Dear colleagues, we would like to draw your attention on
the session that will be held in the European Association of Archaeologists meeting in Vilnius, on the August 31-September 3rd 2016.
The session titled:
Bottom up or top down? Social and ecological
drivers of the Trans-Eurasian exchanges (see abstract below)
The deadline for submitting an abstract is the 15th of February.
You have to become a member of EAA and also pay the conference fees in order to submit your abstract.
Sincerely,
Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute
Xinyi Liu
Abstract
In recent years scholarly interest has been
growing in the investigation of the origins and means of interaction across
Eurasia. The processes of translocation of foods, fibrous plants, medicine,
spices, precious stones and metals across the continent, thousands of
kilometers away from their centers of origin, have played a significant role in
the territories they influenced. In the case of domesticated plants and
animals, not only did their adoption force the lifestyles of people to adjust
and change, but also the animal and plant species had to change as they were
moved into climatically different regions.
The question remains - who received the first
translocated items: the elites or the commoners? In past literature, ecological
opportunism, economic relationships and cultural identities were put forward as
possible motivations behind the movement of food, while other research has
emphasized the social dimensions of plant translocation. The motives and
timings of many translocated items have yet to be discussed in greater detail.
In this session we invite talks analyzing
evidence of the translocation and movement of various advances, including food,
medicine/hallucinogens, fabrics, metals and raw materials. With the application
of both theory and archaeological science we call for papers that look at
social change linked with the arrival of novel items, also analyzing the
drivers responsible for such movements.