call_for_papers_wetlands_archaeology.doc - The Research...

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The Research Group on History of Wetlands (GHZH)’s 6 th international conference
Wetlands & Archaeology
2nd call for papers and posters
Where? At the European Archaeological Center of the Mont-Beuvray - Glux-en-Glenne (Nièvre)
When? November 9-10-11, 2017
From November 9 to 11, 2017, the Research Group on History of Wetlands (
GHZH
), with the
support of the European Archeological Center of the Mont-Beuvray and the Morvan Regional Natural
Park, will hold its international conference on Wetlands and Archaeology in order to better understand
wetlands through Archaeology. Over the past decades, historians, sociologists, legal experts and
geographers have been conducting research on wetlands within vast regional monographs (Bresse,
Dombes, etc.). So have archaeologists. In France, Rescue archaeology has been spectacularly
developed since the early 1980s and has allowed studying countless areas gathering raw data as well as
new “off-site” information: natural cavities (paleo-wetlands, paleo meanders) or anthropogenic (ponds,
etc.) leading archaeoscientists (Palynology, Dendrology, macro plant remains) to elaborate new specific
markers such as plant and animal bio-indicators or sediments.
These new objects, these “soil productions”, which once were not seen as “classical”
Archeology material, have started becoming vectors of landscape and paleo-ecological reconstructions
in wetland recognition. Often times considered uniformly repulsive areas, only interesting once drained
and organized, archaeological examples, which have been multiplying everywhere, differ and point to
the diversity of their diachronic valorization modes, emphasizing the complexity of these areas whether
peatlands, coastal wetlands, alluvial valley or plain.
This conference also aims at developing a comparative approach regarding archaeologist
research led elsewhere in or outside Europe such as The Netherlands, the British Isles (“Wetland
Archaeology Research Project” led for over 30 years at the University of Bradford), Italy, etc.

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The conference will focus on the following topics:
1° Methodology: a true interdisciplinary approach
How does Archaeology understand wetlands and overcome water constraints (pumping)?
How does it define wetlands and what are the digging strategies to be used?
Wetlands are key areas in recording precious archaeo-environmental data with accumulated
sediments (peat, silt), preserved organic matter (pollens, wood charcoals and macro remains for plants
and animals, etc.). The question of sampling must then be raised.
Archaeology requires being able to precisely determine the agent or accumulator factor of the
biofacts collected and studied (sedimentary natural trap, waterbird pellets, otter dung, etc.) hence
taphonomic methodological research. The quantity of preserved artefacts and biofacts being generally
large leads to specific conservation issues outside wetlands and requires technical knowledge quantity
such as lyophilization of the Mesolithic canoe of Noyen-sur-Seine.