This session will explore the evolution of palaeolandscapes by focusing on the human dimension. In fact, the archaeology of submerged landscapes has made significant progress in addressing many decisive issues in human evolution, yet what can be achieved is often limited by the data available and/or the approaches we use – especially for areas that have only received limited attention. This inevitably leads to the risk of conceiving palaeolandscapes as empty boxes in which humans are conveniently placed, without much consideration of the dynamic nature of submerged landscapes and how this intertwines with the complexity of many aspects of human societies. Therefore, in this session we aim to address different perspectives and approaches that can help us move towards a more ‘humanly-conscious’ study of palaeolandscapes, which envisions these as vivid places rather than empty spaces. Firstly, by assuming that submerged landscapes are intrinsically dynamic, we would like to discuss new ways to picture palaeolandscapes in their ever-changing nature. Secondly, we want to explore the theme of life on submerged landscapes, focusing in particular on how certain aspects of human life – including, but not limited to, ecologies, settlement patterns, subsistence strategies, mobility, connectivity, and cosmologies – are affected by the dynamic nature of palaeolandscapes. Finally, we would like to bring particular attention to an issue which we believe will allow us to summarise the themes mentioned above, namely responses to sea level change: how can a ‘man in nature’ approach – rather than ‘man vs nature’ – help us improve our understanding of the issue? How can we explore resilience to and perception of changes? Can we, for example, identify ‘ritual’ responses to sea level change?
9:00am | Tracks through La Manche: exploring the ”Goldilocks Zone” | Beccy Scott, Martin Bates, Richard Bates, Ed Blinkhorn, Chantal Conneller, Sarah Duffy, Josie Mills, Andrew Shaw
9:20am | Lost landscapes and the Middle Palaeolothic occupation in the southern North Sea: new finds from the submerged Paleo-Yare | Andrew Shaw, Daniel Young & Hayley Hawkins
9:40am | People, ancestral beings, and offshore windfarm insfrastructure in the submerged paleolandscapes and Sea Country of Australia | Hanna Steyne
10:20am | Searching for Doggerland: Cultural Engagements with Submerged Prehistory and Regional North Sea Futures | Ren´ee Hoogland
10:40am | Discussion |
Full paper abstracts available here: https://tag2024.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/tag-2024-session-abstracts-1.pdf
Archaeology is often described as informed storytelling: as practitioners, we are trained not only to produce data in the field or in the lab, but also how to write about and present on it – often in more formal settings such as conferences, or informally through public outreach and engagement. However, with increasingly specialised fields of study come greater barriers to dissemination; research narratives may end up ‘lost in translation’, whilst facts and data take second place to catchy news headlines or popular media.
Practised across time and space, storytelling provides an alternative method through which to communicate archaeological information, not only to public audiences, but also amongst those working in diverse archaeological fields. Stories develop and evolve, much like our data and interpretations, and can be told and retold by different narrators. Such techniques may therefore help us to convey complex research in an accessible – but by no means overly-simplified – format, in turn permitting cross-disciplinary discussions and understanding. From archaeological theory to stable isotope analysis, it offers the possibility of connecting with varied audiences, widening participation, and challenging status quo present in traditional modes of research dissemination.
In this session, we invite anyone interested in the human past to try your hand at alternative communication techniques, broadly through storytelling methods. We also welcome those who have had success with such approaches to come and share your experiences! The session aims to be inclusive and experimental, so whether you bring props, present in verse, try out the method of kamishibai (Japanese ‘paper drama’ or picture storytelling – we recommend this method if you are unsure where to start), or simply present your work differently, we would like you to step away from traditional slideshow presentations and to embrace the creative and evolving narratives that archaeological research generates.
So, what’s your story?
