Connecting with the past

Survivals and analogies provide a thought-provoking and creative framework for interpreting ancient societies, but their use often remains uncritical and undertheorised.

When the anthropologist E. B. Tylor introduced the concept of cultural survivals in his book Primitive Culture (1871), the notion postulated an alleged evolution and adaptation of cultural forms over time.

The conjectural nature of some of the proposed analogies, as well as the tendency to establish connections with the past to characterise societies as ‘primitive’ in contexts of colonial domination, led survivals to fall out of favour in anthropological theory by the mid-20th century.

However, some academic disciplines still recognise survivals as a valid analytical framework that serves as an empowering claim to heritage in local communities and allows for an exploration of cultural and embodied transmission.

There is a delicate balance at play here: rather than dismissing survivals on account of their evolutionary intellectual legacy, it may be productive to rethink their potential for understanding ancient societies with the help of a more nuanced approach.

The aim of this two-day workshop is to foster discussion on the implications and potential of the concept of cultural survivals, with specific emphasis on the study of ancient societies.

The overall focus will be on the heuristic value of ethnographic comparison as a method for researching the past, hence contributing towards a critical rethinking of survivals as a creative analytical methodology.

The workshop will be structured along the following thematic strands.

• Conceptions of time, uses of memory, and hauntology in connections with the past
• Ethnographic photography, documentary films, and visual constructions of survivals
• Objects in ethnographic collections and their interpretations
• Ethnogenesis, nationalisms, and the role of cultural survivals in political discourse

This workshop is generously supported by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship.

This event is for an academic audience. Staff and students are more than welcome to attend, but numbers are limited due to venue capacity. Please email the organiser if you plan to attend in person. Alternatively, please register for online attendance.

Contact

Leire Olabarria: l.olabarria@bham.ac.uk

Registration details

For in-person attendance, please contact the workshop organiser as soon as possible, as there are limited spots available due to room capacity.

Please register for online attendance.

Programme

Thursday, 12 November 2026

11-11.15, Welcome

11.15-12, Gavin Lucas, Material Memories

12-12.30, Idowu Mojeed Alade, Hauntology and the Unburied Past: Rethinking ‘Survivals’ through Roman Festivals of the Dead

12.30-13.00, Ana Delia González Jiménez, Cultural Survivals of Pharaonic Egypt in Present Egypt? The Sacred Landscape of Luxor through Religious Festivals

13-13.45, Lunch

13.45-14.15, Elizabeth Hicks, Acknowledging the Impact of African Analogies in the Development of Post-Processual Theory and the Chaîne Opératoire Concept in Archaeology

14.15-14.45, Geirr Kristian Homme Lunden, Thriving, Surviving, or Reviving: The Fishing and Fowling Scenes of 18th Dynasty Thebes

14.45-15.15, Mischa Twitchin, ‘Between Magic and Logos’ (Warburg)

15.15-15.45, Coffee/tea

15.45-16.15, Wiebke Leister, The ‘Ancient’ Serpent-Ritual of Cocullo: Cultural Survival, Revival and Contemporary Significance

16.15-16.45, Lorenzo Verderame, The Bedouin and the ‘Unchanging Orient’

16:45-17.30, Elizabeth Edwards, Behaving ‘Otherwise’: Photographs from ‘Cultural Survivals’ to Survivance

Friday, 13 November 2026

9.30-10, Claire Padovani, A Continuity of Ruptures: Ethnography and Archaeology of Clay Crafts in the Chamchamal Region, Iraqi Kurdistan

10-10.30, Katharina Zinn, Ancient Headrests as Contemporary Information and Inspiration: Heritage, Design and the Use of Comparative Analogy

10.30-11, Akanksha Yadav, Material Memories: Ritual Technologies and Cultural Continuity in Chaṭha Pūjā

11-11.30, Coffee/tea

11.30-12, Charlie Burnell Oubridge, Cultural Survivals in Egyptological Thought: Reconsidering National Religion as Force of Habit

12-12.30, Nathaniel Sydenham, Tracing Survivals: Cultural Values, Belief systems, and the patterns of anthropological historiography

12.30-13.15, Chris Wingfield, A Reformer’s Science? Progressivism, Collecting and Enantiodromia in Anthropology

13.15-14.00, Lunch

14-15.30, Final discussion and concluding remarks