On Shifting Grounds – the study of archaeological practices in a changing world. 3-5 October 2019, Rethymnon, Crete
I spent a wonderful few days in Crete this October, as an invited speaker to a conference on the future of archaeology and research on archaeological methodology. The paper I presented, Six Years of Eternal Winter: The Temporalities of Field Work Between the Global North and South, discussed the cyclical temporalities of field work.
It was exciting to meet other’s working in this hyper specialized field! I’m used to presenting my research on archaeologists to people in STS, Latin American studies, or gender and postcolonial studies. And while I do present to archaeologists, its rarely archaeologists who are already invested in studying the nitty gritty of ethnography-of-archaeological-methods.
I particularly appreciated hearing from other European researchers, who are working in very different traditions of practice and labor organization. There were several US scholars and quite a few Brits, some of whom I’d read or met before. But I haven’t had the opportunity to meet people from, for instance, Germany and Greece before, who are working on similar topics.
The conference was supported by a truly wonderful EU initiative, COST, that provides funding and infrastructure to foster collaborations between researchers from across the European Union. Seeing the benefits of the EU in practice, it was hard not to reflect on what a waste Brexit is going to be.
There are plans for a special issue based on the conference in the New Year, and the publications of the proceedings. I am grateful to the organizers for the invitation, and for being such welcoming hosts! The conference organizers were Dr. Åsa Berggren, Dr. Antonia Davidovic-Walther, Dr. Dorina Moullou, and Dr. Rajna Šošić-Klindžić, and the local committee who took such good care of us were Prof. Pavlina Karanastasi, Ass. Prof. Dimitris Bosnakis, and Ms. Ariadne Gazi.
