The material record represents the basis itself of archaeology, even if relations, analyses and digital transformations are now responsible for much of the records we use for interpretation. Therefore, we have to continuously redefine the role of the material record, and to develop methods appropriate for its thorough integration in future developments of the discipline.
- Objects, collections, exhibitions
- Chaîne opératoire and technical variability
- Life products, trade items, artworks: multiple scales of the material record
- Concrete and immaterial: the archaeology of art
- Sampling strategies, up-to-date and future analytical capacities
- Material culture analyses
- Buildings and monuments from the past to the future
- Roads, fortifications, aqueducts: major infrastructures
- Henges, temples, churches, basilicas, fora: the public and sacred materiality
- Materiality of beliefs, legal acts, statements of power
- Cultures or Societies through artefacts
- Gendered materiality
- Interconnections between artefacts and ecofacts
- Looting, illicit trade, improper appropriation: the place and meaning of the material record
The tumultuous growth of the role of sciences in archaeology may create a gap with humanistic and historical approaches. Moreover, the digital age creates parallel worlds and the size of data increasingly require synthetical and all-encompassing tools, that call for rigorous checks to avoid circular arguments. As such, the hybrid nature of archaeology itself requires the gaps to be bridged, to enable the creation of robust and satisfactory results, visions, meanings and enjoyment.
- (Inter-)disciplinary trajectories
- Hyperspecialisation or global thinking
- High-tech and/or low-cost scientific and digital archaeology
- Science theory and ethics in the study of bioarchaeological and human remains
- Archaeometry and social science
- Geoarchaeology and the Anthropocene
- Bioarchaeology in perspective
- From remote sensing to digital detection of the subterranean heritage
- Data modelling in archaeology
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) and archaeology: opportunities and ethical issues
- The role of archaeology in digital story mapping and story telling
- Assessing the humanitas of archaeological readings
- The archaeology of big data
- Data science, data sharing and open data: towards a collaborative framework
- The technical challenges of professional archaeology
- Applied archaeology
Archaeological Heritage constitutes the basic record of past human activities. The theme focuses on the relationships between past and present, the role of Heritage in society, and how Heritage can contribute to improving the quality of life and our environment. The richness of the Archaeological Heritage in Rome is a striking example of both a problem and an opportunity for society.
- Archaeological Heritage as a burden or a resource for society?
- Archaeological Heritage (and) education
- Archaeological Heritage and museums
- Archaeological Heritage, conservation and management
- Cultural Heritage and cultural relationships
- Professional archaeology and Heritage: actors and matter [FUTURE]
- Discourses of Archaeological Heritage
- Archaeology-Heritage-art networks
- Heritage, health and wellbeing: new and emerging challenges
- Scientific dissemination, press, social media, sensationalism and archaeology
- Experimental archaeology: making, understanding, storytelling
- Role of public archaeology in Heritage management
- Excavation, study, enhancement, maintenance: how to make it sustainable
The motto of the Annual Meeting ‘Persisting with Change’ is a statement about the links between past and present: the remains of past days can be imposing, or almost negligible, but their persistence in the present is a point for reflection. Change is another inherent characteristic of the passage of time: "you'll never step in the same river" (Heraclitus). How do archaeologists deal with the dilemma, of continuity/endurance/persistence while also playing a part in this process of transformation? Rome, with its material and immaterial memories of transformation is the ideal location for reflecting on these issues.
- Landscape archaeology and change
- Hominins, humans, transitions and persistence
- Contacts, movements, migrations
- Genders and transforms
- Human groups, cultural bonds, societies and economy in motion
- Settlement transformations, from mobile to sedentary, from village to urban, and more
- Collapse and resurgence
- Resilience and/or persistence in societies
- Behavioural change
- States, superstates and empires
- Sacred acts, cult and religion: ‘times they were a-changing’?
- Recording and writing
The saying "all roads lead to Rome" reflects the prominence of the City and the close connections between the centre and the periphery in the ancient Classical World. In a broader sense today, it means that archaeology can search for multiscalar interactions among regions, features, people, and material culture. By changing the scale of our studies, both in time and space, we can bring Europe to the world and the world into Europe.
- Multiscalar archaeologies
- Townscapes, landscapes, skyscapes and seascapes
- Archaeology of diverse environments, societies and cultures
- Different demographies
- Connectivity and mobility through land, sea, sky
- Connectivity and networks
- Trade, exchange and consumption
- Pandemics and global impacts
- Integration and separation, links and borders
- Mobility, forced migration and diaspora
- Empires, powers, colonisers and the colonised
- Inequalities and dominant cultures
- Intersectionality
The Mediterranean Sea has been recognised as an arena of population movement and intense cultural and trade interactions, from its deep history to the context of imperial systems. Its potential for insular, coastal and peninsular systems, including ‘continental islands’, is a notable example of persistence and transformation. The diachronic growth of networks, their interactions, and external influences shape a part of the past world that is replete with different meanings for both scholars and the public.
- Coastal archaeology
- Shipwreck archaeology
- Islands and terrestrial fragments
- Mobility and networks of connectivity
- Ships and coastal/maritime industries
- Contacts, ports of trade, colonisation processes
- Maritime cultural landscapes
- Watery boundaries
- Localism and Mediterraneo-centricism: isolation and diversity
- Insularity and identities
- Roman Mediterranean life
- Mediterranean Empires
- Conflict, resilience and adaptation
- Orient and Occident
- Medieval superpowers in the ‘Middle Sea’ and beyond
The study of the past plays a key role in addressing sustainability, shaping our perception of the present, and our views of the future: 'Historia magistra vitae', wrote Cicero. Indeed, the past has shaped the space in which we live, both positively and negatively: we are all obliged to reflect on the sustainability of the past and, above all, of its representation. The city of Rome is a paradigmatic case, with its long history layered in a complex palimpsest in which citizens and tourists merge, live and transform.
- Scales of sustainability: the many starts of the Anthropocene
- Environmental archaeology
- Archaeology of resource exploitation
- Responsible archaeology
- Human impact and animal and plant species
- Resilience and path dependence: reactions to crises
- Sustainability of GDP, wealth, inequality of growth
- Global, local and marginal
- Whose archaeologies?
- Sustainability of field archaeology and finite archaeological deposits
- ‘New’ archaeologies, tools, paradigms, revolutions: are they robust or sustainable?
- Sustainability of open access policies and academic careers
- Museums and the general public: sustainability in storytelling or in telling history?
- Archaeological heritage and tourism: poor and best practices
- Narrative of conflict and war
- Impact of vandalism and war