Celebrate CHAT @Patras 2023

Friday 3rd of November

Day 1_Museum of Science and Technology, University of Patras

Emma Dwyer, MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) Research Communities, Perspectives and Leadership Outside Universities in 20 Years of CHAT   In the UK (like many other countries), most archaeological research is undertaken outside of universities – by archaeology units, community groups, and independent archaeologists. Going back to the first conference in Bristol, UK in 2003, CHAT has long been a venue for people to present on projects, research and perspectives from outside of the academy. How have contributions to CHAT from researchers outside of universities developed over the last 20 years, how have they encouraged new ways to collaborate, what have been the barriers to this research, and what has been the impact on the practice of archaeology? What does this mean for the intellectual ownership of research beyond the academy, emerging research leaders, and the creation of equitable research partnerships between university academics, developer-funded archaeology, and wider communities?

Tis Kaoru Zamler Carhart, Parsons School of Design, New York Vitaly Zamler, Independent researcher in urbanism, Brussels The End of a Rwandan village: Methodological Considerations in Emergency Archaeology   We will present fieldwork conducted in the context of emergency archaeology in a Rwandan mountain village that is being razed to extend a national park. We will discuss some methodological considerations of workflow, and ethical aspects of accessing and surveying an inhabited site. We customized software to integrate our cartographic and photographic workflow with the systematic survey of objects, materials, and spaces. We used both visual analysis and interviews to categorize plastics, metals, ceramics, woods, and soils, and to record patterns of human engagement, including construction, dwelling, storage, use, reuse, and disposal strategies. As a designer-urbanist team, we sought to frame our understanding of local material culture in terms of lifecycles, social relationships, and supply chains. We discovered that the lifespan of buildings is extremely short, which made us broaden our conception of the “built environment” to encompass intangible practices. Our research is being turned into a book, a photo exhibit, and a documentary film. We will present the material for our book, and exhibit selected photographic works.

Iain Davidson, MA Contemporary Art and Archaeology student, University of the Highlands and Islands Harry’s Wall: What Value Contemporary Culture?   In a sleepy valley near a Cheshire village, beneath the arches of a Grade II listed Victorian viaduct carrying mainline trains from Crewe to Manchester, is a collection of graffiti. What should we do with graffiti on protected buildings: clean it off? In this case, most of the graffiti references Harry Styles, now a global pop icon and, we could argue, an important part of contemporary culture. What if this graffiti also told us not just about the meaning of Harry Styles to fans, but also gave us clues about issues of importance today? I will present my research of the site and the messages and look at what drove inscribers to put them here. Then I’ll examine what kind of things they might tell us about contemporary culture. I will propose that the nature and messages in graffiti should be considered before action is taken, but this raises further questions for the heritage sector: whether, and how, such sites should be preserved for the future, who should decide, and what that future might actually look like.

Anna Browne Ribeiro, Assistant Professor, University of Louisville, Department of Anthropology   The Archaeology of Blackness in Brazil: A Regional Comparative Approach   The archaeology of Blackness or the African Diaspora in Brazil has a history that, in the context of Latin American Afro-Diasporic Archaeology, is deep and storied. The earliest archaeological work with an explicit focus on Africans and Afrodescendant peoples, or on Blackness in Latin America, was undertaken in the 1970s-80s at quilombos, maroon settlements, in Minas Gerais state in Brazil (Symanski 2014). Studies have shown how the development of the theoretico- methodological branch of quilombola archaeology born out of work with quilombola or descendant maroon communities and activists in the Black movemement (movimento negro) in Brazil led to a recognition of sites of Afro-Diasporic value and increased appreciation for Black history and memory. However, I argue that the regional distribution of research efforts has been historically configured by a similarly regionalized distribution of funding and archaeological programs, but equally importantly by a racialized moral geography that configures the place of Blackness, Indigeneity, and Whiteness across a national political landscape. These ideas of belonging, which emerge from physiographical-ecological and economic regions reinforced by Regionalist literature in the 1930s, were later federally institutionalized. This has resulted in gaps in the archaeology of Blackness in regions like Amazonia, which require greater attention.

Tânia Manuel Casimiro, NOVA University of Lisbon João Luís Sequeira, Minho University Joel Santos University of Leicester The Archaeology of Stray Cat Care Early morning when I opened the door of my building to leave home for work. It was not even 6 am and the street was silent except for a few birds singing. I am still sleepy, and I do not notice her approach. I look down when I feel her touching my legs meowing and purring, asking for a treat I don’t have. She is used to being fed early morning by my downstairs neighbour who feeds the colony of cats daily in the neighbourhood where I live. He calls her Princess and pets her as much as the ones he has at home. This action taken by my neighbour is not unique and all over the country, especially but not exclusively in urban centres, there are hundreds of colonies of stray cats, some more carefully taken care of than others. This care generates a community engagement where individuals, associations, and schools are organized to feed, shelter, and spray cats (which are signalled by cutting a little of the upper part of their right ears). This generates a specific type of material culture and architecture that we aim to study, located in strategic places, some of them possibly even considered, unhygienic and even unethical.

