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Keynote lectures

List of Keynote lectures

Thursday 6 September

Saturday 8 September

THE EUROPEAN RESEARCH COUNCIL

Jose Labastida

When: Thursday 6 September, 12:40 - 14:00
Where: UB4M

The European Research Council has become one of the most prominent funders of frontier research worldwide. Since its creation it has been an important part of the research funding policy of the European Union. More than 8000 research projects have been funded in all areas of knowledge following an evaluation criteria based exclusively on excellence. The outcome of the research funded through all these projects is having an important scientific impact in many research areas. Currently, the funding schemes run by the European Research Council are part of Horizon 2020, the framework programme of the European Commission for research, technological development and innovation. I will present the main features of this organisation and the accomplishments achieved during its first ten years in existence. I will also make some reflections on the key aspects that have led to its success. I will complete my presentation providing some information on the research funded by the European Research Council in the area of archaeology. In addition, some aspects of the role that the European Research Council will play in the future framework programme Horizon Europe will be also addressed.

Biography

Professor Jose Labastida is the Head of the Scientific Management Department of the European Research Council since February 2011.
Before joining the European Research Council he was Secretary General for Science and Technology Policy and Director General for Research of the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain (2008-2011). Previously he was Vice-President for Research of CSIC, the Spanish National Research Council (2004-2008), and Deputy Director General for Research in the Ministry of Science and Technology (2001-2004).
Formerly, he was a Researcher and Professor of Theoretical Physics occupying positions at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, CERN, CSIC and the University of Santiago de Compostela. His research fields were Quantum Field Theory, String Theory, Knot Theory and Topological Quantum Field Theory.
He has also been very active in several scientific societies; he was President of the Theoretical Physics Group of the Royal Spanish Society of Physics (1998 – 2001), Vicepresident of the Royal Spanish Society of Physics (2001 – 2005) and Member of the Council of the European Physical Society (2000 – 2004).
He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Stony Brook University.

THE NORTHERN BOUNDARY OF NEOLITHIC “CLAYSCAPES” AND THE ROOTS OF THE BANDKERAMIK

Eszter Bánffy

When: Thursday 6 September, 18:40 - 20:00
Where: CCCB4M

This talk will demonstrate the process of fundamental cultural change during the European Early Neolithic that took place in the northern marginal zones of the Balkans in the first half of the 6th millennium cal BC. This zone, the southern part of the Carpathian basin, is part of the south eastern “world of clay”, where clay was used as the fundamental building block of their architecture and finds material expression in artefacts and rituals: truly “Clayscapes”.
The marginal ecological position of these lands beyond the warm riverine lowlands was significant: the hilly forested landscapes brought on a crisis, a challenge, but they simultaneously triggered changes that led to new and creative mental patterns and, in consequence, innovative ritual activities. Following the human-material relations, a newly identified early Neolithic monumental horned figurine type appeared. It acts as the cornerstone of my presentation as an embodiment of the last instance among the south east European early farming communities of the Clayscapes. Research into a contextual reconstruction of the ritual involved in making and using these figurines includes consideration of zooarchaeological and environmental issues, and connections with early dairy consumption.
At the same time, changes around the distant edge of the Clayscapes gave birth to a no less stunning world constructed more from timber and stone, with transformations in subsistence, material culture and rituals. It is inextricably bound with the formation of the first farming communities of central Europe – the Bandkeramik or “LBK” – to which they brought previously unknown concepts of subsistence, landscape perception, architecture and cognition.
The aim of my talk is to present one possible narrative concerning the frontier zone of the south east European – the “clay” half of the European Neolithic – and its role in forging the identity of central European farming societies.

