Thursday 30th April 2015
1pm-5pm
7 Woodland Road, First Floor Seminar Room

This half-day colloquium brings together historians and archaeologists to examine magic in its material and medical settings. Each scholar will address their current research interests and collectively participate in a round table discussion with the audience about their professional approaches and methodologies to this multidisciplinary topic.

The first two of our speakers will utilise the archaeological record to investigate ritualised practices in Iron Age and Roman Britain. Adrian Chadwick (University of Leicester) will use case studies of features and deposits to examine the theoretical and methodological problems behind current approaches to rubbish and ritual in British archaeology. Debora Moretti (University of Bristol) will discuss the evidence for the materiality of magic in archaeological contexts paying particular attention to the phenomenon of curse tablets and the possible survival of their tradition into medieval Europe and Scandinavia.

Our final two speakers will draw on written evidence using Inquisition records and written charms to explore the uses of magical practices to harm and to heal. Catherine Rider (University of Exeter) will dissect the relationship between harmful magic and medicine through an analysis of the Inquisition trial proceedings initiated against Muslim slave Sellem bin Al-Sheikh Mansur in seventeenth-century Malta. Finally, Lea Olsan (University of Louisiana at Monroe) will assess how different methodological approaches to the power of words can be applied to the prescribed performances of charms and written amulets in the medieval period.

This fascinating programme is open to all, though has limited spaces available, so please contact Dr Louise Wilson (louise.wilson@bristol.ac.uk) to reserve your place.