Olanrewaju Lasisi, PhD

Assistant Professor,

Department of Anthropology

 The Ohio State University

Abstract:

This talk explores the deep entanglement of ritual, landscape, celestial alignment, and spatial memory within Yoruba and broader West African cultural worlds. Drawing from historical archaeology, indigenous hermeneutics, archaeoastronomy, and ethnographic fieldwork, the lecture examines how ritual movement functions as a form of architectural logic—shaping urban layouts, sacred networks, and political authority across time. Focusing on the Ijebu region of southwestern Nigeria, it traces how priestly choreography, calendrical festivals, and cosmological orientations produce enduring spatial knowledge systems that challenge Western assumptions about what counts as “architecture” or “urban design.” The talk reframes architecture as a living, kinetic, and relational practice, animated by embodied knowledge, ancestral presence, and celestial order.

Bio:

Dr. Ola Lasisi is an anthropological archaeologist whose work integrates indigenous epistemologies, landscape archaeology, archaeoastronomy, and the anthropology of ritual. His research examines the spatial, cosmological, and political worlds of the Yoruba, with particular emphasis on Ijebu history and the architectural logic of ritual movement. He is the author of Architecture of Ritual Movement: Reimagining Architecture Through Ritual Movements (forthcoming) and has conducted extensive fieldwork in Nigeria on sacred landscapes, archaeological heritage, and urban ritual systems. Dr. Lasisi teaches at The Ohio State University, where he works at the intersections of archaeology, decolonial theory, and cultural astronomy.”