EEA 2012: Session List

The 18th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists will be held in Helsinki, Finland 29 August - 1 September 2012.

The meeting is organized by the University of Helsinki, the National Board of Antiquities, the Finnish Antiquarian Society, the Archaeological Society of Finland and the Univeristy of Oulu. The meeting is funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture and Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.

The conference venues are the Main Building of the University of Helsinki (Fabianinkatu 33) and the Porthania Building (Yliopistonkatu 3). The buildings are conveniently located near each other in the city centre.

Sessions

The meeting will focus on four major themes: Interpreting the Archaeological Record, Maritime Archaeology, Archaeological Heritage Resource Management and Perspectives on Archaeology in the Modern World. In addition the Medieval Europe Research Congress (MERC) is organised in connection with the EAA Helsinki 2012 meeting. The more than 75 sessions are listed below.

Paper abstracts to the sessions may be submitted from 3 February until 31 March, 2012 at http://www.eaa2012.fi/programme/abstract_submission


Interpreting the Archaeological Record


Animal Agency?

Organisers: Kristin Armstrong Oma (University of Oslo; Norway) and Gala Argent (Eastern Kentucky University; USA)

Archaeology by definition centralizes the human within its realm of study. As within broader Western socio-cultural constructs, archaeological studies most often marginalize nonhuman animals as containers for human symbolism or as economic strategies, or segment them into abstract categories of inert variables. In a philosophical sense, ontologically the nature of being is the nature of human being; the nature of action is of human action. Animals are more than cultural abstractions. There is growing interdisciplinary recognition that many animals possess characteristics such as intelligence, emotion and awareness that vary from humans by degree rather than kind. Animals are alive, active participants in their worlds, and the spaces where those worlds intersect and enmesh with humans are often messy and difficult to divide into clean compartments. In addition to how humans use them, animals often take part in subjectified relationships with humans that are impactful for both species at various levels of scale. But while particular lines of archaeological inquiry have focused upon attributing objects and landscapes with agential abilities - while leaving it tacitly understood that this kind of agency is secondary to the type of agency humans apply to their worlds - with few notable exceptions animals have been left out of this type of discourse. This session aspires to be one such exception, by addressing the question of animal agency. With these considerations in mind, this session is open to contributions that specifically address - or reformulate - the question of animal agency within archaeological studies. Questions might include: Do animals have agency, and if so, what type(s)? Do animals hold a middle ground between agential humans and inert material culture? How might animals be seen to have impacted particular societies and cultures, beyond their use? Can a consideration of animals as themselves, and as they live and interact with humans within shared worlds, assist with understanding the human cultures which lived or live with them? How does animal agency challenge the paradigm of human centrality within archaeological studies? How might the manner in which conventional archaeological narratives construct animals be expanded? Can fresh theoretical or methodological approaches be incorporated beneficially into archaeological studies which include animals? What are the ethical implications of animal agency for archaeologies which approach them as objects? Contributors are also invited to address the relevance for archaeological studies of recent advances in human‐animal studies, posthumanist and feminist research.



Archaeological Research, Heritage Interpretation and "lieux de mémoire"

Organisers: Jana Maříková‐Kubková (Archeologický ústav AVČR, Praha; Czech Republic), Dirk Callebaut (Ename Expertisecentrum voor Erfgoedontsluiting; Belgium) and Jan Mařík (Archeologický ústav AVČR, Praha; Czech Republic)

This session will focus on various aspects of the rise, development, significance and pitfalls in the application of the so-called sites of memory theory, les lieux de mémoire (Nora 1984-1992), on archaeology and its evidence. Even though the theory of lieux de mémoire is symbolic in its context as it describes the nature of the collective identity of a nation and the fundamental bases from which it arises, its implications for archaeology are fundamental and far‐reaching. Attention will be paid mainly to protohistoric and early Medieval archaeological sites closely linked to the creation of local and national identities. In each country there are sites that can be considered to be key‐sites for the understanding of the history, and their historical and archaeological exploration has been considerably influenced by myth‐making processes. Obtaining archaeological evidence, its evaluation and interpretation was often biased by those myths as cognitive proof of their reliability was sought for. The papers we expect should deal with the following aspects: the results of the archaeological investigation of such "key‐sites", their part in the process of creating both local and national identities and shared social memories, and, last but not least, the various impacts of the mythmaking processes on obtaining archaeological knowledge, the interpretation of the finds and the interaction between those phenomena.

References
Assmann, A. (2007) Geschichte im Gedächtnis. Von der individuellen Erfahrung zur öffentlichen Inszenierung, München.
Assmann, A. (2007) Europe: A Community of Memory? Twentieth Annual Lecture of the GHI, November 16, 2006, Bulletin of German Historical Institute, Spring, 11-25.
Nora, P. (1984-1992) Les Lieux de mémoire. Gallimard.
Maříková‐Kubková, J., Schlanger, N. & Lévin, S. (Eds.) (2008) Sites of Memory. Between Scientific Research and Collective Representations. Proceedings of the AREA seminar at Prague Castle, February 2006. Castrum Pragense 8.



The Beginning of Agrarian Subsistence among the "Forest Neolithic" Cultures

Organisers: Teemu Mökkönen (University of Helsinki; Finland), Aivar Kriiska (University of Tartu; Estonia) and Valdis Bērziņš (University of Latvia; Latvia)

In Northern Europe the beginning of agriculture is remarkably delayed as compared to the Central European situation. For this reason, the cultures living in the boreal forest zone, who adopted most of the characteristic features of Neolithic Stone Age (above all, pottery technology) except for agrarian economy, are often referred to as "Forest Neolithic", "Subneolithic", "Boreal Neolithic", "Paraneolithic" or even "Ceramic/Pottery Mesolithic". During the past decade, evidence has accumulated that suggests different origins for the southern and northern Neolithic Stone Age. The northern Neolithic most probably has an eastern origin - it spread to Europe from Asia, from east of Ural Mountains. At the same time, the observations of agrarian practices among "Forest Neolithic" cultures have multiplied. Today it seems reasonable to ask if it really was the Corded Ware Culture that introduced agrarian subsistence practices to the north, to areas previously settled by hunter‐gatherers, or was the agrarian component present already in the "Forest Neolithic", possibly from the very beginning of pottery manufacture? This session aims to:
- gather together any new evidence relating to early agriculture in the northern latitudes, and
- to raise discussion on the fundamental questions of how we define Neolithic Cultures: what can be labeled as "Neolithic", is the proportion of the agrarian component in the diet a reasonable criterion, and what was the mechanism through which agriculture spread to the forest zone.



