Peter Alexander Fitzgerald
Heritage Administrative Law in the twenty-first Century. Fact or Fantasy?
SATURDAY MORNING
This session has been developed to examine the interrelationships between legal and management theory and the actuality of practice in modern heritage management.
The eight papers will be presented in pairs, one theory and one practice to facilitate discussion concerning areas of conflict and harmony inherent in the management of our Cultural Heritage. Participants will be drawn from a number of disciplines including Anthropology, Archaeology, Law, and Management and wide-ranging backgrounds. Topics to be addressed include PPG 16, Theory and Practice, Involvement of local populations in the decision making process, The role of Non Government Organisations in policy formation and Conflict resolution.
Heritage protection legislation and related conflicts, Priorities, Desires and Ambitions.
Time watch
Gaining recognition for Heritage Landscapes.
The Spirit or the Letter? Meaning, law and guardianship in British Sacred Sites
Conventions, Charters, Directives and Recommendations: a way through the maze?
Discussing the role of the citizen in development-led archaeology
Working in Ireland- The Rough Guide to EU Procurement Law and Archaeology- An Irish Interpretation
Value Conflicts, Development Control and Archaeology
Dr. Michelle Bonogofsky
Skull Collection, Modification, and Decoration
SATURDAY ALL DAY
Session Abstract
The purpose of this all-day session is to compare the practice of skull collection, modification, and decoration among diverse cultures in various world regions.
Mortuary practices involving the collection and modification of skulls are a topic of growing interest to archaeologists, anthropologists, art historians, and students of religion. The proposed session places emphasis on the methodology and theory of skull collection, modification, and decoration from areas as diverse as the ancient Near East to ethnographic Melanesia. Discussions of the archaeological contexts, visual descriptions, osteological analyses, technological studies, and genetic sexing results of such skulls are encouraged. The intent is to shed light on practices within past societies, addressing whose skulls were collected and why.
The diverse tools employed to answer these questions may include DNA and isotope analysis, taphonomy, iconography, and a primary study of the skulls themselves, to determine—for example—whether the skulls belonged to ancestors or enemies, as local or non-local residents. Researchers in various world regions may thus benefit from shared insights derived from scientific analyses coupled with personal interaction and challenging questions.
The Villain’s Dire Disgrace? Skull Collection and Display in Viking Age and Medieval Dublin
Complexity in Context: Cached, Painted and Modeled Skulls from the Neolithic Middle East
Decoration of Skulls: a Case Study of the Yamnaya and the Catacomb Cultures Funeral Ritual of the Eurasian Bronze Age.
Phenomenon of Skull Modifications, Face Plastering and Death Masks in the Ancient History of the Eurasian Steppes: An Anthropological Study
The Yenisei Mummies with Modeled Skulls and Masks from Siberia
Енисейские_мумии с моделированными черепами и масками
Noémie Rolland Marquesan Trophy-Skulls: Description, Osteological Analyses and Motives
Cranial Modification, Bone Curation, and Skull Art: Implications for the Archaeology of Precontact Mortuary Ritual in Papua New Guinea.
Origins and Function of Woodland Period Cranial Modifications in the Great Lakes Region of North America.
Context, Curation, and Representation: Interpreting the Human Head in Ancient Peru
Emblems of Ethnic Identity: Cranial Modification Patterning Among the pre-Inka Chiribaya of Southern Peru
Ancient Peruvian Trophy Head Taking within a Social and Political Context.
Warriors, Priests, and the Animated Dead: Nasca Head-taking in its Sociocultural Contexts
The Changing Role of Trophy Heads on the South Coast of Peru
The Social Life of Wari Trophy Heads from the Ancient Andes
Niall Brady, Discovery Programme, Ireland.
Medieval Rural Settlement Studies: Pushing the Boundaries
FRIDAY MORNING
Session Abstract
This session is devoted to considering innovative ways in which the medieval rural landscape is being studied around Europe by archaeologists today. Papers are invited that set out the traditional approaches which have been followed in their respective geographic and temporal study areas, and then develop the current research in terms of the range of sources to hand, the techniques deployed to extract data from such sources, and the intellectual framework within which the research is being pursued. Key topics that may address broader concerns, which in turn can fuel a meaningful discussion, include communications, land and sea, rural-urban relations, and cultural interaction. It is so often the case that scholars work within a chronological vacuum, to say nothing of disciplinary isolation. It is hoped that by drawing on studies from across the medieval timeline, and by seeking innovative approaches, it may become possible to realize the degree to which rural settlement studies reveal continuities as well as discontinuities.
Air survey of early medieval hillforts in Bohemia
Flights of Discovery: the potential and problems of archaeological air survey in Ireland - with case studies from the arable zone.
Wealth from the Earth - Viking Age fields in Mikkeli, Eastern Finland
Plagues, Pollen and Platform Raths- a multi-proxy approach to rethinking the chronology of Early Christian Ireland.
Form Follows Function: some recently excavated souterrains in Ireland
“Through the mill”, the excavation of Raystown, County Meath and its significance in Early Medieval Ireland.
Peopling Landscape: Early Anglo-Saxon ‘census’ and regional variation
Shedding new light: The Discovery Programme’s Medieval Rural Settlement Project
Joanna Brück, Department of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Ireland.
Landscapes of Bronze Age Ireland in their European context
SATURDAY ALL DAY
The increase in developer-funded archaeology in Ireland over the past number of years has resulted in the discovery of a substantial number of significant Bronze Age sites. These allow us to move beyond the studies of artefact typology that have traditionally dominated the archaeology of the Irish Bronze Age and to provide a very different and more rounded image of the period. However, there have been few attempts to synthesise the results of recent excavations, and they have yet to enter general texts on Irish prehistory. As a result, our knowledge of Bronze Age settlement, for example, remains sketchy, and the wider landscape context of sites such as barrow cemeteries and hoards is poorly understood in many areas. In comparison, other parts of Europe have a longer history of large-scale developer-funded projects and these have greatly enhanced understanding of Bronze Age landscapes in many areas. This session presents the results of recent excavations and research on significant Irish Bronze Age sites and landscapes. It also includes a number of papers considering the interpretation of Bronze Age landscapes elsewhere in Europe; these will provide points of departure on which discussion of the Irish material can build.
How to excavate a Bronze Age cultural landscape.
Liminality and the management of space on Late Bronze Age settlements in Central and Eastern Slovenia.
How significant was my valley? River, settlement and monuments in the lowlands of eastern England.
Emerging Bronze Age landscapes in the Irish Midlands.
Recent findings at Charlesland, County Wicklow.
An emerging Bronze Age landscape around the Rock of Cashel, County Tipperary.
Fire, water, stone: a bronze age guessing game. Fulachta fiadh along the River Skane, County Meath.
Burnt mounds, houses and the social landscapes of Bronze Age Ireland.
New finds changing old ideas?
The Bronze Settlement at Corrstown, Co. Londonderry
A newly discovered Bronze Age settlement in County Cork
Beaker Settlement in Leinster.
A Middle Bronze Age enclosure complex at Rath, County Meath.
From Bronze Age to Iron Age. Change and continuity within the landscape of Rath, County Meath.
Barrows and ring-ditches - Bronze Age landscape foci.
Recent excavations at the site of the Tamlaght hoard: links with north-west Europe in the Navan landscape
K. Challis1, Prof. A.G. Brown2, C. Carey3, Dr A.J. Howard4
1Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, University of Birmingham, 2Department of Geography, University of Exeter, 3Department of Geography, University of Exeter, 4Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, University of Birmingham
Remote Sensing And Environmental Modelling In Alluvial Landscapes
THURSDAY MORNING
River valleys have always been the focus of intense human activity and occupation since, amongst other things, they provide fertile soils for agriculture, food resources, materials for building and corridors for migration and movement. Further, these valley floors have acted as natural sediment traps, which combined with high water tables, has led to the survival of some of the richest cultural landscapes within Europe. These landscapes preserve not only the physical remains of human occupation, but also evidence of land-use and climate derived from organic sediments.
However, alluvial landscapes are under increasing pressure from infrastructure development, urbanisation, aggregate extraction and increasingly from the impact of policies developed to lessen the effects of global warming, for example, the construction of flood defences.
The identification, quantification, prospection and management of archaeological resources within alluvial landscapes present great challenges for remote sensing, particularly when dealing with thickly stratified sedimentary sequences where burial of archaeology is a major issue.
This session seeks papers on all aspects of remote sensing and environmental modelling in alluvial landscapes. Particularly welcome are papers on the innovative use of ground based and airborne remote sensing, explanation of new techniques and case studies of environmental and stratigraphic modelling in alluvial landscapes.
The Geo-Archaeology of Land-Claim in the Estuarine Environment of Medieval Cork, Ireland.
Developing a Methodology for Obscured Urban Alluvial Landscapes
Urban Space And River: Tours and the Loire (Ixe–Xive)
Lidar In The Witham Valley, Lincolnshire: An Assessment of new Remote Sensing Techniques.
Tracing Anthropogenic and Geologic Landscape Evolution in The Ambracian Gulf, Greece: Results From Integrated Geoarchaeological and High Platform Remotely Sensed Data.
Predictive Modelling of Multi-Period Geoarchaeological Resources at A River Confluence
Getting to the bottom of it. Sub-Surface Modelling and Remote Sensing on the Aeolian Sands of the Vale of Pickering, Yorkshire, England.
A Multi-Sensor Approach to the assessment of the Buried Landscape of Heslerton.
Exploring for Alluvially Buried Archaeological Sites in the Upper Midwest, USA: A Methodological Comparison.
High Resolution Helicopter Borne Lidar in Upland River Valleys (reserve paper)
Gabriel Cooney (Dublin), Natalie Venclova (Prague)
Talking Archaeology: How archaeologists communicate, or don’t?
FRIDAY AFTERNOON
The aim of this session is to sustain and develop some of the important themes that emerged in a related session at EAA 2004 session. Communication by and between archaeologists in a European context should be a major concern for the profession and the EAA. If we cannot identify a common set of ideas, approaches and values can we have meaningful dialogue among archaeologists or hope to achieve communication with the public and decision-makers? If we cannot communciate the importance of archaeological research to the wider public will we find an increasing political reluctance to the expenditure of public money on archaeology? These problems often converge when there is a public controversy, such as the impact of development on an important site or landscape or when archaeological research created within a particular framework is translated for another or wider archaeological community. Themes that might help us to understand why we have problems with communication include the presence of different kinds of archaeological communities, the strength of archaeological research traditions at the level of the state or nation, the impact of different theoretical paradigms and the institutional framework and sector of the profession within which archaeologists work. It follows from this that communication among archaeologists needs to be considered at a number of levels. The papers help to take forward the discussion.
Introduction
Talking past each other
Building Bridges?
