Climate Calendars in World Rock Art: Archaeological and Ethnographic Experiences
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers:
Francisco Pugliese
Department of Anthropology, Laboratory of Indigenism and Indigenous Ethnology, Center for Indigenous Archaeology, University of Brasilia, Brazil
arqueologia.indigena@unb.br
Catherine Namono
Curator, RARI Academic Collections, School of Geography, Archaeology & Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Catherine.Namono@wits.ac.za
Calendars are a source of inspiration for rock art research all over the world. This session proposes to bring together presentations on the subject, with the objective of disseminating the findings on the representation of climatic elements in archaeological and ethnographic contexts. The aim is to facilitate the exchange of recent research experiences, with a particular focus on those that relate ancestral knowledge with interpretative perspectives on the semantics and significance of these places. Considering the growing unpredictability of the climate in recent years, the study of rock art calendars can assist contemporary communities in addressing the challenges posed by climate change. These calendars offer insights into ancient strategies for anticipating continuities and shifts in the elements associated with human territoriality, particularly in relation to celestial and terrestrial events and non-human realms. Finally, we will endeavour to underscore the value of these locations as World Heritage and the paramount importance of safeguarding this legacy for the well-being of future generations.
From Megaliths to Memorial Stones: Commemorative Archaeology, Museums and Heritage Conservation
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers:
Arjun Rao
Department of History and Archaeology, Central University of Karnataka, India
arjunrao@cuk.ac.in
Vishi Upadhyay
Curator, Bihar Museum, Patna, India
vishi.arch@gmail.com
Nagwa Bakr
National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, Cairo, Egypt
Nagwabakr81@gmail.com
Whether crafting stone tools like microliths or making monumental burials such as the megaliths of Stonehenge, the Pyramids or the Taj Mahal, such practices indicate an enduring techno-cultural association in societies since the mid-Holocene and are practiced in many contemporary communities today. Megaliths of various types in Neolithic and Iron Age cultures, irrespective of their sepulchral and non-sepulchral nature, indicate belief in death rituals and life after death, have played a prominent socio-cultural role worldwide, and continue to exist into later periods. Stone circles, cists with stone circles, dolmens, dolmenoid cists, menhirs, cairns, and sarcophagi are common across the world. How did these tangible and intangible aspects of commemorating death spread beyond geographical boundaries? Megaliths were turned into shrines, especially the dolmens and menhirs, by contemporary ethnic communities who inherited them as burials from their ancestors. How were they transitioned from perceiving death to symbolic worship in newer belief systems? The ways in which tangible and intangible, cutting-edge transitions developed in regionally diverse societies during different cultural periods is yet to be comprehensively understood. Conservation and preservation of memories in the form of artefacts, megaliths, and memorial stones in museums broadly indicate heroic deaths, diasporic history, war, etc. This session seeks presentations on, but not limited to, the archaeological excavation or project-based exploration of megaliths as they relate to memorial landscapes, settlement patterns, ethnographic surveys, genetic studies, museums and galleries, and heritage conservation of in-situ and other artefacts across continents.
Submerged Palaeolandscapes: The Underwater Archaeology of Deep Time
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers:
Amy Gusick
Natural History Museum Los Angeles County, USA
agusick@nhm.org
Chelsea Wiseman
Flinders University, Australia
chelsea.wiseman@flinders.edu.au
Jonathan Benjamin
Flinders University, Australia
jonathan.benjamin@flinders.edu.au
Since MIS 5e, when eustatic sea level was last similar to present conditions, global ice volume has fluctuated significantly, reaching its extent at the end of the last glacial maximum (LGM) circa 20,000 years ago. During this 100,000-year period, sea levels were substantially lower than they are today and large swaths of previously inundated land were exposed. This coincides with significantdispersals of anatomically modern Homo sapiens across the globe. The movement of peoples would have been facilitated by these exposed terrestrial environments, offering migration pathways and evolving, coastal habitats. With the current reduction in global ice volumes, sea levels have inundated approximately 20 million square km of cultural landscapes since the LGM. These now-submerged cultural environments would have been inhabited for millennia. Such a massive inundation challenges our ability to address the timing and nature of some of the most significant migrations and dispersals in human history. In some cases the archaeological record is truncated, leaving researchers no choice but to investigate these drowned places. As archaeologists and scientists have begun to acknowledge this, the past decades have seen an increase in research focused on submerged paleolandscapes. Worldwide, social scientists are collaborating with marine and geoscience disciplines to understand the history of the vast submerged paleolandscapes integral to our understanding of human cultures around the world.
Nuclear Heritage and Contemporary Archaeology: Constructing Narratives of Industrial-Military-Scientific Ventures, Material Culture, and Places
Format: Paper presentations followed by panel discussion. Panels will consist of the presenters in each session and a moderator. We will endeavour to ensure wide geographic coverage, with presentations from a diversity of countries.
