The ‘Archaeology of Social Dynamics’ Research Group of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC-IMF, Barcelona), is organising an international conference on SOCIAL INTERACTIONS IN MEDITERRANEAN PREHISTORY (Barcelona, 21-23 October 2024). This conference aims to become a meeting point for researchers investigating social interactions in the Mediterranean Basin and its neighbouring regions in Prehistory, from the Palaeolithic to the Iron Age.
The conference aims to shed light on the construction and maintenance of contacts between diverse populations involving three continents (Western Asia, North Africa, and Southern Europe), with the Mediterranean Sea acting as a vector for those connections. The focus will be on social interactions as dynamic processes that create identities and promote collaboration, reciprocity or conflict between communities. Drawing upon the exchange and circulation of ideas, raw materials, finished products, plants, animals and people examined at local and supra-regional scales, this conference seeks to explore the spread of people and culture through time and space.
We are therefore calling for papers that examine the mechanisms by which social networks developed and shifted due to internal and external social dynamics in parallel with the influence of environmental factors. We welcome papers covering a wide range of chronological periods prior to the appearance of Classical Mediterranean cultures, particularly those focused on comparative regional analyses and studies that discuss supra- regional results. Contributions concerning research which applies innovative methodological approaches (e.g., modelling, multi-scalar network analysis, ABM) are especially encouraged.
The conference will be held in-person only. Contributions to the conference can be made in the form of oral or poster presentations.
Scientific Committee
Eleni Asouti, University of Liverpool, UK
Anna Belfer-Cohen, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israël
Joaquim Fort, University of Girona, Spain
Kristian Kristiansen, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
João Zilhão, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Organizing Committee
Vasiliki Andreaki
Ferran Borrell
Ignacio Clemente
Ferran Estebaranz Sánchez
Aroa García Suárez
Sergio Jiménez
Juan José Ibáñez
Bogdana Milić
Berta Morell Rovira
Vanessa Navarrete Belda
Fiona Pichon
Marta Portillo
Xavier Terradas
Ismael Vaccaro Ribó
Silvia Valenzuela Lamas
Andrea Zupancich