Communication from the other side of the big pond
Cultural imperialism and archaeology
Public and professional access to information and opinion: current policy at Antiquity
Talking to yourself or the importance of measuring post holes. A publisher's perspective on archaeological writing
Going for gold
María Cruz Berrocal1, Sara Fairén Jiménez2, George Nash3
1Palacio del Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Departamento de Prehistoria, CSIC, Serrano 13, 28001 Madrid, Spain, 2Palacio del Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Departamento de Prehistoria, CSIC, Serrano 13, 28001 Madrid, Spain, 3Centre for the Historic Environment, University of Bristol, UK and Gifford & Partners (UK).
Thinking About Rock-Art: A Search For Meaning In Landscape Construction
FRIDAY MORNING
Session Abstract
There has been a tendency in rock-art studies to locate and describe rock-art without little concern for the underlying mechanisms that commission and execute it, in particular reasons for why rock-art sites are chosen. It is now becoming more clear that, based on a group of good regional studies rock-art sites appear to be deliberately chosen for a number of reasons. In order to attempt to understand these landscape patterns, a series of research questions which trace the idea, meaning, inception, utilisation and demise of rock-art is promoted here. In the first instance, we propose to explore in this session questions such as:
Taking this as a baseline, this session will specifically focus on landscape from the various core areas of Europe and suggest that mechanisms used within rock-art and landscape are universal, what we would term as landscape construction.
We view a landscape construction as a system created with a sense and purpose and where rock-art sites appear to be deliberately sited to form distinctive distribution patterns. In particular, we are interested in the way rock-art may manipulate each of these core areas. It has been suggested that rock-art zones lie away from settlement and are sited in marginal areas, such as the intermediate rock slopes. However, it is important to emphasize that some rock-art zonation can overlap with and along side settlement. We suggest that it is here that social and economic mechanisms are responsible for the location and distribution of rock-art and that future reappraisal is required.
By incorporating a socio-economic landscape construct as well as looking at the more traditional ritual-symbolic mechanisms, one can acquire a deeper understanding of how rock-art interacts in primitive societies, in particular the way landscape and rock-art is appropriated. This session will discuss contemporary as well ancient rock-art forms.
Introduction: Rock art systems in local environments
Political economy of Neolithic rock art in Spain
Atlantic rock art and territoriality in Galicia (NW Iberian peninsula)
Rock art as markers for Hunting Territory?
The mobile hunter of the past and todays’ local hunter
The Fluity of Rock Art – Some Examples of Maritime Interaction during the Bronze Age in Bohuslän, Sweden
Rock Art and Prehistoric Routes
Rock art in Ireland: beyond the megaliths
Landscape: Mindscape: Soundscape: Rock Art Traditions in the Northernmost of Europe
Does Graffiti of Edwardian England hold the key to the placing of Prehistoric Rock-Art?
Keri Brown University of Manchester
Tamsin O’Connell, University of Cambridge
Putting the ‘Archaeology’ back into ‘Archaeological Science’ : A session on how scientific results are relevant to archaeological interpretation and vice versa.
Session abstract
Recent years have seen an explosion in the use of what can summarily be described as scientific (chemical, biological, etc.) approaches to archaeological problems. Whilst many of these studies have reinvigorated a number of long-standing debates, they have also resulted – as Andrew Jones has pointed out – in an increasing divergence of archaeological science from the more traditional interpretative archaeology. The emergence of two ‘cultures’, a scientific one and a broadly speaking interpretative one, both with their own agendas, meetings, vocabulary, has led many traditional archaeologists to feel suspicious of the newer breed of archaeological scientists. This general atmosphere of misunderstanding and to some degree, distrust have mitigated against the widespread use of scientific evidence in archaeological interpretations.
The session’s general aim is to introduce, explain and contextualise a wide range of scientific methods to an audience of largely non-scientists. Using case studies from Europe and possibly beyond, we would like speakers to explore the ways in which particular scientific applications and data are relevant and important to mainstream archaeological practice and interpretation, from both the scientific and interpretative archaeological perspective.
What is Archaeological Science for?
Easy bedfellows: Science and archaeology
Luminescence profiling as an aid to understanding sedimentary process: examples from Middle Palaeolithic sites in Russia and Ukraine
Electronic agency: The computer simulation of social life
Stable Isotope Evidence for "Special People" in the Early Historical Periods: Linking Diet and Society
Isotopes: Is one sample ever enough?
Genetics and the origins of agriculture,
You can take it with you: the analysis of EBA faience and its implications for its function in this world and the next.
Disasters And Solutions: Stories From Derryville Bog, Co. Tipperary, Ireland. The Lisheen Archaeological Project
Per Cornell and Fredrik Fahlander
Materiality and inter-societal confrontations
SATURDAY MORNING
Session Abstract
Generally, archaeologists have prevailed in understanding exchange and transformation of social information in terms of exchange in-between large scale given social totalities, neglecting the heterogeneity in the social frame. It is, however, very likely that different individuals and groups handle and/or appropriate new information in different ways.
In such a perspective, meetings and encounters involve misunderstanding, negotiation and direct confrontation with hitherto unfamiliar practices and materialities.
The confrontation may, in certain cases, just work as to confirm old ways of doing things. But in other situations it may give possibilities for the emergence of new kinds of social rationalities. Searching for alternative approaches, Homi Bhabha’s “third space”, Richard White’s discussion on the “middle-ground”, or “intersocietal structuration”, to speak with Anthony Giddens, may constitute starting points. The point of departure will be small-scale events, but not only in order to define specificity, but as a different way to get at large-scale patterns and processes. Focus is, thus, on repetitive events rather than singular happenings, and the goal is to search for different outcomes of intersocietal structuration.
Per Cornell & Fredrik Fahlander, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Materiality, social rationality and confrontations with the unknown
Materiality, ‘ambiguity’ and the unfamiliar in the archaeology of inter-societal confrontations: A case study from northwest Australia
If Old MacDonald Had A Sheep: Exploring the Role of Animal Husbandry in Defining Personal and Social Identities in Iron Age Hampshire, England.
Social interactions at the micro-level in Medieval Eastern Baltic
Dawn of a New Age
A microarchaeological approach to the social significance of Late Bronze Age burial practices: Age and Gender at the Lusatian Urnfield of Cottbus Alvensleben-Kaserne (Germany)
Islamic Glass in Northern Europe
The Stupa as social actant: orthodoxy vs. orthopraxi in Early Buddhism
Keeping up appearances. On the Northern Frontier in Scandinavian Funnel Beaker Times
Imperial Roman Monuments in the Cultural Landscape: meaning and its transmission across social groups through space and time.
Ann-Britt Falk (Lund) & Donata Maria Kyritz
Folk beliefs and practice in medieval lives
FRIDAY ALL DAY
The session is aimed at exploring the impact of folk beliefs in daily life. The medieval concept of the world included more than just the single voice of the Christian church and the cosmology of the time did not only contain heaven and hell but was also loaded with supernatural beings and practices related to them. One issue is the medieval reception of landscape where pre-historic monuments and places were of great importance for the people living among them. While the church tried to control the inner zone by christianising monuments and places, the diabolised monuments of the outer zone still functioned as landmarks in the perception of space and time. Permanent pagan monuments like burial mounds were not only visible in the landscape but also vital in the reshaping of the concept of the world. Another issue to be discussed is folk believes seen as a dynamic tradition where there is no clear boundary between paganism and Christianity. Folk beliefs were present in almost every aspect of daily life. A lot of rituals performed in housework probably had a pre-Christian origin. Some pagan rituals were adopted and modified to embrace Christian concepts, others simply continued through time in what had now become a Christian society. Some of these rituals can be traced in the archaeological records, but are difficult to interpret since they can be part of either a Christian or heathen context. The same ambiguity can be seen in medieval art, were many motifs might be explained in terms of both Christian and pre-Christian religion.
Place-names - a possibility of understanding the medieval and early-modern concept of ancient monuments?
Myths and folklore as aids in interpreting the prehistoric landscape at the Carrowkeel passage tomb complex, Co. Sligo, Ireland.
Oral tradition about landscape as indicator of ancient ritual sites / cults: the case of Rodik
Ethnoarchaeology and microhistory of a cultural landscape: the village of S. Pedro de Cereixa (Lugo, Galice, Spain).
Ar Tóir na Mílisigh: Accounts of the Milesian invasion in the oral folklore of Uíbh Ráthach and Corca Dhuibhne and their connection with archaeological monuments.
Folklore of Augszeme (Latvia) Hillforts
About the protection against evil and the power of tradition in medieval times – Christianity, heresy or folkbeliefs?
Brass pins, Textiles and shoe parts, recent research into a mixed assemblage from a votive pool in Mid Cornwall.
Magical and cult rituals on the basis of archaeo-botanical research
Pre-Christian and Christian: offering practices at holy stones in Setomaa, south-east Estonia
The Medieval Udmurt Sacred Sites
Sacrificial stones of the Northern Caucasus in the mediaeval ages (Religious Dualism among the Alans).
Symbolic meanings in the slip decoration of medieval redware pottery
Christine Finn, University of Bristol, UK
Tombs, treasures and boggy ground: invoking the past poetic
FRIDAY AFTERNOON (3.15)
This is a session coupling archaeology with poetry. It is a natural partnership in Ireland, where both major poets and lesser-known ones have drawn on the depths of landscape and archaeological finds. The intention here is to celebrate Ireland's rich heritage in this area, and also to encourage a broader look at the poetics of the past. Papers are welcomed from archaeologist-poets, archaeologists who enjoy poetry, those who have unearthed lost gems; also those who are critical of the past when put to metaphorical use.
This session will be complemented by a reading at a suitable venue (to be announced) in which all can participate. Friday night, 9 pm. Bring your poems to read.
Introduction
Film, "The Beginning of History", Crown Film Commission, 1946, Jacquetta Hawkes script.
Yeats, Hawkes and Heaney: an archaeological line
Strange Powers narrative film (Seamus Heaney)
Figures in a Landscape (BFI, 1953) (Jacquetta Hawkes prose-poem)
Reads and talks about a selection of his 'archaeological and antiquarian' poems.
In search of lost time: archaeological expression and the craft of writing
Discussion
Teresa Júdice Gamito (University of Algarve, Portugal), Ana Cristina Martins (Faculty of Arts, University of Lisbon, Portugal)
Between Amateurs and Archaeologists
FRIDAY MORNING
Session Abstract
The 19th century was no doubt one of the most important periods in the history of Mankind opening to the western societies large areas and regions geographically distant. Of course this process did not happen out of nothing or in an isolated form but was the product of a serial of events and interests that took place earlier. Among them we have to mention the Enlightenment interest and development as well as the Antiquarian movement of the precedent centuries.
