European Journal of Archaeology

Review Offer

From time to time we are offering to readers of this blog books for review in the European Journal of Archaeology. Here is another one:

Anybody interested in reviewing this title…

Bilder vom Menschen der Steinzeit: Untersuchungen zur anthropomorphen Plastik der Jungsteinzeit und Kupferzeit in Südosteuropa

by Svend Hansen

(2007, 2 vols, Zabern, €96)

…should email me () as soon as possible with details about who you are and why you would like to review this book. We’re especially interested in reviewers from the Mediterranean region or eastern Europe.

Length: 1400 words max.

Deadline: 1 July 2008 or as agreed. Read the rest of this entry »

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Call for Nominations: The European Archaeological Heritage Prize 2008

Willem Willems has asked us to issue this call for nominations for The European Archaeological Heritage Prize 2008:

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

The European Association of Archaeologists instituted the European Archaeological Heritage Prize in 1999.

An independent committee awards the prize annually to an individual, institution or government (local or regional) for an outstanding contribution to the protection and presentation of the European archaeological heritage. In principle, this can be any contribution that is outstanding and of European scope or importance, it does not have to be a scientific contribution. The prize for 2008 will be awarded during the Annual Meeting of the EAA in Valletta, Malta, on Wednesday, 17 September 2008. Read the rest of this entry »

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CFP: Bioarchaeology of Individual Life Histories

We have received the following CFP for a session at the EAA Annual Meeting 2008 on Malta from Marek Zvelebil and Andrzej Weber:

Bioarchaeology of individual life histories

The field of archaeological science is rapidly expanding. This growth includes laboratory methods for examination of human skeletal remains such as stable isotope ratios of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and strontium, as well as ancient DNA analyses. Together with equally advancing methods of macroscopic and microscopic studies, these new techniques, combined with the investigation of artifacts and other cultural remains, allow us for the first time to reconstruct individual life histories from birth to death, reflected in human skeletal and dental tissues and the associated grave goods. A number of archaeological projects have made examination of individual life biographies their focal points. The session will review this research from the perspective of the theoretical, methodological and practical matters involved in the development of this new subfield of bioarchaeology. The format of this session will include paper presentations focused on recent major mortuary complexes dated to the postglacial stone age of Eurasia, and ending with a round table discussion organized over one full day. Depending on the number and kind of submissions, the organizers foresee the possibility of publishing session materials in a separate volume. Read the rest of this entry »

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Archaeological summer camp in Siciliy

Emilia Bella writes:

For 10th year the Archeoclub d’Italia, residing in Campobello di Licata of Sicily, will be organizing a Summer Camp, which in the past has succeeded in having more than 900 foreign and Italian participants involved in a holiday full of sun, sea and archaeological discoveries. The Summer Camps of the Kalat Project have till now made possible the discovery of more than 250 new archaeological sites, the mapping of kilometres of ancient pathways, the accomplishment of two exhibitions and of the creation of the Archaeological Park Parco Antico di Iachinu Filì. Read the rest of this entry »

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CFP: Wetland Archaeology and Movement

We have received from the following calls for papers from Andrea Vianello:

I am co-organising two sessions - one was not enough - that will be held at the forthcoming sixth World Archaeological Congress, WAC-6 Congress. Both sessions are registered under the theme “Wetland Archaeology Across the World”. They are organised together with Ingelise Stuijts, Nora Bermingham and Claire Anderson; I will be the main organiser of the second one. The closing date for proposing papers is 22nd February 2008. See below for some more details. Read the rest of this entry »

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Mark Hall: Speculum Fantasia - Middle-Earth and Discworld as Mirrors of Medieval Europe

This blog entry is a slightly amended version of the paper given at the EAA Annual Meeting in Zadar, Croatia, September 2007. It was read at the session on Invented Civilisations organised by Cornelius Holtorf and Michael Jasmin. It is presented here to give a flavour of part of the session and to invite responses in the interest of debate.

