Animals at the EAA

By Laerke Recht, Associate Editor for Zooarchaeology

Despite a year and a half of Covid-19, many academic conferences are still alive and well, albeit in new online and hybrid formats. The zooarchaeological community has kept active throughout, and a wealth of conferences, workshops and symposia related to animals have been held and are planned for the near future. One of the largest archaeological gatherings in Europe, the European Association of Archaeologists Annual Meeting, took place online again this year at the beginning of September (organised in collaboration with Kiel University), with the theme Widening Horizons.

As always, this entailed a wonderful array of archaeological topics and new research. And studies related to animals were well represented: beyond the many individual presentations and posters, twelve sessions explicitly dealt with topics such as pastoralism, hunting, fishing, domestication and human-animal relations more broadly, as well as animal-related products. It was also refreshing to see sessions and papers focused on more specific animals or groups of animals, including birds, fish, molluscs and horses. A small selection of papers and sessions were recorded and can be found on the EAA’s YouTube channel.

I’m looking forward to seeing if any of the zooarchaeology-related papers or sessions will be published, and for more exciting research at other conferences in the coming months – maybe even some in person.