Important to stress the rationalist and positivist way of thinking then enlarged to all forms of knowledge, and the opposite movement of romanticism. The antiquarian interests and curiosity were always present but the need to more precise data prevailed and active discussions were installed all over the western known world. The need to compare and study the different archaeological sites; to find out the similarities and dissimilarities of all regions; to check the research approaches other archaeologists were using; to collect and keep in large museums the evidence of past societies became an actual obsession to every researcher involved
Therefore, we invite all those doing research on the history of archaeology, on the development of a science nowadays autonomous on its own, to present papers that will illustrate the first steps of its pioneers, either in an Antiquarian or Archaeologist point of view, and their contribution for the development of research. Although we would privilege the role developed by individuals we would also praise the importance of special collections, museums and institutions, either at an international, national or regional level.
What is most important is their actual contribution for the development of archaeological science.
Gregorio Chil Y Naranjo (1831-1901): The making of Canarian prehistory within the European context
F. X. Franc (1838-1910) – From gardener to archaeologist
A quiet archaeology: Federico Halbherr
Estácio da Veiga, a fighter for modern Archaeology in Portugal (19th century)
NILS MÅNSSON MANDELGREN: a Swedish travelling antiquarian and ethnologist (1813-1899)
A new study on the father reverend Sebastien Ronzevalle’s role in the French archaeological politic in Syria-Lebanon at the turn of the twentieth century
Gowland and Munro: two British archaeological pioneers in Japan
Classical Antiquities and French Museums in the second half of the 19 th century: new visions about the implementation of the government’s policy
Juan Facundo Riaño y Montero and the Spanish Monumental Catalogue. A pioneer in the awareness of the Spanish Cultural Heritage
Royal Association of Portuguese Archaeologists and the national heritage during the 19th century
The Casa delle Vestali, Pompeii: Conservation and Presentation in the 18th/19th Centuries and Today
Dragos Gheorghiu, University of Arts in Bucharest, Romania, and George Nash, University of Bristol, UK
Ceramic traditions and clay cultures in the European Neolithic
THURSDAY AFTERNOON
Session Abstract
Within Europe there are a number of well-defined ceramic traditions that span the European Neolithic, the earliest being the Proto Sesklo (Greece) and Starcevo (Central Balkans) cultures of southern and Central Europe. Each tradition has distinct design coding as shape as well as use and provenance. Within each of these macro-traditions there are idiosyncratic changes in style and form that appear to be both spatial and temporal forming a series of micro-traditions.
Interestingly, the technological developments of a European tradition, in particular the way it evolves from east to west over, say, a 4,000 year period suggests less a diffusionist process and more a local development of technology. In other words, the firing and finishing techniques are not synchronous. The ad hoc way in which this assemblage has developed over this period suggests that style and technology is very much a regionalised indigenous affair with the very bare strands of technological knowledge transgressing the Neolithic core areas of Central/Southern and Western Europe.
This session will explore the geographic core areas of the European Neolithic and attempt to trace the way regional development took place. Furthermore, the session will also explore the regional variation in ceramic technology, in particular clay sourcing, paste composition and firing techniques.
Pottery of Hunter-Gatherers in Transition to Agriculture, illustrated by the Dutch Swifterbant Culture
Neolithic pottery in Galicia (4,500-2,500 cal BC). Towards a characterization of regional styles in the Iberian peninsula
Conservatism and Innovation in Ceramic Technology: The Case if Vadastra Tradition
Sediment Fraction Analysis at locations within Vadastra Parish, Southern Romania
Pottery Making in Neolithic Communities of Southern Italy: Toward a Technological and Social Interaction Model
The Hand that makes the Pot: Craft Traditions and Social Consequences in the Scandinavian Corded Ware Culture
Archaeometric Investigations on the Technological Aspects and Provenance of Neolithic Pottery (5th–4th Millennium BC) from Transylvania (Romania)
Neolithic Pottery from the area of Southern Poland. Examination with the use of Scanning Microscopy
Caroline Hamon and Benedicte Quilliec, UMR 7041 ArScan Protohistoire européenne, France
Hoards from the Neolithic to the Metal Ages in Europe: technical and codified practices.
Throughout Europe, from the Atlantic to the Black Sea, deposition of objects in earth or water was a frequent practice during Prehistory. While some of these hoards can easily be interpreted as funeral offerings, the signification of others is still discussed today.
The signification of hoarding (tools, weapons or ornaments) generally depends on the context of their discovery: settlements, humid areas, border areas. On a broad chronological and cultural scale, from the Neolithic to the Early Iron Age, hoards show recurrent characteristics despite their diverse expressions. Examining the contexts of these deposits, such practices appear as deliberate and as codified as funerary behaviour, with a votive or symbolic meaning. The quantity of hoards, their location and their composition (selection and number of objects) certainly correspond to specific rules and social or cultural needs. Interpretations are numerous: reserve of raw material, foundation ritual, religious, social or territorial markers of identity, sacred offerings to divinities or secular people. Nonetheless, these hypotheses are comparable from one period to another. The deposit of isolated objects and the deposit of associated objects of similar or different functions (“complex” hoards) take on various expressions, apparently specific to each context. The coherence of these archaeological assemblages lies in the codification of the arrangement of objects, which follows significant rituals. Thus, how can we interpret the repetition of deposit of objects of different nature? On the contrary, what value should be attributed to similar deposits in totally distinct contexts?
Besides, the study of objects also suggests that precise, codified acts have been carried out. Thus, the deliberate or non-deliberate breakage and even destruction of objects (lithic, metal and ceramic) are widespread. The technical signification of this practice (materials used, techniques of manufacture, superficial state of the objects) must be discussed, following detailed examination of the modes of manufacture, use, re-use and recycling of objects.
The act of deposit may express the need to extract an object from its “ traditional ” life cycle, in order to preserve it or, on the contrary, to destroy it partly or entirely. The precise study of the objects themselves (just shaped out, with use-wear, completely or partially destroyed) may help us re-define the signification of this practice.
In this session, we would like specialists of different periods and fields, to confront and discuss their observations. How are the technical signification and the expression of a specific ritual linked in the deposit gesture? What correlation can be made between the state of the objects and their deposit? Criteria must be defined in order to identify neglected and abandoned objects (domestic refuse, waste from workshop) and to help interpret symbolic spaces, either territorial (borderline, “doorway”) or social (settlements). How can archaeological contexts be used to differentiate these acts of deposit and how are they expressed in specific cultural or geographical contexts? Which archaeological clues can inform about the technical practices of hoards?
Earth, fire, water: aspects of the treatment and deposition of Scottish Late Bronze Age metalwork
Rethinking 'trade hoards': on the relationship between metalwork circulation and deposition the Bronze Age
Voluntary destructions of objects in Middle and Later Bronze Age hoards in the west of France.
Prehistoric flints as hoards: a case study from Bulgaria
The symbolic value of grinding stones hoards: technical properties of neolithic samples
Dépôts des lames en silex du IIIe millénaire avant notre ère
Material culture and context as composition: substances and incorporation in Bronze Age hoards
Doing away with dichotomies? Comparative use wear analysis of Early Bronze Age axes from Scotland
Hoards from Bronze age France: reflection of change in the metrological system through time
Iberian Psycho. Deliberate breaking in Bronze Age gold hoards of the Iberian Peninsula
Use, wear and destruction: treatment of bronze swords before deposition
Interpretation elements of deposits from LBA in Lorraine and Saar through technical studies (forming process and analyses).
Neolithic Depositions in the Northern Netherlands
Chair, Prof. A.F. Harding, President EAA
General Session: The Bronze Age
Modelling in spatial analysis of Bronze and Iron Age settlements in SW Poland
The kula and the Early Bronze Age of the Austrian Weinviertel
Back Pack or Snow Shoes? A new perspective on an ‘Otzi’ artefact
Personal Ornamentation in British Prehistory: keeping up appearances in mainland Britain
Wessex and the Middle Bronze Age ornament ‘horizon’ in southern England.
The Bronze Age Lithics of Ireland – Future research within a wider European context
The Bronze Age Ritual Monuments of Cork & Kerry: A new astronomical perspective
Is early Celtic art Celtic?
Romano-Celtic Religion in Central Balkans: Celtic cults in Upper Moesia during Roman reign (from I to IV century AD)
Elizabeth Wincott Heckett, Cork, and Eva Andersson, Lund
The Archaeology of Textiles and Clothing II
Session Abstract
Since the use of cloth, clothing and self decoration is behaviour exclusive to the human species it is an essential component of archaeological studies. Following on the wide-ranging papers presented at Lyon 2004 the textile session in Cork will develop and deepen the discussion with papers that will inform a more general audience of the scope and breadth of textile research.
The papers provide a wide perspective, correlating different aspects of the area of study, and covering a broad time span from the Neolithic through the Hellenistic and Roman to Post-Medieval periods. The session starts with a preview of the new Centre for Textile Research due to open in the University of Copenhagen in August 2005, and finishes with an exploration of the important dual realities and interrelationship of academic knowledge and creative/technical knowledge.
There are overviews of cloth finds and clothing types from particular geographic areas ranging from Islam in the Caucasus to headcoverings from Late Iron Age Finland, while other contributions cover general contexts that are technical, social or time-related. Topics include textile handicraft and technology in Scandinavia and Ireland, aspects of social organization and economics in such different situations as the Alpine Copper Age and Hellenistic and Roman times. Gender issues are explored through the organization of spinning in Eastern Europe.
This session intends to be interesting to all who want to inform themselves on the present state of textile studies as a basic component of material culture.
Centre for Textile Research in Copenhagen. From vision to mission
The social context of cloth in prehistoric societies: a case study of northern Italy and the Alpine region
“The Self Emblazoned:” Cloth and Cosmology in Copper Age Alpine Europe
Weaving identity, cultural belonging and textile production. 1600-1300 BC in Southern Scandinavia and Northern Germany.
The archaeological heritage of Roman textile production in Pannonia
Textiles, technology and ethnicity - a contribution to debates regarding the Jutish settlement in Kent, England, in the fifth and sixth centuries AD
Old Saxon textiles from Liebenau in Lower Saxony
Textiles in early Ireland: the tools of production
An Overview of Early Medieval Irish Textiles 600-1200AD: ’The Slender Thread over the Hand of a Skilled Woman’
Late Iron Age Headcoverings: A garment of regional speciality?
The Sleeping Beauty and the Spinning: Approaches to a ‘typical’ women’s housework in Eastern European Archaeology
"The people buried clad in linings"
An archaeological view on historic local costumes – How uniform were they?