Body Categories and Identities, Health, and Society in Ancient Europe

Organisers: John Robb (Cambridge University; UK), Sheila Kohring (Cambridge University; UK) and Kirsi Lorentz (The Cyprus Institute; Cyprus)

This session focuses upon how the human body was used to create social categories and identities in ancient Europe. Were particular forms of embodiment associated with genders, statuses or ritual identities? How were particular processes such as violence or conditions such as death understood and integrated into social processes? To what extent was health a social phenomenon? Possible sources of evidence include art and representations of bodies, burials as loci of bodily transformation and as places where the special status of people with different bodies or health may be established, and skeletal remains as evidence of the experience of health and illness.



Boundary Crossings and Gendered Bodies: The Limits of the Body - Gender Trouble at the Margins and in the Center

Organisers: Bo Jensen (Denmark) and Silvia Tomášková (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; USA)

What are the natural and cultural boundaries of a body and how does gender cross the biological/cultural divide to form the situated experience of personhood? How does bodily mobility across boundaries affect gendered experience? How do we recognize such a processes in the archaeological record? In this session, organized by members of the Archaeology and Gender in Europe working party, we will look at the material expression of "biographies of the body" through the lens of gender. We invite papers that address normative and non‐normative gender formations in past societies as reflected on the physical body, contributing to the nature/culture hybrid, and/or as reflected in physical space. We are particularly interested in contributions that discuss cases in which generally accepted "boundaries", either bodily or spatial, are obscured, altered, or transgressed. Topics might include bioarchaeology and skeletal studies, decorated bodies - adornments, tattoos, physical modifications - disabled or differently abled bodies, representations of bodies, materializations of bodies as idealized or as normative, and technologies of the body. Diet, labor, and health might also be interesting "traditional" topics to view through this prism. Likewise, we welcome papers dealing with the gendered ordering of movement, space and place, in ritual, architecture, and economy. For this session, we encourage researchers who work on gender to focus on boundaries and boundary‐crossings, and those who work on boundaries to focus on gender.



Burnt Animal Bones in Occupation Contexts - Where, When and Why?

Organisers: Kristiina Mannermaa (University of Helsinki; Finland), Jan Storå (Stockholm University; Sweden) and Pirkko Ukkonen (Finnish Museum of Natural History; Finland)

In Finland, as well as in adjacent areas at the same latitude, animal bones are found at Stone Age sites exclusively or nearly exclusively as burnt. The acid soil of these areas is often given as the explanation why unburnt bones are not found at the sites, but the taphonomic histories of the burnt assemblages are complicated and great challenges for osteoarchaeological studies. Despite the similarity of other archaeological finds, burnt bones are abundant at some sites while scarce at others. Thus, burning or boiling of refuse seems to be connected with human cultural behaviour, at least in northern latitudes. To verify or reject this concept, more information is needed about burnt animal bones in northern regions as well as elsewhere in Europe. Our aim for the session is to localize the phenomenon of burnt animal bones in time and space:
- Where? In which geographical areas and environments and in what kind of depositional contexts do animal bone materials comprise totally or nearly totally of burnt, fragmented bones?
- When? During which archaeological periods is burnt bone dominating bone samples?
- Why? How is this phenomenon to be explained? How can the taphonomy of the burnt bones be studied? Were these, e.g., used as fuel or thrown into the fire as waste, or were they burnt accidentally, during cooking or some specific ritual?
We call for interpretative and contextual studies about prehistoric burnt animal bones at settlements, hunting camps and other occupation activity areas all over Europe. The research themes can vary from geographic distribution of sites containing burnt animal bones, methodological and taphonomic studies, to combustion experiments and geochemical soil analyses.



Ceremonies and Burial Practices in the Mycenaean World

Organisers : Ann‐Louise Schallin (Sweden) and Helène Whittaker (Universitetet i Tromsø; Norway)

The study of ceremonies and burial practices is a way of gaining information about a society's organization and social hierarchies. Behavioral concepts appear in stylized form and sometimes disguised in the matrix of ceremonies and practices, which are made up of components derived from both internal societal restraints and external stimuli. Ceremonies in the Mycenaean society took place in connection with public festivities and burials. They may have been performed to legitimize a ruling elite or they may have expressed personal or shared social customs. Ceremonies and processions followed established routes to particularly designated areas. Specific equipment, grave goods or offerings were used or deposited to enhance the effects of the practices. Sculptures and figurines, sometimes frightening, were, like the practitioners, clad in festive clothes. Drinking and feasting occurred. Some ceremonies can be viewed as luminal performances. In order to study Mycenaean ceremonies and burial rituals we need to look not only at the archaeological record but also pay close attention to landscape, topography and contexts. We should also make full use of the iconographical and textual evidence. This session aims to explore the various ways of interpreting the sources at hand in order to deepen our knowledge of how Mycenaean society functioned politically, socially, symbolically and religiously. We invite contributions about ceremonies and burial practices in the Mycenaean world which focus on processions, funerals, the organization of burials and how these various components, isolated or together, affected the environment and Mycenaean society as a whole.



