Events

EAA4Am scientific meeting “American landscapes archaeologies”, Second European meeting of Americanist archaeology, Santiago de Compostela 19-21/4/2023

Conference or workshop

19/04/2023 - 21/04/2023
Institute of Heritage Science (CSiC), Cidade da cultura, Monte Gaias s/n, Santiago

EAA4Am community is pleased to organize the second European meeting of Americanist Archeology to be held on April 19-21, 2023 in Santiago de Compostela. Those interested in presenting recent research, and debating in round tables, on the latest theoretical and methodological developments in landscape archeology can submit their proposals by the end of January.

Presentation:

Landscape has been one of the most flexible and creative concepts in archaeology’s recent history. It has been often mobilized, both from the theoretical point of view to reflect on the roles of materiality in the behavioral and cultural modalities of space perception and representation, as well as from the methodological point of view to refer to the set of techniques used for spatial approximations beyond the site.

In the Americas, landscape archeology has benefited from the diversity of indigenous cosmologies and complexity of ecologies (associated with the heterogeneous biogeographical context of the double continent). It has also often been used to investigate spatiality (sociopolitical organization, social control, staging of power, etc.) and territoriality (production of places and structuring of territory through geosymbolic and geopolitical devices). It has tackled a great diversity of archaeological contexts and remains (natural and built monuments, skies and horizons, settlements, agricultural infrastructures, road networks, rock art, iconography, ecofacts, etc.) with a multiplicity of techniques (multispectral and topographic aerial imagery, three-dimensional modeling, spatial, network and visibility analyses, movement modeling, machine learning, among others, in addition to cartography, archaeological surveys and excavations, as well as ethnographic analogy and ethnohistorical information).

For thirty years the Institute of Heritage Sciences (Incipit-CSiC) has been a leading research laboratory in landscape archaeology. There, landscape has been thought from various theoretical angles and studied in distinct parts of the world, always engaging in innovative and generally multidisciplinary techniques for it. Thus, it is only natural that the second colloquium of the Community for the Archeology of the Americas of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA4Am), be held in Santiago de Compostela on April 19-21, with the purpose of exchanging results of recent case studies and critical reflections on the evolution of theories and methodologies with regards to the global issues and challenges of our present: Anthropocene, socio-ecological sustainability, decolonization, historical memory, heritage management, digital virtualization of the world, etc.

Like 2022 EAA4Am first meeting in Bornos (here), EAA4Am meeting in Compostela will offer optimal conditions for scientific dialogue: a human scale, limited to twenty participants, in a comfortable and inspiring place, facilitating academic exchanges in a cordial and relaxed atmosphere.

The call will be open until January 30th. Please, send your proposal (title and a summary of about three hundred words) to the email eaa4am@e-a-a.org. The accepted proposals will be communicated on February 10th by the EAA4Am community committee.

Program overview:

Wednesday 19th, evening: inauguration

Thursday 20th: conference day 1

Friday 21st: conference day 2

Saturday 22nd: Galician landscapes tour

Local scientific comity:

Felipe Criado-Boado, Incipit-CSiC

Marcos Llobera, University of Washington

Cesar Parcero, Incipit-CSiC

For further information, feel free to contact EAA4Am community board:

Marcia Hattori (Universidad del País Vasco, marcia.hattori@gmail.com)Thibault Saintenoy (Incipit-CSiC, thibault.saintenoy@incipit.csic.es)

Alexander Geurds (University of Oxford, alexander.geurds@arch.ox.ac.uk)

Carla Jaimes (University of Bonn, cjaimes@uni-bonn.de)

Marisa Lazzari (University of Exeter, M.Lazzari@exeter.ac.uk)

Carolina Orsini (Museo delle Culture de Milano, Carolina.Orsini@comune.milano.it)

Mariusz Ziolkowski (University of Warsaw, mziolkowski@uw.edu.pl)

More info

2nd International Workshop The Missing Plants: emerging methodological approaches to vegetal remains in archaeology

Workshop
María Martín-Seijo, María Cruz-Berrocal, Nuria Romero-Vidal and Oliver Peter Rusk

27/04/2026 15:00 - 19:00
Incipit, Heritage Archaeometry Laboratory (LAPa)

Workshop organised by María Martín Seijo, María Cruz Berrocal, Oliver Rusk and Nuria Romero Vidal, in the framework of the projects PLANTCRAFT (Grant CNS2023-144343 funded by MICIU/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 and European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR), Hålomtåno’: Chamorro past and future inland on Rota, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, NGS-99765R-23, PacificPeopleForest: History, Archaeology, and Botany of Pacific Islands: assessing the Impacts of Early European colonialism on Peoples and Forests. European Commission, HORIZON-MSCA-2024-DN-01-01 and Marine resource gathering and infrastructure in the Norse North Atlantic, project #343147.