Miriam A.W. Rothenberg, University of Oxford Sole-searching: A Peripatetic Exploration of Historic Bootscrapers on the East Side of Providence, RI   Prior to the advent of motorcars and indoor plumbing, and in an era when even many urban streets remained unevenly paved, cleaning one’s shoes before crossing a building’s threshold was not a trivial act. In spring 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic prevented many of us from leaving our homes except for long walks alone and gave rise to many new and unusual hobbies, I began to document the iron bootscrapers that marked the railings and doorsteps of many historic Providence houses. Over the next 2.5 years, friends and I walked every street on Providence’s East Side, noting bootscraper locations and distinguishing characteristics—type, material, number, date, etc.—ultimately identifying 130 buildings with extant bootscrapers. This 18th- through 20th-century corpus speaks to patterns of urban expansion, ideas of cleanliness and gentility, mass production, and the uneven impacts of historic preservation efforts. Furthermore, comparison with other cities across North America and Europe (via posts made by the small but international Instagram bootscraper community) shows distinct regional variation. This study is an example of systematic pedestrian survey, a method that remains somewhat uncommon in contemporary archaeology but important for understanding contemporary landscapes. Moreover, contemporary archaeology has often flirted with the quirky, the silly, and the slightly strange (as bootscrapers undoubtedly are); along with the field’s many impactful theoretical and methodological developments, the commitment of our community to curiosity and fun is a distinguishing hallmark.

Nadia Machá-Bizoúmi, Assistant Professor of Folklore (Folk Art), Department of History and Ethnology A Dress on the Railings: Discarded Materialities, Multiple Reading   At the time of the first confinement due to Covid-19, during a walk in my neighbourhood, where the skips were overflowing with rubbish of various kinds, in the context of a generalised clearing out -a process that was largely liberating during the pandemic, a dress was hung by its owner on the railings of the courtyard of a block of flats beside the Glyfada golf course with a post-it stuck on it; stating in Greek and English: “Να δωρίζω. To give away”. The black sleeveless cocktail dress caught my attention; I stopped and took a picture of it. Despite being refuse, it had not been added to the pile of stacked rubbish and, in this sense, retained its value (financial and practical) intact. From the perspective of the folklore of attire in conversation with the anthropological interpretations of material culture, the object in question with the help of its morphological and technical characteristics, in absolute connection with the practice of discarding encased in the historical context of the period, is a “visible” object with a dynamic action because of its materiality. It constitutes an excellent example of an object’s social life thanks to the record of the multiple paths it followed from being made to its use/consumption and from its being discarded to its reuse. At the same time, though, it recounts things about the owner herself, her relationship with it and, through her choice to hang it in a conspicuous place and thanks to a handwritten note, to make known her wish to give it away. The communication prompted by the black dress aspires to observe and record the multiple aspects of its materiality in interaction with people and interpret them in the context of a period of vulnerability, during which discarded objects, as long as they do not end up in a landfill, retain their cultural capital, even when they acquire new content through their reuse and their integration into new environments.

Markos Katsianis, University of Patras L. Costaki, Dipylon A. Theocharaki, Dipylon Archaeological Sites as Urban Spaces. Situating Circulation and Movement in the Western Hills of Athens Over the Long-term and During the Recent Pandemic   At present the Western Hills of Athens comprise an urban archaeological site and an urban park. This dual functionality within the city fabric is the result of a long procedure of heritagization in action ever since the inauguration of Athens as the capital of the newly independent Greek state in 1834. The project “Athens Western Hills” employs archival material to document the archaeological remains, the pathway network and the constantly changing topography. Using a layered cartographic background, a web-mapping application brings a wealth of material to the public, illustrating the transformations of the hills alongside urban development from the 19th century onwards. The digital content compiled can be further re-used to study the life-cycle of the site and establish connections with heritage protection policies and alternative models of “open” or “collective” management within the urban settings. Digital mapping allows the tracing of the gradual landscaping of the hills and possible interpretations of the reasons for their growing significance as part of the Athenian monumental landscape. Observed circulation patterns are further correlated with the use of the area in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results demonstrate contrasting movement and circulation patterns from different stakeholders and provide a different source of information for more inclusive management and monitoring solutions for archaeological sites and cultural landscapes in the urban environment.