Organisers:
Prof. Tracy Ireland
University of Canberra, Australia
Tracy.Ireland@canberra.edu.au
Dr Steve Brown
University of Canberra, Australia
Steve.Brown@canberra.edu.au
Prof. John Schofield
University of York, UK
john.schofield@york.ac.uk
What new perspectives can archaeology contribute to understandings of past, present, and future engagements with nuclear technologies? How can narratives created through archaeological methods and approaches contribute to stories of global nuclear heritage and history, to public dialogue concerning nuclear energy policy, and to truth telling surrounding difficult and often toxic legacies?
For this session, we welcome presentations from anywhere in the world that speak to the archaeology and heritage of nuclear technologies in all their forms, including radium and uranium mining and processing, scientific experimentation, military testing and use, reactor construction and decommissioning, uses of medical isotopes, and waste management and disposal. The presentations can range from case studies of specific places to broad-scale analyses of industrial landscapes and flows of nuclear-related activities. We are also interested in the impacts of nuclear technologies and practices on Indigenous and local communities and their associated difficult colonial, dispossession, and material culture legacies. We anticipate that such explorations will foreground archaeological methods and approaches and the ways that they build new knowledge, perspectives, and narratives.
This proposal is associated with the Australian Research Council Linkage Project ‘Nuclear Nation: A contemporary archaeology of Australia’s atomic heritage’. The partner organisations are the Museum of Arts and Applied Sciences, Sydney, and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), Australia’s national nuclear organisation. This interdisciplinary project brings together academics, curators, scientists, and First Nations researchers, using innovative contemporary archaeology approaches, to generate new understandings of the significance of Australia’s atomic heritage in global context. Expected outcomes include improved capacity for heritage management, and new resources and methods for understanding and interpreting Australia’s role in the Anthropocene. The project aims to generate substantial benefits for policy-setting, and for tourism and cultural sectors more broadly.
Modern-day Analogues: Experimental Archaeology, Actualistic Studies and Ethnography
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers:
Akash Srinivas, Centre for Interdisciplinary Archaeological Research, Ashoka University, Sonipat, India
akashsrinivas123@gmail.com
Andrea Dominique Cosalan, School of Archaeology, University of the Philippines-Diliman, Philippines
amcosalan@up.edu.ph
Yezad Pardiwalla, Palaeo-Arch Lab, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Mohali, India
yezad.791@gmail.com
The incomplete and static nature of the archaeological record loses many aspects of the complex past, sometimes leading to its misunderstood or simplistic recreation. While emphasis lies in studying the past to better understand and situate our present, the inverse is also readily applicable, especially since the past is likely to have been as complicated as the present is. We can attempt to model and reconstruct the often-invisible dynamic forces and processes of the past, and obtain a nuanced understanding of these social processes, by studying and undertaking various controlled studies in contemporary contexts and detailed observations of living traditions and practices. These processes, responsible either for the creation or preservation of the archaeological record, as seen today, help us situate the static archaeological record within the dynamic socio-environmental and cultural context of their manufacture, use, discard and preservation, eventually resulting in their recovery by archaeologists.
This session seeks contributions that situate themselves within the range of actualistic, experimental, and ethnographic studies that can strengthen our understanding of the archaeological record. These can range from ethnographic accounts of tool-use and material culture; functional analyses; studies related to site formation processes; modern-day reconstructions of cultural elements geared towards addressing archaeological inquiries; and innovations in the archaeological sciences that can better refine experimental studies. We also invite practitioners to discuss and suggest best practices for undertaking such, as well as the ethical and moral implications involved. Through this session, we hope to bring together perspectives from all over the world to better understand and situate modern-day analogues within the realm of archaeological data, thus, building bridges, across time and space.
Revisiting Vere Gordon Childe: A Contemporary Lens on Archaeological Theory and Practice
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers:
Katsuyuki Okamura, Osaka City Cultural Properties Association, Japan
arc-alc@zeus.eonet.ne.jp
Robin Derricourt, School of Humanities & Languages, University of New South Wales, Australia
robin@derricourt.com
Randall H. McGuire, Anthropology, Binghamton University, US
rmcguire@binghamton.edu
Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957), the Australian-born archaeologist, is renowned for his groundbreaking theories on the development of human history and social evolution, underpinned by his deep understanding of archaeological evidence, as well as his great contribution to archaeological methods and explanation. His major works were translated into 22 languages, with some are still in print and widely read, 100 years after the first edition of “The Dawn of European Civilization” was published in 1925. In addition, thanks to the recent examination of previously unpublished materials, his achievements are being examined and elucidated from a new perspective. This session invites participants to reconsider his methodologies, insights and impacts, and their current relevance to the archaeology of different regions and periods. We will discuss how his commitment to addressing grand questions about human history and social organization remains significant today, inviting a new generation of archaeologists to engage with these complex issues. Join us to explore how Childe’s legacy can inform contemporary research and foster innovative approaches to understanding human societies.
