Interested in archaeological stratigraphy? In 3D fieldwork methodology? Then come to Jönköping in southern Sweden for the VIIIth Nordic Stratigraphy Conference, 25-26 February 2011.
The theme of the conference is Modern Times - New Epochs & New Roads over Familiar Ground. Main sessions will cover post-Medieval excavations, burial archaeology and landscape archaeology.
I've been to two previous conferences in the series, and they were wide-ranging and stimulating. Archaeology can never be better than its data collection methodology!
Here's the prospectus & call for papers.
[More about archaeology, stratigraphy, postmedieval, methodology; arkeologi, stratigrafi, metodologi.]
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A Trondheim colleague has kindly invited me to head a session at the Nordic TAG conference next May. T.A.G. means "Theoretical Archaeology Group", and denotes a series of annual conferences rather than a defined group of people.
Post-modernist hyper-relativism unexpectedly rears its ugly dying head in the form of a call for papers from one Tera Pruitt for the otherwise respectable Archaeological Review from Cambridge.
I've been asked to write an opinion piece about the future of Swedish archaeology for a high-visibility venue. This, as you can imagine, I enjoy doing a lot. Here's an excerpt from the piece as it's looking at the moment.
The thing is....like a table of logarithms, stratigraphy is very, very useful, but it is not "sexy". You never see a film where the crazy megalomanic scientist is into stratigraphy. The number of stratigraphy experts to feature in a Lovecraft story is exactly zero.
The only cool stratigraphy item I have had is a sample of carbon (soot) from the K/T boundary in the northern USA, laid down after the firestorms.
stratigraphy is very, very useful, but it is not "sexy"
Stratigraphy is all about superposition and the opening and filling of holes. I rest my case.