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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?
We are looking for papers that consider:
We are equally interested in hearing about new research directions in this topic from early career researchers and established innovators.
Please submit your details with a title and abstract using this form: https://forms.gle/MBQ7gLaqzU9opZLe7.
Deadline for paper submission is 31 March 2023.
General queries about the conference can be addressed to ekaroune@turing.ac.uk.
Arivruaich, Isle of Lewis. Photo: copyright Steve Forden, published with permission.
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:
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
Association for Environmental Archaeologists Annual Conference Programme (docx)
DownloadA number of archaeology departments in England are under threat of closure, including the University of Hull, University of Worcester and the University of Sheffield. The University of Hull will no longer offer undergraduate courses in archaeology and at the University of Worcester teaching in archaeology will end after the current academic year. There is a petition for this decision to be reversed. See:
https://www.change.org/p/university-of-worcester-save-worcester-s-archaeology-department.
The archaeology department at the University of Sheffield will also cease to exist as a single entity following a decision earlier this year. The department has been instrumental in the development of environmental archaeology and this will be a huge loss to the discipline. If you would like to show your support for the staff and students at the department, please do sign the petition which is still open:
Save Sheffield Archaeology Resources.
See below for the AEA's formal response to the proposed closure, and an article about Environmental Archaeology at Sheffield
The autumn event for the AEA is an Open Science Skills workshop.
It is a full-day online workshop that will run twice (both with the same content) but in two different time zones.
It is free to attend.
The dates are:
Each day will have a maximum of 30 spaces to allow for small group discussions and an environment that allows participants to ask questions freely.
The aims of the workshop are:
1. to introduce all the different aspects of open science
2. to create a friendly space to ask questions (even ones you consider silly!)
3. to have in-depth presentations about open data, open methods, open analysis and open access publishing
4. for all participants to go away with one step they can make towards more open working.
The agenda will be:
Speakers:
Speakers for the different presentations will be Emma Karoune (The Alan Turing Institute), Sam Leggett (University of Cambridge), Li-Ying Wang (University of Washington) and Gayoung Park (University of Washington). We are all active open researchers so we will be sharing the approaches that we use in our own work and be showing examples of what this looks like in archaeological research.
To sign up for this event please use the eventbrite links below:
There are separate links for each of the days so please select the date/time you want. You only need to sign up for one day as both days have the same content.
Friday 19 November 2021 – 9am to 5pm (GMT): https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/aea-open-science-skills-workshop-tickets-167643920479
Saturday 20 November 2021 – 9am to 5pm in an Americas timezone:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/aea-open-science-skills-workshop-tickets-170147368359
Accessibility:
The event is fully online, so hopefully this makes it as accessible as possible to all that want to attend, but if you do have any accessibility issues, please do get in touch with the organiser (details below) as there is a small amount of money for buying equipment (such as headphones) and wifi access to enable participants to attend.
Also if you have any particular accessibility requirements, such as specific captioning for talks or a certain format needed for documents to aid file reader software - please do make the organiser aware of this by email once you have signed up.
Access to resources after event:
If you aren’t available to attend on these days, all of the presentations will be recorded to be added to the AEA YouTube channel and all the resources used will be made openly available, so please look out for details of this after the dates of the workshop.
Thanks:
Special thanks goes to the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI), who are providing funding for this event through Emma Karoune’s Fellowship – https://www.software.ac.uk/about/fellows/emma-karoune.
If you want to find out more about SSI, please see their website: https://www.software.ac.uk/
Any questions?
Please email Emma Karoune (ekaroune@googlemail.com), if you have any questions or if the tickets are sold out and you want to be put on the waiting list.