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Dear Zooarchers, My colleagues John Chapman and Bisserka Gaydarska are organising the conference, whose details you can find below, and they are looking for a zooarchaeologist prepared to talk about 'Animals, people and homes'. Should you be interested in participating please do get in touch directly with them (copied in here and also see email address below). Cheers, Umberto JOINT RESEARCH DAY, PREHISTORIC SOCIETY and DURHAM UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED STUDY & DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY, Durham, 27/II/2010 The creation of ‘homes’ in the earliest farming period in Eurasia One of the long-term global issues of continuing significance to the human sciences is the origins of agriculture some 12,000 – 5,000 years ago. One of the key debates concerning agriultural origins concerns the impact on farming of sedentism - setting down into permanent communities consisting of family-sized ‘homes’. There is still considerable disagreement over the causal priority of sedentism and population growth over agriculture or vice versa, as indeed on the ideological and symbolic significance of the home in comparison with settlement and subsistence factors. While new and general hypotheses purporting to ‘explain’ agricultural origins continue to appear, a minority of recent approaches to the issue start from the bottom-up approach of the formation of homes as distinctive places creating unique relationships with the human groups (households) living there. Novel approaches focussed on personhood, the biographies of buildings, personal agency and the objectification of humans in things, structures, plants and animals have yet to be applied to the homes attested before, at and after the transition to farming. There is a clear research opportunity to develop a new framework that will set the agenda of studies in the emergence of agriculture in any region in the world. This would link homes to the creation of houses, as well as notions of place, dwelling, land, boundaries, defences, families, mobilities, senses of security, comfort and belonging. Moreover, such a project would provide a social context for the innovative reseach into the bioarchaeology of agricultural origins. This meeting stems from a High-Level Symposium organised under the aegis of the Institute of Advanced Study of Durham University and part-funded by the British Academy, entitled ‘Dwelling in long-term perspective’ (March 2009). We are keen to develop the broader perspectives established in that meeting within the key research theme of the origins of Eurasian farming. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONFERENCE PROGRAMME 10.00am Mark White (Durham) Welcome 10.10 Alasdair Whittle (Cardiff) ‘The significance of place’ 10.50 Glynis Jones (Sheffield) Plants, people and homes 11.15 Coffee / Tea 11.45 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Animals, people and homes 12.10 Fiona Coward (Royal Holloway) The Levant 12.35 Trevor Watkins (Edinburgh) Anatolia 1.00 Discussion 1.30 Lunch 2.30 Stella Souvatzi (Athens) Greece 2.55 John Chapman (Durham) The Balkans and Hungary: 3.20 Dani Hofmann (Oxford) Central Europe 3.45 Tea / Coffee 4.15 Robin Skeates (Durham) Central Mediterranean 4.40 Chris Scarre (Durham) Atlantic Europe: 5.05 Chris Fowler (Newcastle) Northern Europe: 5.30 General discussion 6.00 Wine reception 7.00 Conference closes JOHN CHAPMAN [log in to unmask] 0191 3341122 -- Umberto Albarella Department of Archaeology University of Sheffield Northgate House West Street Sheffield S1 4ET United Kingdom Telephone: (+) 44 (0) 114 22 22 943 Fax: (+) 44 (0) 114 27 22 563 http://www.shef.ac.uk/archaeology/staff/albarella.html For Archaeologists for Global Justice (AGJ) see: http://www.shef.ac.uk/archaeology/global-justice.html "only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught we will realise we cannot eat money"