Convenors: Dr Keir Strickland (Australia), Dr Patrick Roberts (Germany) and Dr Carla Jaimes Betancourt (Germany)
The WAC-10 congress in Darwin will be the first congress to be held in a tropical location since 1990 when the 2nd congress was held in Barquisimeto, Venezuela. Consequently, we propose the theme “Archaeologies of the Tropics” to recognise and celebrate the distinctive and important role that societies living between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn have played in key academic debates in the context of human history and the study of long-term human-environment interactions.
As an emergent discipline in the 19th and early 20th century, archaeology was largely formed and shaped within a temperate European and North American climate – something that has left a lasting legacy upon the discipline, from assumptions about the forms of global practices such as agriculture or urbanism to the standard techniques and methodologies that archaeologists are taught, teach, and utilise in the field.
This theme encompasses a broad geographic and temporal range, from the earliest arrivals and adaptations of Indigenous peoples to the impacts and legacies of settler colonialism, from the emergence of tropical agricultures and economies to the rise and fall of complex urban societies. We welcome session proposals that highlight advances in archaeological methods and techniques suited to the unique contexts of tropical climates and environments, as well as sessions that explore the value and importance of integrating Indigenous knowledge and meaningful community collaborations into interdisciplinary research, thus delivering a holistic and inclusive exploration of the many archaeologies of the tropics.
Contacts:
Keir Strickland
Department of Archaeology & History, La Trobe University, Australia
k.strickland@latrobe.edu.au
Patrick Roberts
isoTROPIC Research Group, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Germany
roberts@gea.mpg.de
Carla Jaimes Betancourt
Department for Anthropology of the Americas, University of Bonn, Germany
cjaimes@uni-bonn.de
THEME 07 SESSIONS
T07/Session 02: Food Systems through the Ages: Innovation, Material Culture and Foodways Traditions
T07/Session 03: Archaeologies of the Pacific
T07/Session 04: Tropical Technologies: Global Patterns of Material Culture Analogy and Homology
T07/Session 05: The History of Archaeology in the Tropics
T07/Session 06: Urbanism in Tropical Environments: Sustainability, Resilience & Collapse