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EAA2012 - Session List
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Sessions The meeting will focus on four major themes: Interpreting the Archaeological Record, Maritime Archaeology, Archaeological Heritage Resource Management and Perspectives on Archaeology in the Modern World. In addition the Medieval Europe Research Congress (MERC) is organised in connection with the EAA Helsinki 2012 meeting. The more than 75 sessions are listed below. Please note that all paper abstracts will be evaluated by the session organisers and the Scientific Committee. In order to give all the submitted abstracts equal opportinity in the evaluation process all abstracts will be evaluated after 31 March 2012. Thank you for your patience!
Interpreting the Archaeological Record
Animal Agency? Organisers: Kristin Armstrong Oma (University of Oslo; Norway) and Gala Argent (Eastern Kentucky University; USA) Contact: k.a.oma[at]iakh.uio.no Archaeology by definition centralizes the human within its realm of study. As within broader Western socio-cultural constructs, archaeological studies most often marginalize nonhuman animals as containers for human symbolism or as economic strategies, or segment them into abstract categories of inert variables. In a philosophical sense, ontologically the nature of being is the nature of human being; the nature of action is of human action. Animals are more than cultural abstractions. There is growing interdisciplinary recognition that many animals possess characteristics such as intelligence, emotion and awareness that vary from humans by degree rather than kind. Animals are alive, active participants in their worlds, and the spaces where those worlds intersect and enmesh with humans are often messy and difficult to divide into clean compartments. In addition to how humans use them, animals often take part in subjectified relationships with humans that are impactful for both species at various levels of scale. But while particular lines of archaeological inquiry have focused upon attributing objects and landscapes with agential abilities - while leaving it tacitly understood that this kind of agency is secondary to the type of agency humans apply to their worlds - with few notable exceptions animals have been left out of this type of discourse. This session aspires to be one such exception, by addressing the question of animal agency. With these considerations in mind, this session is open to contributions that specifically address - or reformulate the question of animal agency within archaeological studies. Questions might include: Do animals have agency, and if so, what type(s)? Do animals hold a middle ground between agential humans and inert material culture? How might animals be seen to have impacted particular societies and cultures, beyond their use? Can a consideration of animals as themselves, and as they live and interact with humans within shared worlds, assist with understanding the human cultures which lived or live with them? How does animal agency challenge the paradigm of human centrality within archaeological studies? How might the manner in which conventional archaeological narratives construct animals be expanded? Can fresh theoretical or methodological approaches be incorporated beneficially into archaeological studies which include animals? What are the ethical implications of animal agency for archaeologies which approach them as objects? Contributors are also invited to address the relevance for archaeological studies of recent advances in human-animal studies, posthumanist and feminist research.
Archaeological Research, Heritage Interpretation and "lieux de mémoire" Organisers: Jana Maříková-Kubková (Archeologický ústav AVČR, Praha; Czech Republic), Dirk Callebaut (Ename Expertisecentrum voor Erfgoedontsluiting; Belgium) and Jan Mařík (Archeologický ústav AVČR, Praha; Czech Republic) Contact: marikova[at]arup.cas.cz This session will focus on various aspects of the rise, development, significance and pitfalls in the application of the socalled sites of memory theory, les lieux de mémoire (Nora 1984-1992), on archaeology and its evidence. Even though the theory of lieux de mémoire is symbolic in its context as it describes the nature of the collective identity of a nation and the fundamental bases from which it arises, its implications for archaeology are fundamental and far-reaching. Attention will be paid mainly to protohistoric and early Medieval archaeological sites closely linked to the creation of local and national identities. In each country there are sites that can be considered to be key-sites for the understanding of the history, and their historical and archaeological exploration has been considerably influenced by myth-making processes. Obtaining archaeological evidence, its evaluation and interpretation was often biased by those myths as cognitive proof of their reliability was sought for. The papers we expect should deal with the following aspects: the results of the archaeological www.eaa2012.fi/programme/session_list
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