Circumpolar Rock Art

Organisers: Antti Lahelma (University of Helsinki; Helsinki) and Dagmara Zawadzka (Université du Québec à Montréal; Canada)

The circumpolar region is dotted with thousands of rock art sites, dating from the Early Holocene up until the 20th century AD. Even though their creators have been culturally and linguistically diverse, they nonetheless have created rock art that shares many aspects of style, motifs depicted, technique, location and religious context. Frequently, these similarities seem to be couched in what Tim Ingold (2000) refers to as "circumpolar cosmology". Already since the late 19th century, archaeologists and ethnographers have described cultural phenomena with an apparent circumpolar distribution. Such commonalities were thought to derive from a shared Stone Age background - an idea most famously advocated by the Norwegian archaeologist Gutorm Gjessing (1944). Rock art never played a significant role in this debate, however, and by the 1960s the study of circumpolar archaeology had become unfashionable. Now, it seems, there are signs of a rebirth of circumpolar studies (Westerdahl 2010) and archaeologists are once again addressing questions of wide geographical perspective, such as the dispersal of pottery among hunter‐gatherers in Northern Eurasia (Jordan & Zvelebil 2009) or the use of slate artefacts in the circumpolar zone (Osborn 2004). But in spite of the new discoveries of rock art, vast amounts of which have been found in the circumpolar region since the 1960s, few archaeologists have so far employed this fresh and exciting material for inter‐regional comparison. Is rock art, as it is found in the Arctic and Subarctic, a genuine circumpolar phenomenon? If it is, how can rock art research contribute to the current "circumpolar reappraisal"? Presenters in this session are asked to discuss the rock art of northernmost Eurasia and North America by considering its various manifestations in relation to each other, to other artistic productions, to mythology, and ultimately, to its place in the circumpolar world.

References
Ingold, T. (2000) The Perception of the Environment. Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill. Routledge: London and New York.
Jordan, P. & M. Zvelebil (Eds.) (2009) Ceramics before farming: the dispersal of pottery among prehistoric Eurasian hunter‐gatherers. Left Coast Press: Walnut Creek.
Gjessing, G. (1944) Circumpolar Stone Age. Acta Arctica II, 19-70.
Osborn, A.J. (2004) Poison hunting strategies and the organization of technology in the circumpolar region. In Johnson, A.L. (Ed.) Processual Archaeology: Exploring Analytical Strategies, Frames of Reference, and Culture Process, 134-193. Praeger: Westport.
Westerdahl, C. (Ed.) (2010) A Circumpolar Reappraisal: the Legacy of Gutorm Gjessing (1906-1979). BAR International Series 2154.



Climatic Archaeology: The Role of Climatic Factors in Archaeological and Anthropological Processes and Preservation of Archaeological Sites and Materials

Organisers: Galina Levkovskaya (Institute for Material Culture History, St. Petersburg; Russia) and Niels Bonde (National Museum of Denmark; Denmark)

Different types of palaeoclimatic information obtained by archaeologists and specialists on dendrochronological, palynological, palaeobotanical, paleozoological, geological, chemical, physical and other methods is important for archaeology in various aspects. Palaeoclimatic information offers additional, wider observation and deeper understanding of the causes of change in archaeological epochs, cultures, migration processes, anthropological types of population and their economy. The climate (past or present) influences the destruction or preservation of archaeological monuments, methods of their excavations or conservations, etc. All problems mentioned above are planned to be discussed at the session. Contributions within any aspect of climatic archaeology are welcome.



Creativity in the Bronze Age

Organisers: Joanna Sofaer (University of Southampton; UK), Sarah Coxon (University of Southampton; UK), Sebastian Becker (University of Cambridge; UK) and Helga Rösel-Mautendorfer (Naturhistorisches Museum; Austria)

This session focuses on creativity in the European Bronze Age. Studies of creativity frequently focus on the modern era, yet creativity has always been part of human history. The European Bronze Age is an extremely dynamic period. This session explores the ways in which the notion of creativity may be useful in unpacking the technological and stylistic underpinnings of Bronze Age material culture by investigating the relationship between creativity, material properties and change. There has been a trend within Bronze Age archaeology to discuss change and developments from a top-down perspective, for instance in terms of long‐distance exchange, settlement patterns and large‐scale technological trends. The macro‐analytical level implicated in using such a perspective has, however, tended to detract attention from the idiosyncrasies, affordances and potentiality of material culture itself; the objects that people made and used in their everyday lives. Recent bottom‐up approaches have begun to focus on Bronze Age craftspeople and a discussion of shifts in material culture through the lens of creativity encourages investigation of their decision making processes and how these contribute to change and developments in material style. Placing the spotlight on creativity within craft illuminates how people were exploiting the potentials of materials and developing new ways of designing objects. It further directs archaeological narratives to incorporate discussions of how people were interacting with each other and developing the ideas that are encapsulated in their material culture. This session is organised by the HERA‐funded project Creativity and Craft Production in Middle and Late Bronze Age Europe (CinBA) (www.cinba.net). Bringing together partners from the Universities of Southampton, Cambridge and Trondheim, the National Museum of Denmark, the Natural History Museum of Vienna, Zagreb Archaeological Museum, Lejre Archaeological Park (Sagnlandet) and the Crafts Council, the project investigates creativity in the Bronze Age through pottery, textiles and metal. We welcome speakers from both inside and outside of the project working with these materials and others to present and participate in discussions of creativity, craft and developments in Bronze Age material culture.



Cremation in European Archaeology

Organisers: Howard Williams (University of Chester; UK), Jessica I. Cerezo‐Román (University of Arizona; USA) and Anna Wessman (University of Chester; UK)

There is a long history to the archaeological discovery and interpretation of cremation practices from prehistoric and early historic Europe in terms of changing religious belief, cultural identity and social organisation. However, recent studies prompt us to rethink how we interpret cremation in Europe's past (e.g. Wickholm & Raninen 2006; MacGregor 2008; Williams 2008; Wessman 2010). How did cremation operate as a technology of remembrance, commemorating the dead and reproducing concepts of the person and the cosmos? How and why were cremation practices variable in the same chronological and geographical areas? Did cremation technologies and significations interact with other fiery technologies? When, how and why did cremation operate alongside other mortuary disposal methods? Other key issues concern how we integrate archaeological science and theory in studying cremation? Can archaeological research engage with cross‐disciplinary research on cremation by historians, geographers, anthropologists and sociologists? How should we explore modern cremation across the globe as analogy and bias as well as being a legitimate topic for archaeological investigation in its own right (Williams 2011; Cerezo‐Román & Williams 2012)? Recent dialogue between American and European archaeologists on the context and meaning of cremation makes this session theme particularly timely and appropriate (Cooney et al. 2012; see also papers in Nilsson Stutz & Tarlow 2012). Building on this debate, the session will both explore and critique current theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of cremation in Europe as well as debate future research directions for the archaeology of cremation focusing on European evidence. To achieve this, speakers in the session will be expected to directly address and debate one or more of the following six key research themes:
- Theorising cremation as a technology of remembrance employing corporeal, material, elemental, monumental, spatial and temporal commemorative strategies.
- Exploring the factors affecting the mortuary variability of cremation and the postcremation treatment of cremains.
- Investigating how cremation intersects with other fiery and elemental technologies and disposal methods over different temporal and geographical scales.
- Integrating scientific and osteological methods with archaeological theories of cremation.
- Exploring theoretical dialogues with other disciplines.
- The archaeology of cremation of, and in, contemporary society.

