The Brigham Young University Department of Anthropology will sponsor the annual Grace Elizabeth Shallit Memorial Lecture Monday, Feb. 5, from 3 to 5 p.m. in the Harold B. Lee Library auditorium.
Admission is free, and the public is welcome to attend.
This year’s lecture will feature Katherine Spielmann of Arizona State University, who will discuss “Crafting the Sacred: The Sociality of Ritual Production in Small-Scale Societies.” Her lecture will focus on the creation and preservation of communal ritual spaces and objects throughout history.
Spielmann earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Harvard University and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan. After a postdoctoral fellowship with the Smithsonian Institution and four years of teaching at the University of Iowa, Spielmann settled at Arizona State University, where she is a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.
Her research centers on prehistoric economies in small-scale societies in North America, and she is particularly interested in how economics is fueled by increasing demands for food and goods in ritual, political and social contexts.
The Grace Elizabeth Shallit Memorial Lecture brings distinguished anthropologists to campus to present new findings on various facets of the discipline. The lecture is part of an endowment left to the Department of Anthropology, and the money is also used to fund student and faculty research.
For more information, contact Joel C. Janetski at (801) 422-6111.
Writer: Elizabeth Kasper