9:00am | I Matilda, Regina Anglorum | Lizzie Bryant
9:25am | Combining archaeology and fiction: can writing fiction be a form of experimental archaeology? | David Greig
9:40am | The Bones in the Scout Hut | Sam Scott Reiter
9:55am | Hominin story | Carys Phillips
10:10am | Creating Pwani: rope, nets, fish-traps and the maritime cultural heritage of Pemba | Laura Basell
10:45am | The Tale of the Toad Stone | Katy Whitaker
11:00am | My life in the “Movies”: Interpreting the archaeological remains of WW1 submarine chaser “Movy” Motor Launch [ML]286 through storytelling | Suzanne Taylor
Full paper abstracts available here: https://tag2024.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/tag-2024-session-abstracts-1.pdf
Chris Tilley (1955-2024) was one of the most dynamic archaeological theorists our discipline has produced. From his co-authored works in the 1980s that defined the first wave of post-processual thought, via his transformative engagement with phenomenology to his later work with materiality, his impact on archaeological theory is unquantifiable. In memory of this, we seek to explore in this session how Tilley’s work from different eras reads in the light of contemporary concerns, whether political or theoretical. How does the work continue to inform our contemporary arguments? What more might we glean from returning to the questions he posed? How might our current interests in ontology connect to his analysis of metaphor? In this session we welcome papers from people interested in exploring the impact of Tilley’s work, and its intersection with the ongoing challenges we face today.
9:00am | Introduction: reflections on the world changing theory of Chris Tilley | Rachel Crellin and Oliver Harris
9:10am | “A conceptual dreamwork”; post-humanism, autoethnography and the experience of stone | Amber Sofia Roy
9:25am | Beyond the Human: Chris Tilley’s Phenomenology and a More-than-Human Reading of the Thames Foreshore | Claire Harris, Lara Band, Helen Chittock, Tom Chivers & Lesley McFadyen
9:40am | From models and maps to experience | Alejandra Galmés Alba
9:55am | Phenomenology without the fluff: How such a long word can produce more inclusive community engagement with archaeology | Brodhie Molloy
11:00am | The shock of the old | Anna Collar & Stu Eve
11:15am | Loneliness and Ethical Responsibility: A Levinasian Phenomenological Approach to Archaeology | Joel Santos
11:30am | “On Wenlock Edge the woods in trouble;” Christopher Tilley, Phenomenology and the ‘Thinging’ of Palaeoecological Interpretation | Ben Gearey
11:45am | (Extra)Ordinary Worlds: Chris Tilley’s landscape thinking from phenomenology to anthropology and beyond | Jonathan Last
12:00pm | Enforcing Viking Age Boundaries: Chris Tilley’s Phenomenology and Unravelling the Social Construction of the Danelaw | Alexander Thomas
12:15pm | Chris Tilley and phenomenology | Julian Thomas
12:30pm | Discussion |
Full paper abstracts available here: https://tag2024.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/tag-2024-session-abstracts-1.pdf
Whilst well-established within Indigenous, disability and trans studies, rage as a methodology of affect has yet to emerge into widespread use within mainstream archaeology. This is to the detriment of our discipline. As archaeology increasingly comprehends its political implications and endeavours to establish itself as a progressive field by challenging the climate crisis, colonialism, discrimination and more, it must adopt a methodology that strives to engender change through anger, activism and action. Seldom has progress been won without fighting for it. Furthermore, we must question if, as a social discipline, we can genuinely produce co-created and meaningful work without feeling the same outrage as the communities we work with and for.
Archaeologists often perceive rage as a last resort; where you end up when all traditional academic approaches to a problem have failed. However, through its ability to make individuals think from the position of disenfranchised or otherwise overlooked communities, rather than simply in sympathy with them, scholars of rage/outrage demonstrate why it must be integrated into praxis from the start (e.g.; Stiker, 1997; Stryker, 1994; Weismantel, 2013). This might, and often does, include making those in positions of power and/or privilege uncomfortable by equalising the epistemological playing field through championing embodied knowledge and challenging entrenched power dynamics.