Biography

Eszter Bánffy graduated in prehistoric and medieval archaeology and also in Indo-European comparative linguistics at the ELTE University Budapest and worked for the Institute of Archaeology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for three decades. She has been doing research in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of Central and South East Europe, with a stress on settlement history, landscape archaeology and ritual find contexts. Over the last years, she has been focusing to the Central European Neolithic transition, and became involved also in theoretic issues and matters of heritage protection. She has given lectures and courses in universities like Ljubljana, Vienna, Heidelberg, Prague, Frankfurt, Buffalo, New York University, Leiden, Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, Paris (Sorbonne), Moscow and at the Harvard, where she spent a semester as visiting scholar in 2008.
After a habilitation in 2005 in prehistoric archaeology, and a second habilitation in geoarchaeology in 2012, she is a professor supervising PhD students at ELTE Budapest and SZTE Szeged. Since 2013, she has been the director of the Romano-Germanic commission of the German Archaeological Institute, in Frankfurt am Main, and has been heading many projects between Scotland and Ireland over the Carpathian basin to the Black Sea.
Eszter has a long-standing commitment to EAA. She served on the Executive Board also as secretary (2005-2011), worked in its Nomination committee (2011-2013), currently she is chairing the board of trustees of the Oskar Montelius Foundation, and is one of the series editors of the EAA Monograph series THEMES of contemporary archaeology.
Eszter Bánffy is an author of nine books, and more than a hundred fifty chapters and articles, published in many European countries, in Russia and the United States.

Further information: https://dainst.academia.edu/EszterBanffy/
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eszter_Banffy

ARCHAEOLOGY HAS METHOD: DOES IT NEED AN “ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY”?

Diane Gifford-Gonzalez

When: Thursday 6 September, 18:40 - 20:00
Where: CCCB11A

Since the emergence of processual archaeology in the 1960s, archaeologists have increasingly developed what David Clarke called “critical self-consciousness”, not only recognizing how little we really know about past people but also understanding the extent to which theory underlies all aspects of practice. However, after a half-century of critically self-conscious work, archaeology is still without anything like a general theory, and archaeologists debate suitable bodies of “high theory” to inform their work. This presentation begins by asserting that a lack of general theory might not be due to any failure on our part but rather, that archaeology may be on the brink of recognising its role as an historical tool of a particular and sophisticated sort. From this viewpoint, we can examine theory drawn from fields situated in the ever-fleeing here and now – ontologies drawn from STS and other fields, feminist studies, practice theory, indigenous research practices, etc. – and assess each as a candidate tool for the toolkit we use to address problems that we deem important. The second part of this talk addresses “what we deem important”, reflecting on the interplay of examined and unexamined ethical commitments with archaeological practice at the community level. I am not the first archaeologist to reflect on the unexpected and occasionally distressing lessons archaeologists learn when working with communities that may diverge from our own values in surprising ways. This presentation explores how archaeologists’ expectations are conditioned by pervasive tropes of individualism and history that emerged in the Enlightenment. It also reflects on global predicaments as these expectations are increasingly challenged by global climate change, on the one hand, and by the worldwide broadening of access to both energy and public discourse set into motion by the Enlightenment, on the other.

Biography

Diane Gifford-Gonzalez is a Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has for more than 40 years written on zooarchaeology and taphonomy, including interpretive issues implicated in analogical reasoning, and she is author of An Introduction to Zooarchaeology (Springer 2018). Her regional specialisations and continued research interests are the archaeology of African pastoralism and the historical ecology of the greater Monterey Bay region of California, on both of which she has published. Since the 1990s, she has collaborated with isotopic ecologists to explore the histories of marine and terrestrial mammals using archaeological specimens. She has written on gender in archaeology in terms of both professional practice and the perspectives of representation and public education. Her honors include two teaching awards from her Santa Cruz campus and election to the Committee of Honor, International Council for Archaeozoology. She has served various professional organisations, including the American Anthropological Association and the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and is past president of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists and the Society for American Archaeology. She is the happy grandmother of a four-year-old girl, Effi.

ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE ANTHROPOCENE – WHY SHOULD WE BOTHER?

