COURSE DESCRIPTION AND APPLICATION INFORMATION
| Course Name | Code | Semester | T+A+L (hour/week) | Type (C / O) | Local Credit | ECTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Things do tell tales: an archaeology of objects | KHAS 1378 | Spring | 03+00+00 | Elective | 3 | 5 |
| Academic Unit: | Department of Common Courses – Core Program |
| Mode of Delivery: | Face to face |
| Prerequisites: | None |
| Language of Instruction: | English |
| Level of Course Unit: | Undergraduate |
| Course Coordinator: | - - |
| Course Objectives: | This course aims to explore the Anatolian past through the intimate world of objects. Moving beyond traditional emphasis of history and archaeology on monuments and grand narratives, we will focus on the small things that accompany everyday life and death: tools, toys, adornments, gifts, heirlooms, and personal possessions. Often encountered behind museum glass, reduced to short labels and detached from their original contexts, such objects offer the most personal insights into identities, memories, and entangled histories across time. By foregrounding these materials, the course asks critical questions about how we come to know the past and how objects shape human experience in both past and present: What stories do objects tell when we look beyond their display cases? How do ordinary things contribute to histories dominated by elites, monuments, and texts? How do objects shape identity, memory, and social relations today? Drawing on key concepts in material culture studies, we will trace how objects come into being, circulate, acquire meaning, and leave traces in archaeological, historical, and contemporary settings. |
| Course Contents: | Throughout the semester, there will be lectures, readings, discussions, museum visits, and storytelling and hands-on sessions. We will reflect on personal and familial objects as makers and carriers of identity, memory and meaning, engage directly with Anatolia’s material heritage, and reflect critically, through a decolonial lens, on practices of ownership, consumption, collecting, display, and representation. |
| Learning Outcomes of the Course Unit (LO): |
|
| Planned Learning Activities and Teaching Methods: | Lectures, readings, discussions, creative activities, small assignments, museum visits, final project. • Weekly lectures (60-90 minutes) to introduce key concepts, case studies, and theoretical frameworks. • Weekly in-class activities (90 minutes): o Museum visits. o Reading and discussion sessions. o Creative exercises (e.g., storytelling, drawing and describing an object). o Reflections on small homework assignments. • Guidance on final project: students will design an object biography project. |
WEEKLY SUBJECTS AND RELATED PREPARATIONS
| Week | Subjects | Related Preperation |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Orientation, syllabus overview, introduction | None |
| 2 | Knowing and displaying the past: from antiquarianism to museums | Reading; discussion notes |
| 3 | How do we relate to things: anthropological and sociological perspectives | Reading; discussion notes; homework |
| 4 | Materiality and technology | Reading; discussion notes |
| 5 | Objects of identity, memory and gifting | Reading; discussion notes; homework |
| 6 | Small objects, big histories in Anatolia: prehistory | Reading; discussion notes |
| 7 | Small objects, big histories in Anatolia: from Antiquity to the Ottoman Era | Reading; discussion notes |
| 8 | Workshop: object biography project | Outline of final project |
| 9 | Media and popular culture: narrating the past today | Reading; discussion notes; homework |
| 10 | Museum visit 1: Rezan Has Museum | Review museum catalogues |
| 11 | Museum visit 2: Istanbul Archaeological Museum | Review museum catalogues |
| 12 | Rethinking museums: ethics and decolonial perspectives | Reading; discussion notes; homework |
| 13 | Object stories: final project presentations | Final project preparation |
| 14 | Course wrap-up and final reflections | Short written reflection |
At Kadir Has University, a Semester is 14 weeks; The weeks 15 and 16 are reserved for final exams.