References
Cerezo‐Román, J. & Williams, H. (2012) Future Directions in the Archaeology of Cremation, in G. Cooney et al. (2012).
Cooney, G., Kuijt, I. & Quinn, C. (Eds) (2012) Fire and the Body: Cremation as a Social Context, Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
MacGregor, G. (2008) Elemental bodies: the nature of transformative practices during the late third and second millennium bc in Scotland, World Archaeology 40(2), 268-280.
Nilsson Stutz, L. & Tarlow, S. (Eds) (2012) The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wessman, A. (2010) Death, Destruction and Commemoration: Tracing Ritual Activities in Finnish Iron Age cemeteries (AD 550-1150). ISKOS 18.
Wickholm, A & Raninen, S. (2006) The broken people: Deconstruction of personhood in Iron Age Finland, Estonian Journal of Archaeology 10(2), 150-166.
Williams, H. (2008) Towards an archaeology of cremation, in C.W. Schmidt & S. Symes (Eds.) The Analysis of Burned Human Remains, 239-269. London: Academic Press.
Williams, H. (2011) Cremation & present pasts: A contemporary archaeology of Swedish memory groves, Mortality 16(2), 113-130.



Cui bono? Who Profits from Social Inequality and Change? - Studies on Social Inequality in Prehistoric and Early Historic Societies across Europe

Organisers: Jari‐Matti Kuusela (University of Oulu; Finland), Samuel Vaneeckhout (University of Oulu; Finland) and Valter Lang (University of Tartu, Estonia)

The study of social complexity, inequality and change are central aspects of our archaeological study of the past. We need reconstructions of the organization of past prehistoric and early historic societies in Europe as the explaining factor behind our archaeological data. At the same time our understanding of local social organization is crucial for insight in the interconnectedness between societies in Europe and beyond. It is obvious that the roughly contemporary processes leading to social inequality and social change across Europe are not isolated and thus every study that tries to shed more light on these processes should be welcomed. It is important that studies on social complexity should be extended also in the direction of non‐formal systems of social inequality. Instead of answering the question on the origin of social inequality we need to redirect our questions towards questions on social change and on the benefits of social inequality. This session welcomes papers dealing with any study on prehistoric or early historic social complexity. We encourage both regional case studies and studies from a long term and large scale perspective. Especially welcome are studies dealing with interconnectedness of societies and studies on "lower strata" in social complexities.



Death and Burial in Post‐Medieval Europe

Organisers: Sarah Tarlow (University of Leicester; UK) and Jenny Nyberg (Stockholm University; Sweden)

Over the last two or three decades post‐Medieval burial archaeology has developed into a particular field of study within archaeology both through excavations and laboratory research. This field is however still small and scholars are spread out, often feeling rather isolated in their respective countries as well as over Europe as a whole. This session will examine some important recent developments, and lay the foundations on which to build an international research group for the exchange of information and ideas to vitalise and enrich the research field of post‐Medieval burial archaeology across Europe. In many parts of Europe research on post‐Medieval burial customs has focused on the commemorative aspects of burial practice through the mediums of grave stones and monuments. In this session we would like to place focus on the very driving force behind the funeral ceremony i.e. the dead body itself. How is the materiality of the dead body handled throughout this time period? What are the material traces of attitudes towards the dead body and views on death? How can developments in the treatment of the dead body be related to wider changes in society such as aspects of faith, politics, law, social status, gender, emotions and medical science? We would like to encourage a wide variety of papers on this topic from all over Europe - and considering Protestant, Catholic and other post‐Medieval societies - so that similarities and differences relating to religious faith can be discussed. We invite contributions on any aspect of death and disposal in the post‐Medieval period (between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries); our focus is on mortuary practice rather than the scientific study of human remains as an approach to demography, disease, or other aspects of lived experience.



Entangled Colonialism: Changes in Material Culture and Space in the Late Medieval through to the Modern Period

Organisers: Jonathan Finch (University of York; UK), Magdalena Naum (University of Cambridge; UK) and Jonas M. Nordin (National Historical Museum; Sweden)

Early modern European colonialism with a legacy from the Reconquista in late 15th century Portugal and Spain meant vast changes in material culture, global migrations and the rise of modes of production, use of space, etc. This session aims to discuss archaeological aspects of colonialism and the colonial world, detectable in material culture and text in Europe and overseas. Moreover, the session aims to provide a broader perspective on colonialism and its outcomes mingling the experiences of relatively peripheral and small time agents, such as Denmark/Norway and Sweden/Finland with those of the major agents, such as England, France, The Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. Although the archaeological studies of colonialism currently are in a vital stage and are conducted worldwide, more general for a addressing both the empirical as well as the theoretical issues are still lacking. This session intents to create a platform for archaeologists dealing with questions of colonialism and related subjects of power, domination, creolization and hybridization in the colonial periods from the late middle ages to the modern period. The session welcomes a wide range of papers dealing with research on material culture, buildings, art and texts in the context of the rise of colonialism.



