Theme:
4. People of the Present – Peopling the Past
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Migration and Archaeology after the 3rd Scientific Revolution: aDNA, Isotopes and New Theoretical Perspectives
Content:
Migration, the permanent change of residence by an individual or group, was once a key explanatory mechanism for change in the archaeological record. Migration is distinct from the “mobilities paradigm”, which looks at more generalised movements of peoples, technologies and ideas. With the advent of the “new archaeology”, and specifically from David Clark's 1966 paper onwards, archaeologists have played down the importance of migration as a driver of cultural change. Some archaeologists eschewed the concept, believing it a hangover from an outdated culture-history paradigm. Others realised that whilst migration had utility as a concept, migration, its forms and how they could be identified in the archaeological record, were poorly understood by archaeologists. Change began in the 90s with the work of David Anthony, who developed models of different migration types and their correlates. More recent work has focused on how migrant groups expressed identity materially, and how the agency of migrant groups affected how they display identity through material culture, or influenced the material identity of host communities. Nevertheless, migration has remained something of an unwanted child of archaeology despite migration theory having provided explicit models which can be compared with the large amount of scientific data obtained over the last two decades, from analysis of radiocarbon dates, stable isotopes and aDNA, data which often forms patterns seemingly only explainable within a migratory framework.
This session calls for papers which examine migration as a driver of cultural change over time. These can include papers which look at direct evidence of migration from the new techniques of the “3rd scientific revolution”, papers which seek to broaden our understanding of migration and its correlates, or papers which adopt theoretical models of migration to predict or explain patterning in the archaeological record. We particularly invite contributions where two or more approaches are combined.
Keywords:
Migration, aDNA, Isotopes, Theory, C14
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Cormac McSparron (United Kingdom) 1
Co-organisers:
Rowan McLaughlin (Ireland) 2
Lara Cassidy (Ireland) 3
Affiliations:
1. Queen's University Belfast
2. Maynooth University
3. Trinity College Dublin
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