Lara Band, Freelance archaeologist, researcher, curator and creative practitioner Jobbe Wijnen, Wijnen Cultuurhistorisch Onderzoek Celebrating CHAT memories – a creative postcard initiative What is your dearest CHAT memory?  In order to celebrate 20 years of CHAT, Lara Band and Jobbe Wijnen are initiating the Celebrating CHAT memories postcard [initiative]. Science, archaeology, history, and art have brought people together in CHAT for 20 years, but deeper under the surface we know that CHAT is also a community – or communities –  that celebrates shared values and ideas. Group(s) of people who make beautiful things happen. We all have memories of CHAT, some are good, some likely are bad, but many of us had moments at which we knew, as struck by lightning, straight from the gut and without doubt, that CHAT was right the place to be at that moment in time. Starting from the idea that above all CHAT is a feeling or an experience, we invite all CHAT visitors of all editions to send us a postcard describing or depicting the moment(s) in CHAT you appreciated the most. There are few rules other than ‘send us a card about your experience’. Feel free to use text, poetry, an anecdote, or artwork as you desire. Buy a standard ‘Greeting from Loosley Row’ card at the groceries…or create something from scratch. It is all up to you, as long as the result captures your memories in the way you desire. Use a real stamp – if they still exist in your area and make sure you check the postage rate – and send it to us. These are all the rules…some can be broken, others can be bend… The results will be displayed in the CHAT Patras venue, and possibly published on our CHAT website thereafter.

Saturday 4rd of November

Day 2_Conference and Cultural Center, University of Patras

Bill Caraher, University of North Dakota Grace Erny, University of California, Berkeley Dimitri Nakassis, University of Colorado,   Survey Archaeology and Contemporary Greece   Over the past 50 years, Mediterranean intensive pedestrian survey introduced new forms of rigor to diachronic archaeological research in Greece. The chronological diversity of surface assemblages encouraged research questions that considered the transformation of landscapes and regions over the longue durée. In most cases, archaeologists calibrated their sampling strategies to produce spatially and functionally meaningful assemblages from often scant and scattered ancient artifacts in the plough zone. The abundance of twentieth and twenty-first century material in the Greek countryside, however, has posed challenges for prevailing collection strategies and interpretative schemes. The Western Argolid Regional Project and the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey both sought to document Modern material culture in ways that are both consistent with standard intensive survey practice. This work sought to improve our understanding of site formation processes, to document diachronic post-Medieval landscapes, and to develop methods suitable to the distinctive archaeology of Modern Greece. This paper will focus on a few case studies from our work in the Western Argolid and Eastern Corinthia that show the potential of intensive pedestrian survey to contribute to an archaeology of the Modern world. In particular, we argue that intensive survey methods provide significant insights into the diverse lifeways and built environments of rural populations in Greece across the turbulent political, economic, and social developments of the last 150 years.

John Cherry, Brown University Alex R.  Knodell, Carleton College Early Modern and Contemporary Archaeology in the Southern Aegean: Contributions from the Small Cycladic Islands Project     Mediterranean archaeologists have access to written records reaching back several millennia. Few of them, however, think of themselves as historical archaeologists, in the wider sense. Their research — whether they are Mycenaean scholars, Greco-Roman archaeologists, or Byzantinists — operates within specialized, well-defined sub-fields, even if all of them do indeed make use of historical sources. It is hard to relate such work to James Deetz’s well-known (albeit now somewhat outdated) definition of historical archaeology as “the archaeology of the spread of European cultures throughout the world since the 15th century, and its impact on indigenous people.” We suggest that some convergence of aims and methods between historical/ contemporary archaeology as practiced elsewhere and fieldwork focusing on (or at least including) Greece’s early modern and contemporary past. Specifically, many of the hundreds of Mediterranean pedestrian survey projects that have taken place over the past several decades have been diachronic in scope, and have thus also included the collection of evidence pertaining to the recent past. As illustration of the value of such projects for Greek “historical archaeology,” we present data from the ongoing Small Cycladic Islands Project, an intensive and comprehensive survey of several dozen uninhabited islets spread throughout the southern Aegean.

Elena Mamoulaki, Assistant Professor, Department of Social Anthropology, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences The Role of Space and Materiality in the Social Production of Social Memory and Political Identity: From the Ethnography of Memory to an Anthropology of History   This presentation focuses on the function of place and materiality in the construction of collective memory. Special emphasis is placed upon the practice of storytelling in the context of the community as a technique that transforms a space into a mnemonic place or an object into a mnemonic trace for the participants. Finally, Ι will address methodological concerns about how we research, comprehend, empathise, and eventually engage in the construction of social memory and public history. Based on a long-term ethnographic research project on the Aegean Island of Ikaria, and on the memory of cohabitation between locals and political exiles during the Greek Civil War (1946-1949), I will describe how my fieldwork research itinerary led me from orality to materiality in order to trace how memory is constructed by and alongside the community. The anthropology of history focuses on the social and cultural principles, which constitute the forms and ways in which the past is represented beyond or in dialogue with Western historiography. The purpose is to document how these different practices manage to reflect the past in meaningful and compelling ways for local cultures and social scientists and to comprehend them within their own conceptual and factual context.

