Speaking Through Skulls - Brooks E. Kleber Memorial Lecture Series

February 2, 2017 - Dr. Wayne E. Lee, Dowd Distinguished Professor of History, Chair of the Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense, University of North Carolina

Dr. Lee discovered the topic of understanding reactions to death through studying artifacts while researching Continental Army Soldiers' reactions to a "Golgotha" - a field of skulls and bones - during their 1779 campaign against the Iroquois. When he set out to understand what such objects related to death might have meant to those Soldiers, he discovered a surprising variety of magical beliefs, spiritual connections, and even an ancient Latin curse skull. Although we all die, how we think about death and the afterlife has profound implications for the way we respond to violence and how we use violence ourselves. In his lecture, Dr. Lee will explore how those Soldiers responded to death with their own forms of violence, and also how objects related to death served as means of communication, motivation, and spiritual power in eighteenth-century North America.

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