Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri (1942 - 2023)

With the sad news that Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri passed away the EAA has lost one of its important figures from the formative years of the association. She served as vice-president during my first period as president, and she combined many skills that were important in the context of the EAA: she was an outstanding researcher especially for the Bronze Age and early Iron Age (for which she received the Prehistoric Society’s Europa Prize in 1996), but she was also an experienced administrator serving for many years first as officer in the Soprintendenza, the Ministry Heritage office, in Rome, later she became leading Soprintendente herself in Abruzzo. We had a wonderful collaboration where she was able to add her experiences from Italy to my more Scandinavian background, creating a solid and realistic foundation for the strategy we developed for the EAA during those early years. Our first Annual Meeting where we collaborated closely was in Santiago de Compostela, where we also worked together with the local organizer Felipe Criado-Boado, our later president. For my generation many lifelong friendships were formed during these early years, and I have now lost one of them. But the memory of her still shines bright and will do so for years to come.
Kristian Kristiansen