Niels Henrik Andreasen, Senior Curator, Museum of Copenhagen, Denmark Cleo Gougoulis, ret. Associate Professor, Department of History and Archaeology, University of Patras Nota Pantzou, Assistant Professor, Department of History-Archaeology, University of Patras Myrsini Pichou, PhD candidate, Institute of Art History, University of Bern The Pantopoleio in Ano Gatzea: Establishment, Operation and Decline of a Greek Mountain Village Shop 1920-1990   Scholarly interest in the history of retailing has tended to focus on the protagonists of the so-called consumer revolution by exploring issues such as the development of urban department stores as icons of modernity or gendered spaces of sociality (Benson and Ugolini 2003). Little has been written so far on the role that rural small- scale retailing played in the provision of food and other goods linked to traditional and early modern livelihood. This paper discusses the findings of an interdisciplinary approach to an abandoned village shop operating in Ano Gatzea of Mount Pelion in mainland Greece from the 1920s to the 1990s by focusing on the provision, distribution and consumption patterns of commercial goods linked to several aspects of economic and social life around South Pelion. It does so by adopting a “Follow the thing” approach (Kopytoff 1986, Marcus 1995) starting from the merchandise and the infrastructure of the shop and moving to the relationship between people, commodities and services, in the context of a local and a global economy, by especially focusing on the role of Diaspora Greeks in socioeconomic developments in the 20th century Mainland Greece.

Katerina Chatzikonstantinou, Architect, MPhil Cantab, PhD AUTh , MONUMENTA for the protection of natural an architectural heritage in Greece and Cyprus, Academic scholar – University of Thessaly Stelios Lekakis, Archaeologist – CHM Consultant, Research Fellow – Newcastle University, Adjunct Lecturer – Open University of Cyprus Underground monuments of pain   The basement space of the National Insurance building (built in 1938) in the centre of Athens, Greece, is an underground enclosure that lingers between the notions of refuge, protection, survival and the notions of capture, isolation, death. The successive use of the space first as an anti-aircraft refuge during the interwar period, then as place for incarceration and torturing during the period of the German Occupation (1941-1944) and now as a place of commemoration and performance, allows for a reflection on the essence of the place that takes us away from the physical properties into the psychic territory of the mind. The insertion of new functional and symbolic structures short-circuits the initial architectural logic and opens up the emotional and expressive range. The affective properties (descending, withdrawal, otherworldliness, silence) gathered into this subterranean structure engage us with issues of identity and memory, consciousness and the unconscious, biologically motivated behavioural remnants as well as culturally conditioned reactions and values. The basement space of the National Insurance building and similar sites in the centre of Athens function as our case study in interpreting and presenting part of the modern history of Greek politics, highlighting the semantic load and the value of these spaces as monuments of difficult heritage.

Lucija Klun, researcher based in the Slovenian Migration Institute Nick Shepherd, researcher based at Aarhus University and the University of Pretoria Counter-archiving the Balkan Route   The Balkan Route is the main overland migration path to Europe. After forming as a semi-formalized corridor in 2015 and gradually closing in 2016, it is nowadays composed of various buffer zones (hotspots, border zones, urban areas, ports), where people on the move remain for longer periods of time, and passages, serving swift and often illicit transit. Despite the illegalization of refugees’ journeys, and subsequent invisibilization of the Route, it is still widely used (145.600 crossings in 2022 according to Frontex) and impactful to the transit territories from Turkey’s “exit points” to the Trieste as a “finish line”. While gaining considerable attention from the scholarship in human geography and mobility studies, there are significant gaps in understanding Route’s ever-developing, morphing and decaying materiality. Drawing on the research at the US-Mexico border we propose to investigate Route’s material “remains”, including the abandoned informal settlements (urban and rural squats, jungle camps) and materiality at the junctures and passages (objects left lay in the border zones, evicted sites, pushback sites, commonly used paths). Situated at the intersection between contemporary archaeology, walking ethnographies, and arts-based research methods, this speculative project collects and interprets material culture of migrancy on the Balkan route as a way of opening up questions around history, memory and representation. Drawing inspiration from decolonial thinking on the “archive of the dispossessed” and from practices of counter-archiving, the project seeks to insert experiences of clandestine migration into European and global imaginaries.

