Sophie Preiswerk
University of Zurich
BGC Fellow

Unwilling Rocks and Rolling Stones
Ancient quarries pose a particular challenge for archaeologists: they are created by the removal of the very material we seek to understand. In her talk, Sophie Preiswerk will share some preliminary considerations (and open questions) about what kinds of knowledge can inform the study of ancient Greek quarrying. Drawing on ethnographic evidence, ancient texts, and theories of making, Preiswerk will approach quarries as places where reciprocal relationships between people, material, sculptures, and environment take shape. How can these relationships help us think further about marble extraction, processual risk, or the materiality and agency of stone in Archaic Greece? This Tuesday Tea will explore how these approaches invite us to consider ancient understandings of stone—not simply as passive matter, but as something dynamic and at times autonomous.

Sophie Preiswerk is a doctoral candidate in classical archaeology and an academic assistant at the University of Zurich. She obtained her BA and MA degrees at Heidelberg University and conducted research at the Sorbonne and Yale University. Her doctoral project examines processes of figuration in Archaic Greek marble sculpture, focusing on how images emerge through the interplay of material, craftsmanship, and making. During her fellowship at Bard Graduate Center, she will advance this research through the analysis of a corpus of unfinished Archaic Greek sculptures documented during her fieldwork in Greece. By investigating how sculpture was created through processes of assembling, joining, and finishing individual parts and surfaces, she seeks to understand how sculptural bodies in sixth-century BCE Greece were brought into being. Her broader interests include image studies in classical archaeology, production aesthetics, and the history of archaeological scholarship, particularly the construction of the Greek “Archaic” in texts and photography in twentieth-century Germany. Her previous research explored the aesthetic and material dimensions of inscriptions on Archaic Greek votive statues.

Tuesday, October 13, 12:15 pm
38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall

Tea, coffee, and snacks will be served starting at noon.
No registration required.