The 24th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists will be held from 5-8 September 2018 in Barcelona, Spain.
Venue
The Annual Meeting has two venues which are next to each other.
Faculty of Geography and History
Montalegre 6, 08001 Barcelona
http://www.ub.edu/facgh/en
This is the main venue where most sessions take place.
CCCB - Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona
Montalegre 5, 08001 Barcelona
http://www.cccb.org/en
This is where registration, information desk, exhibition, meeting point, coffee-breaks and some sessions are.
Themes
The Annual Meeting themes, as defined by the Scientific Committee, incorporate the diversity of EAA and the multidimensionality of archaeological practice, including archaeological interpretation, heritage management and politics of the past and present.
1. Theories and methods in archaeology
2. The archaeology of material culture, bodies and landscapes
3. Mediterranean seascapes
4. Archaeology and the future of cities and urban landscapes
5. Archaeology and the European Year of Cultural Heritage
6. Museums and the challenges of archaeological heritage in 21st century
Sessions
Access the list of accepted sessions here: https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA2018/Programme.aspx?WebsiteKey=35414e88-a032-42d3-9e9b-d34ff524c79a&hkey=9ba73740-1809-47c0-bd96-13055196e087&Program_ContentCollectionOrganizerCommon=3#list
Abstracts
The call for papers/posters/other contributions closed 15 February: https://eaa.klinkhamergroup.com/eaa2018/
Registration
Registration is open: https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA2018/Registration.aspx?Done=1
Further information
Go to the website: https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA2018/
PAGES working group involvement
1. The LandCover6k working group will conduct session 609: From Local to Global Land Use in the Holocene (Theme: Theories and methods in archaeological sciences)
Organizer: Marco Madella. Co-organizers: Nicola Whitehouse, Kathleen Morrison, Girolamo Fiorentino and Marc Vander Linden.
Holocene changes in landcover are documented primarily by pollen and macrobotanical records. Syntheses of historical land use are less developed than those of land cover, partly because of data heterogeneity archaeological and historical records, and the larger size and disciplinary diversity of the communities involved. Changes in land use are inferred from multiple forms of archaeo-historical evidence. Farming types, for example, may be identifiable based on settlement sizes, distributions, duration, and from faunal remains (wild/domestic taxa, husbandry practices such as milk, traction, and manure), botanical remains (macroremains showing crops grown, commensal weeds, processing strategies, wood assemblages from fuel), landscape features, geoarchaeological evidence (soil micromorphology, buried soil profiles, evidence of erosional regimes), and isotopic evidence for human and animal diet, to name some of the ways in which categorical assessments of land-use type are made. Other forms of land use such as foraging using of fire, metallurgy, pastoralism, and urbanization also impact landcover and carbon cycling.
This session aims to bring together researchers with an interest in assessing land use, from local to global level, during the Holocene. The session has also interest in improving our understanding of human responses to change, including climate adaptations and technological ‘fixes’ for overcoming limitations. Human land use strategies represent complex outcomes of multiple kinds of choices, from economic to cultural and are not necessarily simple responses to physical stimuli and this session will approach this with geographical and temporal examples.
Questions about abstracts for this LandCover6k session can be sent to Nicki Whitehouse nicola.whitehouse@plymouth.ac.uk or Marco Madella marco.madella@upf.edu
2. A side meeting of the Europe Land use at 6000 BP group will be held on 5 September from 14:30-19:30 at the University of Pompeu Fabra. Contact organizers Marco Madella and Nicki Whitehouse for details (as above).
3. PEOPLE 3000 will present the working group and its goals in session 684: At the interface: Investigating coupled human and natural system from natural scientific and archaeological perspective. Challenges and opportunities (Theme: Theories and methods in archaeological sciences)
Organizer: Martin Hinz. Co-organizer: Steinar Solheim
Led by Erick Robinson, their abstract is titled "Solar energy, biodiversity and human population stability during the Holocene": Among many species changes in the attributes of populations are coincident over space and time—a pervasive ecological phenomenon known as synchrony. Recent research indicates that prehistoric human societies displayed synchronous changes in population attributes over the last 10,000 years and over four different continents. The causes of this synchrony likely include 1) common responses to oscillations in the availability of solar energy, and 2) similar pathways of cultural evolution toward more complex political economies. Although prehistoric societies display synchronous changes at a global scale, local ecological and cultural factors may affect the amplitudes or stability of human populations, independent of each other, over the long-term. In this paper we investigate the effects of ecological factors on the stability (amplitudes of variation) in the radiocarbon records of four different continents. Specifically, we test the predictions that biodiversity makes populations more stable over time while pathogen stress decreases the stability of human populations by comparing the relative changes in radiocarbon frequencies in a global sample of cases against the Holocene sunspot record. By documenting and proposing hypotheses that explain stability of human populations, we contribute to developing more refined understanding of the interplay between biodiversity, pathogens and the long-term population ecology of Homo sapiens.