July 2019 Newsletter

Dear friends and colleagues,

Summer is well under way and so it is time to give you an update on PaM business!

 

EAA BERN 2019

This year’s EAA annual meeting will be held in Bern, Switzerland, from 4-8 September 2019.

We have been working with the conference organisers to try to identify the PaM sessions that should not be held at the same time. Obviously with 12 sessions in three days it’s not possible to prevent overlaps and timetabling such a big conference is no easy task, but hopefully our input helped to avoid too many clashes. The preliminary conference schedule (sessions only) is now available here. In addition, we have collated over 16 pages of accepted presentations to PaM sessions and PaM-relevant topics in a PDF attached to this message. So prepare yourself for three intense days of PaM-research in Bern!

On Wednesday 4 September there will be a meeting in Bern of the PaM Community, to which you are all invited. This will be a chance for you to meet your fellow PaM members and to discuss the activity of the Community so far and in the future. If there is anything in particular that you would like to discuss at the meeting please let us know ahead of time (eaa.palaeomeso@gmail.com) and we can make some dedicated time for discussion.

Last year we didn’t have time to widely advertise the creation of PaM before our meeting in Barcelona, and so we know that people didn’t have a chance to put themselves forward as Chair or Co-chair or for elections to take place. While the two of us are more than happy to continue in our roles for the next two years, we also want to give other people a chance to take a leading role in PaM – so if you are interested in becoming Chair or Co-chair, let us know by 5 August! If anyone comes forward, we will organise a ballot of PaM members to choose the Chair and Co-chair for the next two years.

On the evening of Friday 6 September we will organise an informal meet-up in Bern for PaM members – more details on this closer to the time but put it in your diaries now!

OTHER CONFERENCES & CALL FOR PAPERS

The meeting of the UK Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) 2019 will be held in London and includes the session “Palaeolithic societies, sociality and social life: archaeological perspectives 20 years after Gamble (1999)”. PaM members may be interested in this Call for Papers – please email Jennifer French (jennifer.french@ucl.ac.uk) or Fiona Coward (fcoward@bournemouth.ac.uk) for more information.

 

JOB OPPORTUNITIES & SCHOLARSHIPS

The University of Vienna is advertising (deadline: 18 September 2019):

• a tenure-track Professorship for the field of Methodology and techniques from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic: link
• and a tenure-track Professorship for the field of Geoarchaeology: link

 

The University of York is advertising (deadline: 31 July 2019):

• a three-year fixed-term Associate Lectureship in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Archaeology: link

 

OTHER NEWS

PaM is now on Facebook! Thanks to our colleague Silje Bentsen, we could accomplish one of the requests from the Barcelona meeting and now have a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/PaMCommunity/ – if you are a Facebook user, have a look,  “like” the page to keep updated, and help Silje keep the page lively with posts and news!

EAA’s international peer-reviewed European Journal of Archaeology (EJA) would warmly welcome more contributions from the PaM community. More information about the journal and instructions for contributors can be found at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-archaeology#

Got something to share with the PaM Community? If you have a short message (up to 150 words) that you would like to be included in the next email to the PaM Community in August 2019 (job opportunities, conference announcements, calls for papers), please send it to eaa.palaeomeso@gmail.com.

Need some publicity on Twitter? If you have something specific that you would like us to tweet/retweet, just send us a DM at @EAAPaM with the details.

Please feel free to distribute this email among your networks as you wish. You can also direct anyone who is interested in joining the Community or our external mailing list to this link, where they will find all the relevant instructions: https://eaapalaeomesocommunity.wordpress.com/get-involved/

Look forward to seeing many of you in Bern!

All the best,

Sonja and Natasha

PaM Community Page (for EAA members)

PaM Community Site (for non-EAA members)

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Beyond EAA: Call for papers – TAG 2019, London

The following call for papers may be of interest to the PaM Community. If you would like us to share any similar announcements, please email us at eaa.palaeomeso@gmail.com.

