Program on Human Rights Collaboratory: Cultural Heritage - The Role of Archaeology in Cultural Heritage and Human Rights

The Program on Human Rights Collaboratory Series is an interdisciplinary investigation of human rights in the humanities. It is funded under the Stanford Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies as the third in a sequence of pursuing peace and security, improving governance and advancing well-being.

Bio: Ian Hodder came to Stanford in 1999. He is the Dunlevie Family Professor in the Department of Anthropology, and since 2006 he has been Director of the Stanford Archaeology Center. Since 1993 he has been excavating at the 9,000 year-old Neolithic site of Catalhoyuk in central Turkey. The 25-year project has three aims - to place the art from the site in its full environmental, economic and social context, to conserve the paintings, plasters and mud walls, and to present the site to the public. The project is also associated with attempts to develop reflexive methods in archaeology. Ian Hodder teaches and writes about archaeological method and theory. Among his publications are: Symbols in Action (Cambridge 1982), Reading the Past (Cambridge 1986), The Domestication of Europe (Oxford 1990), The Archaeological Process (Oxford 1999), Catalhoyuk: The Leopard's Tale (Thames and Hudson 2006).