Love and Loathing: Innovation in Archaeological and Heritage Approaches to Graffiti
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers:
Dr Ursula K. Frederick, University of Canberra, Australia
ursula.frederick@canberra.edu.au
Dr Antonia Thomas, University of Highlands and Islands, Scotland
Antonia.Thomas@uhi.ac.uk
Graffiti occupies a contentious position in the contemporary world. Maligned on the one hand as vandalism, while celebrated as contemporary art on the other. Yet archaeological research reveals a much more complex picture of graffiti production and reception. The examination of graffiti as artefact and text has revealed important information about the social, political, ceremonial and everyday lives of people from the ancient world to the middle-ages and late modernity. And to the degree that graffiti interventions in the present are deployed by activist cultures and political groups seeking to highlight issues and contribute to public debate, graffiti is necessarily linked to our heritage futures.
Nonetheless, graffiti remains undertheorised in archaeological research and heritage management and this session aims to go some way in addressing that lacuna. We are especially intent on exploring the behaviours, social relations and material practices underpinning and motivating graffiti actions and their repercussions, as well as performative engagements with place. As such, this session also invites consideration of graffiti-adjacent practices of inscription and place-marking, such as stone-stacking, love-locks or spontaneous memorial-making. While this session is not intended as a forum for technical papers addressing conservation concerns and methods, we will accept innovative approaches to understanding the issues that graffiti may present, particularly in a cross-cultural setting. We seek papers that offer new empirical pathways and theoretical possibilities to the study of graffiti in archaeology and heritage contexts, innovative case studies and provocations that aim to shape and redefine the field. We particularly welcome proposals from marginalised voices and communities and are keen to encourage responses from a wide geographical and temporal range.
Rethinking Global Perspectives on Museums: From Managing Heritage to Engaging Communities
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers:
Vishi Upadhyay
Curator, Bihar Museum, Patna, India
vishi.arch@gmail.com
Kamani Perera
Manager—Research & Development, Chartered Institute of Personnel Management, Sri Lanka
kamani@cipmlk.org
Roshan Mishra
Director, Taragaon Next, Kathmandu, Nepal
write2roshan@gmail.com
Yongjun Kim
Professor, Institute of Cultural Heritage, Korea University, Korea
akedmina@naver.com
Until the 20th century, educating the public about cultural inheritance was a key museum objective, popular in a few public domains like history and archaeology. Over time, in the 21st century, various novel approaches have played a vital role in advancing museum industries led by younger generations employing existing and new technologies. Along with gaining education and information from museums, people these days are looking for experimental learning filled with joyous entertainment to enhance their palpable experience before they exit the museum. General visitors, like tourists and professionals, have developed formal and informal networks in peer review feedback systems through social media, leading to decision-making on new visitors. The financially stable museums can lead digital innovation to engage new generations; augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) have added fresh approaches to age-old heritage narratives. This has dramatically involved visitors in digital practices. Additionally, museums have significantly impacted how archaeological heritages of a region or nation are managed and studied, shaping their role in research and community engagement.
This session will explore how museums have been handling their regional responsibilities, competing with global collaborations, and creating new narratives by (re)interpreting accumulated collections to engage modern audiences, especially visitors of different age groups and diverse cultural backgrounds. Such underlying discussions on the evolving role of museums in archaeological research emphasise how museums can act as dynamic spaces for heritage preservation, cultural engagement, research innovation, and the 21st-century challenges that are taken up here. We, therefore, invite contributions touching on the lines such as archaeological materials in research, museum curation, museum management, public outreach programs, innovative curatorial practices, sustainable conservation methods, community-driven programs, educational resources, social and cultural relevancy, innovation, digitalisation and digitisation, innovative curatorial practices, community engagement programs, sustainable practices, conservation and preservation of heritage sites, storytelling, and new interpretations. This session welcomes worldwide researchers, museum professionals, conservators, archaeologists, and faculty members to contribute papers, no matter if the museum you work for is a ‘small scale/start-up museum’ or a ‘big museum’, and we look forward to engaging in impactful discussions.