Brit Solli

When: Thursday 6 September, 18:40 - 20:00
Where: CCCB-1A

Are we now living in a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene? Have we left the Holocene? In 2000, Nobel laureate chemist Paul J. Crutzen and his partner, marine science specialist Eugene F. Stoermer, suggested in a short statement that planet Earth has entered a new geological “era”; namely, the Anthropocene (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000). In 2002, Crutzen developed his argument further under the headline “Geology of mankind” in the journal Nature. Geo-scientists discuss whether there is a need for a new concept covering the last 250 years’ immense human impact on the Earth. Does the eventual introduction of a new geological epoch have any consequences for how we engage in and consider archaeology? Whose Anthropocene is it anyway? Why should we as archaeologists bother about this ongoing discussion among earth scientists? Archaeologists are engaged in the direct consequences of climate change concerning archaeological sites, e.g., the rise in sea levels, erosion due to more extreme weather conditions, the thawing of ice in the Alps and Subarctic regions, etc. But should we also concern ourselves with the mere concept of the Anthropocene and its epistemological consequences? Are there new artefacts, e.g., hyperobjects to be included in future archaeological assemblages?

Biography

Brit Solli is Professor of archaeology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. She was until 2005 Professor in Historic Archaeology at the Department of Archaeology, University of Tromsø. From August 1. 2012 – October 30. 2014, Solli was Scientific Director of the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Brit Solli’s areas of research have since 1985 spanned a wide array of themes: Archaeological research history, theory and method; archaeology and zoo-archaeology; archaeology and climate change; cultural heritage management; archaeology and identity; archaeology of gender and queer theory; archaeology of Old Norse religion; the Christianization of Norway, urbanization, and socio-political history of the Viking Age and Middle Ages. She has participated on numerous excavations and headed the Veøy-project in Romsdal and the Borg III-project in Lofoten.
Brit Solli is now working on a project concerning ancient reindeer hunting in the high alpine mountains in Norway. Due to climate change artifacts connected with ancient hunting and other high mountain activities, are now coming out of perennial ice – and snow patches. The archaeological artifacts not only give information about cultural history, but also of past climate change.

WELCOME CONFLICT. ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE RETURN OF THE POLITICAL

Alfredo González Ruibal

When: Thursday 6 September, 18:40 - 20:00
Where: UB4M

Politics in archaeology has been dominated over the last couple of decades by discourse that has emphasised identity, multivocality, ethics, negotiation and consensus. The truly political – which is characterised by agonism and radical disagreement – was thus replaced in many cases by policy or harmless politics: what Chantal Mouffe and other political philosophers have called “post-politics”. Even those fields of practice that have had to face the harshest controversies, such as conflict archaeology, indigenous archaeology or the archaeology of the contemporary past, have all too often skewed the political, seeking refuge in ethics or bland forms of political engagement. The current global situation, dominated by a reactionary backlash and the spread of extreme right populism, has caught archaeologists largely unprepared. If archaeology wants to become relevant in social debates, it will inevitably have to change the paradigm. This implies a willingness to accept conflict as part of our daily work, to take sides and opt for unpopular discourse. In this talk, I would like to illustrate my points through my archaeological research on the Spanish Civil War (1935-1939). This is a conflict that left deep wounds in the social fabric that have never properly healed. Defending the dictatorship that followed the war and which lasted 40 years is still seen as legitimate and attempts at producing narratives that challenge accepted views of the war and the dictatorship are met with hostility. In this context, the conceptual tools of social archaeology as is usually practiced are of little help. Here, I will defend a relationship between archaeology and politics that fully embraces conflict and keeps away from apolitical positivism and the post-political – but also from activism.

Biography

Alfredo González-Ruibal is a researcher with the Institute of Heritage Studies of the Spanish National Research Council (Incipit-CSIC. Although trained as a prehistoric archaeologist specialising in Atlantic Europe, for the last 15 years he has worked on the archaeology of the contemporary past and African archaeology. He has explored the darkest side of modernity (dictatorship, war, colonialism) and forms of resistance against the State. He is also interested in borderlands, long-distance trade and political theory. He has now active projects in Spain, Ethiopia and Somaliland. His research on the archaeology of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship has led him to excavate in battlefields and concentration camps, but also to reflect on the limits of public and community archaeology. He has published numerous articles in some of the top journals of archaeology (Current Anthropology, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Antiquity, World Archaeology, etc.) and has authored or edited several books, among which Reclaiming archaeology: beyond the tropes of modernity (editor, Routledge, 2013), Ethics and the archaeology of violence (edited with Gabriel Moshenska, Springer, 2015) and An archaeology of the contemporary era (Routledge, forthcoming). He is the managing editor of the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology.