We are looking for contributions that showcase how outrage functions as an affective method within any and all archaeological frameworks, be these gender, disability, climate, enabled, Indigenous or any other archaeologies. Submissions that look to evolve activist and transformative archaeologies using rage/outrage and those that discuss integrating this methodology “at the trowel’s edge” are especially encouraged.
9:10am | Disability Activism in an Interdisciplinary Archaeology: Experiences of ableism and methods of counteracting it via Critical Disability Studies | Alexandra F Morris & Hannah Vogel
9:30am | Outrage, Survivors, and Politicising Archaeologies of Carceral Sites | Elias Michaut
9:50am | Break |
10:00am | Stirring the Pottery: Intentional and Accidental Outrage as a Method of Digital Public Archaeology. | Steph Black
10:20am | Defaultism in Landscape Archaeology. | David Stapley
11:00am | F*ck Your Civility, I Want Change! On Subversive Anger as an Asian American Archaeologist. | Alex Fitzpatrick
11:00am | Benign Ignorance and Unintended Consequences - or Why you Shouldn't Make an Activist Rage. | Ashley Fisher
11:20am | Turning Alienation into Action: Attempting to build a Disability Archaeology by and for Disabled People | Anna Freed
12:10pm | No, But My Mates Do: Considering the Necessity of Communities of Care to Actualise Anger-driven Activism | Yvonne O'Dell, Brodhie Molloy and Andy Rogers
12:30pm | Break |
12:40pm | Discussion |
Full paper abstracts available here: https://tag2024.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/tag-2024-session-abstracts-1.pdf
Astronomical speculation has been part of megalithic studies since antiquarian times. With the turn of the 20th century, archaeology and archaeoastronomy evolved separately, coming together and splitting apart at different moments. Right now, in the UK at least, the two appear to be converging again. But archaeoastronomy is still rife with controversy and speculation, with the quality of work done by academics varying greatly, with no set standards and giving off the impression that anything goes. Perhaps because of this, the field also attracts non-academic speculation that ranges from the quasi-academic to the ancient aliens crowd.
In this session we want to reflect on the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the relationship between archaeoastronomy and prehistoric archaeology. Has archaeoastronomy provided the missing key to understand prehistoric societies, as is often claimed by amateurs? Are the often-convoluted mathematical expositions and arcane explanations by archaeoastronomers a barrier to dialogue between the fields? Have archaeoastronomers been revolving around the same theoretical and methodological circles instead of evolving with wider archaeological and anthropological approaches? In other words, has archaeoastronomy provided an “evolution”, “convolution” or “involution” of prehistoric studies?
This session will explicitly focus on the broader issue of why there is an apparent lack of interest in archaeoastronomy by some archaeologists, and what is required to fully bridge the gap. We welcome papers that discuss the barriers to collaboration and dialogue, and how to overcome them, as well as papers proposing novel theoretical and methodological developments that may bring the fields together. Case studies will also be welcome but only in so far as they provide examples of broader theoretical and/or methodological considerations.
9:00am | Skyscapes and Archaeology: a reflection on the last decade | Fabio Silva
9:20am | Bridging the Gap Between Archaeology and Archaeoastronomy: Overcoming Barriers Through Education and Outreach | Carolyn Kennett
9:40am | Assembling Land and Sky | Ingrid O’Donnell
10:00am | Excavating the sky | Matt Leivers
10:20am | Archaeoastronomy and its evolutionary approach to archaelogy | Tore Lomsdalen
11:00am | How wonder theory can help to understand skyscape archaeological phenomena | Anna Estaroth
11:20am | Symbols and Theory in Skyscape Archaeology | Nicholas Campion
11:40am | Excavating Neolithic cosmologies: The Cotswold Severn long barrows and their skies – how to combine archaeology and archaeoastronomy within a single model | Pamela Armstrong
12:00pm | Livestreaming the winter solstice phenomenon from Newgrange— commissioning of work, audience impact and analytics. | Frank Prendergast
12:20pm | Towards a new "total archaeology"? How to manage sky-associated monuments in their landscape and skyscape contexts. | Amanda Chadburn
12:40pm | Discussion |
Full paper abstracts available here: https://tag2024.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/tag-2024-session-abstracts-1.pdf
As we consider how to make archaeological practice more inclusive, equitable, and societally relevant, it becomes increasingly necessary for our sector become self-aware and transparent about how, why and who in archaeology sets research agendas, gathers data, analyses and interprets it – in other words, how archaeological knowledge is constructed. This process is one that many archaeologists are intimately familiar with, yet in-depth discussion of its implications remains rare.