Johannes Jungfeisch, Leibniz-ScienceCampus ‘Resources in Transformation’ (ReForm) Institute of Archaeological Studies, Ruhr University Bochum Archaeological Perspectives on the Materiality of Migrant Labour in Contemporary Greece In 2015 and 2016, undocumented and forced migration from West Asia, Central Asia, and Africa to Europe reached unprecedented levels, prompting contemporary archaeologists to investigate the material realities of the migration movement. While archaeological research has examined various material elements of the different stages of migratory journeys, for instance, the built environment and material culture of official and informal refugee camps, one crucial aspect of migrant lives in Europe has been largely neglected: the employment of migrants in different economic sectors which frequently happens under precarious conditions. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the materiality of migrant labour in contemporary Greek agriculture through the lens of archaeology. Specifically, the paper seeks to address the question of how retail-driven intensive cultivation practices in agriculture affect both the local landscape and the living and working of migrant workers. Based on a short research stay in Greece in 2022, the paper applies an archaeologically inspired methodology to investigate this topic, using the example of intensive strawberry cultivation in Vouprasia, a region in the north-western Peloponnese. In doing so, the paper attempts to reveal the material dimensions of precarious living and working conditions as well as the material worlds of migrant workers.

Emma Beatrice Farina, graduate student Confined on the Adriatic. Archaeology of a migrant holding facility in South-eastern Italy: the “Regina Pacis   From 1997 to 2005 the “Regina Pacis”, one of the earliest and largest holding facility for migrants in Italy, operated in San Foca (Lecce). Located in a former summer colony for children, and managed by the Catholic Church, it hosted migrants waiting to be expulsed. As the facility was closed and abandoned in 2005, due to charges of abuse and corruption, it is now used as shelter by seasonal workers and the homeless. The centre overwhelmed the small hosting community: it led to a quasimilitariza ion of the area and sparked a radical protest movement objecting to the migrants’ treatment. A multfaceted case study, it explores the intersections of different fields such as archaeology of undocumented migration and internment, and human geography, while simulating reflection on the ethical implications of conducting research in such places. Employing a mixed methodology, the research aims to analyse the “Regina Pacis” in its phases studying the spatialities of the building and the material culture, while assessing the impact the holding facility had, and still has, on the local community through ethnographic research.

Marek E. Jasinski, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and Falstad Center for Human Rights Andrzej Ossowski, Pomeranian Medical University, Poland Kate Spradley, Texas State University, USA Graves Seek Names and Faces – Interdisciplinary Forensic Research   In his book Eric Hobsbawm (1994) described the 20 th Century as an Age of Extremes. Hobsbawn was actually writing about the period 1914-1991, i.e. the two World Wars and the Cold War, stressing among other issues the massive loss of lives culminating in the Holocaust during which over 6 million European Jews were murdered by implementing industrial methods of killing. Unfortunately, the rest of the 20 th Century and the first decades of 21 st Century do not look much better, as the wars in former Yugoslavia, the present war in Ukraine and the new genocides around the world, have brought about death and distress to many thousands of people leading. among other consequences, to new waves of forced “illegal” migrations to Europe and the USA. What is common in all armed conflicts is the vicious materiality of countless dead bodies and new, hidden or anonymous, graves. Death caused by war crimes, or as a result of political and social conflicts, often generates memory wars: with processes such as confiscation of dead bodies by perpetrators and frequent attempts to erase the victims from social memories and depriving them of fundamental elements of post-mortem human dignity. This paper discusses selected methodological issues and presents the preliminary results of an interdisciplinary forensic research project carried out jointly by the present authors in Norway, Poland and the USA aiming at detecting graves, exhumations and personal identification of anonymous victims.

Lara Band, Freelance archaeologist, researcher, curator and creative practitioner Rubbing the Ungraspable to Burst   A helium A, unmoored and adrift skims slowly across a parquet dance floor, a solitary silvery dancer nosing into a sea of unaware legs then drifting off again at a languid tangent. It’s leading me somewhere but where? Party balloons and Border Control blimps, missile testing and MRI machines: while the use of helium in medical settings is ethically uncontroversial, is its celebratory use any worse than less commonly discussed military–industrial complex applications or use in nuclear reactors? This film/paper is an attempt to approach something (humanly) invisible but wholly material, a few minutes younger than the Big Bang, wildly abundant in the (observable) universe but non-renewable and in short supply on earth. If, as Scott Schwartz suggests (2023), archaeology could invert its practice of extracting meaning from materials to instead seek the materiality of the discursive then it should be more than possible to approach matter that lies in an odd but material middle between the tangible and intangible. Through film-as-research (with time-based media’s movement of energy through matter an apt container) and with Helium as an entry point I ask: what could an archaeology of uncountable, ungraspable matter look like? This abstract is also submitted as a celebration of the generosity of CHAT list serv members for confirming, sparking and focusing lines of thought on archaeologies of gas.