DOING ARCHAEOLOGY AND HERITAGE IN AFRICA: DECONSTRUCTING AND DECOLONISING THE NARRATIVES

George Abungu

When: Thursday 6 September, 18:40 - 20:00
Where: UB4G

Archaeology and heritage in Africa are often interlinked and even intertwined. While heritage that often includes archaeology is practiced, lived and cherished, archaeology as looked at through the Western lens has remained an elitist, university/museum-practiced subject divorced from society. At times it has been looked upon with suspicion and, in many parts of the continent, has recently remained a subject for white scholars, mostly foreign elites and their few African counterparts and students, many of whom have been trained in Europe or America. In the footsteps of the colonial practice of archaeology, this group has maintained the status quo, hardy recognising the role of communities in the production of archaeological knowledge, let alone the ownership of their past. This trend is however changing as the concept of community archaeology comes into play and communities realise the power of the past and call for its appropriation. As scholars grudgingly cede some power of archaeological knowledge production to communities through engaging them as partners, there is a swinging pendulum that may be good for the subject in the long run. The co-ownership and co-production of archaeological knowledge and resources is part of the deconstruction and the decolonising of African heritage resources. This presentation looks at the history of archaeology in Africa and the changing landscape where heritage including archaeological practice is taking a negotiated approach rather than “the scholar knows it all”. “Not for us without us” is becoming the motto across the continent.

Biography

George Henry Okello Abungu is a Cambridge-trained archaeologist and former Director-General of the National Museums of Kenya. He is the founding Chairman of Africa 2009, ISCOTIA (the International Standing Committee on the Traffic in Illicit Antiquities), and CHDA, the Centre for Heritage Development in Africa among others.
Prof. Abungu has been a guest scholar at the Getty Conservation Institute and Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Chairman of the Kenya Cultural Centre, and is an International Heritage Consultant. He has been a visiting lecturer in many Universities around the world.
He is a recipient of the “Ife Prize in Museology” in 2007, Brazzaville, Congo; distinction of “Passeur du Patrimone by Ecole du Patrimoine Africain in 2009, Benin; INational Museums of Kenya Award in 2011; Association for Research into Crime against Art for Lifetime Achievement in Defense of Art in 2012; and Chevalier de l’Order de Arts et des Lettres by the Government of the Republic of France in 2012. In 2016 he was awarded the first African World Heritage Fund Award for outstanding contribution to the long-term capacity building of heritage practitioners in Africa.
Prof. Abungu has numerous publications in the disciplines of archaeology, heritage management, museology, culture and development, heritage and tourism and heritage and sustainable development and has championed community participation and benefits from heritage.
Prof. Abungu has been an advisor to the Aluka project of the Mellon Foundation, the Global Heritage Fund, USA Vice President of International Council of Museums (ICOM), and a Member of the International Jury of the UNESCO Melina Mecouri International Prize for Safeguard and Management of Cultural Landscapes Paris France. In 2015 the German Minister for Culture appointed him as an Experts for the Humboldt Forum, Berlin, Germany where he serves as one of the International Experts. He has sat on the World Monuments Watch panel of the World Monument Fund, New York and was Kenya’s Representative to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, and Vice-President of its Bureau (2004-2008). He a Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Stellenbosch South Africa and was Elizabeth Eddy Professor of Applied Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA. He is the immediate former and founding Professor of Heritage Studies, at the University of Mauritius.

IS HERITAGE IRRELEVANT?