This session invites exploration of all aspects of knowledge production in archaeology. Contributions could include, for example:
Addressing the gap between lived experience of research and the official narrative of the field report Focusing on the voices and perspectives that tend to be excluded from this process altogether Examining the implications of intercultural collaboration in the context of international projects, from systemic and localized power imbalances to the epistemic diversity of archaeological knowledge production within a single team Reflecting on how we can better address contemporary societal challenges, enhance the impact of our field. Methods in archaeology are constantly “evolving”, but what of the knowledge construction processes underpinning it all?
9:00am | Introduction | Lisa Randisi & Cecilia Conte
9:00am | Unearthing Power: Qufti Labor, Colonialism, and the Making of Archaeological Knowledge at Abydos | Amany Abd El Hameed & Robert J. Vigar
9:20am | Dividing Stories: Knowledge Production at the site of Buhen, Sudan in the Post-independent Era | Yu Zhuang
9:35am | “Base Camp”: practice and materiality of international field schools in rural Mongolia | Lisa Randisi
10:05am | Who are you calling pseudo-scientific? The magic-magnetic properties of the Karakol kurgans (Altai Republic, Russian Federation) | Cecilia Conte
10:20am | Exploring TikTok as a Tool for Participatory Public Engagement and Intercultural Collaboration in Archaeology | Julia Josefowicz
10:35am | Are You Not Entertained? Exploring the Production and Interpretation of Archaeological Knowledge Outside of Academia | Isabel Scarlet King
10:50am | Discussion |
11:20am | A Climate Archive and Modes of Representation | Suha Hassan
11:35am | Solar Farms and Archaeology: 20th century thinking applied to a 21st century opportunity | Robert Sutton
11:50am | Cultural heritage-security nexus: Understanding the evolution of cultural heritage as a security issue | Sabine Ameer & Andreas Giorgallis
12:05pm | Discussion and roundtable |
Full paper abstracts available here: https://tag2024.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/tag-2024-session-abstracts-1.pdf
Storytelling and narrative construction has long been a topic of interest to archaeology both in understanding the evolutionary role of stories in past societies, and in using archaeological data to create narratives about the past in the present. Contemporary archaeological theory acknowledges the need for diversity, multivocality and constructivism in interpretations of archaeological pasts presents and futures.
Diverse narrative and creative approaches can enhance impact and engagement, offering subversive, fictive, and alternative perspectives. With the inexorable rise of self-publishing, social media, bots, and AI, we are inundated with stories and content designed to evoke emotional responses or effect change. The power of the past, heritage, and material culture provided by archaeology offer a rich source of inspiration. But are archaeologists engaging effectively in this arena? If so, how can we do so ethically and responsibly, while maintaining academic integrity?
Questions we’re eager to explore include:
Were there compromises made between research rigour and the demands of story, worldbuilding and plot? What do you create and why? What are the challenges and what are the benefits of a creative approach? What challenges did you face responding creatively to your own or others’ research? What practical and ethical decisions did you have to make?