A Multitude of Landscapes, Rivers, Seas and People: Developing Pluralistic Perspectives on Indian Ocean Cultures and Interactions
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers:
V. Selvakumar
Department of Maritime History and Marine Archaeology, Tamil University, Thanjavur 613010 India.
selvakumarodi@gmail.com
Wijerathne Bohingamuwa
Department of History and Archaeology, University of Ruhuna, Matara 81000, Sri Lanka
bwijerathne@hist.ruh.ac.lk
Kaushik Gangopadyayay
Department of Archaeology, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India.
k.gongo@gmail.com
Bobby Orillaneda
Maritime and Underwater Cultural Heritage Division, National Museum of the Philippines, P. Burgos Drive, Rizal Park, Manila, Philippines.
bcorillaneda.nmp@gmail.com
The Indian Ocean connects a multitude of cultures, communities, and landscapes across the world. This session proposes to focus on the diverse landscapes and oceanscapes, transcending the regional affiliations of the Indian Ocean region, and to deliberate on the recent perspectives of archaeologists, ethnographers, historians, earth scientists, and climatologists on Indian Ocean cultures and interactions. The Indian Ocean is not a singular unified geo-cultural entity, but is comprised of many diverse cultural regions, cultural and ideological landscapes, and communities, from Africa to Asia through Europe, connecting the hinterlands, seas, rivers, coasts and deltas. The primary division between the Western and Eastern Indian Ocean regions is created by the South Asian landmass, and the monsoon wind patterns power the key interaction spheres. The ‘Oceanic connect’ among the regions of South Asia, Southeast Asia, Asia-Pacific, Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula has been historically strong. There is, however, a great deal of scope to delve deeper into the ‘lives’, cultures and belief systems of the people living around the Indian Ocean. This session proposes to revisit the following topics, considering recent advances in archaeology and related disciplines.
a) Human mobility from the earliest times to the present
b) Indigenous knowledge systems related to navigation
c) Transfer of technology and migration of traders, craftsmen, and artisans
d) Regional networks across the western and eastern Indian Ocean
e) Human lives and cultures on the fringes as gleaned from archaeological, historical, and ethnographic investigations
f) Works on communities, such as fisher folk, conch shell makers or even pirates
g) Climatic histories, and sustainability of human life
Emblems on the Move: Tracing the Spread of Symbolic Systems through Ancient Trade and Communication Routes
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers:
Dr Vinay Kumar, Associate Professor, Centre of Advanced Study, Dept of Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India, vinaykumar166@yahoo.com
Dr Rose Solangaarachchi-Bandujeewa, Immediate Past President, Sri Lanka Council of Archaeologists; Senior Lecturer, Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, rosebandujeewa@hotmail.com
Mr Kasun S. Jayasuriya, Sri Lanka Council of Archaeologists, Sri Lanka[, kasunsjayasuriyaresearch@gmail.com
“Emblems on the Move” centres on understanding how symbols, iconography, and even specific motifs travelled across ancient trade networks, embedding cultural, religious, and political meanings within regions that may have been otherwise isolated from each other geographically. The idea of “Emblems on the Move” highlights symbols as cultural ambassadors, mapping the spread of ideologies, artistic influences, and human cognition, alongside the movement of goods and people. By tracing these symbols along ancient trade and communication routes, the session illuminates the intangible exchange that complemented material trade, showcasing how ideas and cultural practices were shared, transformed, and localised. In modern archaeological frameworks, symbolism has a major role and it became an attractive archaeological working space all over the world.
The session focuses on the following areas:
1. Symbols as Cultural Currency. In ancient history, symbols were not just made for decoration purposes; they served as a type of cultural “currency” that carries meaning, identity, and often spiritual significance. This area explores how merchants, artisans, and monastic travellers carried these emblems as they moved through ancient networks, bringing distinctive symbols to new regions.
2. Trade Networks as Vectors of Symbolism. Ancient trade routes, such as the land routes (based on mountain ridges), maritime routes, and riverine (river or river valley) routes, ideas and ideologies. This explores interacts between diverse groups, including traders, religious missionaries, and local communities. For example, the Indian ancient trade route carried the message of Buddhism and Jainism all around India.
3. Artefacts as the Base of Symbols and Ideologies. Artefacts are the major actors of ancient symbolic systems. Those carried all the cognitive historicity of human nature, such as behavioural patterns and peoples’ beliefs and activities.
4. Cross-Comparative Analysis with Other Ancient Civilisations. A comparative approach would allow for the analysis of symbolic exchange beyond a single cultural context. Examining the parallels in how symbolic systems spread across trade routes from the prehistoric era and also the Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, Chinese civilization, Egyptian civilization, Greece, and the Roman Empire offers insights into universal patterns of cross-cultural symbolism. This analysis could reveal how integrating symbols across different civilisations provided social cohesion, especially in multicultural trade hubs like Alexandria or ancient ports along the Arabian Peninsula.
The exploration of “Emblems on the Move” could provide a profound understanding of how symbols, as carriers of culture, adapted and thrived in diverse contexts, revealing the extent of interconnectedness and mutual influence across ancient civilisations.