Sophia Labadi

When: Saturday 8 September, 18:40 - 20:00
Where: CCCB-1A

This keynote speech will reflect upon and bring together some ideas that I have researched and written about over the past few years, primarily the issue of diversity (discussed in the book Museums, Immigrants and Social Justice, Routledge, 2017) and sustainability (discussed in the edited volume Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability, Routledge, 2015). Diversity and sustainability are key themes of the EU Year of Cultural Heritage. These two themes are regularly used to argue for the relevance of heritage and museums in contemporary society. The first part of this speech will critically assess the importance given to diversity in museums and heritage sites, as well as the failure of these institutions to take seriously concerns for diversity in their programmes and activities. Some explanation for this failure will be provided. The impact of this lack of diversity will be discussed, including issues of relevance for museums and heritage sites. The second part of this speech will turn to the notion of sustainability, understood as the socio-economic impact of heritage and archaeology. It will detail the issues with these ideas and the threats posed to heritage by the concept of sustainability and of the need to demonstrate to public officials and funders that heritage has socio-economic impacts. A final part of this keynote will propose some potential solutions and a way forward.

Biography

Sophia Labadi is Senior Lecturer in Heritage and Archaeology at the University of Kent (UK). She also regularly acts as consultant for international organisations on cultural heritage, including UNESCO, the World Bank or the European Union. Dr. Labadi has a PhD and MA in Cultural Heritage Studies from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London (UK). She is the author of ‘Museums, Immigrants, and Social Justice’, published by Routledge in 2017, 'UNESCO, Cultural Heritage, and Oustanding Universal Value', published by Altamira Press in 2013. She is also the co-editor with Colin Long of 'Heritage and Globalisation' published by Routledge in 2010 and 'Urban Heritage, Development, and Sustainability' co-edited with Bill Logan and published by Routledge in 2015. Dr Labadi was a fellow at the Getty Conservation Institute, Stanford University, Durham University, Manchester Museum (2014) and the National Gallery of Denmark. She received the 2008 Cultural Policy Research Award.

EATING THE PAST: FROM PREHISTORIC CUISINES TO MODERN FOOD TRENDS

Soultana Maria Valamoti

When: Saturday 8 September, 18:40 - 20:00
Where: CCCB11A

Food studies over the past decade have grown into a dynamic trend in archaeology with numerous field projects, interdisciplinary long-term research projects, conferences and publications inquiring into the subject of food as reflected in the material culture of past societies. Studying food in past societies goes beyond a mere subsistence investigation as the focus has now shifted to the investigation of social and cultural processes underlying daily practice where identities are forged, power is negotiated and alliances are built. The strong sensory experience of food preparation and consumption generated a powerful mnemonic tool for prehistoric communities of Europe. It transformed nature into culture through the culinary practice of daily meal preparation as well as feasting and fasting that marked special occasions. Archaeobotany has played a significant role in generating raw data to approach these issues as well as launching research questions as regards food choice, identity formation and culinary changes over time. In our inquiry into the origins of cereal cultivation or wine making, for example, it is the archaeobotanical data that hold the answers in our current paradigm of archaeological science. Although we no longer need myth to explain how viticulture reached Greece or agriculture reached Europe, the archaeobotanical evidence generated to address these questions forms the basis for generating modern, urban lifestyle narratives. These narratives, at times at the heart of modern food mythologies, link small-scale food production and the marketing of foodstuffs that prevailed in prehistory but were later abandoned as the needs of past societies that consumed them changed through time. An archaeobotany of food provides analytical tools for understanding past societies and at the same time offers an emerging arena for generating modern food consumption trends and identities.

