What are you doing here? Session 8 proposal.

Abstract

The importance of raw materials in Prehistory was studied early in Archaeological Science. Understanding how communities of the past related to their immediate environment through raw materials studies allows us to infer important characteristics from past human populations: technology, mobility, territory, behaviour, or social complexity. Due to all these implications, its study has been developed from a multiproxy point of view: understanding raw materials source, manufacture processes or technology, permit to be addressed the implications for the livelihoods of the populations.
This session aims to address the different techniques and methods that allow us to know the raw materials and their sources of supply for the manufacture of tools, utensils, potteries, and other key elements in the development of past societies. These can be applied to different prehistoric chronologies, with a varied geographical scope. This session is opened to a diversity of issues about characterizations and interpretation of raw material in prehistoric tools and objects, from analytical techniques (thin section, SEM, XRF, FTIR, Raman, magnetism, micro-CT, isotopic...) which give measurable data and allow to approach the study of the past, through experimental process to comparative recreations. Applications of such methods to different inorganic materials in Prehistoric times are welcomed. Works emphasising integration of results obtained on distinctive features of past societies will be prioritised.
Some examples of topics: raw material characterization, raw material source identification, chaîne operatoire of manufacture process materials or experimental recreation of previous points.
Participation is open to all authors who want to present work on characterization of materials in prehistoric objects. It is intended that works on any prehistoric material (lithics, pottery, metals, glass, beads, colourants, fibres, etc.) and chronologies (Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age) can participate so interaction between authors may be encouraged.
Deadline abstract submission: 19th February 2024