Silk Paradise in the Northern Caucasus, (Iranian figured fabric of the 16th century
Theorizing Craftmanship
Sorin Hermon*, Franco Niccolucci* and Liisa Seppanen**
*Vast Lab, PIN scrl, University of Florence; **Turku University, Finland
Information Communication Technologies for the Research and Dissemination of Scientific Record – the Epoch Project and Beyond
Introduction to Epoch
Tools for Stratigraphic Data Recording
Standards in the Archaeological Scientific Research
Archaeological Documentation for the Semantic Web
Image-based Modelling Applied to Archaeological Field Data Acquisition
On Site Reconstruction Experience
Multimodal Interface for Safe Presentation of Valuable Objects
Avatar Based Interactive Storytelling
Urban Modelling and Multilingual Avatars
e-Tourism through Cultural Routes
Implementing Results of the ARCO Project in Archaeological Museums
New Possibilities with Digital Imaging in Fieldwork
Incorporating 3D Documentation into Excavation Strategies – The Gråfjell Project, Eastern Norway
The 4D-QTVR Visualization and the FIT-Methods in the Routines of a Field Architect
The Use of Experimental Archaeology: Virtual Visualization and Real Reconstruction from Archaeological Evidence
A Radical Approach to Stonehenge
General Remarks and Conclusions
Gail Higginbottom (Glamorgan Gwent Archaeological Trust, UK) & Hannah Cobb (University of Manchester, UK)
Time and time again: notions of time in prehistory
We think time needs to be seen again. There are many ways of looking at what time is or can be and what time was for people in non-literate societies of the past. Did people think of time as a separate quality of their world, as an instance or an occasion, or even measure or divide their world according to various notions of what time was? What might these notions of time been and how were they experienced? At a minimum, previous studies seem to suggest that it involves ideas of sequence and duration (Goody 1991: 31) and/or occurrences and events, but as phenomenologists have shown us time involves Being and vice versa. Recently geography too is reassessing time, with May’s and Thrift’s (along with their contributors’) notion of TimeSpace (May and Thrift: 2001) where activities can create time and space and who, like Lucas (2005), illustrate that time is indeed multidimensional.
This geographically and chronologically open session seeks to explore possible notions of time in prehistory, with a particular focus on how approaches to this are developing in the twenty-first century. We hope the session will address both philosophical aspects as well as those suggested by current material culture research. It will deal with the way time may have been perceived and understood. Naturally this entails a discussion of how we conceive of time and the times of the past and how we might be able to discover the notions of time in prehistory. Ultimately we hope to move towards a greater understanding of time in the lives of those that lived in the various prehistoric worlds.
Time of Matter, Time of Memory: What is archaeological Time?
Time and fluid identites
Time to say Goodbye: time, persons, and changing perceptions of identity in the late Mesolithic of the Northern Irish Sea Basin
Once upon a time ...
The world begins here, the world ends here: construction of observers of time on the inner isles of western Scotland
Interpreting place of burial over time
Time and Time Again in Struggles for Epistemic and Political Sovereignty
Cornelius Holtdorf, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Lund, and George S. Smith, National Park Service, Tallahassee, Florida
What are we to make of the popular appeal of archaeology in the media and popular culture?
References to archaeology and the archaeological past abound in popular culture and the media throughout the Western world and indeed beyond (some key words as potent reminders: Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, Jean Auel’s Ayla, Discovery Channel documentaries, Kennewick Man, Erich von Däniken, Time Team TV series in UK). At the same time, the professional field of archaeology faces profound challenges. Sites are destroyed for a host of different reasons. Many archaeological institutions have to operate with cut budgets. The former primary goals of enlightenment and education seem to give way, at least in practice, to ambitions of providing experiences and entertainment. Archaeologists need to ask precisely what is going on in the large picture. Is popular archaeology launching a (possibly hostile) take-over of the entire field of archaeology? If successful, which long-term consequences might that have? Does professional archaeology need to ”fight back”? If yes, what strategies might work best in the current circumstances?
The short and provocative contributions in this conference session each sketch out some concerns and issues that are relevant in the way professional archaeologists relate to the popular appeal of both archaeology and the archaeological past in the media and popular culture. Each paper will present a concrete case-study but also address general trends and possible future scenarios.
Introduction by session organizers
The role of archaeology in presenting the past to the public
Learning from Las Vegas: archaeology as a theme
Sidling up to the Archaeology of Western Saloons: Historical Archaeology Takes on the Wild of the West
Archaeology and the “Educated Public”: A Perspective from the University
History in Computer Games
Fiction as heritage, heritage as fiction
Same story, different spin: British national press coverage of the 1998 Sterkfontein hominid fossil discovery
Archaeology and self-actualisation
Tove Hjørungdal & Åsa Gillberg, Göteborg University, Sweden
PEDAGOGY IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL EDUCATION
FRIDAY MORNING
Session abstract
The session aims to discuss a broad spectrum of pedagogical practices and ideas within as many archaeological areas as possible. It includes pedagogy in tertiary university education, as well as the education of children in schools and museums, and the public relations of heritage management.
European countries have their particular traditions of education and teaching, traditions that in various ways will be transformed through the implementation of the Bologna process. This concerns universities, and as such one side of the pedagogical coin.
Another side of the pedagogical coin is the extensive practices and traditions of the archaeological education of children in e g. France, and the active public relations in e.g England.
Focus will be on alternative, interrogating, pedagogies of learning, as different to traditional and authoritarian ways of teaching. We find student and children integrating pedagogies to be of particular interest, that is to say different ways of "learning by doing", and various methods of peer teaching.
Student integrating methods in archaeological field courses
Field archaeology as a pedagogical instrument
Learning and Teaching archaeology through Museum visits
Stakes of comprehension and protection of Heritage: importance of Archaeology at school and outside school. The example of Grand-Pressigny (Indre-et-Loire. France)
Greek archaeology, education, archaeological books, children, teenagers
The archaeological club at Suwaliki Museum, Poland, after 28 years of actitivity
Elizabeth Jerem, University of Miskolc/Archaeolingua Foundation, and Thomas Meier, Institut für Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie und Provinzialrömische Archäologie, Universität München
In 2000 the countries of the EU have agreed on the European Landscape Convention, which today is basis of almost any landscape action in the European Union. As archaeology and heritage management are more and more discovering "landscape" as a subject of interest the ELC is of growing importance to their daily work. However, the ELC is the negotiated product of a "landscape"-model, based on the very specific constructs and ideologies of modern Europe. Analyzing these basics will be a vital issue to clarify our future strategies of action in concrete landscape research and heritage management.
As guidelines for comparative analysis we suggest the following questions:
Some introductory thoughts on "landscape" ideology
Bridging the gap between archaeological landscape analysis and local perceptions - a heritage perspective.
Landscape in prehistoric archaeology: comparing Western and Eastern paradigms
Contextualising the Phenomenology of Landscape
Continuity of lowland prehistoric settlement activities in the view of aerial survey: interpreting the cropmarked landscape
From Fürstensitze to ritualised landscapes: Prolegomena for new directions in the archaeology of West Hallstatt societies
Place names and folk landscapes in Southern Germany as archaeological resources
A radical approach to Stonehenge
Tomasz Kalicki, Institute of Geography and Spatial Organisation, Polish Academy of Sciences, Cracow, Poland & Bartłomiej Szmoniewsk, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Cracow Branch, Cracow, Poland
Settlement And Morphology
Morphology is one of the main factors of the environment. However, another factors such as hydrology, soil, vegetation etc. are strongly influenced by relief and morphogenetic processes at global, regional and local scales. Human activity has always caused morphoclimatic zones. These zones changed during the Late Glacial and the Holocene creating different environments for man. It caused a significantly different settlement pattern from Neolithic up until the present-day. Also, through the creation of new "anthropogenic" forms and processes, human activity modified the rate of natural morphogenetic processes. These interdisciplinary problems are cross-border and timeless and would therefore like to invite specialists from around Europe. The main subject of the session will be reconstruction of the relationship between morphology and location of archaeological sites and the influence of settlements on relief evolution from the Palaeolithic to Middle Ages.
Interdisciplinary studies at local and regional scales with geomorphological and archaeological data can help us to recognise human activity in different morphological regions and forms. It is very important to compare the anthropogenic activity on different mezoform such as river valleys and watershed areas and on microforms ie. slopes, terraces and flood plains.
This session will concentrate on:
Settlements, economic activities and geomorphology in North coastal Etruria
Andornaktálya, Zúgó-Dűlő - Upper Palaeolithic Archaeological Site: geomorphology and stratigraphy
Early Neolithic settlement pattern and its influence on morphology in Eastern Slovakian Lowland
The reflection of settlement phases in alluvial sediments of the Upper Dnister basin – Carpathians Foreland, western Ukraine
Anthropogenic landforms connected with prehistoric and historic settlement as an indicator of relief evolution – a case study from Polish Carpathian Mts.
Relief and settlement on the Ojców Upland (Southern Poland) in the Roman and Early Migration periods
Relief and the Early Medieval hill forts from Małopolska Upland (S-Poland)
Neoholocene anthropogenic alluviation in river valleys of the Holy Cross Mts. (central Poland)
Morphological evidences of the human impact on natural environment in Poland (from 7000 BP to 2000 AD)
Geomorphological conditions of the location of prehistoric settlement in Kashubian lakeland and northern Tuchola Forest (northern Poland)
Marcus Brittain and Stephanie Koerner (University of Manchester, UK)
Iconoclash and Archaeological Image Wars. Beyond Responses to 'Crises of Interpretation' the Treat 'State of Emergency' as Norm
SATURDAY
Session Abstract
The last century has seen academia experience a series of 'crises [in the] of interpretation [of sources of the authority]' of most influentially opposed paradigms for research and teaching. Today, debates over the causes and consequences of these crises proliferate across increasingly specialised cross-disciplinary:
The expression 'crises of interpretation' comes from works of Walter Benjamin (1992, [1936], 1978 [1937], 1994 [1940], 1977) that 'comb against the grain' 'standard' accounts of the 'Birth of Modernity' - posing questions about the conditions under which 'state of emergency' can and has become a normative principle, and the ways in which colonialist, imperialist and nationalist political ideologies render invisible the barbarity of what they call 'civilising' processes.
Benjamin spoke too early and too late. Increasingly phantasmagorical ideologies have been employed to obscure the marginalisation, exploitation and oppression, even until death, of 'minorities'.
Starting in 1949, Theodore Adorno (1973) put forward his influential arguments concerning crises facing 'representation.' Concrete events had undermined the credibility of any claims to be able to 'clean the slate' (to 'start again from scratch') – and establish a timeless, placeless universally agreed-upon arbiter of what is common in the world we live in common. Critical theory, Adorno said, faced with the final stage of the 'dialectic' of 'culture and barbarism.'
The 1960s saw 'crises of interpretation' motivate critiques of images of the First, Second and Third Worlds' that render invisible the barbaric impacts on the 'Third' of the history of the political, economic and cultural hegemony of the 'First and Second'. But key issues have recurrently been overshadowed, by disputes over 'analytic,' 'continental' and 'social (or critical theory)' paradigms for research and teaching.