Biography

Tania (S.M.) Valamoti was born in Thessaloniki in 1965. She studied Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (B.A.) and specialised in Archaeobotany in Sheffield under the supervision of Glynis Jones (M.Sc., PhD). Since 2002 she is teaching at the Department of Archaeology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki where she is currently an Associate Professor and leader of PLANTCULT, an ERC funded, Consolidator research programme on the role of plant foods in shaping the prehistoric cuisines of Europe. She has conducted archaeobotanical research in Greece and abroad. LIRA, the Departmental Laboratory that she directs is conducting leading research in Archaeobotany in the Eastern Mediterranean and Southeastern Europe. She has published articles in various journals, authored two books and edited three volumes. She is currently finishing a book on prehistoric Greek plant foods, including recipes, thus combining her passion for cooking and Archaeology. Communicating her research to the wider public has formed an essential element of her approach, thus she has organised events where archaeological information is combined with food tasting. Her major challenge so far has been combining motherhood and family life with a career in Archaeobotany since her PhD years.

http://plantcult.web.auth.gr/en/

MEANINGFUL STORIES: WHAT ARCHAEOLOGY CAN TELL

Paloma González-Marcén

When: Saturday 8 September, 18:40 - 20:00
Where: UB4M

Archaeology has been experiencing two opposite trends in recent years. On the one hand, we are facing increasing hyperspecialisation and technification fuelled by the race for impact factors in the neoliberal academic system; on the other, a parallel growth of public archaeology and related grassroots initiatives, demanding more democratic, socially relevant disciplinary aims and practice. Between these two poles, stories about one side and the other emerge without a connection being established. In this talk I wish to address the centrality of sharing stories and their various forms and ways of construction to redefine concepts and praxis of archaeology, proposing them as a necessary meeting point. Just as the archaeological record only acquires its scientific meaning in a relational context, research only acquires social meaning when it merges with values, worries, experiences and expectations beyond academic interests. Storytelling, story creation and sharing, in their many forms, are the basic and universal tools of communication of humanity, and the stories that archaeology can tell may positively affect the lives of people if it is willing, not only to share them, but to put them at the service of a more inclusive, equitable and democratic society. To illustrate this position, I will present certain cases and projects, mainly but not exclusively from the educational sphere, which link their public and social calling with a concept of archaeology understood as the creator of meaningful stories.

Biography

Paloma González-Marcén is Assistant Professor of Prehistory at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and is currently also researcher at the Centre for the Study of Prehistoric Archaeological Heritage of the same university. Her initial training was related to the investigation of the Bronze Age in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula and she wrote her doctoral thesis on this same topic. Since then she has participated and directed several research projects on the late prehistory of the northeastern Iberia, from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. At the same time, a large part of her activity focuses on the development of feminist perspectives in archaeological research and outreach programs and in the design and management of projects around public archaeology, especially in collaboration with local administrations, cultural associations and NGOs, primary and secondary schools and museums. For 25 years she has been teaching graduate courses at the Autonomous University of Barcelona on the public dimension of archaeology and prehistory, regularly organizing seminars and meetings both to facilitate collaboration between academics with non-academic stakeholders and to promote a transdisciplinary and socially committed archaeological training and practice.

THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE RESCUE OF OUR ARCHAEOLOGICAL HERITAGE

Jean-Paul Demoule

When: Saturday 8 September, 18:40 - 20:00
Where: UB4G

Archaeology has never been independent of the society where it is practised. In France, for example, as the archaeology of the national territory never played any role in the construction of national identity, preventive archaeology only really started in the 1980s, long after other European countries. In any event, since 1992 all European countries (and not just the European Union) have been subject to the Malta Convention (also called the Valetta Convention), even though not all have ratified it entirely, even after a quarter of a century. Nevertheless, the Convention says nothing about the actual organisation of preventive archaeology. In reality, in Europe today there are two opposing conceptions: one where the state should be responsible for the entire organisation of preventive archaeology, the other where, in the context of economic liberalism, this should be left to private initiative and commercial competition. Between these two extremes, there is a whole range of intermediary situations, often in constant transformation, although not always in a positive manner (as the recent case of Hungary has shown). It is not enough to say that it is just the quality of research that counts, since these legislations have a direct effect on the organisation of work and on the scientific results; hence, this paper will try to make a provisional assessment of the various archaeological policies implemented in Europe and draw some conclusions, also from the perspective of a possible modification of the Malta convention.

