[Archport] CALL FOR PAPERS - EAA 2020 (Session #365) "Defining Boundaries in Archaeological Research"

[Helena Barbosa <h_barbosa@hotmail.com>]

Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists 

EAA 2020, Budapest

 

CALL FOR PAPERS 

 

(Session #365)

 

DEFINING BOUNDARIES IN PREHISTORIC RESEARCH

 

Deadline for submissions is 13 February 2020

 

https://www.e-a-a.org/eaa2020

https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2020/

 

 

Session #365

DEFINING BOUNDARIES IN PREHISTORIC RESEARCH

 

Main organiser: Barbosa, Helena (Spain)^1,2,3

Co-organisers: Sanches, Maria de Jesus (Portugal)³; Castro Teixeira, Joana (Portugal)³

 

Keywords: Boundaries, Prehistory, Materials, Identities, Change, Conceptual boundaries

 

Archaeology is shaken by a general call to overcome the structuring epistemological principles of the modern dualism-based scientific matrix from which incessant theoretical fragmentation has taken place in recent decades. In challenging the conceptual boundaries of archaeological discourse, it is urgent to question the ways in which we delimit archaeological categories that refer to ontological conceptions quite distant from modern Western thought, namely those of Prehistory, and how these societies would conceptualize their different borders. Reflecting on the boundaries of the Past necessarily requires discussion of the conceptual boundaries in modern research.

The purpose of this session is to integrate the debate that permeates contemporary archaeology, using as thread the “boundaries” i.e., the interface that both unite and separate. Where do we draw the line between the mind and the material world, between “people” and “things”? We welcome critical approaches in defining central categories in the analysis of the materialities of the Past, whose conceptual boundaries remain blurred: e.g., ritual / ceremonial / mundane; extraordinary / ordinary; style / function / technique, etc. Can we blend those concepts? How, why and under which circumstances, namely in order to emphazise the process of formation and consolidation of prehistoric identities, focusing both the short time scale - in daily life contexts - and the regional long-term duration? In what ways can we identify / deduce spatial, social and ideological boundaries of prehistoric communities through the archaeological record? Similarly, we wonder how they produce, maintain, alter, and break boundaries over time.

Given that historical circumstances and academic tradition give rise to narratives often accommodated to current political and / or administrative boundaries, tending to project them into the prehistoric Past, we also list this line of research for this session.

 

¹ University of Valladolid

² FCT - Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology

³ CITCEM / University of Porto, Portugal