11:30am | Developing new interdisciplinary approaches for engagement in the Caucasus: Reflections from the Caucasus Through Time Network (CTTN) | Narmin Ismayilova/Caucasus Through Time Network
11:45am | METSEMEGOLOGOLO: of fragmented archives and story-mapping for the exploration of ancient African urbanism | Stefania Merlo, Justine Wintjies & Anton Coetzee
12:00pm | Journeys on the Tavistock Canal: navigating multivocal narratives of industrial Improvement | Andrew Thompson
12:15pm | Stories of stone and soil – the intersection of materiality, landscape learning and human-environment interactions | Emma Stockley
12:30pm | Recovering and reimagining absent archaeologies through creative engagement? | Claire Nolan & Ben Gearey
12:45pm | The past fizzes and trembles in the present | Alice Clough
2:00pm | “Shards of the Past, Meanings of the Present” Bridging distant and recent memories by researching-exhibiting relationships | Mauro Puddo
2:15pm | Animating the Narrative: Artefacts and their Adventures | Aaron Clarke
2:30pm | Playing - with - Light and Time | Laura Basell
3:00pm | Ice-bound Discoveries: An archaeological voyage to Antarctica | Felix Pedrotti, grant Cox, Michael Grant and Jack Pink
3:30pm | Participants as Designers: What Neighbourhood-Led Digital Heritage Storytelling Can Teach Us about Place-Based and Urban Heritage Relationships. | Claire Boardman
3:45pm | Encountering movement: embodied perspectives on the “dancing stone” | Fiona Coward, Derek Pitman, Richard Potter and Megan Russell
4:00pm | Discussion |
Full paper abstracts available here: https://tag2024.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/tag-2024-session-abstracts-1.pdf
The main theme of the 45th Theoretical Archaeology Group is ‘Evolution?’ It prompts us to consider whether evolutionary models are still relevant for understanding culture change through archaeology. While many scholars would agree that culture is characterised by the fundamental tenets of universal Darwinism (i.e. variation, selection, and heredity) and be sympathetic to a definition of culture as ‘information that is passed from individual to individual nongenetically, via social learning processes such as teaching or imitation’, there is an extensive and diverse, and often contrasting bodies of theory that aim to understand cultural change. Some of these, such as social evolution and dual inheritance theory, are comparatively well known to archaeologists, while others, such as cultural attraction theory, have received less scholarly attention. It follows that the term of evolutionary models is perhaps too broad as a category to allow us to determine its relevance in the archaeological discourse. Many models have been misunderstood, some concepts abused, and several opportunities for development and synergies were missed Evolutionary thinking in archaeology also runs the risk of being outdated when compared with modern evolutionary thought – which is constantly changing, as demonstrated by the recent (debated) calls for an extended evolutionary synthesis. This session will gather speakers who believe that the answer to the question ‘Evolution?’ is ‘Evolution.’, but are critically aware of the many limitations of what has been achieved so far, and are open to reconsidering, updating, breaking, and possibly rebuilding many of the pillars of current thoughts and premises of evolutionary archaeology.
11:40am | Reframing Evolutionary Archaeology in the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis; a holistic scaled systems approach | Kuipers, K.J.