Biography

Jean-Paul Demoule is Professor Emeritus of later European prehistory at Paris 1 University (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He has excavated in the course of the regional rescue project in the Aisne valley, as well as in Greece and Bulgaria. Particularly interested in issues related to rescue archaeology, he participated in the drawing up of rescue archaeology law in France, as well as in the establishment of the Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventives, which he presided from 2002 to 2008. His research has focussed on the neolithization of Europe, Iron Age society, on the history of archaeology and its social role, as well as on the construction of ideologies. Among his main publications as author, editor or co-editor : Guide des méthodes de l’archéologie (2009), La France archéologique (2004), L’archéologie préventive dans le monde (2007), Naissance de la figure (2007), Origin and evolution of languages (2008), L’avenir du passé, modernité de l’archéologie (2008), La nécropole gauloise de Bucy-le-Long (2009), L’Europe, un continent redécouvert par l’archéologie (2009), La révolution néolithique dans le monde (2010), On a retrouvé l’histoire de France (2012), Mais où sont passés les Indo-Européens ? (2014), Les dix millénaires oubliés qui ont fait l’histoire (2017).

PAST AND PRESENT SOCIAL LANDSCAPES OF ARCHAEOLOGY IN EUROPE

Predrag Novaković

When: Saturday 8 September, 18:40 - 20:00
Where: CCCB4M

Being an organiser of the EAA inaugural Meeting in Ljubljana in 1994 and serving for 17 years on EAA bodies gave me the chance to closely observe the changes the discipline and practice of archaeology went through over the past three decades. My personal and professional experiences of studying and working in one (socialist) country, former Yugoslavia, and continuing in another one, Slovenia, contribute another component to my re-thinking of these changes and the role of the EAA in them. Since it is impossible to elaborate on all aspects of the recent transformations in one lecture, I will focus on what I have termed the social landscape of archaeology, i.e., the social structures, conditions and changes which affect the discipline of archaeology and archaeologists, and where the influence of the EAA was probably felt the most. For the sake of this keynote lecture, I see “European archaeology” as a cluster of regional and local scholarly traditions which, over the past century or so, have been greatly determined by past and present national political frameworks. Each major political change resulted also in the considerable reshaping of the archaeological discipline. The last major transformation following the end of polarised Europe most directly affected “eastern” archaeologies (but also catalysed considerable changes in the “West”), not only in ideological terms but also with regard to differences in technological development, funding opportunities, weak communication between the archaeologists from “two Europes”, lack of publications, travel opportunities, language barriers, etc. It is these aspects that increased the gap and somehow isolated the “East” rather than ideology alone. And indeed, it is in these fields where, since the 1990s, the greatest advances were made and where the EAA contributed the most.

Biography

Born in 1963 in Postojna, Slovenia, graduated from archaeology (1989), PhD in archaeology (2002) at the University of Ljubljana. Since 1992 employed at the Department of Archaeology, University of Ljubljana, first as researcher and teaching assistant, after 2003 as professor. Guest professor at the Universities of Pisa (1997-2000), Graz (2007) and Sarajevo (2012-2014). Lecturing and research: history and theory of archaeology, field methods, settlement and landscape studies, GIS, preventive archaeology, digital archaeology. Conducted research projects in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovakia, France. Member of the EAA since 1994, co-organizer of the EAA Inaugural Meeting in Ljubljana, served in several EAA bodies, Secretary of the EAA (2005-2008), awarded the EAA honorary membership in 2008. Author and co-author of monographs and papers on history of archaeology in Slovenia and SE Europe. nationalism in archaeology, theoretical overviews of spatial and settlement studies in European and regional archaeology, prehistoric hillforts in Northern Adriatic. Edited and co-edited monographs on Europan preventive archaeology, virtual archaeology, 3D recording. Co-author of archaeological research standards in Slovenia. Since 2007 intensively engaged in projects and initiatives aimed at improving the status and practice of archaeology in SE European countries, especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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