REQUIRED AND RECOMMENDED READING
| Main readings • Alberti, S.J.M.M. 2005. Objects and the museum. Isis 96(4): 559-571. • Appadurai, A. (ed.). 1986. The social life of things. Cambridge University Press. • Gosden, C., Marshall, Y. 1999. The cultural biography of objects. World Archaeology 31: 169-178. • Graeber, D., Wengrow, D. 2021. The dawn of everything: a new history of humanity. Penguin. • Hopkins, J.N., Costello, S.K., Davis, P.R. 2021. Object biographies: collaborative approaches to ancient Mediterranean art. The Menil Collection, Yale University Press. • Hoskins, J. 1998. Biographical objects: how things tell the stories of people’s lives. Routledge. • Lydon, J., Rizvi, U.Z. (eds.). 2010. Handbook of postcolonial archaeology. Routledge. • Meskell, L. 2021. Object worlds in Ancient Egypt: material biographies past and present. Routledge. • Miller, D. 2008. The comfort of things. Polity Press. • Nowell, A., Chang, M.L. Science, the media, and the interpretations of Upper Palaeolithic figurines. American Anthropologist 116(3): 562-577. • Shaw, W. 2007. Museums and narratives of display from the Late Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic. Muqarnas 24: 253-279. • Spikins, P. 2022. Hidden depths: the origins of human connection. White Rose University Press. • Tilley, C. et al. (eds.). 2006. Handbook of material culture. Sage. • Woodward, I. 2007. Understanding material culture. Sage. Also recommended • Baydar, G., Güngör, S. 2024. Entanglements: a new materialist approach to an ethnographic gallery in the Anatolian village of Tahtakuşlar. Architecture and Culture 11(1-2): 165-191. • Baysal, E.L., Yelözer, S. 2023. Searching for the individual: characterising knowledge transfer and skill in prehistoric personal ornament making. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 30: 172-202. • Carrier, J.G. 1995. Gifts and commodities: exchange and western capitalism since 1700. Routledge. • Choyke, A., Kovats, I. 2010. Tracing the personal through generations: late Medieval and Ottoman combs. In A. Pluskowski et al. (eds.), Bestial mirrors: using animals to construct human identities in Medieval Europe. Universität Wien: 115-127. • Dobres, M.-A. 2000. Technology and social agency: outlining a practice framework for archaeology. Blackwell. • Doğanalp-Votzi, H. 2005. Histories and economies of a small Anatolian town: Safranbolu and its leather handicrafts. In S. Faroqhi, R. Deguilhem (eds.), Crafts and craftsmen of the Middle East: fashioning the individual in the Muslim Mediterranean. I.B. Tauris: 308-338 • Graeber, D. 2001. Toward an anthropological theory of value. Palgrave. • Hahn, H.P., Weiss, H. (eds.). 2013. Mobility, meaning and the transformations of things. Oxbow. • Hallam, E., Hockey, J. 2001. Death, memory and material culture. Routledge. • Hodder, I. 2006. The leopard’s tale: revealing the mysteries of Çatalhöyük. Thames and Hudson. • Hodder, I. 2012. Entangled. Wiley. • Joy, J. 2009. Reinvigorating object biography: reproducing the drama of object lives. World Archaeology 41(4): 540-556. • Kılınç, K. 2017. The Hittite sun is rising once again. Contested narratives of identity, place and memory in Ankara. History and Memory 29: 3-34. • Komter, A. 2005. Social solidarity and the gift. Cambridge University Press. • Lillios, K.T. 1999. Objects of memory: the ethnography and archaeology of heirlooms. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 6: 235-262. • Malinowski, B. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Routledge & Kegan Paul. • Mauss, M. 1950. The gift. Cohen & West. • Miller, D. (ed.). 1998. Material cultures: why some things matter. UCL Press. • Miller, D. 2010. Stuff. Polity Press. • Pitarakis, B. 2021. Toys, childhood, and material culture in Byzantium. In V. Rapti, E. Gordon (eds.), Ludics: play as humanistic inquiry. Palgrave-Macmillan: 243-274. • Pitblado et al. 2025. Retheorizing archaeological artefacts as belongings. Archaeologies 21: 209-229. • Shaw, W. 2000. Islamic arts in the Ottoman Imperial Museum, 1889-1923. Ars Orientalis 30: 55-68. • Strathern, M. 1988. The gender of the gift: problems with women and problems with society in Melanesia. University of California Press. • Weiner, A.B. 1992. Inalienable possessions: the paradox of keeping-while-giving. University of California Press. |
