Christopher Heaney

I'll be back in Cambridge, MA next Monday to talk at MIT. I'll get into how "ancient trepanation" or cranial surgery was given an existence via 19th and 20th century "ancient Peruvian" and "Inca" examples, and the political stakes of it becoming "Andean." history.mit.edu/.../trepanni...

"While engrossed in Heaney’s book, my mind kept wandering back to that ancient huaca [a sacred monument or tomb]. As I shut my eyes ... I imagined those craters filling up again. The earth and its departed souls reunited, embarking on a journey of healing together — the ancestors and us." 2/2

So honored by this review by Marco Avilés of Empires of the Dead in El País: "Through Inca mummies, Heaney unravels colonization, capitalism and the birth of anthropology, revealing the impacts of pre-Hispanic ancestors on the living." english.elpais.com/culture/2024...

I'll be in Boston/Cambridge Tuesday to talk at Harvard (CGIS South, S-050, at 5:15 on Tuesday) about how to remember the entangled history of American and Peruvian anthropology, and accounting for its remains. Looking forward to the conversation.

Last, I'm not sorry for cross-posting from the hellsite. I'm happy for a non-hellsite space. But unless I've missed it, there isn't as much the conversation on the Penn story, ¿and museum issues?, happening over here that's happening over there. The silo-ing is real ... 6/6

Again, this isn't to take away with museums' recent progress on NAGPRA. But it warns against singular definitions of reparative justice, which when pushed through can do extraordinary harm, and can even be an effort to liberate _the museum_ from its past. Which is what Penn is attempting. 5/

As @intersectionist.bsky.social and #FindingCeremony have insisted for the Penn case, _restitution_ can be more needed in some cases than repatriation. It means not going quickly, and engaging communities with what _they are asking for_. 4/

Museums need to keep looking at their failures at NAGPRA (or its misuse), to attend to Native North American's protests and pain. (Something this post can't possibly encompass.) But the contrast drives home to me how, absent legal frameworks, repatriation can become a performance—even a cover-up. 3/

This, in spite of Finding Ceremony's call for their reconnection to specific descendants, whose research showed that at least one was also Indigenous (triggering NAGPRA, and preventing their surreptitious burial). 2/
www.phillyvoice.com/penn-museum-...

I'm sitting with the contrast between this great stat on NAGPRA's acceleration and the incredible news that Penn "repatriated" 19 Black Philadelphians collected by Samuel George Morton by secretly burying them. 1/ propublica.org/article/sena...

Of course, problem is that ‘in Quechua’ here means Quechua as written in letters, which Chas been subject to a lot of debate. So you also see malki or malqui

I’m so glad you’re enjoying it. Can’t wait to talk more about it. My understanding is that in Quechua before a vowel LL is y, and before a consonant LL is L. Yllapa v mallki, or Yyyapa v malki.

Current reading: @chrheaney.bsky.social excellent new book 'Empires of the Dead: Inca Mummies and the Peruvian Ancestors of American Anthropology'. To say I'm enjoying it is an understatement.

There will be an online feed. Interested in the history of archaeology and medicine in the Andes and Americas? : www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEpE...

Thrilled to be giving the public lecture tonight on the 3 burials of Julio César Tello at the annual meeting of the Institute of Andean Studies. In the Bay Area? Dwinelle 145, on Cal’s campus in Berkeley at 7!

If you're at #aha24 check out Empires of the Dead at Oxford University Press's table! Charmed to see it on the banner. @ahahistorians.bsky.social

Thank you, Daniel!

Lots of good stuff in the Xmas @londonreview.bsky.social. My favourites:

@jamesmeek.bsky.social on Peter Biskind on TV's recent golden age.

Colin Kidd on Claire Rydell on America on John Locke.

@artcrimeprof.bsky.social on @chrheaney.bsky.social on Incan mummies.

1/2

Statues of gods in a science fictional setting. Drawing by Jack Kirby

In addition to punching Nazis and working behind enemy lines in WWII, Jack Kirby was the 'Argo' artist.

He drew the concept art for 'Lord of Light', the fake science fiction film that helped the CIA rescue the Tehran hostages in 1976.

Kirby did not phone that shit in. You can find it all online.

;) aelarsen.wordpress.com/why-an-histo...

Thanks to those in the replies who pointed out that Lego seems to swooping in on a tellurium (h/t, @rhiggitt.bsky.social) that already exists! a.co/d/fDdkfGh

MISINI Solar Systm Building Kit,865/pcs MOC C71004W Bricks for Kids and Adults,Contains Moon Earth and Sun Orrery Model a.co/d/fDdkfGh

Lego is a Danish company, right? Release the 38,291-piece Tychonic geoheliocentric version, you unpatriotic cowards!

Thanks for the tip! MISINI Solar Systm Building Kit,865/pcs MOC C71004W Bricks for Kids and Adults,Contains Moon Earth and Sun Orrery Model a.co/d/fDdkfGh

Really? Right now? Link?

L: Joseph Wright of Derby, A Philosopher Lecturing on an #Orrery (1766)

R: LEGO System A/S of Billund, An Aspiring Philosopher Demonstrating a Tellurium (As @rhiggitt.bsky.social notes, an orrery features the entire solar system)

#histsci #histSTM #sciart #astronomy #STEM #LEGO 📜🗃️🔭

Thank you! I thereby out myself as a historian of the social sciences.

We'd call it a tellurium rather than an orrery (focus on the earth-sun system rather than solar system)

_An_ orrery, an historian meant to write.

Lego technic set of a earth and moon circling the sun.

Calling all historians of science -- Lego is releasing what's basically a orrery: www.lego.com/en-us/produc...