The UISPP Commission on the History of Archaeology, in collaboration with the UISPP Commission “Southeast Asia: Human Evolution, Dispersals and Adaptations” is organising a symposium “Past and future of archaeological collections. Field exploration, movements, preservation (19th-21st c.)” to be held at the “Asian Prehistory Today Bridging Science, Heritage and Development” conference, from October, 27 to 6 November, 6, 2025.
Call for papers (short version)
This symposium will concentrate on the creation, transmission and movements of prehistoric collections –including natural history specimens, human remains, and artefacts–, from the colonial era to the present day. Particular emphasis will be placed on collections from Southeast Asia, however, case studies drawn from other historical and geographical contexts are welcome too.
Read more: Call for paper: Symposium “Past and future of archaeological collections. Field exploration, movements, preservation (19th-21st c.)”, at the “Asian Prehistory Today” conference, Indonesia, 27 Oct.-6 Nov. 2025It will concentrate on three interdependent topics:
- Field explorations conducted in Southeast Asia during the colonial and post-colonial periods.
- Movement of samples and collections in their diversity (museum, academic, private, and community-owned collections), exchanged, curated, and displayed in Asia and elsewhere in the world.
- Archaeological collections today: narratives, accessibility, policies and regulation in local and international contexts.
We expect proposals that take into account:
- The political, social, economic, religious and cultural dimensions of scientific practice;
- the continuities and ruptures observed between the colonial and post-colonial periods;
- the multi-scale realities involving actors, institutions, practices, networks, activism, specimens and artefacts;
- the impact of places within scientific practices: between centres and peripheries; colonies and metropolises; rural and urban areas; shared and contested territories.
How to submit
Please send abstracts (2000 characters max) with title, the name(s) of the author(s) and
its/their affiliation(s), an email address to: history-of-archaeology@uispp.org
Deadline: 31 May 2025
Convenors
- Maddalena Cataldi, Sapienza University of Roma, Italy
- Adèle Chevalier, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, France
- Géraldine Delley, Latenium museum & University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
- Sébastien Plutniak, Centre national de la Recherche scientifique, lab. CITERES, Tours, France
This call on Calenda.
Call for papers (extended version)
The theme “Field explorations” will concentrate on the scientific practices, methods and
techniques employed in the collect of archaeological artefacts, ecofacts, and human remains, surveys and excavations carried out by laymen and archaeologists (Blanckaert 1996; Kuklick & Kohler 1996; Kolher 2007; Latour 1993). It would include papers:
- paying particular attention to the collaborative aspects of these scientific undertakings,
in which the local population and knowledge possibly played important roles (Chambers
& Gillespie 2000; Dubald & Madruga 2022; Podgorny 2015); - about forms of scientific validations and expertise between the field and institutions:
international scientific commissions with interdisciplinary and international
collaborations in European and Asian laboratories, etc. (Bossaert & Durand 2018; Reubi
2015); - about the role of foreign financing or international institutions (UNESCO) and
foundations (not restricted to American ones, but also referring to Dutch, Japanese,
Australian institutions) during the colonial and postcolonial periods (Boylan 1997 [1979];
Carruthers 2019; Delley et al. 2016; Kaeser 2002; Petitjean et al. 2006; Proctor 2003).
The theme “Movement of samples and collections” will examine the itineraries, exchanges,
cataloguing, description, and interpretation of the material collected as well as its dissemination to the public (Achim & Gänger 2021; Secord 2004). It will focus on the fate these collections have faced on site in Asia, and abroad (19th-21th c.). It would include papers:
- identifying which specimens were retained in Asia and which ones were sent abroad,
and for which reasons; - studying the making of copies: selection of models, methods to reproduce originals
(drawing, casts, digital models and twins) and their different uses: pedagogical,
scientific, for museums exhibitions, commercial, etc.; - examining the possible reconfiguration, division, reshaping of these collections, and the
consequences on the narratives about them (Bennett et al. 2017); - determining how the political and cultural transition from colonial to post-colonial
society has impacted the ways prehistory has been collected, exhibited, and
communicated (Schlanger 2002; Schmalzer 2008).
The theme “Archaeological collections today” addresses current practices in local and
international contexts regarding the narratives about collections, their accessibility, their
scientific relevance and epistemic significance, and their related policies and regulation in Asia and abroad (Bloembergen & Eickhoff 2011; Drieënhuizen & Sysling, 2021). Collection managers and curators are especially welcome in this section, as well as scholars interested in collections provenance research. Papers could deal with
- innovative experiences and current trends in museology, regarding display methods and
narratives; - the interrelations between policies, regulations, and standards implemented by national
and international institutions; - the diversity of governance forms of museal institutions: public and private, including
community-owned institutions (Bezerra & Gomes Ferreira 2002; Clifford 1997); - the place of alternative narratives in current museographies, including discourses by
local communities (biography of objects and collections) and historians of science and
collections (Delley & Kaeser 2024).
We expect proposals that take into account:
- The political, social, economic, religious and cultural dimensions of scientific practice;
- the continuities and ruptures observed between the colonial and post-colonial periods;
- the multi-scale realities involving actors, institutions, practices, networks, activism,
specimens and artefacts; - the impact of places within scientific practices: between centres and peripheries;
colonies and metropolises; rural and urban areas; shared and contested territories
Bibliographic orientations
- Achim M., Gänger S. 2021, “Pas encore classiques. La fabrique des antiquités américaines au XIXe siècle”, in Annales, Histoire, Sciences Sociales 76, 2, pp. 341-376.