OTHER COURSE RESOURCES
| Podcasts • Adalet Atlası 2.11 Maddenin hafızası with Sera Yelözer, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Umut Yıldırım https://www.anadolukultur.org/36-yayinlarimiz/1534-adalet-atlasi-2sezon-bolum-11/ https://youtu.be/RLSX9O1eSRQ?si=AcT1k4LP4qGWu177 • BIAA Heritage Türkiye Podcast, Small things, big stories with Emma Baysal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvgJPUJn37A • Immaterial: 5000 years of art, one material at a time https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8HAkqKX065DKYbp2CZPzNQDmsOMLIIOc&si=G36-f9m1bPfCh7EW Recommended episodes: o Season 1, Episode 3 Shells https://youtu.be/bS8rxZBmmFg?si=7LBSfNcW-WbXqYGY o Season 1, Episode 6 Metals, part one https://youtu.be/H4o1y53axAM?si=WDGWnsv5lK3vsv-Q o Season 2, Episode 1 Stone: making and breaking legacies https://youtu.be/1nEeYbgWCvU?si=4JF_6g5p6k_fStSV o Season 2, Episode 4 Blankets and quilts: threads of identity https://youtu.be/dvl-PRNVs0U?si=DijxXjLuXfL044UQ • Her half of history – 11.4 From Venus to Barbie (a history of dolls) https://herhalfofhistory.com/2023/10/12/11-4-from-venus-to-barbie-a-history-of-dolls/ • Peopling the past – Podcast Season 1, Episode 9: Living in a material world with Jennifer Stager https://peoplingthepast.com/2020/11/10/podcast_9/ • Peopling the past – Podcast Season 4, Episode 4: Curating with care: transparency in museums with Saladino Haney https://peoplingthepast.com/2025/05/20/season-4-podcast-4-curating-with-care-transparency-in-museums-with-lisa-haney/ • Peopling the past – Podcast Season 4, Episode 5: Naturalizing inequalities: the colonial museum with Dan Hicks https://peoplingthepast.com/2025/05/27/podcast-season-4-episode-5-naturalizing-inequalities-the-colonial-museum-with-dan-hicks/ Videos • A history of the world in 100 objects. Western Australian Museum https://museum.wa.gov.au/explore/articles/history-world-100-objects-symposium-videos • Ochre and the dawn of human culture (Tammy Hodgkiss) TEDx Talks https://youtu.be/YRPYS4LuKjg?si=4oz6KAI730jsMs_7 • Object biography: the life of a concept (Ann-Sophie Lehmann) https://youtu.be/vVz06Xaf-wI?si=cTglYyJcbR69YsKo • Telling better stories: archaeology, object biography & the public (Sarah Costello) https://youtu.be/TfOt2LcbGF4?si=wosaOjUDXNuC2GAR • Becoming a Çatalhöyük person: an integration of evidence (Ian Hodder) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10jD7ueLNZs • Cylinder seals of the Neo-Assyrian period as experiential object (Kiersten Neumann) https://youtu.be/ix465vgVrmg?si=qCnw1kYiySrAFRmj • Up close: elk ivory pendants in Alberta (Karen Giering) https://youtu.be/7Aca8vyRzEk?si=6wbfspG7VNBTLCz7 Online exhibition: The curious case of Çatalhöyük: https://curiouscaseofcatalhoyuk.ku.edu.tr |
ASSESSMENT METHODS AND CRITERIA
| Semester Requirements | Number | Percentage of Grade (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Attendance / Participation | 1 | 20 |
| Field Work | 2 | 10 |
| Homework Assignments | 4 | 10 |
| Extra-Class Activities (reading, individual study etc.) | 1 | 10 |
| Midterms / Oral Exams / Quizes | 1 | 10 |
| Final Exam | 1 | 40 |
| Total: | 10 | 100 |
WORKLOAD
| Events | Count | Duration (Hours) | Total Workload (hour) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Course Hours | 14 | 3 | 42 |
| Field Work | 2 | 3 | 6 |
| Homework Assigments | 4 | 3 | 12 |
| Extra-Class Activities (reading,individiual work, etc.) | 10 | 2 | 20 |
| Midterms / Oral Exams / Quizes | 1 | 15 | 15 |
| Final Exam | 1 | 30 | 30 |
| Total Workload (hour): | 125 | ||
1 ECTS = 25 Hours Workload
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES (LO) AND PROGRAM QUALIFICATIONS (PQ)
| # | PQ1 | PQ2 | PQ3 | PQ4 | PQ5 | PQ6 | PQ7 | PQ8 | PQ9 | PQ10 | PQ11 | PQ12 |
| LO1 | ||||||||||||
| LO2 | ||||||||||||
| LO3 | ||||||||||||
| LO4 | ||||||||||||
| LO5 |
Contribution: 1 Low, 2 Average, 3 High