Palaeolithic societies, sociality and social life: archaeological perspectives 20 years after Gamble (1999)

Twenty years ago, Gamble’s “Palaeolithic Societies of Europe” was published, representing a landmark moment in the study of the social lives of both archaic hominins and early members of our own species, Homo sapiens. For arguably the first time, Palaeolithic populations, and the archaeological record which they generated, were analysed within an explicitly social framework interpreted in terms of the nested scales of social networks and the resultant interactions within and between individuals, groups, and regional populations. Two decades later, social approaches have become fundamental to Palaeolithic archaeology. However, the Palaeolithic archaeological record does look rather different. Not only does it now extend back in time to 3.3 million years ago, but it also incorporates at least three new hominin species (Homo floresiensis, Homo naledi, the Denisovans and possibly a fourth, Homo luzonensis), and falls increasingly under the purview of geneticists, whose research provides unique insights into hominin interactions and evolution. What has been the impact of these developments on how we conceive of Palaeolithic society, and what should be research priorities moving forward?

Taking the 20th anniversary of Gamble (1999) as our impetus, we invite papers from researchers working on all aspects of Palaeolithic society, social life, and sociality, broadly defined. Papers are welcome from all Palaeolithic sub-periods, geographic regions, and theoretical perspectives. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: population connectivity and landscape use; group size, life history and demography; social organisation and economic strategies, including the role of individuals of different ages and sexes in Palaeolithic societies. Complementary perspectives from scholars working on primate archaeology or early farming societies are also welcome.

Discussant: Professor Clive Gamble!

Further information on TAG 2019 at the IoA, UCL, London: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/news-events/conferences/tag-2019

For further information about this session or to send an abstract, please contact Jennifer C. French, UCL Institute of Archaeology (jennifer.french@ucl.ac.uk) and/or Fiona Coward, Bournemouth University (fcoward@bournemouth.ac.uk). Please send abstracts by Wednesday 28th August.

Download PDF of Call for Papers

 

January 2019 Newsletter

Dear friends and colleagues,

Happy New Year! We hope you all had a nice break and wish you a successful 2019 to come.

 

PREPARATIONS FOR EAA BERN 2019

Preparations are underway for the next EAA annual meeting to be held in Bern, Switzerland, from 4-8 September 2019.

Here are some deadlines to note:

14 February: Deadline for abstract submission
31 March: Early bird membership fee deadline
8 April: Early bird conference registration fee deadline
11 April: Deadline for travel grants application
24 April: Deadline for membership and conference registration payment for presenters (first authors)

The full list of approved sessions is available via the conference website ( https://www.e-a-a.org/eaa2019 ).

 

The following sessions are on PaM-related themes and might be of particular interest:

#157 At the fringe of early Neolithisation – from the coasts to the mountains

#188 African and Eurasian Palaeolithic coastal occupations

#193 Patterns of the Deep Past. Interrogating the ‘long term’ in archaeology and history

#213 Humans beyond arrowheads. Questioning the interpretative value of arrowheads and other tools for reconstructing people identities in prehistoric societies

#238 Functional analyses of hunter-gatherer lithic tool assemblages

#252 In search of cloudstones*? Lithic raw material procurement in mountainous and alpine regions during the Mesolithic and Neolithic

#279 Quantifying Stone Age mobility: Scales and parameters

#284 Untangling the Final Palaeolithic and Early Mesolithic in Europe

#286 Blades still a big deal? – Laminar technology in the Middle Palaeolithic and Middle Stone Age

#292 Process of change from late Acheulean to early Middle Stone Age / early Middle Palaeolithic in Africa and Eurasia

#310 The importance of fishing for cultural development in the early and mid Holocene in Northern Europe

#319 Settling at high altitudes. Intra-site and inter-site variability, site function and mobility of hunter-gatherers and the first agro-pastoral societies

#344 Stumbling block or common ground? The question of standardisation of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic lithic analysis (Following your feedback on our October 2018 newsletter, we organised this as a discussion session)