Inscriptions: maria.martin-seijo@incipit.csic.es

15:00 Preliminary results of the micro remains preserved on sherds, shells and lithics from Taipingot site, Rota

Céline Kerfant, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

15:30 Use of phytoliths and starches for the identification of food plants : the case of Taipingot site burials

Alex Chevalier, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences

16:00 Archaeobotanical applications of analytical pyrolysis for organic matter molecular characterization

Joeri Kaal, INCIPIT

16:30 The taphonomy of driftwood: novel classifications from scanning electron microscopy

Oliver Rusk, University of Stavanger

17:00 Rethinking plant classification systems in Tropical regions: A multidisciplinary ethnotaxonomic approach to archaeobotany

Nuria Romero Vidal, INCIPIT

17:30 A Methodological Proposal for Studying Iron Age Wooden Crafts Preserved by Charring

María Martín Seijo, INCIPIT

18:00 Was this a fire? Building an anthracological methodology proposal for the identification of prehistoric erased hearths

Alba Vidal Soliño, USC

Taller de Lectura: "El camino inesperado"

Workshop

30/04/2026 12:00 - 14:00
Incipit, Sala 8

En el próximo taller de lectura comentaremos El camino inesperado de Rebecca Solnit.

Resumen del libro: "¿Qué puede enseñarnos un violín de trescientos años sobre nuestros bosques? ¿Cuáles son los matices del hielo? ¿Cómo influye en las historias el modo de narrarlas? Las preguntas son el hilo conductor del nuevo libro de Rebecca Solnit: para llegar a nuevos horizontes, nos susurra entre sus páginas, hace falta idear caminos alternativos, tomar la carretera secundaria y mirar el paisaje, perderse en el desvío para así alcanzar, en algún momento, una inesperada forma de ser, pensar y actuar.

Como una hoja de ruta hacia un mundo imaginado, este volumen recoge ensayos tan variados como el pensamiento de su autora, que con su característica agilidad salta de sus observaciones sobre la naturaleza y nuestra relación con ella, al análisis de la actual lucha feminista o las implicaciones modernas de su célebre concepto de mansplaining. Y es que para Solnit el ejercicio de pensar es ante todo una reflexión sobre cómo se construye el propio pensamiento."

Design and Archaeology. The social imaginary in Iron Age and early Roman Europe

Incipit Colloquium
Christina Unwin

07/05/2026 19:00 - 21:00
Museo das Peregrinacións e de Santiago

I explore the inter-relationship of design and archaeology to show how designers and makers work together with their communities to build their sociality – how they choose to live together. These design strategies interconnect the things they make in different media and in different places, both in their own contemporary time and also with things that have already been made. In this way a community builds their sociality to connect their present lives with those of the past, and with an eye to their own future.

1846

Incipit Coffee Talk
David Barreiro

20/05/2026 11:00 - 11:45
Incipit, Sala común

Como cada ano por estas datas, desde hai dez anos, Santiago se prepara para a recreación do Banquete de Conxo. Este evento festivo (e masivo) conmemora a celebración dun banquete de confraternización entre a intelectualidade da cidade e as clases populares, que tivo lugar no bosque de Conxo, en 1856. O noso tema vai ás raíces daquel banquete, que non foi senón unha conmemoración, á súa vez, dos acontecementos que tiveran lugar dez anos antes, en 1846.

Tiris, la novia de los poetas, y el mar en la mitología de la literatura saharaui

Incipit Talk
Bahia Mahmoud Awah

26/05/2026 12:00 - 13:30
Incipit, Sala 8

El propósito de este seminario es realizar una inmersión antropológica en la región saharaui de Tiris, conocida como patria de sabios, poetas, guerreros anticoloniales y caballeros andantes. Tiris es descrita como un lugar mítico y venerado, al punto de ser considerado por el poeta Badi Mohamed Salem como “el posible paraíso en el día del juicio final”. La relación de la sociedad saharaui con el mar es distante; tradicionalmente, la cultura saharaui ha estado más enfocada en la tierra y el pastoreo que en el mar, a diferencia de otras culturas. El mar, aunque poco presente en la vida cotidiana saharaui, aparece en la literatura y mitología local asociado a leyendas, ritos y elementos simbólicos, como el viento elguebliya que evoca a través del verso su presencia en el desierto.

Bahia Mahmud Awah es descendiente de poetas nacido en Auserd (Sahara español, 1960). Es escritor, traductor e investigador saharaui, doctor en Antropología social y profesor honorario en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.