Irini Gratsia, MONUMENTA director Eleftheria Eleftheraki, MONUMENTA associate  Buildings Are Like Friends   MONUMENTA created the documentary “Buildings are like Friends”, which presents the history and methodology of recording the buildings of the period 1830-1940 in Athens. The documentary, directed by Nikos Anagnostopoulos, was made within the framework of the “Documentation and Promotion of 19th and 20th century buildings in Athens” program, through support by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. MONUMENTA is a nonprofit organization for the protection of natural and architectural heritage, founded in 2006 with the aim of contributing to the protection of architectural heritage in Greece and Cyprus. In its actions it has included the systematic recording of old buildings, with their protection as its main objective. The recording process in addition to field recording and photography includes information through interviews with building owners, residents and engineers, as well as archival and bibliographic research. The final stage of the process is the registration of the informational and photographic material in the freely accessible repository of the MONUMENTA website (www.monumenta.org). It should be noted that during the recording main partners are volunteer recorders and residents of each neighborhood, who contribute decisively to finding rare information about the buildings and to establishing relations with the local community.

Lucy Carr-McClave, ‘A Small Document of Archaeology’: To What Extent Can ExperimentalArt Filmmaking Be Used to Illustrate Alternative Perspectives of Archaeological Practice?   ‘A small document of archaeology’ is a practice-led project, to analyse the relationship between archaeology, documentary and experimental film. This research highlights the limitations of the documentary genre, which often restricts creative autonomy and presents archaeology through a singular view: implying a gap in our engagement with more particular and unorthodox views of the practice. In response to this research, a short experimental documentary film was created to explore how unconventional filmmaking techniques can change the perception of the subject. The film highlights alternative, more intimate perspectives of archaeology through the dialogue of individuals working in the field, accompanied by footage that focuses solely on their hands. Compiling narratives with experimental editing techniques, this project emphasises the significance of the intimate and reflective discussions surrounding archaeology that are often disregarded in conventional documentary media. This unique exploration of archaeology offers an insight into the value of using creative frameworks to broaden the representation of archaeology. Contributing to the growing discussion surrounding the interdisciplinary practice of art and archaeology.

Sunday 5th of November

Day 3_Conference and Cultural Center, University of Patras

Morwenna Potter, University of York, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority John Schofield, University of York, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority David Jenkins, University of York, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority Norman Bird, University of York, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority UK Nuclear Heritage: Developing New and Practical Approaches to a Complex Industrial Landscape   Post-war optimism and aims for regeneration initiated investment in industry and public utilities. Nuclear technology was instrumental in creating a strong, defensive international position and provided hope for an affordable and plentiful source of electricity. Experimental, Magnox and Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactors form the basis of the UK’s civil nuclear estate. Gradual evolution of technology resulted in greater efficiency of production, also changing the functionality of design. Architecturally, new materials were favoured for nuclear power stations, partly due to the post-war shortage of materials, which resulted in a distinctive, new building style. Equally, the rural location of power stations required greater consideration of the integration of industrial architecture into landscapes. Changes in attitude towards nuclear power, combined with technological developments requiring new infrastructure, has resulted in decommissioning. Since 1977, 34 UK nuclear reactors have entered the decommissioning process, raising debate around the heritage values of older sites. This paper will present the initial phases of and rationale for a PhD project, which aims to apply values-based approaches to the heritage and cultural value of nuclear infrastructure within the UK. Focus will be placed on the historiography and chronological development of nuclear technology, architecture, and principles of post-war design.

Dan Lee, University of the Highlands & Islands, Archaeology Institute Energy Landscapes: Archaeologies for Net Zero   This paper explores archaeological approaches to energy landscapes and examines the role of contemporary archaeology in the transition to Net Zero. The archaeologies of different energy regimes will be discussed, from extractive peat, oil and uranium mining to renewable regimes of wind, wave, and tidal energy and green hydrogen production. What are the archaeological traces of energy production now and into the future? How can a fine-grained understanding of site-based energy transitions in the recent past enable greater readiness for transitions yet to come?  Drawing on a recent project, Orkney Energy Landscapes, the methods of recording energy sites and landscapes will be discussed in the context of Orkney’s renewables revolution. Orkney is a place where renewable technology not only has a history but is also part of an unfolding story of technological innovation and testing. Contemporary energy sites and landscapes require new methods to record and track processes that are still emerging, at a range of scales and settings (e.g. from device test sites to the next mega-industrial installations of the offshore wind industry). This research is highlighting how contemporary archaeology can contribute to wider energy debates and help enable action in the face of the climate emergency.

