Johannes Müller (Christian Albrechts University Kiel, Chair of the Scientific Committee)
With extraordinary speed, the world, science, and archaeologists are experiencing dramatic changes in times of climate and social change. Within our disciplines, in addition to the advancement of new methods, new forms of communication, and new threats to archaeological heritage, structures and formats are emerging, which are accelerated by the experience of a worldwide pandemic. The challenges of our modern societies are becoming all the more apparent, for example the environmental crisis, increasing inequality, and the potential for conflict, to name but a few aspects.
Especially in times such as these, the reflection of human behaviour from distant and far distant times is important for the self-assurance of human existence.
In this context, archaeology makes important contributions to the interpretation of recent cultural changes and provides crucial data for strategy development of our modern societies. “Widening Horizons” – the motto of this year’s annual meeting – stands for both what is happening and what is necessary to fulfil our social duty: the departure to new horizons!
For this EAA conference in Kiel, the Scientific Board had identified various topics to meet the task to structure the discourse on widening horizons: Seven themes were identified to guide the many contributions. “Widening horizons through human-environment interconnections” and “Pandemics and climate change: responses to global challenges” locate connectivity and transformations in the socio-environmental context of the past, which continue to be relevant in the present. We know, especially from the experiences of the last decade, how strikingly the disruption of social connectivity or the destruction of the environment becomes a danger.
The new challenges for the preservation of cultural heritage and the presentation of the past to the public are addressed in the topics on “The new normality of heritage management and museums in post-Covid times” and “Globalisation and archaeology”.
Two further themes: “Assembling archaeological theory and the archaeological sciences” and “Material culture studies and societies” discuss the extraordinary progress in archaeological methodology, which not only makes complete new archives accessible for research but above all requires new theoretical foundations to interpret the new data.
This is exemplified in the theme “From global to local: Baltic-Pontic studies”. Investigations are brought together for a part of Europe, where, since Palaeolithic times, connectivity between diverse societies and their environments have always led to significant innovations.
Kiel – as the venue of the EAA conference 2021 – stands symbolically for widening horizons by integrating natural and life sciences into archaeology, by incorporating the most diverse horizons between east, west, north and south, and by developing new research centres that build on proven examples.
Thus, here at the university, in addition to the Cluster of Excellence “ROOTS - Social, Environmental and Social Connectivities in Past Societies” and the CRS “Scales of Transformations: Human-environment Interaction in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies”, a variety of European collaborations on important challenges of contemporary society have been organised. The Centre of Scandinavian Archaeology in Schleswig and the World Heritage Site Haithabu form the crucial bridge to the North.
Widening horizons --- already now we can recognise various aspects that seem important for the problems of our world today. I would like to pick out just three here.
1. Isotope and aDNA analyses, which have become standard in many fields, prove for our archaeological periods that even in sedentary societies - i.e. since about 12,000 years ago - between 10-30% of the population was mobile in most cases. We can therefore modify our modern definition of sedentism: Mobilities, migrations and emigrations are part of the basic pattern of human societies. In the political dimension, this is of course a message for open borders or a world without borders. Even if this may seem illusory to some right now, problem solving requires courage. Especially from an archaeological and historical perspective, we know that crisis situations, including the current ones, offer opportunities for change here – not only for a borderless Europe, but also a world without borders.
2. In the aDNA analyses mentioned above, as in biomarker analyses, there has been an accelerated technical progress in methods. We can also observe this in the archaeological results. No less than five years ago, supra-regional migration movements were reconstructed by archaeology, seamlessly following the old “clash of cultures” narrative. An inflation of terms, such as “extinction”, “migration”, and “warfare”, set in without reflecting the numerous forms of mobility and the diversity of transformation processes. Today, this is a thing of the past. The new development of methods has led to genetic aspects, such as “admixture” or the diversity of genetic fingerprints, that are being linked with integration, diversification and the opening of networks. Here, too, we undoubtedly recognise not only the political relevance but also the dangers for the current political discussion.
3. Widening horizons from a cultural anthropological point of view, we archaeologists have taken up numerous positions in recent years on questions of identity, cultural phenomena, etc. It is precisely the placing of ethnoarchaeological perspectives in the discourse that proves how complex and changeable, how fluid identities are in archaeologically researched societies: social identity is produced by the culturally constituted human being.
One of the special features of the Kiel EAA is this year’s EAA declaration on climate change, which will hopefully be adopted at the General Assembly tomorrow.
Already, the first international archaeological climate summit with experts from Japan to California and from South Africa to Scandinavia took place on Monday under the umbrella of the EAA. The SACC summit stated, and I quote:
“All previously mentioned topics – social inequality, resource management, food security, mobility, conflict – have major consequences for human health. Archaeologists have demonstrated that the circumstances surrounding competition over resources – reduced mobility, living under siege conditions, and malnutrition – also contribute to the increasing fragility of immune systems. In turn, human societies become more vulnerable to both chronic diseases and acute epidemics.
Finally, most of the prehistoric and historic studies conducted by archaeologists have shown that climate change, natural catastrophes, pandemics, etc. did not leave people helpless, but they actively and creatively tried to find solutions. Even when concerted efforts sometimes failed, gained trust in the capabilities of societies facing changes could be bolstered by archaeology.”
The Kiel EAA would not have been possible without the excellent work of Angelika Hoffmann, Annalena Pfeiffer and Hendrik Raese from the local organisation team, to whom we extend our sincere thanks. Of course, it would not have been possible without the great commitment of the EAA’s Prague offices, without the cooperation of numerous colleagues on the scientific committee, and without the support of Kiel University. We would like to thank Ms Simone Fulda on behalf of the latter. It would also not have been possible without the opportunity to work so beautifully with Felipe and Eszter, who are clearly a treasure for the entire EAA.
The Kiel EAA Annual Meeting 2021 had to go virtual again, what is a pity for the local organization, the university and cross-regional, on-site participation. But at the same time, going virtual has facilitated new forms of participation and communication, which also makes the annual meeting more inclusive. The Scientific Committee had to develop a scientific program for the second-highest number of papers handed in within the history of the EAA in spite of the pandemic – from 66 countries. Thus, widening horizons is not only necessary, but possible!
*Editors’ note: This rendering is a transcript of the welcome from 8 September 2021. Similarities between it and the 2021 Kiel Statement on Archaeology and Climate Change reflect the close collaboration of J. Müller with others in the EAA Task Force which drafted the statement.
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