 

These sessions are organised by PaM members and might also be of interest:

#88 Funerary Practices at Çatalhöyük and in the Neolithic Near East: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

#178 Macro Weather – Micro Climate: Local Palaeo-Climate Reconstructions and Social Responses at a Human Scale

#199 Rethinking the interpretation of vertical past land use on mountain environments

#289 European Origins and Fading Heritage

#318 Bending the Arc of History to a Low Carbon Future

 

As you can see, there is no shortage of interesting sessions this year! For full details on each of these sessions, go to the “Scientific Programme” at https://www.e-a-a.org/eaa2019 . Abstracts for proposals should be 150-300 words in length, with three keywords.

 

OTHER CONFERENCES & CALL FOR PAPERS
The Workshop “Cultural geography of the Paleolithic of the East European Plain: from the Micoquian to the Epigravettian” will be held in Bryansk/Khotylevo, Russian Federation on 10-16 September 2019. The deadline for abstract submission is 28 February 2019. For further details, please go to: https://eaapalaeomesocommunity.wordpress.com/2018/11/21/beyond-eaa-call-for-papers-cultural-geography-of-the-paleolithic-of-the-east-european-plain-from-the-micoquian-to-the-epigravettian/ and/or contact the organising committee via desna2019@gmail.com

CROSSDEM 2019 “Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to Prehistoric Demography” is  a two-day workshop held 29th-30th March at UCL Institute of Archaeology. The call for papers is closed but registration has just opened. For further details, please go to: https://crossdem2019.com/

 

JOB OPPORTUNITIES & SCHOLARSHIPS
The Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology (ZBSA) invites applications for a PhD research fellowship (total number available: 3). The potential projects are expected to be based on empirical studies of archaeological remains found within the geographical working area of ZBSA, i.e. primarily the Baltic and Scandinavian region but also the North Sea area. Deadline is 1st March 2019. Further details can be found here: http://zbsa.eu/aktuelles/stellenangebote/ZBSA_PhD-positions.pdf

 

OTHER NEWS

http://trowelnation.com is a recently launched website that is intended as an employment resource focused on archaeology. This Ohio-based community wants to bring together individuals seeking for projects and fieldwork and archaeology companies, universities, and government agencies that look for professional archaeologists. Furthermore, TrowelNation shall offer a platform for exchange of ideas and networking. If this sounds interesting to you have a look at their website!

The EAA PaM website is up and running! The address is https://eaapalaeomesocommunity.wordpress.com/ – this website will serve as a public information point and archive for the Community, to complement the EAA members-only PaM Community space on the EAA website accessible via https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA/Navigation_Communities/Palaeolithic_and_Mesolithic_Community.aspx

We’re still looking for someone to oversee a Facebook page for PaM. We would like to set up a Facebook page for the PaM community and we are seeking help from one or more people who can help out with getting this started and keeping it up-to-date. We aren’t asking for anyone to make a huge time commitment but we do need one or more people who can post occasional updates and keep a general eye on things on the page. Please get in touch at eaa.palaeomeso@gmail.com if this sounds like it might be you.

Got something to share with the PaM Community? If you have a short message (up to 150 words) that you would like to be included in the next email to the PaM Community around April 2019 (job opportunities, conference announcements, calls for papers), please send it to eaa.palaeomeso@gmail.com. We are also happy to share these messages on our external website (see above).

Need some publicity on Twitter? If you have something specific that you would like us to tweet/retweet, just send us a DM at @EAAPaM with the details.

 

Please feel free to distribute this email among your networks as you wish. You can also direct anyone who is interested in joining the Community or our external mailing list to this link, where they will find all the relevant instructions: https://eaapalaeomesocommunity.wordpress.com/get-involved/

 

We’ll be in touch again in a few months.

Until then, all the best,

Sonja & Natasha

Beyond EAA: Call for papers – CROSSDEM 2019

The following call for papers may be of interest to the PaM Community. If you would like us to share any similar announcements, please email us at eaa.palaeomeso@gmail.com.

Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to Prehistoric Demography 29-30 March 2019

The UCL Institute of Archaeology will be hosting a two-day workshop “Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to Prehistoric Demography” (CROSSDEM 2019) next March (29^th-30^th).

Demography underpins a number of important prehistoric cultural processes, from cultural diffusion and changes in subsistence practices, to population bottlenecks and migration episodes. Yet, no element of the archaeological record is directly associated with demographic factors such as population sizes, growth or fertility rates – they must be inferred from the analysis of different proxies. Using site and artefact densities, radiocarbon dates, palaeoanthropological data and ancient DNA, and vastly different methods, scholars have been able to reconstruct these variables, and infer dispersal rates, population growths, crashes and bottlenecks.

CROSSDEM 2019 will create a space for scholars working on prehistoric demography, through different disciplinary lenses and types of data, to come together and discuss current methodological and theoretical issues.

The workshop will comprise keynote papers delivered by scholars from across a range of disciplines, structured discussions led by experts, and contributed papers.

We cordially invite submissions from motivated scholars working on prehistoric demography to submit proposals (300-500 words in length) for a paper of approximately 20 minutes to crossdem2019@gmail.com, by 19th December 2018. Please find our Call for Papers attached. Registration will open in early January 2019.

Further information about the workshop, including details of our keynote speakers, can be found at our website: https://crossdem2019.com/

CROSSDEM 2019 is organised by Jennifer French, Phil Riris, Andy Bevan and Stephen Shennan (IoA) and Fabio Silva (Bournemouth University), and is generously funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

Beyond EAA: Call for papers – Cultural geography of the Paleolithic of the East European Plain

The following call for papers may be of interest to the PaM Community. If you would like us to share any similar announcements, please email us at eaa.palaeomeso@gmail.com.

Cultural geography of the Paleolithic of the East European Plain: from the Micoquian to the Epigravettian 10-16 September 2019

Dear colleagues!

In November 2019, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Fëdor Mikhailovich Zavernyaev, a scientist from the Bryansk State Museum of Local Lore. He was a pioneer and the discoverer of the numerous Paleolithic sites in the village of Khotylevo, in the Bryansk region of the Russian Federation, including the largest – Khotylevo I and Khotylevo 2. The conference «Cultural geography of the Paleolithic of the East European Plain: from the Micoquian to the Epigravettian» will be devoted to Zavernyaev’s work.

Over the past 25 years of intensive research into the Middle and Upper Paleolithic of Eastern Europe, a large volume of archaeological material has accumulated, asking for a continuous reevaluation of the archaeological record. Questions of the chronology and periodization of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic of the East European Plain have been substantially revised. The technological direction in the analysis of stone and bone industries, which allowed us to approach the problems of the definition and genesis of archeological cultures and traditions, has been significantly developed. There has been a radical change in research approaches to the analysis of the spatial structure of settlements. The recent developments give cause to discuss the study of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic of Eastern Europe with the use of comparative material in a broad chronological and territorial context. During the conference, issues of a paradigm shift will be discussed regarding the conceptions of cultural communities in the Middle and Upper Paleolithic of the East European Plain and neighboring territories. The attempt to identify large communities of trans-European (transcontinental) distribution will be given special attention.

Location: Bryansk/Khotylevo, Russian Federation.

Main topics for discussion:

1. Chronostratigraphic correlations of sediments of alluvial and loess-paleosol series of the Valdai epoch (Weichselian) on the East European Plain
2. Variability within large cultural communities and options for modeling their development processes
3. Issues of reconstruction of paleoclimatic changes, correlation of socio-cultural and natural factors in the development of large cultural communities of the European continent in the Middle and Upper Paleolithic
   

The program of the conference/field seminar will include acquaintance with the main areas of the Middle Paleolithic sites of Khotylevo I and Betovo, the Upper Paleolithic sites of Khotylovo 2, Khotylovo 6, and Yudinovo.