European Hunter‐Gatherer Bog‐sites: Data, Models, Perspectives

Organisers: Lars Larsson (University of Lund; Sweden), Harald Lübke (Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology; Germany) and Nicky Milner (University of York; UK)

European hunter‐gatherer bog sites with well‐preserved organics have an enormous importance for the understanding of our past especially for the temperate climatic zone north of the Alps. They enrich our understanding of this important period not only because of their well preserved rare cultural material but also because of their high resolution climatic and environmental records. Sites of this early part of human history are very rare; and so the bog sites, with excellent organic preservation, provide a unique insight into past lives. In addition, interdisciplinary collaboration and cutting edge scientific methods are enabling high‐resolution palaeo‐climatic and environmental change to be modelled which can be used to discover how these people reacted to and adapted to periods of extreme changes of their environment at the end of the Ice Age and the early Holocene. However, over many parts of Europe this resource is under threat due to current climate change and modern farming practices and extraction of peat, resulting in rapid peat degradation and the destruction of this valuable archaeological heritage. This session aims at sharing information on cutting‐edge scientific methodologies and to evaluate the threats to this valuable cultural resource. The purpose is to gather together specialists who work on bog sites which have produced evidence of hunter-gatherers from the end of the last Ice Age to the introduction of farming. Presentations on the following topics are requested:
- The archaeological resource at bog sites across Europe.
- Cutting edge and innovative techniques through interdisciplinary collaboration.
- Assessing the risks to the cultural heritage resource.
- Engagement of a wider audience.
It is anticipated that through discussion of the various themes, the session will stimulate the growing interest of the scientific community in new areas of research on Mesolithic bog sites and collaboration on a European level.



Examining Diseases and Impairments in Social Archaeology: Current Issues and Future Options

Organisers: Darek Błaszczyk (Museum of the First Piasts at Lednica; Poland), Magdalena Domicela Matczak (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań; Poland) and Leszek Gardela (University of Aberdeen; UK)

This session will be devoted to archaeological and anthropological investigations of diseases and impairments based on the cemetery evidence. Materials from cemeteries can provide extremely rich sources on living and health conditions of past populations and individuals. Therefore, on the one hand, the session aims at presenting examples of burials of people with various physical anomalies from different archaeological periods and cultures. On the other hand, we aim to discuss ways of placing such burials in the social context of the life of past communities as well as possible methods of their analysis and interpretation. We also hope to develop a research agenda for future studies. We would like the session to become an opportunity for archaeologists and anthropologists to come together and discuss their research. We welcome papers in the following thematic categories:
- Which social theories and research methods can be used to create a narrative about individuals with diseases and impairments?
- How were the people with various anatomical anomalies (diseases and impairments) perceived and treated within given societies, what were the attitudes to them?
- How were diseases and impairments connected with social status?
- What can we say about social practices of treating ill and impaired people?
- What was the sexual or gender dimorphism in the incidence of diseases (the nature and frequency of diseases in both sexes)?
- Did the individuals buried in the so called atypical burials (e.g. "graves of the vampires") possessed physical anomalies?



Focus on Archaeological Textiles - From Finds to Facts on Fabric

Organizers: Sanna Lipkin (University of Oulu; Finland), Krista Vajanto (University of Helsinki; Finland) and Carol Christiansen (Shetland Museum & Archives; UK)

The aim of the session is to bring in new starting points and methodologies in the research of textiles. Textiles are made from animal and plant fibres with differing techniques (weaving, sprang, felting etc.), but clothing was made also from other materials such as leather and fur. An archaeological textile is usually fragmentary and sometimes only an imprint in another material. The challenge of the session is to find answers to the questions: How the selection of the fibre and the applied textile technologies affected the value of the textile? What social impacts followed from the garments of different values? Can different textile techniques reveal something about the garment users in respect to others within the community or outside of it? Traditionally the research is based on the analyses of the structure of the textiles: What is their material? How is the textile made? What sort of textile is the one under research? Reconstructing textiles has also had an important role in their interpretation. Reconstruction may be made similarly as the textile would have been as new or as it was when deposited. It is worth discussing the terminology and practice of the reconstruction as well as the display context. Within the past decades, the natural sciences have become a part of textile research. For example the provenance of the textile fibres and dyes have been studied. These studies have provided new insights in the exchange and trade of textiles. The collaboration with the natural scientists, such as zooarchaeologists and chemists has been launched and the results applied to textile archaeological knowledge. Both practical and theoretical discussion on the role of natural sciences in textile archaeology is warmly welcomed.



From Bone to Bead: Developments in European Research on Worked Osseous Materials

Organisers: Alice M. Choyke (Central European University; Hungary) and Aline Averbouh (CNRS -Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; France)

Worked osseous materials are among the earliest tools and ornaments manufactured and used by human beings. They are found across the world in find assemblages from every period where conditions of preservation exist. Despite this fact bone tools have remained an understudied class of artifacts the study of which has only begun to take form in the past forty years and really take off in the past twenty years. The 1960s and 70s saw fundamental work carried out by schools of research founded by Henriette Camps‐Fabre in France and by the lithics expert A.S.A. Semenov in Russia. However, elsewhere in the world, individual studies work was carried out by individuals with little opportunity to coordinate and learn from each other. Starting in the 1980s, archaeozoologists also started to become involved in bone tool studies (for example Jörg Schibler in Switzerland, Alice Choyke in Hungary and Sandra Olsen in the USA) creating schools with more of an emphasis on raw material choice. Today, there is an official working group for bone tools (Worked bone Research Group-WBRG) and on‐going initiatives by CNRS‐based projects in France bringing together archaeologists from different scholarly backgrounds across Europe to exchange experience and solve targeted research problems. It is time to introduce the European archaeological community to some of the achievements of the past twenty years in terms of developing theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of this important but still understudied and misunderstood artifact class. Papers will be presented in the following fields:
- The history of bone tool research in Europe.
- The work and results of the last GDRE and of the WBRG, Presentation of some of the bone tool labs.
- Future research directions and potentials (methodology and theory) including raw material studies, memory and identity, attitudes to animals, trace wear studies etc.).
- Papers concretely showing what kind of research is taking place in Europe and the world.



From Skulls and Skeletons to Ancient People: Approaches to Human Remains from Prehistoric Northern Eurasia

Organisers: Eileen Murphy (Queen's University Belfast; Ireland), Vyacheslav Moiseyev (Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography The Kunstkamera; Russia) and Valery Khartanovich (Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography The Kunstkamera; Russia)

From its earliest beginnings, physical anthropology has been recognised as an important tool for enabling the reconstruction of a variety of facets of human history. For many years anthropological data represented the predominant source of information pertaining to the biological aspects of a past population's history. Given the attributes of the anthropological data collected most studies have focused on the nature of genetic admixture apparent within population groups as well as sought evidence relating to ancient migrations. In recent years, the situation has notably changed, however, and much more attention is now placed on the study of the physical remains of these prehistoric people using a suite of other scientific approaches, which include the study of ancient diseases, stable isotopes and ancient DNA amongst others. Approaches and techniques within both physical anthropology and scientific archaeology are constantly developing and the objective of the session is to draw together researchers, with a wide variety of research interests, but in which the corporeal remains of the ancient people of Northern Eurasia are central. Contextualised research of this nature has the potential to provide substantial insights on key archaeological themes, including diet, economy, health, lifestyle, funerary practices and migration. It is envisaged that this cross‐over of approaches has the potential to lead to more nuanced understandings of the prehistoric populations of Northern Eurasia and ensure that the people are central to these debates.