Today, as many barriers created by this tripartite cosmos-polis collapse, 'crises of interpretation' occur arising in tandem with the explosion of political policy, academic and media attention to images of 'globalisation and multi-culturalism' and its 'public understanding.' In what concerns archaeology, debates over 'agency and structure,' 'material culture,' and the 'efficacy of symbolic forms' expand across divisions between the contents and contexts of research and teaching. The range of images contested is expanding too, from archaeologist's images of the past, to images arising from interpretations given to archaeological materials by commercial industries, political interest groups, etc., to images of archaeologists proliferating across diverse public media. Several issues posed relate to questions Benjamin's works raised that are being taken up in such projects as those represented in the exhibition catalogue: Iconoclash: Beyond Wars of Religions, Science and Art (Latour and Weibel: 2002). This session seeks to provide a context for exploring some of these and related issues suggested by speakers.
Introduction
The LANCEWADPLAN-Project. A Multilateral Project in Cultural Heritage Landscape and its Socio-Political Background
Here is Not All There: Captivating Differences and Time-Image Repetitions in Museum Space
The Shifting Place of Order and Chaos in Mesolithic Archaeology
Imaging Sameness: 'Style' and the Supposed 'Derivation' of 'Low' and 'High' Iron Age Cultures
Artefact and Image: Archaeology and the Crisis of (Re)Presentation of the Past
'The Truth is Out There': Thoughts on The Da Vinci Code and Perceptions of the Past
Intersubjectivity and the Meaning of Things
Doing Archaeology in the High-/Post-Modern World as "Academics"
‘Artificial Reality’ and Politics of Digital Archaeological Representation
Walter Benjamin and Archaeology: the Archaeology of the Present
Misunderstanding 'Public' Misunderstanding? Or, Iconoclasm as a 'Cultural System'?
Discussant
The Eurasian Steppe in the Copper and Bronze Age
Oleg Mochalov and Pavel Kouznetsov
The term " Eurasian steppe" traditionally refers to the broad valleys and plains that make up the region between the Southern Siberia and Altai in the East and the lower Danube in the West. The forest zone borders this region to the north, while the Caspian and Black Sea coasts and Mongolia make up the southern border. This region, including such famous rivers as the Volga, Don, Dnieper and Ural, was occupied by different stock breeding groups throughout the whole Copper and Bronze Age. Unfortunately, the eastern part of the European Steppe is often not considered to be part of the whole, as is attested by the fact that this eastern most region is generally not included in Western European and American maps of Europe. The "European steppe" also includes the transitional forest-steppe zone. While the groups that inhabited the forest-steppe were closer to the steppe groups culturally, they interacted with other groups as well. The forest-steppe zone, mixing steppe and forest landscapes, was a region where steppe stock breeders and local forest tribes interacted with one another, creating unique and rich cultures that reflected this contact such as the Tripolskaya, Srednestogovskaya, Yamnaya, Poltavkinskaya, Katakombnaya, Abashevskaya, Potapovskaya, Srubnaya, Andronovskaya, and Okunevskaya culture groups. The forest-steppe zone and the northern steppe are of particular interest to researchers, because it is the forest-steppe that was the nexus for interaction of different emerging groups during the Bronze Age. Thus, this session will be interested in questions concerning the climate, ecology and economy of northern steppe and forest-steppe. The session will also focus on new methods and techniques that are being used to understand this region better archaeologically, and on the results of recent excavations in the European steppe. Only papers that describe and discuss results of research that either change current perceptions of the region or integrate several new scientific methods will be accepted for presentation. Some papers will focus on the problems of Middle and Late Bronze Age in general, and on the origin of Late Bronze Age in Eastern European steppe and forest-steppe, in particular. Many papers will present the results of collaborative projects of scholars from many countries of the world concerning archaeology, physical anthropology, paleoecology and geoarchaeology. The chronology of the cultures and their economies will also be of particular interest.
Caspian-Volga and Pontic Steppe Regions: Comparative Analysis of the Development in the Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age.
The dynamics of the ornamentation painted pottery as index of development cultures (samples Trypilya-Cucuteni and Anasazi)
The tribes of the yamnaya culture in the steppe zone of the Eastern Europe: The beginning of the wheel transport
Ceramic areas of the Bronze Age in eastern part of Europe: the distribution of types
Sickles and Seeds: Making Sense of The Macrobotanical Remains from Kibit 1
Living and Working in the Forest-Steppe during the Late Bronze Age: An In-Depth Look at Kibit 1
The Late Bronze Age and Iron Age Evolution of Basal Motifs
Archaeogeophysics as a method of historical heritage protection and archaeological remains study (integrated research of the Bronze Age sites of steppe zone of Ural region)
Reconstruction and computer modeling of pre-historic observatories
Making Metal, Making Value
Dr Michael Ryan, Chairman of The Discovery Programme (Chair), and Dr Brian Lacey, CEO, The Discovery Programme
Research in a time of development-led archaeology
Session Abstract
Many will agree that there is poor professional integration between the growing sector of development-led and purely research-oriented archaeology . This session will examine how best change can be directed at the goal of improving knowledge creation, which is the aim of all archaeology.
There are many aspects of this issue: e.g. the absence of agreed research agendas, with consequent failure to connect the huge volume of gathered data with existing knowledge. Other issues include: appropriate funding and the fact that developers often perceive their role only as the orderly removal of the 'problem', with minimal post –excavation analysis and no involvement with the intellectual content of the outcome or its public dissemination.
However, it is clear also that excellent research can be undertaken in the development-led sector and that every effort should be made to link the two sectors, to the advantage of all.
Archaeological discovery on national road schemes in south-east Ireland - the implications for the identification and management of Ireland's archaeological heritage
The Dublin Module of the Discovery Programme’s Medieval Rural Settlement Project
Rescue and Research Archaeology – Are they mutually exclusive?
Archaeological landscapes, a question of perception
Gas pipeline investigation in Ireland since 1977: contribution to the archaeological record
Big questions and the tyranny of details
Neolithic – general session
Expanding the Near Eastern Neolithic World to the Islands
Fragmented Meanings: Bodies and Material Culture in the Neolithic Near East
Neolithic landscapes and settlements
Identifying key areas and controlling data scaled up to larger regions. An example from the early Neolithic period (Bandkeramik) in the Rhineland/Germany
GIS based techniques to estimate prehistoric population densities. An example from the earliest Neolithic culture in Germany (Bandkeramik).
Conceiving Place in Neolithic Europe: A Contextual Approach to Circular Enclosures
Neolithic communities on the peripheries of the Kuiavian cultural mesoregion (Mid-western Poland)
Similarities and differences of the morphology and the landscape siting of the portal tombs in Ireland, Wales and Cornwall
The attractive force – Gallery-Graves in the Landscape
Sarah May and Sefryn Penrose
Roads as Archaeology
Session Abstract
Despite the key role that the archaeology of road schemes is now playing in the discipline there has been remarkably little recent discussion of roads as subjects of archaeology themselves. Roads, tracks and routes all lead us to think on the construction and maintenance of landscapes and their political context. At the beginning of the 21 st century, the political context of road construction has been explicit. The urban development of the British motorway project, or the passage of the M3 near Tara, illustrate the alignment of roads with hierarchies of power. This echoes the administerial and military role of Roman roads stitching and maintaining an empire. Of course not all roads are built by a centralising state. Wetland excavations across northwest Europe have uncovered a range of roads, tracks and other routeways that points to their complex links between people and places. The in-betweenness of roads offers the possibility of interesting archaeological journeys. This session aims to address the archaeology of roads across as wide an area and as broad a timespan as possible.
Roman Roads in the Adriatic Hinterland
The Roman Road Naissus - Lissus to the Western Border of Upper Moesian Dardania
Stukeley and the Princess: the Roman and 18 th century military roads along Hadrian’s Wall
Roads and Communication in South-Eastern Estonia during the Late Iron Age and the Middle Ages (800–1500)
Roads to nowhere? Wetland routes and backwaters
Roads? Flexibility or continuity in a peripheral community in northern Sweden
Medieval Kerdery: Transit point from Asia to Europe
The Silk Road: Traders and tourists in Central Asia
Things on the move: Worlds past and present made through wheels
Thomas Telford's Holyhead Road in North Wales: Archaeological survey and management of an historic road still in current use
The M32 - Superhighway for the Seventies
Tara and the Planned M3
‘A Walk on the Wild Side’: About movements, spaces and places in a landscape network
Session summary, discussion and response
Sarah McCarthy & Kalliopi Fouseki
Interpreting perspectives: the perception of heritage as object versus place
Session Abstract
A central tension within heritage site management arises from the contextualisation of the heritage as either object or place. This perceived dichotomy forms the basis for subsequent management strategies and processes which, in turn, serve to reinforce the initial point of view. This session aims to examine and compare the different ways in which heritage artefacts and sites are placed in context, and analyses the implications of contextualisation for how sites and artefacts are accessed, both physically and intellectually, through their presentation, management and use. The core themes are perception and interpretation, as they relate to archaeological artefacts and sites, and these provide the framework for the exploration of issues such as intangibility, materiality, object versus place-centred approaches, cultural biographies, authenticity, conflict and dissonance.
The themes will be examined through a number of European and internationally-based case studies that are concerned with, for example:
The papers within the session come from the disciplines of heritage site management, conservation, museology, public archaeology and heritage business consultancy, each of which are inherently concerned with how the contexts of heritage sites and objects are negotiated and used. In achieving a greater understanding of the many different ways in which people perceive, identify with, access and situate artefacts of the past, we will be better equipped to assess the implications of pertaining interpretive and management practices. The next step is to work towards the development of strategies which increase the accessibility of sites and artefacts while maximising the integrity of their contexts.
Context vs materiality of the heritage site: A case study of a Roman archaeological site in Somma Vesuviana, Italy
Art or archaeology? The conservation of architectural ruins and archaeological sites in the modern city
The Ickworth Estate
Mount Athos treasury exhibitions: negotiation and conflict in the interpretation and presentation of ‘sacred’ artefacts
Recreating the “original” archaeological context: The case of ‘in situ museums’
Monument conservation and interpretation: the role of anastylosis in achieving interpretation and the debates that are subsequently raised.
Excavating fictions
Robina McNeil, Manchester
Cities in Ascendancy
Session Theme
Towns are like electronic transformers. They increase tension, accelerate the rhythm of exchange and constantly recharge human life’ (Fernand Braudel)’.