Stavros Vlizos, Assoc. Prof. Ionian University, Corfu / Director, Museum Collections of the Ionian University Anastasia Chytiri, MSc, intern of the Museum Collections of the Ionian University Industry Then, Heritage Now: A Case of Contemporary Archaeology in Corfu City   This paper presents the industrial heritage of Corfu from the mid-19th century until today, emphasizing on the role of the local society in the development and decay of this heritage. One focus of this presentation is the development and operation of local industries and factories that produced a variety of products and raw materials during the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, a period when industry was the core of the island’s economy. However, from the 1960’s onwards the advent of the new economy shifted the economic growth of the island from industry to tourism. Another focus concerns today’s industrial archaeology in Corfu, and the extent of the abandonment to which related buildings have fallen into disrepair, posing the risk for local history to slip into oblivion. Among the few exceptions is the Patouni Soap Factory, which never stopped production from the late 19th, and a recently organized temporary exhibition dedicated to the rise and fall of Corfu’s industrial heritage organized by the Museum Collections of the Ionian University. The aforementioned issues will be presented in detail along with a plan for engagement with this particular recent past.

Harriet Crisp, a London-based multi-disciplinary artist, writer, and creative producer currently pursuing an MA in Contemporary Art and Archaeology at the University of the Highlands and Islands Surface Assemblages: Space and Time in the Audio-Visual Work of Andrew Kötting   The audio-visual work of Andrew Kötting, a key figure in British psychogeography cinema, evokes and explores ideas of landscape, surface, hauntology, becoming, assemblage, and collage. In these respects, Kötting’s work has a distinctly archaeological sensibility. This observation opens up the possibility of considering Kötting’s work from a new perspective – that of contemporary archaeological theory.   This paper employs a model from archaeology, Rodney Harrison’s conception of the present as a surface assemblage (2011), in the analysis of space and time in three of Kötting’s audio-visual works: Hoi Polloi (1990), This Our Still Life (2011), and The Tell-Tale Rooms (2022). Taking the four features of Harrison’s model as points of departure and drawing on insights gained from my interview with Kötting, the paper considers how ideas of temporality, assemblage, becoming, and sensoriality operate in the three works. Throughout the discussion, the works are positioned as surface assemblages in Harrison’s terms and it is argued that the works depict the present-day world as described in Harrison’s model. Overall, the paper demonstrates the usefulness of adopting archaeological theory in the analysis of audio-visual work, advances filmic approaches to contemporary archaeology, and offers new insights into Kötting’s work and British psychogeography cinema more broadly.

Aileen Ogilvie, Creative Practitioner & Artist Researcher, MA Contemporary Art & Archaeology at The University of The Highlands & Islands Excavating Sounds of Place   Landscapes are traversed as much by stories as they are by footsteps (Dean & Millar 2005), but how do we uncover the many voices that contribute to the complex biographies of places? Croft No.4: An Aural Biography of Place is a creative practice-led contemporary art and archaeology project focused on excavating the sounds one place has experienced over time. Using a combined methodological approach, it explores how learning with the landscape can uncover both human and non-human sound interactions with place. It also demonstrates how qualitative research gathered can inform creative responses to place and contribute to the interpretation and reimagining of place. This paper will discuss the process of this creative practice-led contemporary art and archaeology project, accompanied by audio examples of a sonic artefact produced in response to the research carried out.   The sonic artefact can be listened to at the following link:- https://soundcloud.com/croftno4-aabop/dt-part-2/s-7D7sU0B8ljp?si=6a2fd0aaf9744f6580085 60dcb72bff2&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

F. Anichini, MAPPA lab, Department of Civilizations and Forms of Knowledge, University of Pisa, Italy S. Basile, MAPPA lab, Department of Civilizations and Forms of Knowledge, University of Pisa, Italy G. Gattiglia, MAPPA lab, Department of Civilizations and Forms of Knowledge, University of Pisa, Italy V. Lochu, Visual Artist, Performer C. Sciuto, MAPPA lab, Department of Civilizations and Forms of Knowledge, University of Pisa, Italy Coexistence and Resurgence in the Apuan Alps (Tuscany, Italy). Reflections on the Idea of Abandonment in an Upland Area   Over the last century, the mountain area of the Apuan Alps underwent significant depopulation. Walking through the forests, we catch the stone rows of agricultural terraces lying among chestnut trees, stumps, ferns, and fir forest patches; ivy has conquered buildings’ walls, mushrooms grow on the clearings of the charcoal kilns, and salamanders bathe in stone-cut troughs. Traces of farming, husbandry, pastoralism and other activities, outline the knots of a multiform geography of cohabitation and collaboration between humans and non-humans. This contribution presents our research in what is generally regarded as an abandoned mountain area. We aim to unravel the network of tangible and intangible relationships between human and non-human communities through a transdisciplinary approach in which field surveys, HLC, archaeobotany, ethnography and countermapping contribute to assembling glimpses of narratives as relational maps. Archaeology tends to understand abandonment and resurgence as the two faces of the same coin, the continuous transformation of one in another, or, finally, the evidence of a change of perspective from an anthropocentric to a multispecies point of view. Instead, our approach considers them a palimpsest: the effect of erasure and superposition, both on the same surface and displayed in the present.