From the Ural Mountains to the Baltic Sea - New Insights into Early Ceramic Traditions in the Northern European Forest

Organisers: Peter Jordan (University of Aberdeen; UK), Petro Pesonen (University of Helsinki; Finland), Henny Piezonka (Ernst‐Moritz‐Arndt University Greifswald; Germany) and Aleksandr Vybornov (Samara State Academy of Social Sciences and Humanities; Russia)

The last years saw increasing evidence for the eastern origin of early ceramic traditions among Stone Age hunter-gatherers of the Baltic, and it is now widely accepted that pottery production started in the lower and middle Volga region already in the first half of the 7th millennium cal BC. Important new evidence is provided by the systematic application of AMS‐dating of charred crusts, analyses of the pottery matrix, and biochemical as well as stable isotope studies. New excavations on a number of stratified and even waterlogged sites are contributing to a better understanding of the context of the early hunter‐gatherer ceramics on a micro‐scale, and the first supra‐regional studies are summing up results on a macro‐scale. However, the relationship of the various early pottery traditions, the role of early ceramic styles north of the Black Sea, and the social context of the adoption of pottery needs to be clarified on a more reliable basis. The session aims to address these important research questions. We welcome contributions that can provide new information on these early pottery traditions, for example, their chronology, typology and technology, as well as insights from the application of new analytical methods, and also theoretical contributions investigating the development of early ceramic traditions in their social and ecological environments. The session will also identify future directions of research into this remarkable Stone Age innovation and its origins further east.



Hunter-Gatherer Responses to Diminishing Resources

Organisers: Mikael A. Manninen (University of Helsinki; Finland), Miikka Tallavaara (University of Helsinki; Finland), Esa Hertell (University of Helsinki; Finland) and Kjel Knutsson (Uppsala University; Sweden)

The growing rate of resource depletion is a current and worldwide problem and diminishing resources were and still are a problem also for many hunter‐gatherer societies. Climatic and environmental fluctuations, demographic changes and pressure from neighboring agricultural societies could have led to different kinds of consequences that hunter-gatherers had to cope with, such as raw material scarcity and decreasing game density. It is also known that the abundances of different resources are often not positively correlated and that in many situations tradeoffs exist between different resources. For instance, during the post‐glacial colonization of northernmost Europe access to sources of cryptocrystalline lithic raw materials was gradually severed at the same time as new territory was gained. This session focuses on the archaeological signatures of the ways past and present hunter‐gatherers have coped with situations where resources diminish or are depleted, as well as on the theoretical approaches applied when studying these strategies. For example, according to foraging models, an effective response to a decrease in the abundance of the highest ranking game species is a diversification of the food base. The responsive strategies to be discussed can include, but are not restricted to, intensified or diversified technological and foraging practices, proactive modification of the environment (niche construction), as well as new social strategies and innovations. We invite papers that discuss these themes from different perspectives without any chronological or geographical restrictions.



Living and Being in Wetlands and Lakes

Organisers: Benjamin Jennings (IPNA - Basel University; Switzerland), Philipp Wiemann (IPNA - Basel University; Switzerland), Ramon Buxó (Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya; Spain), Stefanie Jacomet (IPNA - Basel University; Switzerland), Raquel Piqué (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Spain), Tony Brown (University of Southampton; UK) and Christina Fredengren (The Discovery Programme; Ireland)

Water plays an enigmatic, if not paradoxical role in landscape archaeology: central yet peripheral, separating yet attracting and revealing yet obscuring. From the Mesolithic to Medieval periods water, lakes and wetlands have had differing meanings and affordances. In particular, prehistoric settlements in Wetland and lake environments are common across Europe. Our compartmentalisation of wet places into rivers, lakes, mires, etc., both obscures their common elements and implies a fixed and relatively unchanging form, which we know from environmental studies, is rarely the case. The arbitrary distinction between "wetland archaeology" and "archaeology" should be reconsidered to facilitate a holistic interpretation of communities and societies living in "wet-scapes" (Van de Noort & O'Sullivan 2006; Menotti In Press). Despite, or in-spite of, the high standard of preservation of organic remains found in wetland settlements and environments, such as the lake-dwellings of the Circum-Alpine region and beyond, the methods of recovery are heterogeneous and produce barely comparable results, while consuming large amounts of post excavation research time and budget. Furthermore, there have been relatively few attempts to incorporate these wetland settlements into wider theoretical models or comprehension of the social structures, social change, or "population" of the inhabitants (Skeates 2007). Papers are invited relating to three broad categories:
- Methods of investigation, sampling and recovery techniques. Topics covered should include: sampling strategies, recovery technique, methods of excavation and survey, new technologies, current research.
- Consideration of the properties and dynamics of wetland environments, by seeking to include them in the cognitive loop. It is the manipulation and internalisation of properties from the visual (reflection/refraction/opacity) to the value of wet places as "thinking spaces" and a problem solving resource. Papers should relate to the broader approaches over a range of spatial and temporal scales.
- The incorporation of theoretical models into the analysis of wetland settlements which go beyond the environmental evidence and addressing the choice to settle, or abandon, wetland and lake environments, the role of lake-settlements in wider social networks and the interaction of wetland and terrestrial settlements.

References:
Menotti, F. (In Press) Wetland Archaeology and Beyond: Theory and Practice, Oxford.
Van De Noort, R. & O'Sullivan, A. (2006) Rethinking Wetland Archaeology, London.
Skeates, R. (2007) Review of the book "Living on the Lake in Prehistoric Europe: 150 Years of Lake-Dwelling Research", by F. Menotti (ed.), Environmental Archaeology 12:1, 95-97.



