Thomas Barfield is a social anthropologist who first conducted ethnographic fieldwork among pastoral nomads in Afghanistan during the 1970s and wrote three book length studies on the country’s people, politics, and traditions of indigenous architecture. He has combined anthropology with history to explore the relationship between the steppe nomads and China over the course of two millenia (The Perilous Frontier, 1989) and has just published a comparative study of ancient and medieval Eurasian empires (Shadow Empires, 2023). He was co-curator of an exhibition of Splendors of Medieval Timurid Art in Afghanistan Exhibition at Herâr Castle in 2017. He also teaches a seminar on History and Anthropology.
David Carballo is a specialist in Mesoamerican archaeology, focusing particularly on the prehispanic civilizations of central Mexico. His current projects in the ancient city of Teotihuacan seek to understand urbanization, neighborhood organization, and the daily life of commoners through excavations and geophysical prospection within a southern district of the city, as well as understanding the city’s political economy through a palace compounds.