Belcourt Theatre Nashville, TN
Beth Koontz
PhD Candidate in Anthropology, Vanderbilt University
Raiders of the Lost Ark— The Role of Violence in State Formation and Collapse
Program Description
A discussion of Andean bioarchaeology and the role of violence in state formation and collapse.
Presented At
Belcourt Theatre Nashville, TN
Film Synopsis
Archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones is hired by the US government to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do.
In the first installment of the Indiana Jones series, the year is 1936. Archeology professor and adventurer Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is hired by the US government to find the Ark of the Covenant. Accompanied by his feisty, independent ex-flame Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), the two-fisted archaeologist embarks on a thrilling quest to locate the Ark before the Nazis do. Along the way, the two companions face poison, traps, snakes, and treachery. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won four.
About the Speaker
Beth Koontz is a PhD candidate at Vanderbilt University. She graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with degrees in anthropology and dramatic art, and then earned a JD at the University of New Hampshire School of Law. She served the State of North Carolina for two years as an assistant district attorney. She hopes to contribute to scholarship concerning the nature of Wari expansionism in the Majes Valley and Valley of the Volcanoes, Peru, by furthering our understanding of regional health and lifeways prior to Wari influence. More broadly, she is interested in the role of militarism in state formation and collapse, structural violence, paleopathology, skeletal trauma, state-sanctioned violence, and the cultural construction of laws and morality.
She has contributed to archaeological excavations and bioarchaeological research in the Tierras Blancas Valley, the Middle Moche Valley, Chavin, and Ayacucho, Peru. Prior to graduate studies, she contributed to excavations in Italy, ethnographic fieldwork and research in Egypt, and ethnographic field work in the Burch Field Research Seminar (UNC-Chapel Hill) in Manteo, North Carolina. She has volunteered for the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology, the North Carolina program for Forensic Science, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, the New England Innocence Project, and completed coursework in art and antiquities law with the University of San Diego School of Law in Florence, Italy.