12:00pm | Cultural Microevolution and Archaeology | Enrico Crema
12:20pm | ‘Concepts’ in dynamic assemblages: an integrative and encompassing evolutionary framework and its archaeological relevance | Jennifer French, Marc Kissel, Somaya Khaksar & Augustin Fuentes
12:40pm | Relating Material Culture and Demographic Trends: A case on prehistoric arrowheads | Alfredo Cortell-Nicolau
2:00pm | The (Per)Mutation Problem: Outlining a new approach to long-term developments in ceramic technology | Erik Kroon
2:20pm | Can we use the present to interpret the past? Ethnographic analogy and cultural evolution. | Marc Vander Linden, Andres Angourakis & Francesco Carrer
3:20pm | MetaPypulation | Marc Vander Linden & Matteo Tomasini
3:20pm | Evolutionary Archaeology: Time for a Rethink | Mike O'Brien
3:40pm | Discussion |
Full paper abstracts available here: https://tag2024.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/tag-2024-session-abstracts-1.pdf
The concept of the past has evolved significantly since the inception of archaeology as a discipline. Traditionally conceived as something that is gone and needs to be put together by the archaeologist to understand it, in this session, we use the idea that the past never ends as our starting point. Along this line of reasoning, science continues to shape and reinterpret the past. We will discuss the biases of known pasts and how these influence the very idea of the past. In other words, which constructs of time do we prioritise, how are they reevaluated, and why are some erased? Furthermore, archaeology, with its hegemonic position based on its expertise and scientific methods, does not have absolute control over the representation and construction of earlier times. The narratives about the past are fluid, reflecting diverse perspectives and ways of being, questioning whether the past we relate to is real or recreated. In this session, we explore how these forces interact and challenge traditional perceptions of time. Therefore, we welcome presentations that question its linearity, its coloniality, and/or examine how historical events are always ongoing, highlighting specific material examples. The session promises to offer a rich discussion on the evolution of past narratives and their material representation, challenging long-established perceptions and fostering archaeological study.
2:00pm | Massive Weapons: The BNP and the Weaponization of Heritage | Lorna-Jane Richardson
2:20pm | Re-conceptualizing the nature of power in late protohistory, France. | Béatrice Fleury
2:40pm | Monuments and the Past-Present-Future Nexus | Heather Ford
3:20pm | Ways of Living in the Upper Thames Valley: The changing nature of domestic life in the Upper Thames Valley | Olivia Britter
3:40pm | The past is never-ending: the destruction and reconstruction of a Moche statue | Aldo Accinelli Obando
4:00pm | Archaeology of the imagination. Simulating the reality to satisfy the archaeological narrative about the past. | Jesús Martín Alonso
4:20pm | Discussion |
Full paper abstracts available here: https://tag2024.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/tag-2024-session-abstracts-1.pdf
In 2002, James Whitley declared there were ‘too many ancestors’ in archaeology following the ubiquity of them in Neolithic narratives of the 1990s. He was critical that they were invoked as an explanation for seemingly everything and could be found everywhere. Furthermore, it could be argued that several authors discussed ‘the ancestors’ without clearly defining who they were or what their relationship to the living was.
More than 20 years on, the ancestor’s hold on archaeology hasn’t loosened, yet we believe this concept can still be used uncritically. Therefore, rather than throw the ancestral baby out with the bathwater, we think it would be useful to rethink this major concept in archaeology. We both work in contexts with ancestors albeit understood differently. In Neolithic Britain, ancestors have been found in tombs, old pathways, and standing stones however ideas about ancestry draw heavily from ethnography. Similarly in the Caribbean, ancestor worship is often cited as the rationale for a whole host of practices, images, and objects.
In this session, we want to think about ancestors in archaeology without the theoretical baggage they have previously brought with them and are looking for papers reconsidering this concept in a radically different way taking inspiration from posthumanism, new materialism, and Indigenous theory.
2:00pm | Ancestor? We hardly know her! An introduction | Andy Rogers & Jonny Graham
2:20pm | Ancestral rupture, structural violence and the politics of kinship in 1st millennium northern Europe. | Kevin Kay and Marianne Hem Eriksen
2:40pm | A building lineage? Palimpsests, brochs, and complex identity in the Scottish Iron Age | Sam Scott-Moncrieff
3:12pm | Not quite dead: how ancestors shaped prehistoric cooperation | Mark Haughton and Mette Løvschal
3:35pm | What could ancestors do? – Reflections on different roles of ancestors in the Neolithic in north-west Germany | Sarah Bockmeyer
3:55pm | Memories of an ancestor: becoming-minoritarian at Quanterness | Jonny Graham
4:15pm | Discussion and roundtable |
Full paper abstracts available here: https://tag2024.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/tag-2024-session-abstracts-1.pdf
