Date: Wednesday, May 15, 2013

NOTE CHANGE OF DATE:  Wednesday, May 15th - Kit Carson has a Board Meeting on Tuesday so our meeting is changed to Wednesday.

Topic Title: Connecting the Past: History and Archaeology

Speaker:  Raffi Andonian, Los Alamos Historical Society

Location: Kit Carson Electric - 118 Cruz Alta Rd, Taos

Brief description:

The academy divides history and archaeology into separate fields, and we often conceptualize our studies and understandings of the past within these boundaries. Yet, dividing the learning about peoples of the past with these artificial and insurmountable walls limits our common missions of better understanding them. The history-archaeology dichotomy often created by both fields causes a loss of opportunity to complement each other and complete the bigger picture that is obscured with each field's tight focus strictly on its own approaches and methodologies, assumptions and theories. Archaeology, without history, is incomplete; history, without archaeology, is incomplete. With examples both prehistoric and historic, we'll observe how these fields coming together could create a dynamic understanding of the past for all of us, regardless of titles.

Short bio:

Raffi E. Andonian is the educator at the Los Alamos Historical Society. His educational background is in history, which he has applied to archaeological sites when working for the National Park Service in interpretation at the Gettysburg battlefield as well as other CIvil War sites around Richmond. He has also interned at The Archaeological Conservancy. Raffi tries to transcend the walls constructed between academic and public, theoretical scholarship and tangible sites, and history and archaeology.