Malga, buron, Alm, shieling, seter, salaš, orry and cayolar: Seasonal Exploitation of Uplands from Prehistory to the Modern Day

Organisers: John Collis (University of Sheffield; UK) and Franco Nicolis (Provincia autonoma di Trento; Italy)

There is a considerable variety of ways in which the exploitation of summer farms took place throughout Europe, in some cases involving the movement of whole communities, sometimes only the men or the women, and there was also variety in the distance travelled, from a couple of hours to several days. In some cases major structures were constructed for the production of cheeses, in other cases the passage of shepherds might leave little or no trace. In some areas summer farms were an integral and essential part of the farming cycle, in other cases more of a supplement to that cycle. There were also variations in when such transhumance took place starting possibly as early as the Neolithic, but elsewhere reaching its zenith in the 19th century. At Oslo in 2011 we held a first session in which we explored some of the variety, but limited to a small geographical and chronological sample. In this new session we hope to extend the survey to other areas not covered in our first session and to explore the variations in greater detail to see if there are any underlying patterns.



Material Chains and Networks in Space: Production Sequences, Processes, Chaînes Opératoires and Object Biographies in Bronze and Iron Ages Workshops

Organisers: Barbara Armbruster (CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; France), Alexis Gorgues (Université de Bordeaux; France) and Katharina Rebay-Salisbury (University of Leicester; UK)

Craft production in the ancient Mediterranean and adjacent regions is a topic of long standing interest to archaeologists. The aim of this session is twofold. First, it aims to examine the theoretical underpinnings of studies of craft production, focussing on concepts such as production sequences, processes, chaînes opératoires and artefact biographies. These concepts have considered technological elements of production, distribution and consumption step by step from the procurement of raw materials to the finished item, extending into artefact distribution and transfer of technologies. Increasingly, social and embodied aspects of craft, and the importance of human agency on process have been taken into consideration. Examples include the social roles of the craftspersons and the embeddedness of their skills, learning, transmission and modification of styles and technologies, and gauging material properties with the human senses. Second, this session addresses the spatial dimension of craft production, which includes permanent structures such as workshops as well as ephemeral traces. In some cases, the place where craftspeople worked can be well studied through moulds, furnaces and slags in situ (e.g. in the French Late Bronze Age site Fort Harrouard, or in Iron Age Spain). Regular and intense activities will have a major impact on the archaeological record, whilst one-off activities may be more difficult to reconstruct. Comparing the archaeological record linked to craft, work areas and their spatial organization will be explored through specific questions:
- Permanence or temporariness of the work area: was its use permanent, temporary, or a one-off?
- Location of the work area: is it a specific building, a specific area within a palace, mansion, farm or house? Was it part of a room or located in an open space?
- Exclusivity of the use of the area: was the work area exclusively dedicated to a specific production process, or was it embedded in a wider range of activities, such as domestic tasks?
- How are workshops situated in relation to each other, to settlements and within the landscape?
The place of craftspeople in Bronze and Iron Ages societies in Europe has been discussed within a range of theoretical frameworks, using different sets of vocabularies in different languages. In this session, we will not only discuss how different these approaches really are, but also find commonalities and differences between the concepts by examining case studies in detail. We invite papers from prehistoric as well as classical backgrounds to contribute to our session. This session welcomes both theoretical papers and approaches focusing on new fieldwork or new methods used to analyse the archaeological record. Case studies may include, but are not restricted to, stone tool chipping, pottery production, metalworking, textile production and woodworking in Bronze and Iron Age Europe; analyses about reciprocal influences between different areas of the continent are especially encouraged.



The Michelsberg Culture - Territories, Resources and Sociopolitical Complexity?

Organisers: Detlef Gronenborn (Roemisch‐Germanisches Zentralmuseum; Germany), Laurence Manolakakis (CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; France) and Bart Vanmontfort (Eenheid prehistorische archeologie; Belgium)

From 4500 cal BC onwards, one millennium after the introduction of agriculture, the Neolithic in northwestern Europe is characterized by major economical and technological transformations, but also by a growing sociopolitical complexity. During this period, the Michelsberg Culture (4200-3500 cal BC) developed in the Paris Basin and in the Rhineland. From this core region it expanded eastwards, southwards, and northwards. Michelsberg is characterized by a distinctive multi‐tiered settlement pattern centered on complex enclosures and hillforts. Some burials indicate the existence of elites. The communities were active participants in elaborate networks of production and exchange of flint, both as raw material and as finished goods, but possibly also salt. Jade axes of Alpine provenience constituted objects of wealth and power. The session will present recent research, particularly from current projects in Germany, Belgium and France, focusing on links between territories, resources and sociopolitical complexity. The objective of the session is to discuss the causes for the observed transformations and its consequences. The result of this discussion is of interest to a much larger audience than the French‐German MK community. The papers will be edited for publication and are planned to be published in 2013/2014 as a product of an ongoing MK project.



Moving on - Colonisation as a Social Process

Organisers: Håkon Glørstad (University of Oslo; Norway), Jarmo Kankaanpää (University of Helsinki; Finland) and Ole Grøn (University of Southern Denmark; Denmark)

Archaeological literature about social‐material transformative processes tends to organise explanation in a dual system: Either new features appear in an area because of migration, or because of various types of exchange. These concepts are of course important tools for archaeology. Compared with the concept of innovation, exchange and migration are much more frequently used explanatory tools for social change. The reduction of social and historical variation down to these two options - migration or exchange - has too often prevented archaeology from nuanced and specific analyses of the complex social dynamics inherent in most processes of change. The process of colonisation of an area most clearly brings this in focus because colonisation implies the movement of people. But how can those movements be described? What kind of social fabric encompassed the actual historical process? This session explores the process of colonisation from the end of the last Ice Age to the present from a cross‐cultural and interdisciplinary perspective. Key themes are:
- The historical circumstances of the process of colonization.
- Relations to the places of real or imagined origins.
- The advantages and challenges of the natural setting.
- The available means of communication technology.
- Dynamics in biological history (included human DNA).
By defining the key questions in a setting involving the disciplines of both natural and cultural history the session will promote a wide spectrum of perspectives and analyses of global relevance.



