Next conference of AWRANA, University of Nice | May 29th-June 1, 2018
AWRANA president and vice-president: Prof. Richard Fullagar & Dr. Veerle Rots

Three years after the first AWRANA Conference in Leiden, Connecting people and technologies, the next AWRANA conference will be held in Nice (France), from 29th May to 1st June 2018. This encounter will be the 13th major international meeting of use-wear analysts.

The central focus of the conference will be « Beyond use-wear traces: about tools and people ». Many studies on technological aspects of material culture deal with specific material categories (e.g. flint, ceramics, bone), often in separate or isolated ways, and this division does not really reflect the integrated nature of technical systems in which different material categories are in dynamic interaction. Hence, exploring the interactions between different chaînes opératoires is crucial for a more global concept of the toolkit with all its components and it is a precondition for paleoethnographic reconstructions of technical systems and economies.

This conference aims to revive the debate on the role of traceology (use-wear and residues) in multidisciplinary approaches that address archaeological questions. Therefore, we invite presentations which are not solely isolated functional studies, but which attempt to integrate other approaches and/or different raw materials. Starting from a functional perspective, presentations could explore topics such as apprenticeship, group dynamics, social status, economy, technological evolution, spatial organisation, mobility patterns and territories, or adaptations to cultural and environmental changes. Also presentations dealing with more methodological topics are encouraged as methodological advances are in the heart of the discipline (experimentation, trace quantification, residue characterisation).

Contact: AWRANA2018@unice.fr

Organizers: S. Beyries (UCA-CNRS), C. Hamon (Paris 1 Univ.-CNRS), Y. Maigrot (Paris1 Univ.-CNRS).

Scientific Committee: R. Fullagar, Wollongong Univ. (Australia); D. Macdonald, Tulsa Univ. (USA); E. Gyria, Russian Academy of Sciences (Russia); V. Rots, Liège Univ. (Belgium); I. Clemente, CSIC Barcelone (Spain); A. Van Gijn, Leiden Univ. (Netherlands); C. Lemorini , Rome Univ. (Italy); A. Little, York Univ. (UK); E. Claud, Inrap (France).