Introduction and welcome and resume of last year’s conference
Genesis and Evolution of a Celtic, Roman and Medieval Littoral Town Guerande in France
Success or failure: settlements in transition in northern England
The evidence for Early Viking-Age Norse fortifications in Ireland in the light of recent research
Early Christianity and urbanization in the Province of Östergötland, Sweden
Elblag in the 13 th Century in the light of archaeological sources
Cities In Ascendancy – Cork and Waterford in the Medieval and Post Medieval Periods
Timber framed houses and the images of merchants and artisans
The Grand Canal and urban developments in the Irish midlands
Michael Monk, Department of Archaeology, University College Cork, Ireland
General Session - 'Environment, Heritage and Archaeology'
As the title of this session, implies it includes a diverse range of papers. The first four papers to be presented (Elders, Brzozowski and Siemaszako; Koivisto; Steen, Bünz, Wiedercrantz) relate to archaeological cultural resource management issues and the public perception/knowledge of archaeology. These are then followed by two papers that relate to later European prehistory and wetland archaeology (Pydyn; Grossman, Piotrowski and Zajaczkowski). The final paper by Morris raises questions of how we interpret the archaeological record and specifically articulated animal bone groups.
The Archaeology of Christianity in Europe - Management and Research Issues
Szwajcaria Project: The archaeological centre of research, exhibition and education, connected with a burial ground in Szwajcaria, near Suwalki, North East Poland
Stone cairns and flying squirrels - how to combine archaeological and environmental values
Cultural heritage for everyone?
Living by the water - constructing the waterborne landscape in the late European prehistory
Results of latest archaeological and interdisciplinary studies in Biskupin microregion, Poland
Interpretation of Associated Bone Groups, problems and potential
Eileen Murphy, School of Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University Belfast
Deviant burial practices in the archaeological record
Session Abstract
It is recognised that certain individuals in a variety of archaeological cultures from diverse time periods and geographical locations have been accorded different treatment in burial relative to other members of society. These individuals can include criminals, women who died during childbirth, unbaptised infants, people with disabilities, and supposed revenants. Such burials can be identifiable in the archaeological record from an examination of the location and external characteristics of the grave site. Furthermore, the position of the body in addition to its association with unusual grave goods can be a further feature of deviant burials. The motivation behind these often exclusionary burial practices is also diverse and can be associated with a wide variety of different social and religious beliefs. The objective of the session is to bring together researchers who have studied abnormal burials so that a clearer understanding can be gained concerning the nature of the people involved and their burial contexts within the broader social and religious beliefs of the society from which they each originated.
The study of deviant burial rites in German-language archaeology
Odd One Out? Reanalysis of Early Neolithic Human Skeletal Remains from Caves in Yorkshire
Ritual inhumation of children at the Geto-Dacians. Archaeological approach.
Unusual Burials and Necrophobia: an Insight into the Burial Archaeology of Fear
Aspects of deviant burial in Roman Britain
The landscape archaeology of deviant burial: perspectives from Early Medieval England
Off with their heads: Archaeological and osteological evidence from an Anglo-Saxon execution cemetery at Walkington Wold, East Yorkshire
Charcoal burials: an Early Medieval minority burial rite
The cross and the grave: the development of churchyard burial in Anglo-Saxon Wessex, c. 700-1100AD
Unusual life, unusual death and the fate of the corpse: a case study from dynastic Europe
Children’s burial grounds in Ireland
Grief, Grievance and Grandeur: An Eighteenth-Century Mausoleum in Mainham, Co. Kildare
Kristian Kristiansen (chair) Gothenburg, Sweden, and Kristin Oma, Southampton, UK
The formation of the household in the Bronze Age
The project “Emergence of European Communities” (hereafter EOEC) incorporates three field projects: Tanum in Sweden, Százhalombatta in Hungary and Monte Polizzo on Sicily.
Working with the different projects creates a unique possibility for comparative studies of the development and formation of the household applying various archaeological methods to approach the household from different angles, both regarding approach and methodology. The main emphasis of this session is upon the formation and development of the household, the notion of the household not necessarily being confined by the house.
Results from the three projects will be presented. The session is also open for papers and discussions that embrace the wider topics of the EOEC.
Following up the session given by EOEC in the 10th annual EAA meeting in Lyon 2004, titled “The formation of political unities”, this year’s session elaborates upon the topics that were presented in Lyon, and also introduces new topics. Papers will be given by senior project members and PhD students who are funded by the EU.
Introduction
Digital documentation – How to bring chaos into order
Spatial organisation of plant processing on a Bronze Age tell settlement in Hungary. Different crop-processing stages and storing activities at Százhalombatta-Földvár.
Technological choices: a process that binds people together
Micromorphology and chemistry of space at the Százhalombatta Bronze Age tell settlement, Hungary
House 1 from Monte Polizzo, Sicily: from excavation of a ruin to interpreting a household
The human-animal relationship: the construction of the household
Dwelling burial urns. Houses, symbols and the North European Late Bronze Age House Urns practice.
The context of Rock Art in Tanum
Dáire O'Rourke, Senior Archaeologist, National Roads Authority, Dublin
Models of archaeological organisation on highways projects
Much archaeological work in Europe is now being carried out as a result of development, whether State sponsored infrastructural developments or large-scale private commercial developments. This has led to an explosion in relation to commercial archaeology and in relation to the archaeological resource that is being generated. It has also led to an explosion in the numbers of excavations being carried out in many countries. It has led to increased pressure on private sector archaeological companies but also on the State and State Agency' archaeological staff and procedures. The nature and scale of the new archaeological excavations being carried out have in turn generated new data, which is challenging accepted academic research frameworks. These excavations are also revealing the extent to which the known archaeological heritage is in many ways only the tip of the iceberg.
With major Highways being built in Ireland, at an annual roads' budget of c. €1.5bn, it has led to the necessity to develop archaeological risk assessment strategies to allow the advance identification of the known and previously unknown archaeological resource. Advance archaeological testing of major landscapes have been and are currently undertaken in Ireland prior to a roads contractor coming on site. This has led to large-scale use of geophysical techniques and test trenching. Now, over 95% of all archaeological investigation and excavation is carried out prior to the main roads contractor being appointed. This allows a more structured approach to the management of the mitigation of the archaeological resource.
Models of Archaeological Organisation on Highways Projects; The Irish Experience.
Theoretical analysis of test-trenching works on the Monasterevin By-pass, Co Kildare.
Major infrastructure projects in north-eastern France. A comparison of methods and results of "linear" (roads, etc.) and "wide area" (airports, etc) projects.
The Highways Agency (England) approach to the cultural heritage topic in EIA.
The management structures in and experience from the highway project E4 Uppland, Sweden.
Highways and cultural heritage in England - the past and the future.
Changing Times: Changing Approaches, Management of Archaeological Projects on NRA Road Schemes
Ivan Pavlů, Archaeological Institute CAS CR, and Petr Kvetina, Archaeological Institute Prague, Czech Republic
GIS analysis within a single site
The changing theoretical and methodological frame of archaeology causes the discrepancies between traditional explanations of the finds and the evaluation of artefacts from a different piont of view. Recently also the formative processes of the artefactual refuse are more taken into consideration. Apart from the chronological questions, the new problems (e.g. of spacial distribution) are analysed. Extracting of "historical conclusions" from isolated artefacts is replaced with multidimensional analysis of artefacts on the geographical, economical and symbolical background of a culture. Methodology of GIS can be broadly used also for one site analyses. We are intended to evaluate critically present argumentation and to extract the most acceptable explanations as an initial set of hypotheses. This will be encountered with the space analysis of artefactual refuse using G1S methods within the one site geographical details, that we prefere to call archaeogeography or microgeography.
To the recognition of oppida - spatial analysis of late La Tène enclosed farmstead
Spatial database of one site excavations based on GIS
The story of settlement refuse. GIS intra-site analysis of a Bronze Age settlement site
MicroGIS Evidence and Analysis of Settlement Refuse
Spatial distribution of ceramic attributes within a settlement refuse
Title to be announced
Sarah Ralph, University of Cambridge, UK
Chewing It Over: New Perspectives on Food and Drink
Session Abstract
What and how we consume is socially, culturally, economically and politically motivated. The consumption of different products communicates different meanings in different societies and within different social contexts. The destruction and discard of what we consume may be considered important ways in which social groups both define and create their own social relationships and identities.
Food and drink are forms of material culture and as with all archaeological materials they cannot be divorced from the social and cultural context in which they were produced, consumed and discarded. The analysis of how food and drink is processed, prepared, consumed and discarded will aid our understanding of how individual social groups view the consumption of food and drink and the basic categories of the world in which those social groups live.
The very foundations of archaeological investigations are the residues of food preparation and the consumption of that food; animal bones, pottery, plant remains (micro and macro), landscape exploitation, settlement patterns and grave goods.
Traditionally the study of food and drink has produced work largely directed towards concerns with subsistence, production and economy. Both food and drink are deeply implicated in the politics and construction of cultural and social identity and should be viewed more than just a source of nourishment. A much broader analytical arena is required.
This session will explore this theme more widely and aims to discuss new approaches and attitudes towards food and drink in order to explore a variety of questions concerning consumption as opposed to the traditional issues of subsistence, production and economy. I would hope that this session could draw on examples from wide range of regions and different time periods in order to produce a collection of papers that reveal the diversity of research into the consumption of food and drink.
Interpreting Iron Age and Roman Coastal Salt Production sites in Southern Britain
Wine, beer, and the Other in the Iberian Peninsula’s Late Iron Age: A case study from the Celtiberian city-state of Segeda I (Zaragoza, Spain)
Eat, Drink and be Roman? Feasting in later Iron Age and Early Roman Britain
Food for Thought: Campanian Still Lifes
Narratives of Food Procurement and Cultural Identity in Roman Britain
An Archaeology of Overindulgence
Ethical authenticity, artefacts and value systems
Community Spirit: distilling Scottish identity, the case of Strathblane
Diane Scherzler, Stuttgart, Germany, and Dr Gerald Wait, Southampton, UK
Archaeology and the Popular Media: A Workshop on Getting the Message Across
Session Abstract
Archaeologists know that the media are very important for them. But the relations between scientists and press are often difficult: Most archaeologists lack formal training and experience in how to cooperate with the media. Many of them still believe that dealing with the media would be similar to speaking to students or with colleagues. So many chances to call attention to our scientific fields are missed. Journalists - on the other hand - sometimes over-simplify or misunderstand facts scientists gave them. The purpose of this workshop is to familiarize archaeologists with effective and successful strategies in working with the media.
We learn about the different kinds and needs of media: Television, radio, print, and online. We will answer such questions as:
This is a training session that lasts one full day and is divided into two parts; with this people who can attend only in the morning or only in the afternoon can participate, too . The workshop will include several practical exercises so that everyone will have some ‘hands-on’ experience.
Participants with and without experience in press-work are welcome.
Organisers/Trainers are:
Diane Scherzler an archaeologist, Media Advisor Europe for the World Archaeological Congress, and editor for German Public Radio &Television.
Gerry Wait is Director of Heritage and Archaeology in a multi-disciplinary consulting company with offices around the world.