Introduction: Audiences, authors and True Lies
All civilisations are invented by people, some go on to be re-created as acts of archaeological and historical interpretation, some do not achieve material reality but remain fictive imaginings. This blog has two foci, the boundary between real and fantastic, between archaeology and narrative and the exploration of play culture, often fuelled by invention, mythopoesis and narrative. I will not look in any detail at the dynamics of the audiences’ role but implicit through out is the recognition that the role of audiences is as crucial as that of authors/experts. This is as true in the past as it is now, as has been demonstrated, for example, by Abou-el-Haj (1991) in her study of the audience for the cult of saints and their relics, an audience she makes evident could be non-consensual and volatile to the point of violence in its reaction to the staging of some cults.1 As Eagleton (1996, 62) has observed: ‘the meaning of a literary work’ (and by extension films, see Winkler 2001, 3-23) ‘is never exhausted by the intentions of the author; as the work moves from one cultural or historical context to another new meanings may be culled from it which were perhaps never anticipated by its author or contemporary audience…All understanding is productive: it is always …realising new potential in the text, making a difference to it. … The reader makes implicit connections, fills in gaps, draws inferences and tests out hunches and to do this means drawing on tacit knowledge of the world in general and of literary conventions in particular. The text itself is really no more than a series of ‘cues’ to the reader; invitations to construct a piece of language into meaning.’ At one level of course this paper, just like Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of Lord Of The Rings, is an audience response. Indeed I contend that Tolkien’s writing of Middle-Earth can be understood as the response of an audience member, a very individual response - Tolkien if you will stepped out of an audience to make meaning as an author.2 Read the rest of this entry »

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Call for papers: Interpreted Iron Ages

Case studies, method, theory

3. Linzer Gespräche zur interpretativen Eisenzeitarchäologie

Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum Linz, Austria
14 – 16 November 2008

The aims of European Iron Age archaeologies are not only to classify material remains of the Iron Age past according to typological and chronological frameworks, but also to explain the societies that produced these remains. The Linzer Gespräche zur interpretativen Eisenzeitarchäologie are intended as a platform to present and discuss explanatory models, either as applied to individual case studies, or the methods employed in developing such models themselves, or the theoretical foundations underlying the interpretation of Iron Age sources, without being buried, as often the case at other conferences, amidst serial presentations of hardly interpreted masses of primary evidence. Read the rest of this entry »

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Free access to online archaeology journals

Maney Publishing offers a 30 days free trial to its online archaeology and heritage journals. You need to fill in a simple form here. Choose access to the “Archaeology Collection“. You will get access to the following periodicals:

Arms and Armour
Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2006 - Volume 4, Number 2, October 2007

Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites
Volume 8, Number 1, January 2006 - Volume 8, Number 3, September 2007

Environmental Archaeology
Volume 11, Number 1, April 2006 - Volume 12, Number 2, October 2007

Industrial Archaeology Review
Volume 27, Number 1, May 2005 - Volume 29, Number 2, November 2007

Journal of the British Archaeological Association
Volume 158, Number 1, October 2005 - Volume 160, Number 1, September 2007

Medieval Archaeology
2000 - 2007

Palestine Exploration Quarterly
Volume 136, Number 1, 1 April 2004 - Volume 139, Number 3, November 2007

Post-Medieval Archaeology
Volume 39, Number 1, March 2005 - Volume 40, Number 2, September 2006

Public Archaeology
Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2007 - Volume 6, Number 4, Winter 2007

Vernacular Architecture
Volume 36, Number 1, February 2005 - Volume 37, Number 1, February 2006

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Public Archaeology Swedish-style

Svanberg, Fredrik and Katty H. Wahlgren (2007) Publik Arkeologi. Lund: Nordic Academic Press. 152 pp., illustrations (many in colour), pbk, ISBN 978-91-89116-96-2, SEK 169 (= ca € 18). Order here.

Public archaeology is a fast growing area of Anglophone archaeology, with strong centres in both the UK and the US. Now a new book by archaeologists Fredrik Svanberg and Katty Wahlgren, both of the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities (Historiska Museet) in Stockholm, proves that in Sweden, too, much has been done in recent years concerning public archaeology, or publik arkeologi as the term has been swedified (see the Museum’s webpages for their publik arkeologi programme).
Read the rest of this entry »

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Call for Posters: 17th International Congress of Classical Archaeology

A message from Martina Della Riva:

Call for Posters: 17th International Congress of Classical Archaeology
Rome, Italian and foreign Archaeological Research Institutes
22-26 September 2008

The Organising Committee of the 17th International Congress of Classical Archaeology invites all archaeologists, scholars, postgraduate students and academics to submit proposals for posters around the theme: NEW WORK IN CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY. Read the rest of this entry »

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