Erin Riggs, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Anthropology Department Documenting Contentious Contemporary Landscapes: Integrating Systematic, Humanistic, and Politically Engaged Approaches   Contemporary archaeology, as a discipline, has been characterized by methodological diversity. Material culture is involved in the `now’ in complex, ever-changing ways. Because of this, contemporary archaeologists have had to develop innovative ways of working across spatial scales, qualitative and quantitative forms of data, and politically contentious contexts. Often, they draw information from infinitely varied sources—including everything from site maps, bar graphs, and archival records, to photographs, interviewee quotes, and public social media posts. In this paper, I consider what methods of interrelating such diverse forms of evidence are archaeological and socially relevant. Drawing examples from various works of contemporary archaeology, including my own—a project focused on documenting 1947 Partition refugees’ resettlement in Delhi and Kolkata—I consider how, regardless of the type of data utilized, best-practice in contemporary archaeology involves some form of: 1) systematic survey 2) community narrativization and 3) critical political commentary.

Zena Kamash, Royal Holloway, University of London Zhala Amin, American University of Iraq, Sulaimani Annae Ferrey, University of Oxford Omar Jassam American University of Iraq Emma Palmer-Cooper University of Southampton Layla Salih, American University of Iraq, Sulaimani Ethical Approaches to Heritage in Conflict: Exploring the Nexus of Crafting, Heritage and Wellbeing in Iraq   In this paper, we will explore some of the learning moments from our ongoing ‘Crafting Heritage for Wellbeing in Iraq’ (CHeWI) project, which is designed to promote wellbeing for people who have experienced conflict in Iraq. This project is co-produced, driven by local participants and the team, who include archaeologists, heritage professionals, psychologists and craft practitioners from Iraq and the UK, working together to create a robust evidence- base for crafts in improving personal and social well-being. We will reflect on our working practices, including both the challenges and successes of working collaboratively to create equitable partnerships that draw on the expertise and lived experiences of the project team. We will discuss how we have designed and implemented our workshops to ensure the outcomes are relevant and beneficial to Iraq, and reflect Iraq’s complex, often intersectional, societal needs. Finally, we explore how taking inspiration from heritage to create new objects can potentially spark hope through self- and collective-efficacy (e.g. Bandura 1997; Bandura and Cherry 2020; Salanova et al. 2011; Zakeri et al. 2016). We argue that these sensitive, inclusive approaches can provide a flexible, low-cost resource for improving wellbeing and feelings of agency for Iraqis both now and in the future.

Eliana Martini, (PhD Art History, University of Essex), City of Edinburgh Council Representations of Desecrated Churches in Post-1974 Northern Cyprus: the Case of the ‘Lost Heritage’ Exhibition (2009)   This paper focuses on a notable case of dialectic collaboration between Doros Partasides (b. 1944), a Greek-Cypriot documentary photographer, and an international pool of artists represented by the London-based Gallery K. Through a juxtaposition of photographs, paintings and drawings, the Lost Heritage exhibition (2009) brought to the fore the thorny subject of ruined and desecrated Christian monuments in the post-1974 Northern Cyprus, procuring critical thinking on their recent uses and significance. In this occasion, attention will be given to representations of churches, monasteries and cemeteries located at the Mesaoria valley and built or significantly reconstructed during the last two centuries. The primary aim of this endeavour was to consolidate archaeological observations and appeals about the lamentable cultural loss that followed the island’s division, given the start of the ongoing peace process in May 2008. Simultaneously, the obliteration of Christian monuments as sites of differentiated memories offered a chance of leaving behind the cause of conflict and starting afresh, through the consensual recognition of the given monuments as sites of shared cultural experiences and post-colonial trauma resolution.

Walking Tour by Nickoula Kougia, Keramos Lab, Department of Geology, University of Patras, Patras, Greece A ceramics route among places and memories     Patras and ceramics are inextricably linked. The city provides evidence of a centuries-old tradition of ceramic production from the distant to the contemporary past. Many ceramic industries and individual potters were active in the area, from the end of the 19 th century until the beginning of the 21 st century, when they were either abandoned or closed. Today only architectural remains remind us of the big brick and tile industries once operated in the area. Regarding small workshops, narratives of local people and some old photos of potters is the only evidence left behind. The approach is ethnographic and aims at better understanding the materiality of contemporary past through ceramic tradition. As a powerful research tool for social scientists, ethnographic evidence should be incorporated within the context of their science-based work on the distant past and on archaeological ceramics. A tour will give us the opportunity to form memories in these places, promoting a dynamic image of this heritage.