AEA NEWS

•  Conference page: AEA conference page
• Abstract submission form: https://bit.ly/abstractsAEA2023
• Deadline 31 July 2023 at 23:59h CET

Members of the Landscape Archaeology Research Group (GIAP) of the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology (ICAC) are organising the 43rd edition of the AEA's annual meeting, which will be held in Tarragona (Spain) on 24–26 November 2023.

Registration and call for papers will open soon!

Title: Telling environmental archaeology stories

Dates: 24–26 November 2023

Host institution: Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology (ICAC), Tarragona, Spain

Location: Palau Firal i de Congressos de Tarragona, Carrer Arquitecte Rovira, 2, 43001 Tarragona

Organisers: Landscape Archaeology Research Group (GIAP). Organisation committee in alphabetical order: Giannis Apostolou, Theoni Baniou, Lídia Colominas, Charlotte Diffey, Maria Ferrer Bonet, Abel Gallego, Darío Herranz Rodrigo, Alexandra Livarda, Alfredo Mayoral, Hèctor A. Orengo, Valentina Pescini

Scientific committee: Lídia Colominas, Charlotte Diffey, Alexandra Eleftheria Kriti, Alexandra Livarda, Alfredo Mayoral, Patricia Vandorpe, Federica Riso, Laura Strolin & Patricia Vandorpe

General queries about the conference can be addressed to: Alexandra Livarda at alivarda@icac.cat 

Website:  https://icac.cat/difusio/activitats-icac/43rd-aea-conference/

Conference schedule:

The conference will start in the afternoon of Friday 24 November 2023 with a keynote lecture. The main conference programme will follow on 25–26 November. The conference will end at noon on Sunday 26 November.

Registration will open soon: watch out for news on the conference page!

Abstract and call for papers

The interpretation of sites, soils, stratigraphies, cultural artifacts and bioarchaeological remains using archaeological methods provides a rich source of material to investigate past behaviours and ultimately explain the human stories behind scientific data. The increasing interdisciplinarity and the development of new methodologies to treat archaeological primary data have opened new possibilities to deepen our interpretations and go one step further in understanding our cultural heritage. Greater engagement in theoretical debates and approaches has further contributed to a multivocality and a proliferation of narratives that entangle different scales of analysis to explain the past. Environmental archaeology has made great strides, moving on from the ‘appendix’ of site reports listing species, to occupying an important role and shedding light from different angles on key archaeological questions.

In this conference, we seek to explore the contributions of environmental archaeology to these ‘stories’ of the past. The aim will be to move the focus away from the data, techniques, and methodological advances to the narrative, to explore how our research has helped explain and interpret the past and which are our key contributions in creating history. Another important area will be the examination of effective communication strategies of our stories and research achievements to colleagues of other academic fields and the public and how these can contribute real impact on modern society through either a better understanding of the past or lessons and practical guidance for the future. 

We are calling for papers that employ environmental archaeology in its broader sense to investigate or propose new interpretations/hypotheses on:

• Social relations and the role of different social groups in shaping society and economy
• The role of immigration/movement in changing society, how this took place and its repercussions
• Past cosmologies and belief systems
• How people or groups of people perceived and acted on issues of health and medicine
• How people or groups of people engaged with their environment: reconstructing rural or urban histories of interactions
• People and societies as main actors impacting landscapes, geographies and environments
• Local versus global narratives
• Key events of the past (agricultural and farming developments, emergence of new forms of socio-economic organisation, and what these meant or how they changed life, etc.)

In relation to the theme ‘communicating environmental archaeology stories’, papers are also welcome on:

• Environmental archaeology contributions to policy making and impact
• Successful stories of communicating and disseminating environmental archaeology research to researchers of other fields and the public
• Environmental archaeology and the press
• Environmental archaeology and impact on education
• Inclusive environmental archaeology
• 
  

The abstract submission guidelines will open soon.

About Tarragona:

Tarragona is a port city located in northeast Spain by the Mediterranean Sea. Tarraco, as it was known in Roman times, provides an eloquent and unprecedented testimony to an important stage in the history of the Mediterranean in antiquity. In 2000, UNESCO declared its archaeological sites a World Heritage Site.

Tarraco was a little Rome, open to the Mediterranean and with a particularly pleasant climate, that is, a good place to live and prosper. This is still the spirit of the city today. Walking through the streets and squares of the medieval city or contemplating the horizons over the Mare Nostrum, you can relive the pleasant and beneficent city that has inspired travellers, artists & chefs. In Tarragona, history comes out of stones and books and comes to life in its people, cuisine and landscapes. 

This still holds true nowadays, with the NYTimes including Tarragona as one of the 52 places to go in 2023.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqNgrB4GLfA

Registration open for the AEA Virtual Spring Conference 2023 

The AEA Virtual Spring Conference will be taking place online on 13 May 2023, with optional Basic R training sessions on 14 and 15 May 2023. 

Title: Data Science in Environmental Archaeology

Organisers: Emma Karoune, Matt Law

Following our highly successful Spring conference in 2021 on Open Science Practices in Environmental Archaeology, we want to extend this topic by focusing this year's spring conference on the applications of and innovations in data science approaches to environmental archaeology. 

In this conference we would like to explore how environmental archaeologists as a community are dealing with data and using data in their research. This is data science in the broad sense. We are looking for new directions and initiatives around data science, including new methods and types of analysis, new ways to manage data, implementation of new data stewardship approaches, and new ways to share and publish data. 