Mihaela Simion (Romanian National History Museum, Bucharest, Romania), and Beatrice Cauuet (Université Toulouse Le Mirail, UTAH, France)
Preventive Archaeology in a mining investment context- Case study - Roşia Montană, Romania
Session abstract
The session is dedicated to a subject of special interest for the European Association of Archaeologists and not only. Besides, during the former meeting of the EAA in Lyon, in September 2004, one of the issues of the closing session was precisely this discussion.
Starting with 2001, due to a planned mining investment (S. C. Roşia Montană Gold Corporation S. A.), the Romanian Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs created a National Research Program, named Alburnus Maior, after the ancient name of the modern Roşia Montană. Although it represents the discovery place of important archaeological sources (Dacian wax plates), epigraphical as well as sculptural, the area has been previously researched only sporadically. To this program are taking part the main Romanian institutions involved in the research and the protection of the country’s archaeological patrimony, under the coordination of the Romanian National Histrory Museum. Due to the mining character of the site (e.g. Roman mines), the underground archaeological research is undertaken by a team from the Toulouse Le Mirail University – UTAH, lead by Dr. Beatrice Cauuet.
A series of archaeological objectives were identified and researched, dated especially to the Roman period (dwellings as well as road segments that insured the traffic to and from the ancient Alburnus Maior, seven Roman necropolises with over 1200 cremation graves researched to the present moment, sacred areas, ancient and medieval mining networks, installations for processing the gold ore.
The interest that the special issues raised by this ample preventive research program have created (it is the first mining archaeological project in Romania) is also reflected by the visits of high representatives of the Council of Europe - Committee on Culture, Science and Education and UNESCO, followed by their reports.
Alburnus Maior National Research Program: general presentation
Historique des découvertes sur le site antique d’ Alburnus Maior (Roşia Montană) ; aperçu synthétique des recherches antérieures à 2000 ; aperçu synthétique des recherches menées de 2001 à 2004
The epigraphic sources from Roşia Montană: historic fundaments for establishing the strategy and the methodology of the archaeological rescue research
Mining archaeology researches at Roşia Montană (1999 - 2005)
Interdisciplinary study: Mining Archaeology – Geology. A case study in Roşia Montană (Alburnus Maior), Romania
Habitation structures at Alburnus Maior
Les aires cultuelles de Alburnus Maior dans le contexte de la Province romaine de Dacie
The necropolises from Alburnus Maior
Archaeological data and information management system from Roşia Montană (2000 - 2004): MS Access and GIS applications, Web publishing and publications
Session organizer: Ladislav Smejda, Czech Republic
Chair/discussant: Martin Carver, England
Burial monuments as social signals
Session Abstract
This session represents a logical continuation of the presentations focused on the mortuary record which were held within the Thessaloniki and St. Petersburg EAA Annual Meetings. This time we will aim at several aspects of monumentality inherent to funerary structures built above the ground surface, including their accessibility and visibility in the landscape. Looking at the archaeological record from this point of view we can attempt to define and interpret the varying rationale of grave markers used over millennia up to the modern times. This will include searching for their inspiration and purpose, and discussing their possible expressive attributes and symbolic meanings. Although much good work has already been done in this field, with decades of turbulent theoretical debates and paradigmatic shifts in archaeology, now is a good time to recapitulate the pros and cons of individual approaches and advocate the promising directions of future research.
The main thematic topics of this session will include:
An assembly of builders: The social role of barrow building in the South Scandinavian Bronze Age
Barrows in their context: The development of a local barrow-group in the Southwestern part of Denmark
Landscape Memories
Burial mounds: glory of the living or monuments of the dead?
Performative space, signaling place: Burial monuments, material culture and mass mediation
Steles for the dead, steles for the living: the case of Western France
Monumentality and Remembrance. The grave language from AD 200-1000 in pre-Christian Scandinavian burials
Early Medieval Burial Mounds and the Commemoration of Personhood
Kathrine Stene, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo
Eva Svensson, Institute of Archaeology and Ancient History, Lund University
Ingunn Holm, Department of Archaeology, the University of Bergen
LIMINAL LANDSCAPES
This session and the following round table focus on liminal landscapes, landscapes outside what archaeologists traditionally define as central areas. Liminal landscapes are often considered as marginal and peripheral, a fact that too easily colour the study of the archaeological material of these areas. These landscapes are often viewed as passive in relation to an active centre, and thus considered marginal also from a social perspective. Due to such perceptions archaeological projects on liminal landscapes risk being marginalised both in academic research and within the cultural heritage management.
In contrast to what is traditionally recognised as central areas, i.e. champion agricultural areas, liminal landscapes are set in rougher topographical environments e.g. mountains, forests, heathlands, wetlands and coastal areas. Such environments are, in modern society, often mistaken for nature and not recognised as complex and varied cultural landscapes created in a dialogue involving human strategies and topographical frameworks. This misconception contributes to the devaluation of the historical importance of the liminal landscapes.
This session and the following round table will focus on aspects of various liminal landscapes; the dynamics of land use in older times, the understanding and experience of the landscapes both in older times and by modern society and how to upgrade the importance of liminal landscapes on the agendas both within cultural heritage management and environmental preservation.
Bringing the Outside in: Outfield Resources in the Norse North Atlantic
Upland Settlement and Early Farming Landscapes of Coastal South-west Ireland
Spaces and boundaries – a concentric landscape?
Integrating Geo-Archaeological Approaches in the Study of Marginal Landscapes
Sheep, shrine and sulphur. Via Tiburtina and the urban pastoral landscape.
Hidden Landscapes: Obstacles to Mapping and Interpretation of the Surficial Archaeology of Upland Areas
Living at the edge of the world: Liminal(?) Settlements at the coast of Trøndelag, Norway
Long-term human impact and environmental change in a liminal landscape: reconstructions based on palaeoecological investigations in the Beara peninsula, SW Ireland
Iron production in Gråfjell, a discussion of resource use and the understanding of marginal landscapes.
Shifted Authenticity and the Notion of 'Liminality' in the Balkan Prehistoric Landscapes
These Papers will be discussed in the Round Table that follows in the afternoon.
David Fontijn, University of Leiden, Meriel McClatchie, University College London, Fay Stevens, University College London
Narrating the environment: bounding social practice to landscape and environmental resources
Session abstract
Increased interest and improved methods in the analysis of archaeological landscapes and environmental materials throughout Europe has led to a situation where, in some areas, we are provided with high-quality spatial and temporal patterning. Despite these advances, the integration of such data into theoretical archaeological approaches does not seem to have kept pace with the accumulation of data. Indeed, the preponderance to re-use outmoded datasets is representative of how archaeologists orientate their way around interpreting relationships between palaeoenvironmental evidence and human activity, highlighting the conceptual divide between archaeological practice and interpretation. We suggest that understanding of the archaeological environment requires a comprehension of how different ways of inhabiting the world became possible, whereby the values that people give to land, plants, animals and food is fundamental to the construction of social practice.
This session will explore the application of landscape and environmental analyses in the construction of social and cultural archaeological narratives. We would like to encourage papers that demonstrate how environmental data is a method of enquiry into the ways that humans bound their own biographies to that of the environmental resources around them.
From this perspective, social practice does not stand in opposition to nature, but is created in a complex network of exchanges that bind different lifeforms together in various, what has been referred to as, symbiotic relationships.
Environmental narratives: methodological and theoretical perspectives
Lakes, life and landscape - merging the archaeology of watery places
New approaches to Bronze Age landscapes in Northwestern Europe: relating land use to fieldsystems [provisional working title of paper]
Living in the Dutch river area during the Bronze Age
Working on the archaeology of a non-human animal: the wider implications of research on Castor fibre, the European beaver
Deciphering social practice in an estuarine landscape: proposing an interpretive framework for excavations at Newrath, Co. Kilkenny
A life amongst trees: perceptions of the environment in the Neolithic of Northwest Europe
Camilla Forsman & Helena Victor, Societas Archaeologica Upsaliensis, Uppsala, Sweden
Handling the Body – problematizing the introduction of cremation burial customs and the parallel use of inhumation burials during the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age periods in Europe.
Session Abstract
This session will be problematizing the introduction of cremation burial customs and the parallel use of inhumation burials during the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age periods in Europe. There seems to be a regional diversity in the introduction of the cremation burial traditions in different parts of Europe, but also similarities. In Continental Europe the cremation burials in a more developed form first seems to appear within Bohemia, Czechoslovakia and middle Germany. Early cremation burial practices (2100-1800 BC) has recently been observed in Central Sweden, suggesting a development similar to the Continental European. The session seeks to bring forth a discussion where this process can be put in a social and ritual context in a wider perspective. For example, the process of the introduction of cremations will be dealt with in relation to the continuous parallel use of inhumation burials. One aspect that needs to be enlightened is the hybrid forms where both burnt and unburnt bones are mixed in the same deposition, sometimes even in the handling of the same body. Both cremated and unburnt bodies display being treated in various ways. Some questions that may arise are; what does the use of two parallel burial customs mean? Are they a reflection of a social hierarchy? Or should the differences been seen as solitary ritual? What factors make one burial custom become predominant in a society? Archaeological examples from all of Europe are requested to bring forward a better understanding of the phenomenon.
The ritual fire – aspects of late Neolithic body treatment
Working the dead into the ground: cremation practices in Orkney, Scotland.
Raising and Binding the Dead: Burning Bodies and Scattering Skeletons during the Late Neolithic in Southern Sweden
The absence of burials in the Late Lengyel culture (Western Hungary 4500 BC), an answer to the question - increasing number of cremation burials.
Homology as Eschatology: An interpretation of cremation burial practice in Bronze Age Scandinavia
Helène Whittaker, University of Tromsø
The Aegean Bronze Age in the wider European Context
Session Abstract
The Greek Mainland is both part of the Eastern Mediterranean and of the European continent. On the whole, Aegean archaeologists have been most interested in exploring connections with the Near East. Correspondingly, it would seem that the Greek Bronze Age plays a fairly marginal role in general discussions about the European Bronze Age. The purpose of this session is to discuss the Greek Bronze Age and Greek Bronze Age archaeology from a European perspective.
Of relevance to this session are papers that deal with topics related to:
Metal hoards in Early Bronze Age Greece: a look from the Western Europe perspective
Bronze Age Rock Art. Culture Exchange gradient between North-central & Mediterranean Europe
From Diffusion to Interaction: connections between the Nordic Area and the Mediterranean Cultures during the 2nd Millennium BC
The Multivocality of the Bull Symbol: Minoan Bronze Age vs. the Nordic Bronze Age
When the Mycenaeans met the Europeans: Aegean influences in the Late Bronze Age West Mediterranean
Images of the dead, treatments of the deceased: Ritual dimensions of mortuary practices in the context of secondary burial in the Aegean and European Bronze Age (with a focus on southeast Europe)
Malice in Wonderland: Warfare and violence on Bronze Age Crete
Warfare and Religion in the Bronze Age
The potter´s workshop at Mastos in the Berbati Valley – the repertoire
Late Helladic III Asine and interaction: Patterns of pottery distibution.