- Bennett T. et al. 2017, Collecting, Ordering, Governing: Anthropology, Museums, and Liberal Government, Durham, London: Duke University Press.
- Bezerra M., Gomes Ferreira L. 2022, “Affective Museums. The Practice of Collecting
- Archaeological Artefacts in the Brazilian Amazon”, in Stevenson A. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Museum Archaeology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 98-114.
- Blanckaert C. 1996, “Histoires du terrain. Entre savoir et savoir-faire”, in Blanckaert C. (ed.), Le terrain des sciences humaines. Instructions et Enquêtes (XVIIIe -XXe siècles), Paris: L’Harmattan.
- Bloembergen M., Eickhoff M. 2011, “Conserving the Past, Mobilizing the Indonesian Future. Archaeological Sites, Regime Change and Heritage Politics in Indonesia in the 1950s”, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 167, 4, pp. 405-36.
- Bloembergen M., Eickhoff M. 2015, “The Colonial Archaeological Hero Reconsiderer. Post-Colonial Perspectives on the ‘Discovery’ of the Prehistoric Past of Indonesia”, in Eberhardt G. & Link F. (eds.), Historiographical Approaches to Past Archaeological Research, Berlin: Editions Topoi, pp. 133-164.
- Boylan P. J. 1997 [1979], “The Controversy of the Moulin-Quignon Jaw: the Role of Hugh
- Falconer”, in Jordanova L. & Porter R. (eds.), Images of the Earth. Essays in History of the Environmental Sciences, Oxford: British Society of the History of Science, pp. 171-199.
- Bossaert M., Durand A. 2018, “Par-delà les confins de la science italienne. Relectures transnationales d’une science nationale”, in Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines 130, 2, pp. 261-271.
- Carruthers W. 2019, “Heritage, Preservation, and Decolonization: Entanglements, Consequences, Action?”, in Future Anterior 16, 2, pp. ii-xxiv.
- Chambers, D.W., Gillespie, R. 2000, “Locality in the History of Science: Colonial Science, Technoscience, and Indigenous Knowledge”, Osiris 15, pp. 221–40.
- Cherry, H. 2002, “Digging up the Past: Prehistory and the Weight of the Present in Vietnam”, Journal of vietnamese studies 4, 1, pp. 84-144.
- Clifford, J. 1997, “Museums as Contact Zones”, in Clifford, J. (ed.) 1997, Routes: Travel and Translations in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 188-219.
- Delley G. et al. (eds.). 2016, History of Archaeology – international perspectives, Oxford: Archaeopress.
- Delley, G., Kaeser, M.-A. 2024, “Collections patrimoniales et polysémie des objets archéologiques : L’apport heuristique et muséographique d’une réflexivité sur les trajectoires des objets”, in Lehoërff, A., Louboutin, C. (eds.), Archéologie en musée et identités nationales en Europe (1848-1914) : Un héritage en quête de nouveaux défis au 21e siècle, Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, pp. 29-48.
- Dias N. 2015, “From French Indochina to Paris and Back Again: the Circulation of Objects, People, and Information, 1900-1932”, Museum & Society 13, 1, pp. 7-21.
- Dotte-Sarout É. et al. (eds.). 2020, Pour une histoire de la préhistoire océanienne. Approches historiographiques de l’archéologie francophone dans le Pacifique, Marseille: pacific-credo Publications, https://books.openedition.org/pacific/1103
- Drieënhuizen C., Sysling F. 2021, “Java Man and the Politics of Natural History”, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 177, pp. 290-311.
- Dubald D., Madruga C. 2022, “Introduction: Situated Nature. Field Collecting and Local Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century”, Journal for the History of Knowledge 3, 1, pp. 1-11.
- Kaeser M.-A. 2002, “On the international roots of prehistory”, Antiquity 76, pp. 170-177.
- Kolher R.E. 2007, “Finders, Keepers; collecting sciences and collecting practice”, History of Science 45, 4, pp. 428-454.
- Kuklick H., Kohler R. E. 1996, “Introduction”, Osiris 11, Science in the Field, pp. 1-14.
- Latour B. 1993, “Le ‘pédofil’ de Boa-Vista – Montage photo-philosophique”, Petites leçons de sociologie des sciences, Paris: La Découverte, pp. 171-225.
- Peleggi M. 2023, “Prehistory and ideology in Cold War Southeast Asia : the politics of wartime archaeology in Thailand and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1954-1975”, Histories 3, pp. 98-111.
- Petitjean, P. et al. (eds.). 2006, Sixty Years of Science at UNESCO 1945–2005, Paris: UNESCO.
- Podgorny I. 2015, “Towards a bureaucratic history of Archaeology. A preliminary essay”, in
- Eberhardt G. & Link F. (eds.), Historiographical Approaches to Past Archaeological Research, Berlin: Editions Topoi, pp. 47-67.
- Proctor R., 2003, “Three Roots of Human Recency”, Current Anthropology 44, 2, pp. 213-239.
- Reubi S. 2015, “(Re)connaître l’homme primitif. Savoirs anthropologiques, préconceptions et situations locales à Sulawesi, 1892-1906”, Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines 27, pp. 65-87.
- Schlanger N. 2002, “Making the past for South Africa’s future: the prehistory of Field-Marshal Smuts (1920s-1940s)”, Antiquity 76, pp. 200-209.
- Schmalzer S. 2008, The People Pekin Man: popular science and human identity in twentieth-century China, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- Secord J. 2004, “Knowledge in Transit”, Isis 95, pp. 654-672.
- Theunissen B. 1989, Eugène Dubois and the ape-man from Java: the history of the first missing link and its discovery, Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.