The Neolithic House: Interdisciplinary Approaches to (Re)Constructing Prehistoric Architecture

Organisers: Peter F. Biehl (SUNY Buffalo; USA) and Nurcan Yalman (Turkey)

People create themselves through the houses they build. Recent anthropological as well as archaeological and ethnoarchaeological inquiry has identified houses as active material culture entangled with both material and immaterial social values and rules. Architecture is the material expression of culture, both enabling and constraining the relationship between people and their actions. In archaeology, we receive the final phase of the use‐life of a house, yet abundant evidence exists for its making and constant re‐making as living space. This session will explore the intersection of architecture and archaeology focusing on interdisciplinary approaches to (re)constructing architecture from Neolithic Europe and the Near East. The abject spaces and materialities associated with archaeological investigation - dirt, waste, rubbish, ruins - can be useful as themes for thinking about the Neolithic house, its functions and meanings as well as its construction of mudbrick, daub and wattle, timber or stone. The session will help to elucidate and challenge conventional narratives of sedentism to seasonality, and spatial organization to early urbanism from a cross‐cultural perspective. It will explore the architecture‐archaeology intersection through discussing approaches ranging from geophysical surveys to laser‐scanning and 3‐D reconstructions and from archaeological and geo‐archaeological to ethno‐archaeological analyses of architectural remains. It will also scrutinize the complex processes involved in constructing and re‐constructing architecture and the reciprocal relationship between people and the things they built.



New Studies in Cultural Interactions in the Northern Black Sea in the First Millennium BC

Organisers: David Braund (Exeter University; UK) and Marina Yu. Vakhtina (Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg; Russia)

This session will focus on cultural contact and exchange between inhabitants of the north coast of the Black Sea and its hinterland (c. 700 BCE-400 CE). It will present new data from very different sites of the region (e.g. Hallstatt, Scythian, Greek or hybrid) in the context of a session which is designed not only to offer new evidence about specific cultural interactions, but also to contribute to ongoing debates about the whole phenomenon of such interaction. Postcolonial perspectives are especially welcome to balance the Greek and Roman viewpoints of our written evidence on the region and its peoples. It is intended that the set of papers will both constitute a series of informative new studies of particular issues/locations and also provide a well-grounded and integrated treatment of this important topic, relevant to other regions and contexts.



Not Just Meat: The Role of Plants in Paleonutritional Reassessment

Organisers: Karen Hardy, (ICREA - Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona; Spain), Laura Longo (Ufficio Centro Storico UNESCO; Italy) and Anna Revedin (Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria; Italy)

Understanding human diet before plant and animal domestication is a challenge. Survival of material remains is variable but bones frequently survive more readily than plants, and this has led to a traditional focus on meat. This session will focus on the role of plants in human evolution, and we welcome contributions based on both traditional and recently developed techniques that aim to understand the plant component of the diet, and dietary reconstruction. It is now becoming clear that plants were consumed and processed deep into the Palaeolithic; this session will explore aspects of the biological and technological capacities for the transformation of plants for human consumption as well as the evidence for the plants themselves. There is currently little data to examine the impacts of plant supply to nutrition and, in a wider sense, its influence on behavioral choices of the hunter‐gatherers during Upper Pleistocene. This workshop will highlight the new sources of paleodietary information and will aim to promote awareness of these. The discussion is divided into three sections each introduced by invited lecturers.



The Optimal Use of the Information Content of Complex Roman Settlements

Organisers: Tessa de Groot (Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency; Netherlands) and Heini Ynnilä (Oxford University; UK)

Many Roman settlements are characterized by a horizontal and vertical complexity. Due to long term occupation and several formation processes, a complex pattern of features and finds was created, as well as a complicated stratigraphy. Various post‐depositional processes also affect the readability and interpretation of the archaeological record. The purpose of this session is to gain insight into ways in which justice can be done to the above complexity. In what ways can the potential information of these sites be utilized to gain knowledge? The papers focus on relevant questions and methods, techniques and research strategies with which they can be answered. Special attention is paid to the potential value of the find and cultural layers. A second focus is the influence of the organization of field research on the above issues. In a system in which most of the research is conducted by private companies, the constraints of money and time can put pressure on the quality of research. The question is whether specific choices should be made (yet) to gain the desired knowledge?



Organizing Landscapes and Settlements

Organisers: Mads Holst (Aarhus University; Denmark) and Anne Nissen Jaubert (University François Rabelais of Tours; France)

Fences, ditches, enclosures and track‐ways are common features in medieval rural settlements and played an important role in structuring the layout of the settlements and surrounding fields. Numerous sites offer evidence for long‐lasting boundaries which in some cases even survive in present‐day rural territories. The session aims to explore the development, interrelation and significance of these structuring features in various European landscapes during the medieval period. Since long, rural research has addressed roman cadastral systems and regular Medieval open-field systems. In non‐Romanized Europe archaeologists have studied the so‐called Celtic fields since the 1930s. In recent decades there has been a growing awareness of the long‐term continuities of these landscape structures, as well as the complex transformations and developments, which occurred over time. Numerous archaeological investigations have revealed wide‐ranging pre‐Roman regulated field systems which were taken over in Roman Antiquity, while other studies have drawn the attention to continuities into medieval field systems and land‐division principles. A considerable time‐depth has also been observed and argued in non‐Roman Europe where it has been possible to demonstrate that Celtic fields were still recognizable in rural landscapes of the early middle ages. This has resulted in a much more nuanced view on the rural territorial organization changing previous impressions of ruptures at the transition between pre‐Roman, Roman and post‐Roman periods or between early and late Iron Age. The early Middle Ages has thus played and obvious role in the preservation of earlier field, settlement, road and cadastral systems. The long‐lasting rural boundaries should, however, not shade the profound transformations of land management during the same period. In northern France, more settlements, e.g. Serris les Ruelles in Île‐de‐France or Vieuxville‐Bearaude in Brittany, attest an evolution from curved and apparently irregular fences and ditches to a more regular layout of the farm plots and the surroundings of the settlements. However, they cannot be reduced to chronological phenomena. In some regions e.g. Central Sweden and Gotland apparently irregular field boundaries overlay rather regular field systems. This may also be the case in Southern Scandinavia, notably in Vallensbæk and Foulum (5th-6th centuries) where parts of large fences recall the Late Iron Age infield and outfield systems observed in more Norwegian and Swedish Regi