Note: Due to the devastation from Hurricane Helene, the Mountain Studies Lecture has been postponed until Spring 2025.
2024 Mountain Studies Lecture feat. Dr. María Nieves Zedeño
Wednesday, October 9, 2024
7-8:30 p.m. (Doors open at 6:30 p.m.)
I.G. Greer Hall Auditorium, 401 Academy St, Boone, NC 28608
BOONE, N.C. — Appalachian State University's College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) is pleased to host archaeologist Dr. María Nieves Zedeño as the 2024 Mountain Studies Lecture Series speaker. Dr. Zedeño's lecture, titled "After the Ashfall: What Ancient Environmental Disasters Can Tell Us About Human Attachments to the Landscape," will take place on Wednesday, October 9, 2024, at 7 p.m. in the I.G. Greer Auditorium at 401 Academy Street in Boone.
Zedeño is a professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona. Since 1994, she has devoted her research to Applied Archaeology with Native Americans in several regions of the United States and Canada, and especially with member tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Zedeño's research focuses on landscape theory and method, mobile hunters and, most recently, the peopling of the Rocky Mountain West. Zedeño co-directs the interdisciplinary Blackfoot Early Origins Program, which integrates oral tradition and science.
In her lecture, Zedeño will discuss the following: In 1815 Tambora, a volcano in a small Indonesian island east of Java violently erupted, killing untold numbers and incinerating villages and crops. This eruption, which historian Gillen D’Arcy Wood compares to that of Mount Mazama (now known as Crater Lake, Oregon) 7,600 years ago, not only blackened the sky and reshaped the island landscape, but also disrupted climate patterns and living conditions around the globe. Yet, there is an intense connection between people and erupting volcanos that defies scientific logic. As we live in a world fraught with ever worsening environmental disasters, we reflect on how ancient people in North America coped with various known disasters, especially the Mazama eruption and its aftermath, why they returned to denuded ancestral landscapes and what valuable lessons they may teach us to find avenues for social action.
Sponsored by CAS, the Mountain Studies Lecture is free and open to the public with no ticketing or registration. For a disability accommodation, visit odr.appstate.edu. Questions about the event can be directed to the CAS Dean's Office via email at cas@appstate.edu or via phone at (828) 262-3078.
The Mountain Studies Lecture Series was born out of the inaugural International Mountain Studies Conference, organized by App State's Center for Appalachian Studies in 2019. The 2024 Mountain Studies Lecture will kick off the second International Mountain Studies Conference. Proposals for papers, sessions, roundtables, posters and creative endeavors related to mountains are due Monday, September 30, 2024, via this Google Form. There is no conference fee and conference presentations and events are free and open to the public. For more information, visit cas.appstate.edu/events/mountain-studies-lecture-series.
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About the Morgan Science Lecture Series at Appalachian
The Morgan Science Lecture Series at Appalachian State University was established with a gift from the G. William Morgan Family. Morgan was a 1934 graduate of Appalachian and a health physicist with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. The series stimulates scientific understanding and research among the sciences by bringing researchers to campus. Previous speakers include David Suzuki, award-winning geneticist and broadcaster, evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould, population ecologist Paul Ehrlich, former U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and oceanographer and underwater archaeologist Robert Ballard. Learn more at cas.appstate.edu/events/morgan-science-lecture-series.
About the College of Arts and Sciences
The College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) at Appalachian State University is home to 17 academic departments, two centers and one residential college. These units span the humanities and the social, mathematical and natural sciences. CAS aims to develop a distinctive identity built upon our university's strengths, traditions and unique location. The college’s values lie not only in service to the university and local community, but through inspiring, training, educating and sustaining the development of its students as global citizens. More than 6,400 student majors are enrolled in the college. As the college is also largely responsible for implementing App State’s general education curriculum, it is heavily involved in the education of all students at the university, including those pursuing majors in other colleges. Learn more at cas.appstate.edu.
About Appalachian State University
As a premier public institution, Appalachian State University prepares students to lead purposeful lives. App State is one of 17 campuses in the University of North Carolina System, with a national reputation for innovative teaching and opening access to a high-quality, affordable education for all. The university enrolls more than 21,000 students, has a low student-to-faculty ratio and offers more than 150 undergraduate and 80 graduate majors at its Boone and Hickory campuses and through App State Online. Learn more at appstate.edu.
By Lauren Gibbs
September 6, 2024
BOONE, N.C.
Dr. María Nieves Zedeño is a professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona. Photo submitted
Dr. María Nieves Zedeño is a professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona. Photo submitted