You are invited to our Cultural Heritage Management Seminar Series 9. This online talk on May 22, 2025 at 7.00 pm (EET), 5 pm (Irish time), 12 pm (EST) is given by Dr Eleanor Neil (Aarhus Unversity, Centre for Urban Network Evolutions ) on "Posthumanism and Community Archaeology in a Contested Landscape".

Abstract
Posthumanism challenges traditional, hierarchical, and anthropocentric structures by emphasizing relationality, multivocality, and the agency of both human and nonhuman actors. In a community archaeology context, this means moving away from rigid distinctions between experts and non-experts and acknowledging the active role of landscapes, material culture, and heritage in shaping social identities.A key contribution of posthumanist community archaeology is its ability to break down binary thinking—such as expert/non-expert, past/present, and human/nonhuman—to create more fluid, participatory models of archaeological practice and interpretation.

Within definitions and conceptions of community archaeology, much ink has been spilled on what is classified as archaeology. Does non-invasive survey count? What about museum curation? Do artistic responses have a role to play? These are all valuable and creative responses to the problem of engagement. Much less effort, however, has been spent defining what constitutes a community and how that definition should be approached.

In contested landscapes like Cyprus—where divisions persist due to political conflict and contested heritage claims—the questions around defining communities become particularly thorny. It is in this context that approaches such as posthumanism, with their reimagination of hierarchical definitions, are particularly relevant. By embracing multivocality and co-creation, posthumanist approaches can help reimagine archaeology as a collaborative, socially transformative practice that acknowledges historical trauma while seeking pathways toward shared understanding and co-creation.

Author bio
Dr. Eleanor Q. Neil completed her doctoral research at Trinity College Dublin last year, examining community archaeology in Cyprus. She has wide ranging research interests that include digital methods for community engagement, cultural policy, and the historiography of archaeology. Currently she is employed by Aarhus University’s Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (Denmark), exploring archival and legacy data from 19th- and 20th-century archaeological missions in the Near East.

Registration details: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1341761858839