Professor Stephanie Wynne-Jones, Tom Fitton, and Mik Lisowski (Department of Archaeology, University of York), together with Professor Rubina Raja and Olympia Bobou (Centre for Urban Network Evolutions, Institute for Culture and Society, Aarhus University), organized a session on Resource Use and Recycling in Urban Ecologies within the framework of the European Association of Archaeologists 2021 Annual Meeting on 9 September 2021.

The session included nine papers that ranged chronologically from the neo-Assyrian period to the Middle Ages. It demonstrated that the questions of sustainability, recycling, and use of resources cross-cut traditional scholarly isolationism, while the examination of case studies from one period or culture can prove fruitful and useful to scholars focusing on other cultures. Two broad themes were covered: the question of recycling and re-use, and resource management. The first four papers of the session highlighted the long lives of buildings and materials, changing use between one incarnation and the other, and showed how highly stratified societies could use and repurpose these materials differently depending on the social stratum of the users. The following papers focused more on resources, their uses, management, and significance, and highlighted the impact of social structures, societal stratification, and economic considerations within specific landscapes and environments when deciding on and managing resources and materials.

27th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA)

The 2021 Annual Meeting of the EAA is hosted by Kiel University from 8-11 September. Due to Covid-19, the 27th Annual Meeting is virtual. The Annual Meeting themes, as defined by the Scientific Committee, incorporate the diversity of EAA and the multidimensionality of archaeological practice, including archaeological interpretation, heritage management and politics of the past and present. This year’s main theme is “Widening Horizons”.