Digital Archaeology

Advancing open research into the next decade

International Colloquium on Digital Archaeology in Bern

1st - 3rd February 2023, University of Bern, Switzerland

Organizing Committee: Maria Elena Castiello, Cynthia Marti, Joe Roe and Martin Hinz / Institute of Archaeological Sciences, Univ. Bern

Julian Laabs, Institute for Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology, Univ. Kiel

Submission

Oral and poster presentations are welcome. Accepted oral presentations should not exceed 20 minutes. Posters should be submitted in A0 size. The colloquium language is English. Abstracts must not exceed 500 words.

Young scholars are particularly encouraged to apply and participate in the discussion, which will be of growing importance in the future of archaeological research.

Submission deadline for abstracts of proposed presentations and posters: 27 th November 2022

Please send your abstract (Presentation type, title, author(s) and author(s) affiliations, three keywords, text) as a single PDF file to dab@iaw.unibe.ch.

Registration

The fee for conference registration includes workshop registration, materials, coffee breaks, and the conference dinner.

Conference registration fee for presenting participants: 60 CHF
Conference registration fee for non-presenting participants: 100 CHF
BA and MA students are exempt from the registration fee.

Online registration is closed.

There will be a grant to support travel and accommodation expenses for young scientists, i.e. BA/MA/PhD students and early Postdocs, presenting a talk or poster at the colloquium.

For general information, please write to dab@iaw.unibe.ch

Please read our registration terms if you need more detailed information.

Scope

Following the success of the inaugural 2019 colloquium, the second iteration of ‘Digital Archaeology Bern’ (DAB) will take place at the University of Bern on the 1st to 3rd February, 2023.

Ten years ago, a groundbreaking special issue of World Archaeology on ‘Open Archaeology’ introduced the concept to the wider discipline. And five years ago, a paper in the SAA Archaeological Record once again brought together many authors to endorse the concept of ‘Open Science in Archaeology’. In 2022, we can perhaps at last claim that open archaeology has come of age – if not as an established norm, then at least as a widely-accepted aspiration! So it seems timely to again take stock of which developments have proved fruitful over the past decade, and to ask which directions the field should take in the next. As guiding principles such as the FAIR and CARE increasingly establish themselves in the wider digital humanities in recent years, how should digital archaeology position itself?

We hope the colloquium will provoke debate on the status and role of ‘open’ archaeological research with the spectrum of archaeological practice. We would also like to consider how, as digital archaeologists, we should position ourselves under the emerging umbrella of the digital humanities, and what we can learn from the paths taken there. The colloquium will be a forum for both junior and senior researchers from different fields to discuss and share their work and experiences.

Sessions

The colloquium will consist of three main sessions dealing with the following topics:

• The impact and significance of open science in archaeology to date
• The interaction between archaeology, open science and the digital humanities
• Practical applications and exemplars for open science in archaeological research in the next decade

All three sessions will feature presentations from invited keynote speakers and from an open call for papers.

Keynotes speakers

• Julian Bogdani, Research Fellow, University of Rome La Sapienza, Department of Archaeology, Italy
• Ben Marwick, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington
• Colleen Morgan, Lecturer in Digital Archaeology and Heritage, University of York, UK
• Rachel Opitz, Senior Lecturer in Spatial Archaeometry, School of Humanities, University of Glasgow, UK
• Alessio Palmisano, Postdoctoral Fellow, Historisches Seminar der LMU, Germany
• Julian Richards, Professor and Director of the Archaeology Data Service, University of York, UK
• Iza Romanowska, Postdoc, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Denmark

R workshop or Field trip

Participants will have the opportunity to join one of two workshops or an archaeological field trip on the third day of the colloquium. Participants of the workshops (beginners & advanced) will learn about the principles of open research in archaeology and its real world application.

Call for papers and registration

The publication of the colloquium’s contributions is planned within our „Open Series in Prehistoric Archaeology“ (OSPA) . Further details to be announced.

Key Dates

• 2022-11-27 – Call for Papers ends
• 2023-12-23 – Deadline for registration
• 2023-02-01 – Conference begins
• 2023-07-31 – Deadline for publication submissions

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