Category: News

The 20th Congress of the IUPPS will be held in Timişoara (Romania), from the 3^th to the 10^th September 2023. The “History of archaeology” commission is organising two sessions, on:

• Untold stories. “Marginal” scholars and/or intellectual movements in the history of archaeology (org. Alessandro Guidi).
• History of the History of Archaeology: between Archaeologists’ and Historians’ Concerns. Figures, Trends, and Perspectives (org. Sébastien Plutniak).

The call for papers is open until the 15^th June 2023; abstracts can be sent through the conference website.

Untold stories. “Marginal” scholars and/or intellectual movements in the history of archaeology

Boucher de Perthes, Pigorini, Montelius, Childe… our histories of archaeology are dominated by this giants of the discipline and from their main intellectual affiliations (evolutionism, cultural-historical approach, New Archaeology and so on). Ezra Zubrow in a paper on the international trends of theoretical archaeology (Norwegian Archaeological Review 1980) wrote that the ship of archaeology doesn’t need only helmsmen but also good sailors. The session is devoted to the life and works of these “minor” scholars or to the less debated theoretical movements in our discipline.

History of the History of Archaeology: between Archaeologists’ and Historians’ Concerns. Figures, Trends, and Perspectives

Since several decades, historians and sociologists of science scrutinize the history of science as a practice. Loren R. Graham et al., for example, investigated the “Functions and Uses of Disciplinary Histories” in their eponymous edited book (1983). Writing the history of archaeological research, and prehistoric archaeology in particular, has a long history too. It raised the interest of several archaeologists in the early 20th century, such as James Reid Moir, in his paper about the “Position of Prehistoric Research in England” (1917), and Léon Aufrère, with his “Essay on the first discoveries by Boucher de Perthes and the origins of primitive archaeology” (1936, in French). This long-term concern of archaeologists for the writing of the history of their field has continuous occurrences until today, as illustrated by Glyn Daniels’ introduction on the “Necessity for an Historical Approach to Archaeology” (1981), Douglas R. Givens’ “Short History of the Bulletin of the History of Archaeology” (2002), and Tim Murray’s paper addressing “Why the History of Archaeology is Essential to Theoretical Archaeology” (2013).

These few references demonstrate, first, the relevance of investigating who are the writers of disciplinary histories and what are the uses of these histories and, second, archaeologists’ concern to this regard. This session is intended to strengthen these studies from the case of archaeology. Proposals may relate to, but are not limited to, these topics:

• the status of the history of archaeology as a discipline, sub-discipline, informal network, etc.
• publishing aspects of in the history of archaeology: bibliometrical studies, history of related publishing houses or journals, etc.;
• biographical case-studies about prominent or poorly-known historians of archaeology;
• tension between the global and national dimensions in the practice of history of archaeology;
• styles and theoretical trends in the history of archaeology;
• past and current places of the history of archaeology in university trainings in archaeology;
• etc.