🔽 Dear colleagues,
Times are tough. Newspaper headlines are sobering. It seems that we are living through some very tenuous times indeed. People are afraid…and rightfully so. There are a frightening amount of parallels in the world today with the world of one century ago. Increasingly, populist leaders are in or coming into power. War is a sad reality in many parts of the world, including in Europe. Elsewhere, it rumbles loudly just over the horizon. The world economic situation is dire and, in many ways, the fight for equal social and economic rights still seems an uphill battle waged on a slippery slope.
Faced with so many negative events and difficult situations—alienated from friends, family and colleagues by ideological and/or political differences in many cases—it is worrying to have to consider where to turn for trustworthy news and weighty to choose which worthy issue(s) to champion first and which to set to one side for later consideration.
Last Spring, we came to you with a message of hope. We asked EAA Members and TEA readers to take on the mantle for which archaeologists and heritage professionals are ideally suited: that is to offer some much-needed perspective in a world increasingly turned topsy-turvy. In 2025, the situations as such have heated even further. In a sea of chaos and a deluge of startling day-to-day events, offering perspective seems like a drop in the ocean.
Thus, instead, we urge you now to be prepared. Today, that means keeping informed. On 26th March, 2025, The European Commission released a new “Preparedness Union Strategy” with the intent of both preventing crises and to respond quickly and effectively should the worst occur. If you have not read it yet, we suggest you give it a read.
The world stage is changing rapidly and we are all buffeted by very diverse pressures and drains on our time and energy depending on our unique situations. Political standings and nationalities spring to mind, to name but a few. There are, however, many things that we can do beyond merely being prepared and staying informed: we can also take action. (Please see our previous Letter from the Editors from TEA 83 for a few examples).
If and how you choose to act in these troubling times is important. Of course, this is all a matter of personal choice. However, one thing we may all aspire to is embracing a philosophy that was first put forward over a century ago: that is, to ‘think globally and to act locally’ (Geddes 1915). Though we may be divided by space, creed, political party, or national borders, as EAA Members we are united by a passion for the past and the knowledge that comes with that passion. This spring, rather than asking you to provide perspective as we did in our 2024 letter, we urge you to use the perspectives that you have gained through your own personal study of the past to think globally and act locally. We may not necessarily agree on what should be done first or even what should be done, but we can all do our best to use our knowledge of the past to orient today toward a better, safer, and more equitable tomorrow. If we can rephrase the quote most often attributed to Edmund Burke, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. Do not do nothing.
Think. Act. Be safe. Use your heads. Take care of each other. Be a light of solace, encouragement and inspiration. Have the courage to change the things you can; find the serenity to accept the things you cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference (Shapiro 2014). We all know that the past is important. After all, we have chosen to spend our lives delving into it after facts, patterns and discoveries. The value of what we bring to society today is in moulding those very facts, patterns and discoveries into wisdom that can help us to reflect on the issues with which we are confronted on a daily basis. Our cover for the Spring Issue is particularly appropriate, as it speaks to what happens when things come under pressure.
Unfortunately, the EAA AM has been transformed from an in-person meeting to an online meeting as of the announcement from the Executive Board on 1 April. As the ExB emphasized in their message, though we will be not physically meet in Belgrade, this by no means diminishes our support of Serbian colleagues, particularly in these troubled times. Here, too, we can exercise fellowship in a world under pressure. The Belgrade AM Organising Committee has kindly provided some additional context to the events unfolding in Serbia that have led to this difficult decision.
This issue of TEA contains a Calendar for upcoming Member events which is doubly important with regards to recent changes regarding the 2025 AM. We also feature interviews with EAA Official Matija Črešnar and EAA Member Sila Tripati. The section In Case You Missed It is joined by a Community Spot of the newly founded StoryArch Community.
Appropriately, this issue of TEA is particularly focused on providing a diverse array of perspectives on matters of interest given the current geopolitical climate, including a new EAA Statement on European gender and women’s studies an update regarding the recent CINGOs Spring Session and look at Northwest Europe’s influential (yet often overlooked) female archaeologists both historical and modern and a historical and ethical examination of bioarcheology with a particular focus on Greenland. We also include a thought-provoking reflection from Montserrat on the challenges of working with complex histories that have also been affected by natural disasters.
We have research overviews from several exciting projects, including a study of human/canid relations in Alaska, the presence of Middle Stone Age lithics in Equatorial Guinea and evidence for ancient human cannibalism in Poland. We include a Newsflash on an exciting new discovery from the Phrygian Highlands of Anatolia and a Project Announcement for the ongoing ERC TerraForm project looking at terraced landscapes in Malta.
We include a short conference report on the recent Current Archaeology Awards LIVE! conference at UCL, London. Further, we wish to draw your attention to important announcements, including the launch of the 2025 TEA Photojournalism competition and a new platform for archaeologists, by archaeologists called PastForward.
Finally, we mourn the recent passing of Gheorghe Lazarovici who was an influential force for Central European prehistory throughout his long career in Romania.
Best regards,
Samantha S. Reiter & Matthew J. Walsh
Editors