Please consider sending in an abstract by 8 February to the following call: Call for papers: 30th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) in Rome, Italy, 28-31 August 2024 

Session: #613 

Title: Making the Most of What We've Got: Activating Museum Collections, Monuments and Built Heritage 

Content: 

The archaeological record is a non-renewable resource. Material cultural heritage in public or private ownership, be it artefacts and ecofacts in museum collections or historic buildings and monuments, represents a huge archive of source material with enormous potential for improving our understanding of the past. However, these archives are often preserved as inactive matter rather than being actively incorporated into research programs. In the face of the so-called "curation crisis" and widespread funding cuts within the heritage sector, it is vital that we demonstrate the continuing research value of material cultural heritage and its relevance in the modern world. At the same time, a drive to conduct "sustainable archaeology", avoiding excavation unless a site is threatened by development or by environmental change, means that there is an increasing need to consider how new techniques and novel approaches can derive new information from existing collections. 

In this session, we invite case studies using museum collection material, historic monuments and built heritage to explore traces of past human activity at all scales, from biomolecules to artworks, buildings and cultural landscapes. We also welcome papers exploring how archaeology as a discipline can better integrate studies of archived material and built heritage, especially so-called orphaned or legacy collections. We welcome interdisciplinary perspectives, especially those that bridge the humanities and sciences, and the material and the theoretical, as well as studies that demonstrate how knowledge of the past can contribute to current societal issues. 

Organisers: Bettina Ebert, Dawn Mooney, and Hege Hollund (Norway), and Joe Walser (Iceland)

Submit your abstract by 8 February through the EAA conference platform: https://www.e-a-a.org/eaa2024. Please refer to the EAA website for updated submission deadlines and guidelines. 

For further details or enquiries, contact the organisers: Bettina.ebert@uis.no 

The ICCROM Classifieds are a service to the professional institutions of our Member States. The Classifieds list announcements on conservation-related topics and events from around the world. They are made available to ICCROM's public solely for informational purposes. Posting of items in the Classifieds does not imply endorsement by ICCROM.

ICCROM reserves the right to moderate content posted to the Classifieds and may remove or edit any Content for any or no reason, including, but not limited to, that which is deemed out of scope or inconsistent with ICCROM's intergovernmental status.

For information about ICCROM’s Privacy Policy, please consult the following link