Data is at the heart of all of our research and it is a precious commodity that should be treated with the same care as archaeological remains. To get the most out of our data and to be able to integrate different types of data together, we need to think about how it is structured and how we can best manage data. As the size and breadth of data grows, what new ways can be developed to interrogate our data to generate new insights? What new perspectives from the past emerge from bringing disparate datasets together or re-analysing existing datasets? And what are these new approaches that we might want to exploit for data integration and novel research?

The programme is now available for the AEA Spring Conference - click here to view the programme. 

Both the conference and R training workshop are free to AEA members!

Members can register for free here: https://forms.gle/4TRNK8VrszBwhtCb7

Not a member of the AEA?

Why not become an AEA member?

Annual membership of the AEA starts at just £25 (concessionary rate for online-only access to the journal), and goes up to £45 (to include a print copy of the journal). 

If you join prior to registration for the spring conference, you will be entitled to free attendance to both the conference and workshop as part of your membership.

Other benefits  include access to our journal Environmental Archaeology, reduced conference rates, our newsletter, and voting at AGM. Members are also eligible to apply for Research grant schemes and student members can apply for bursaries to attend AEA conferences. 

You can join AEA or renew your membership here: Join or renew membership page.

Alternatively, you may register for the spring conference and workshop for a combined fee of £20.

• Please use this link to pay the conference fee: https://checkout.square.site/buy/IKDMBJYUNVHSM6A2NF67UVSA
• Then register for the conference using this form: https://forms.gle/zT2PEWX2aGRXsFMA6

To ensure the conference and workshop are widely accessible, we are also operating an accessibility grant to cover the cost of registration for non-members.

• Register for the conference using this form: https://forms.gle/zT2PEWX2aGRXsFMA6
• Tick accessibility grant at the bottom of the form and we will contact you to get more information. 

General queries about the conference can be addressed to ekaroune@turing.ac.uk

The 42nd Conference of the Association for Environmental Archaeology will be held on 2–4 December 2022, with an optional fieldtrip on Monday 5 December 2022

Title: The environmental archaeology of landscapes and land-use 

Host institutions: University of Glasgow and University of Pennsylvania, USA (remotely)

Organisers: Nicki Whitehouse, Matt Jacobson, Gareth Beale (University of Glasgow); Xiaolin Ren (University of Glasgow and Chinese Academy of Sciences); Kathy Morrison (University of Pennsylvania) 

Website:  

https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/research/archaeologyresearch/latestnews/headline_859669_en.html

Humans do not live in isolation from nature. In this conference, we would like to explore our changing relationships with landscapes and land-use, and consider how humans and non-humans have developed entangled and complex relationships with other beings. We are interested in the ways archaeology can enable us to examine these relationships in the past, especially when it comes to more creative ways to think about landscapes and human activities within them. 

An important area where we have impacted landscapes is around changing land-use, often instigated by agricultural practices. What have the effects of these activities been on our landscapes and how have these been shaped by cultural activities and human agency? Major historical transitions, such as the start of the Neolithic, and technological advances, such as intensification of agriculture or urbanisation processes, have driven major changes in land-use. Thus, human land-use activities are known drivers of vegetation change and can also produce potentially significant levels of greenhouse gases. How can we improve our understanding of these effects from analyses of archaeological and palaeoecological records? 

Finally, an additional interest is around what we can learn from approaches developed within the digital humanities, for example, in thinking about and interpreting human relationships to landscapes and places? 

The conference will showcase research that explores our relationships to landscapes and land-use to consider how we have shaped our modern world and its current ecological and climate crisis. We are interested in hearing about research that investigates the environmental archaeology of landscapes and land-use studies that utilise archaeological and historical evidence, including texts, maps, images, settlement datasets, artefacts, plant and animal remains, biomolecular evidence, taking a variety of perspectives; we are also keen to welcome contributions from the digital humanities that engage with these lines of evidence as well as the broader themes of the conference. 

We are looking for papers that consider:

• human-induced changes to landscapes, land-use and environments at all scales 
• How human activities have shaped our cultural landscapes
• engagement with more-than-human and multi-species approaches that offer new ways of thinking about our past landscapes and place in the world
• how past land-use change is a major driver of our current ecological and climate crisis
• the creative ways offered for exploring and understanding past landscapes and land-use through digital media 
• what lessons can be learnt by bringing together different focal approaches towards a more sustainable, culturally informed future.

The deadline for abstracts is now closed. 

Conference programme 

The conference will start early evening on Friday 2 December 2022, opening with a keynote lecture and followed by a wine reception at the University of Glasgow. The main conference programme will follow over 3–4 December, finishing by 4pm. There will be a conference dinner on the evening of 3 December (up to 60 participants).

On Monday 5 December there will be an optional fieldtrip to Kilmartin Glen and nearby monuments; this will be led by Dr Kenny Brophy and Dr Nicki Whitehouse, with a stop en route at Inveraray. 

The final programme is available to download.

A livestream link for the conference is available to AEA members via the members' page.  Please note, however, that there is no technical support for this system.  The livestream is offered free of charge to AEA members, but the conference organisers are not able to deal with any issues related to it.

The deadline for registration has now passed.

General queries about the conference and programme can be addressed to nicki.whitehouse@glasgow.ac.uk