The deadline for applications for participation in the conference/field workshop is
February 28th, 2019. The deadline for submission of abstracts for advance publication is April 30th, 2019.

First circular: English / Russian

Poster: English / Russian

Application form: English / Russian

E-mail of Organizing Committee: desna2019@gmail.com

October 2018 Newsletter

Dear friends and colleagues,

We hope this finds you well. Now that the EAA Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Community is up and running, it’s time to get down to business!

SESSION PROPOSALS FOR BERN 2019

The next EAA Annual Meeting will be held in Bern, Switzerland, from 4-8 September 2019 ( https://www.e-a-a.org/eaa2019 ). Although September next year is a long way away, the deadline for session proposals is coming up very soon – Thursday 8 November 2018.

If you are interested in submitting a session connected with the study of the Palaeolithic and/or Mesolithic (or have already submitted something), and you would like to co-ordinate efforts with other PaM members, please get in touch with us at eaa.palaeomeso@gmail.com as soon as possible. Following this, we will put you in touch with other potential session organisers, to enable communication ahead of submission, avoidance of duplication of session proposals, etc. We hope that this will help to ensure a good range of session proposals for next year’s meeting.

If you’ve never organised a conference session before, and are wondering whether to propose one this year, EAA is a great place to organise a session for the first time – it’s extremely well-run and session organisation is very straightforward. There’s lots of information available on the conference website (here) about session proposal requirements. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions.

We would also like to organise a round table session on a topic related to Palaeolithic and Mesolithic archaeology at Bern. We have a couple of ideas for this already, as follows:

• Standardization of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic lithic analysis: Is standardization possible? Is it desirable? What are the advantages and disadvantages of diverse methodologies and research traditions? What might a standardized methodology and terminology of lithic analysis look like? What are the differences between the study of the Lower/Middle/Upper Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic?
• Social media and Palaeolithic and Mesolithic archaeology: What are our main aims in using social media as Palaeolithic and Mesolithic archaeologists? Public engagement? Intra-/inter-disciplinary communication? In practice, what are we most effective at doing with social media? Are there potential conflicts? What are the challenges and benefits? What are some examples of good/bad practice?

We would love to hear your feedback on these ideas and any alternative ideas you might have – please email us at eaa.palaeomeso@gmail.com

OTHER NEWS

The EAA PaM website is up and running! The address is https://eaapalaeomesocommunity.wordpress.com/ – this website will serve as a public information point and archive for the Community, to complement the EAA members-only PaM Community space on the EAA website accessible via https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA/Navigation_Communities/Palaeolithic_and_Mesolithic_Community.aspx

Are you better at Facebook than we are? We would like to set up a Facebook page for the PaM community and we are seeking help from one or more people who can help out with getting this started and keeping it up-to-date. We aren’t asking for anyone to make a huge time commitment but we do need one or more people who can post occasional updates and keep a general eye on things on the page. Please get in touch at eaa.palaeomeso@gmail.com if this sounds like it might be you.

Got something to share with the PaM Community? If you have a short message (up to 150 words) that you would like to be included in the next email to the PaM Community in January 2019 (job opportunities, conference announcements, calls for papers), please send it to eaa.palaeomeso@gmail.com

Need some publicity on Twitter? If you have something specific that you would like us to tweet/retweet, just send us a DM at @EAAPaM with the details.

Please feel free to distribute this email among your networks as you wish. You can also direct anyone who is interested in joining the Community or our external mailing list to this link, where they will find all the relevant instructions: https://eaapalaeomesocommunity.wordpress.com/get-involved/

We’ll be in touch again at the beginning of January, with information on Palaeolithic and Mesolithic-related sessions that will be taking place in Bern next year.

Until then, all the best,

Sonja & Natasha

Welcome to the PaM Community

Welcome to the website for the EAA Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Community! We’re just getting up and running – but you can already read about the Community, and how to stay in touch and get involved.

All the best,

Natasha and Sonja