Australia; this paper examines how we might explore some of these as 'waste site stories'.


Sara Wills obtained her PhD from the University of Melbourne and is currently the Associate Dean of Advancement in the Faculty of Arts and a senior lecturer in the Australian Studies program.  Sara's research specialties include migration and multicultural studies, with a particular interest in aspects of social memory as they relate to refugee issues and the meaning of hospitality and cosmopolitanism in an Australian context. Sara has received research support from the Australian Research Council and has published many journal articles related to her research.

Very interesting books for reading suggested by Joy-Lyn

Joy- Lyn thinks  that the following books.  "Have many interesting aspects
in relation to migration, colonisation,the diaspora and immigrants.
Attitudes,loss of cultural links and political correctness. In particular
the lack of communication and fostering of prejudices by 'interest groups'
with agendas which are often at best misinformed and at worst uninformed."

Martha C.Nussbaum. Not for Profit-why democracy needs the humanities. 2010
Princeton University Press.
Tony Judt. Ill fares the Land. 2010 Allen Lane, London and new York.
Sven Lindquist. Terra Nullius, a journey through no-one's land. 2007 The
New Press. New York and London.
Donald Horne. How I came to write 'The Lucky Country'. 2006 Melbourne
University Press.
Donald Horne. The Lucky Country. 2005.6th. ed. Penguin Books. Australia.

Abstract for the Symposium by Marcia Nugent

Sensing the difference:  memory of identity through symbol in the ancient world by Marcia Nugent

Senses are an integral part of memory formation and recall.  What we see, taste, smell, touch and the repetitive acts we perform are powerful embodied memories of who we are and our place in the world.   Memory can transcend time and space through the use of symbols – the most common being the transmission of meaning through written language.  Seeking to understand the identity of prehistoric cultures for which we have no translated record of individual or group memories is a greater challenge.  This paper examines the role of the botanic motif in the Bronze Age to reveal the identity of the peoples of the Cycladic Islands of the Aegean Sea.

Marcia is a PhD candidate in the Centre for Classics and Archaeology, researching a thesis entitled “Botanic Motifs of the Bronze Age Cycladic Islands: Identity, Belief, Ritual and Trade”.  Marcia has been a recipient of the Norman MacGeorge scholarship and published on her thesis topic in local and international publications.  Her interest in contextual interpretation of prehistoric iconography to reveal the living experiences of the peoples of the Cyclades has drawn her into the transcultural identities research network, contemplating the markers and symbols of identity that link to embodied memory and its transmission across time and space.