Stephen Wickler (Tromsø University Museum, University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway) and Colin Amundsen (City University of New York – CUNY)
Life on the Edge: Maritime archaeology from the North Atlantic rim of Europe
Session Abstract
Archaeologists have focused to an increasing extent on the need for a unified view of coastal and maritime landscapes in which the archaeological record from submerged and terrestrial contexts is integrated to create a ’seamless join’. Despite recent efforts to mediate and meld the wet and the dry, many focusing on the intertidal zone as the missing link, there remains a considerable gulf between theory and practice within maritime archaeology. If we are to bridge this gap, changes need to be made not only in the way we do archaeology but in how we present our results. The inclusion of one or more ’underwater archaeology’ sessions at the EAA annual meetings, while justifiably heralded as a breakthrough for maritime archaeology, may also serve to maintain the artificial barrier between sea and land. This session attempts to surmount the barrier by presenting maritime viewpoints from a part of Europe where the sea and its resources have always been essential for survival. We wish to emphasize field research and aspects of material culture that may be spatially and temporally diverse and employ a variety of empirical sources such as zooarchaeology and landscape studies but are unified by the importance of a holistic maritime perspective.
Iron Age boathouses in northern Norway: beyond ’boat storage’ to a more holistic maritime perspective
The Late Medieval and Early Modern coastal sites of the Barents Sea: the zoo-archaeology of the multi-room house sites and their connection to the sea through the analysis of halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus).
Dead Cod Swim Upstream: Inland consumption of fish in Myvatn, Iceland
Coastal Finds: the analysis of faunal remains from NW Iceland
At the receiving end. A preliminary zooarchaeological analysis of the late medieval trading site of Gásir in Eyjafjörður, NE Iceland
The emerging picture of Norse subsistence on Sandoy, Faroe Islands
Neolithic fishermen with ploughs: the economic exploitation of terrestrial and marine resources of a North Atlantic island.
Living at the edge? Working the seashore and sailing the seaways in early medieval Ireland
Reassessing remoteness: Ireland’s off-shore islands in the early medieval period
Petra Nordin and Tore Artelius
Dealing with Death: Perspectives on Bronze and Iron Age funerary rites in Europe
Session Abstract
If one certain purpose should be identified in this session on burial ritual, it is to underline, analyze, compare and exemplify the social and religious complexity that was expressed in collective ritual behavior in different northern regions and periods of prehistory. The general and fundamental meaning that through burial ritual became mediated can be described as the continuous creating of a history and the upholding of ideology and identity.
The session includes contributions to the “multi-linguistic” world of archaeology. The contextual perspective and the combination of theoretical and methodological achievements from social anthropology, sociology, psychology and the history of religion has in the last decades changed the way in which burial ritual is approached within archaeology. The focus has changed towards the analysis of a holistic analysis of the society and the actors that performed ritual. A society (as well as the object of study: the ritual) is a complex body reflected in many different ways and is seen with different eyes. This gives us the possibility to present papers on funerary rituals from different countries of Europe: one session with many approaches.
The Dead in the Hills - reflections upon the cult of the dead in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age of Uppland, Sweden
The agency of Death in Iron Age Scandinavia - Reproduction and relocation of ontology
Mortuary practices and symbolic metallurgy – Studies of caves and graves in Sunnmøre, Western Norway
WITH THOR ON OUR SIDE – the symbolism of the Thor´s hammer-ring in Viking Age burial ritual
Aristocratic Death Rituals in Prehistoric Scandinavia and the House
Wealthy Women and Absent Men
Bog burials – places of forgetting
Death, forging and sacrifice on two Swedish burial sites
Human bones in the Bronze Age of Uppland: Bronze Age, Sweden, burial in settlements, rituals
Ritual similarities and differences in Germanic societies of Europe – a discussion of Germanic ideals as seen from selected burial data and literary sources
Spear Symbolism in Scandinavian Late Viking Age Burial Ritual
Willem J.H. Willems (Chair) State Inspectorate for Archaeology, the Netherlands
Monique van den Dries, State Inspectorate for Archaeology, the Netherlands
Quality Assurance in Archaeology: the international experience
In many countries, the advent of commercial archaeology has led to concerns about the quality of archaeological work that was virtually lacking in the past, when archaeology was only an academic discipline. The stated reasons for these concerns are similar everywhere. Commercial archaeology becomes possible when there is an obligation to take archaeological remains into account in development projects and at the expense of the developer. The developer thus has an interest in the work being done, but the quality of its results is only relevant in terms of time-and-money, not in terms of the quality of the end-product which is knowledge about the past.
The lack of interest in the quality of the end product in combination with the particular character of the archaeological work, a knowledge-based line of business, makes it difficult to use a quality control approach from other businesses. In archaeology, various approaches are being explored to provide mechanisms that assure quality. In fact, there seem to be two levels at which this is being done.
One aim is guaranteeing a basic level of performance by quality assurance of the process or methodology (methods, procedures). This may include voluntary or enforced standards and guidelines for archaeological contract work, codes of conduct, etc.
Another approach aims at guaranteeing the quality of the product: the content and relevance of the academic output, its contribution to our knowledge about the past. This involves a variety of instruments such as research agendas, peer review systems, etc.
Another, related issue, is the way in which systems of quality control are being supervised. They can be almost entirely voluntary, or they can be enforced through an enforced system of certification and accreditation, through a system of permits, through an inspectorate, or by means of a combination of such regulators. This can be part of the discussion, but it is not intended to discuss the organisation of archaeological heritage management in various countries.
The session is designed to exchange the different ways in which quality assurance at both these levels is organised in different countries, experiences on how it works in practice, and a discussion about pros and cons of different approaches.
Quaestors, Quality & Quantity: Archaeology and the National Roads Authority in Ireland
Always Fluid, Never Stationary: Capturing Standards and Guidelines in Ontario Archaeological Resource Management
Scientific Quality Assurance within the archaeological Excavation Department at the National Heritage Board in Sweden
Quality control in French archaeology
Quality assurance in the Netherlands
Quality management and Irish commercial sector archaeology
Accrediting archaeologists in the UK
John Williams, Kent County Council, UK
Developing Best Practice for Archaeology in Spatial Planning
Increasingly the provisions of ‘Valetta’ and other conventions relating to the historic environment and also those of more general environmental legislation are being recognised and implemented. Standards, however, may vary. Spatial planning thus has a key role to play in providing for the protection and management of the historic environment. The proposed session will examine emerging best practice in taking forward the integration of archaeology within spatial planning and other areas of land management. A number of initiatives being progressed through the Planarch and Planarch 2 projects will be examined including
The session will provide an opportunity for discussing how archaeologists can work effectively within spatial planning.
Archaeology and Spatial Planning; European Cooperation through Planarch
New initiatives in managing Wallonia’s urban archaeological heritage
A historic environment strategy for Thames Gateway
The Actiparc excavations (France, Pas-de-Calais)
The Valetta Convention, Planarch 2 and the process of systematic trial trenching.
Predictive modelling for archaeological resource management
Reasoning with uncertainty in archaeology and spatial planning
Testing predictions
Historic environment characterisation as a spatial planning tool
The Highways Agency (England) approach to historic landscape assessment
Towards a European standard for coverage of the historic environment in Environmental Impact Assessment.
A possible new legal tool in Spatial Planning - Heritage Impact Assessment
Cultural Historical Stewardship: a new tool for our ‘Old’ Heritage
Within and beyond the Planning System: the protection of archaeological sites identified in aerial reconnaissance in rural lowland Devon.
Revitalising Peizes hidden landscape
Archaeology, Planning and Strategy on road infrastructure in Ireland
Organizer: Constanze Witt, University of Texas at Austin
Co-Presider: Jeffrey S. Soles, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Respondent: Laurent Olivier, Musée des Antiquités Nationales, Saint-Germain-en-Laye
THE "CLOSED CONTEXT" IN CONTEXT II
What is a "closed context," a "closed find," or a "closed deposit"? These are terms with which we work every day. The phrases have entered the vernacular and are used in a wide range of contexts. In archaeology, systems of relative and absolute chronology are based on confidently declared "closed" finds. The arts of stratigraphic analysis, art historical and stylistic analysis, historical and cultural interpretation, even the discoveries of entire peoples have been profoundly impacted by certain key "closed" finds. Yet there does not appear to be a clear terminological consensus on the identity of a "closed find" -- is it the same as a "closed context"? a "geschlosssener Befund"? How exactly does one determine the precise degree of closedness of a context? What is the history of the use of the terms, and what theoretical underpinnings can we ascribe to them, then and now? what are the temporal and spatial aspects of a "closed" context? How do we go about the interpretation of a "closed" find -- what are the special considerations? What of "heirlooms," residual finds, multiple-use? What different types of contexts can be considered "closed," and why?
Introduction: Taxonomy, Stratigraphy, Seashells and Time Capsules
The "closed context" -- altering a conception: the German perspective
Buried Metal Hoards
Contexts of Luxury: Etruscan Gold at Poggio Colla
The Open Tomb
“What Is All This Stuff? And Why Is It Important?”: Depositional Processes in the Evaluation and Interpretation of Closed Contexts in Urban Features
Faulty Assumptions: Mixed and Closed Contexts in Commercial Archaeology
Closed context: ideal and real
Ezra B.W. Zubrow, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge & Department of Anthropology University at Buffalo
Space - The Final Frontier? An Intercontinental Approach.
Session Abstract
The past decade has seen significant advances in the tools available for spatial analysis in archaeology. Theory and methodology regarding the spatial character of archaeology must keep pace with these advances. Geomorphological and geophysical techniques, geographic information systems, and electronic survey technology provide new opportunities, but also require new ideas. How can this ‘Final Frontier’ give us better insight into the ways that people have used space to subsist, to recreate their culture in their ‘homelands’ or in new areas, or impose their culture on others? Contributions from Europe and North America demonstrate intercontinental connections and explore ways of using dynamic models of spatial patterning to assess human activity within natural and cultural landscapes. The differences between the left and right on theoretical and methodological spatial issues are reflected. Among topics to be considered are parallel processing and multiple spatial simulations; social construction of landscape; use of spatial patterning to identify human activity in space; and locational analysis for the study of settlement patterns.
Location in Time and Space
Pompeii--Representations Across Space and Time
GIS Visualization of Spatial Structure at Multiple Scales within Palaeolithic Sites
New Ideas for the New World: Theorizing the Construction of Social and Ritual Landscapes.
Voyage across the Atlantic: Intercontinental Connections between Southern Europe and the Américas
Spatial Analysis of Wedge Tomb from the Point of View of the Original Builders
Dispersal and Colonization: A transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic
The location of power and the art of resistance: spatial analysis and social theory of Denmark’s Iron Age