Issue 86 - Autumn 2025

In 1966 then US president John F. Kennedy gave what was arguably his most famous public address at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He is quoted as saying “There is a Chinese curse which says: ‘May he live in interesting times.' Like it or not, we live in interesting times.” Without doubt, we still live in “interesting times”. In 1966, protests against racial segregation and oppression were in full swing, the Vietnam War was intensifying, with global ramifications. Mao Zedong had just launched the ‘Cultural Revolution’ in China. The ‘Space Race’ was going full throttle. The South African Border War had just begun. Events today are equally as sobering—ongoing war in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, among many other smaller conflicts on the global scale. At nearly every corner, we see political instability and dictatorships, loss of free speech, economic downturn, and increasing social and political distance between previously friendly national and ideological entities. Even within the greater community of the EAA as an association, we have witnessed tremendous polarization in recent weeks.

Many of you have written or called us to express your frustrations with some of the recent decisions made by the EAA. There have been concern about the 2026 AM and anxious requests for more information. Like you, we do not know what will happen in the aftermath of recent events. However, the two of us sat down and had a very serious discussion about what we felt was right and appropriate with regards to our editorship of TEA following the events leading up to and during the 2025 online AM and AMBM (whose minutes are included in this issue). We feel that it is easier to leave an association than it is to stay and to fight for what you believe in. At the end of the day, we agreed that we both keep the fire burning deep down in our hearts for the mission of the EAA—to build bridges through a shared love of culture and the archaeological and historical pursuit thereof.

TEA is nominally the EAA’s newsletter. This is not up for debate. But it is also the EAA’s archive. Our job as volunteer editors is to assist with record-keeping of major events in the world of culture and archaeology and to also help ensure that Members’ voices are heard and recorded. Many of those with whom we have been in contact have written directly to the ExB. We would like to use this occasion to make an open call for Letters to the Editors that express your opinions on recent events and which present suggestions and ideas for the future trajectory of the EAA as an institution. Things are still developing, and the results of the per rollam voting will give an indication of the future direction of the EAA. What we would like to offer you here is a space for open dialogue. We will make a selection of entries for inclusion in the upcoming 2026 Winter Issue. We promise to do our utmost to give equal weight to each side of the debate(s) that have emerged from the 2025 AM and AMBM. Please address any such letters directly to [email protected] earmarked “Letter to the Editors Winter 2026”. Due to what we suspect will be a high amount of mail, we require that you limit your letters to 1000 words.

One of us (Sam) was recently reading a work of fiction entitled When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill. The book is a heavily feminist-influenced fantasy historical fiction that champions women and sisterhood as well as science. The final paragraph of the first chapter sums the current situation up well:

I was four years old when I first saw a dragon. I was four years old when I first learned to be silent about dragons. Perhaps this is how we learn silence—an absence of words, an absence of context, a hole in the universe where the truth should be.

(Barnhill 2024, 9)

Although we may live in those aforementioned “interesting times”, we (your editors) do not believe that they should be silent. As we have repeatedly written in our Letters of years past, archaeology is always about context, and TEA is—as we see it— a significant part of the context for the EAA itself. Our ears are open. We aim to make TEA a thing of words. A presence of context (like archaeology). A window in the universe which gives perspective.

In the meantime, we have assembled here a panoply of articles that we hope will do just that. First comes a highly relevant read regarding current developments with regard to important cultural holdings in Russian-held Ukraine. This is followed by a unique perspective on differing official attitudes to material culture in Greece and a book review and announcement of a new publication entitled New Ways of Communicating Archaeology in a Digital World edited by Fonseca, Thomas and Basterrechea.

As always, we include a short selection of the hottest archaeology news of this quarter in In Case You Missed It. We have the pleasure to feature an EAA Official spot on our Ukrainian and Swedish colleague Fedir Androshchuk and an EAA Meet a Member over TEA interview with 2025 AM volunteer Vukić Antović. Don’t miss the story behind this issue’s beautiful cover and check out the EAA’s newest communities: ARCMET. Finally, check out a new and exciting opportunity to refine your written science communication skills with the Archaeosnack writing group.

We further include some fascinating research overviews on a broad range of topics from Palaeolithic ivory processing in Ukraine to the fascinatingly complex discoveries from recent Lidar surveys in the Upano Valley in South America. Other colleagues have shared behind-the-scenes insight into work on Neanderthal tools made from cave lion bones and the burial of Roman Iron Age mass grave in Vienna.

The ECHO team shares their plans for an ongoing project in the Baltic states and we have a short newsflash on historical trendsetters on the modern food stage in eastern France (including a recipe!). Finally, we close this issue with obituaries for two colleagues whose passing leaves our community at a great loss: Martin Appelt and Mike Rowlands.

Yours in solidarity,

Sam and Matt

Samantha S. Reiter & Matthew J. Walsh

Editors

Bibliography

Barnhill, K. 2023. When Women Were Dragons. 2^nd ed. Hot Key Books, London.