SECOND CALL FOR SESSIONS AND PAPERS
Stanford Archaeology Center is pleased to announce the second US meeting of the Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG)
May 1-3, 2009
Stanford University, Palo Alto CA
http://archaeology.stanford.edu/TAG2009
Stanford University will host the second US meeting of the Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) on the weekend of May 1-3 2009. The intention of this TAG conference is to provide a forum for the diverse and interesting theoretical perspectives that exist in the United States, and to bring together both Classical and anthropological archaeology. TAG was founded in Great Britain in 1979 with the aim of exploring inter-disciplinary theoretical issues, promoting debate, discussion of their application and use for archaeological interpretation. It has always been an exploratory venue for progressive and innovative archaeological research. The annual conference meeting is an important part of the TAG mission and these meetings have recently started at universities in the United States, with the 2008 meeting being held at Columbia University in New York City.
TAG is centered around a plenary session in which a handful of scholars will comment on this year’s theme, “The Future of Things”. Our speakers include Rosemary Joyce (University of Berkeley), Stephen Shennan (University College London), Webb Keane (University of Michigan), and Michael Schiffer (University of Arizona).
Sessions on any theoretical theme are welcome and are not dictated by the plenary session. Session organizers will be responsible for selecting speakers and organizing abstracts. There are several format options, such as sessions, workshops, or roundtable discussions and these can either be half-day (6-10 papers) or full day sessions (12-18 papers). Individuals should contact session organizers for participation in a specific themed session.
If you are interested in organizing a session or submitting a paper, the final deadline for session abstract submissions is November 15th, 2008 and the deadline for paper abstracts is February 15th, 2009. The list of sessions is regularly updated on the TAG website http://archaeology.stanford.edu/TAG2009. If you are intending to submit a paper abstract rather than a session proposal, please review the list of sessions, choose one whose theme fits your paper, and contact the session organizers directly.
Stanford TAG 2009 organizational committee
TAG2009(at)stanford.edu

From Pella to Gandhara: Hybridisation and Identity in the Art and Architecture of the Hellenistic East
A graduate student conference held at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, University of Oxford on April 18, 2009. The Hellenistic age was a time of monumental shifts in terms of population, mobility, and political boundaries. Greek culture came into direct contact with the civilizations of the East, transforming both and creating a unique civilization with elements from both the Hellenic and eastern worlds. To what extent this is reflected in the material and visual record is an ongoing research question that we are keen to address in this conference.
Some of the questions we would like to address are as follows: How deeply were the peoples of the East influenced by Greek culture? How were Greek settlers in the realms of the former Persian empire influenced by local cultures and traditions? Did hybrid cultures emerge in some parts of the East as a result of the direct contact between the Greek world and the East? Was Hellenization a politically imposed program designed to increase the support base of the ruling dynasts or local satraps? Did it only benefit small elites or was it a broader cultural phenomenon with a wider impact? Alternatively, is Hellenization simply a modern term that emerged as a result of colonial and post-colonial discourses?
The organizers of the conference welcome papers from doctoral students on all aspects of the art, architecture, and archaeology of the Hellenistic age that deal with the above questions. The papers should be 20 minutes in length. There will be 10 minutes allocated for discussion. The organizers hope that the papers will be published as proceedings of the conference in the near future.
Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words with your name, department, institution and e-mail address to Anna Kouremenos, anna.kouremenos(at)lincoln.ox.ac.uk no later than January 20, 2009. Questions about the conference should be addressed to the organizers: Anna Kouremenos, Roberto Rossi, roberto.rossi(at)lincoln.ox.ac.uk, or Suji Chandrasekaran, sujatha.chandrasekaran(at)lincoln.ox.ac.uk. Accepted speakers will be notified by February 10, 2009. Limited funding may be available for overseas students.

The Center for Ancient Studies at the University of Pennsylvania welcomes submissions for its first annual graduate student conference, “Ancient Cultures in Contact: Catalysts for Change”, scheduled for 20-21 March 2009. When interactions between ancient cultures are characterized as confrontations with inevitable ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, one group emerges to dominate political, cultural, and historical discourse. However, such a view tends to overlook or oversimplify the extent to which cultures and ethnic groups influence one another. This interaction often mutually influenced each culture in areas as broad as economy, material culture, literature and the arts, and government.
This conference aims to discuss the appearance and results of cultural contact broadly, as found throughout the ancient world. While the term ‘ancient’ has different connotations in every discipline and can imply different chronological parameters, nevertheless, its fundamental connotations are relatively stable: e.g., a period of considerable remoteness of time and radical changes in cultural paradigms in such basic areas of human activity and experience as technology, economics, and epistemology. These common principles that underlie conceptions of ‘ancient’ are the focus of the Center for Ancient Studies. To this end, submissions are encouraged from graduate students working in the fields of Anthropology, Archaeology, Art History, Assyriology, Ancient History, Classical Studies, East Asian Studies, Egyptology, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and pre-Columbian studies. Submissions are welcome from, though not limited to, the following focuses:
• Trade (influence on material culture and religion, exchange of information and ideas, etc)
• Warfare
• Language influence and language change
• Religious syncretism
• Law
• Colonization (both internal and external)
• Travel and exploration
• Diaspora
• Development of identity (from disparate groups, vis-a-vis The Other, etc)
• Memory
• Authority and Kingship
• Empire-building
• Technological acquisition
• Literary borrowing and influences
• Theoretical and methodological perspectives
Keynote speaker TBA.
March 20-21, 2009
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Philadelphia, PA
Interested speakers should submit a 300-word, double-spaced title and abstract by January 16, 2009 to [email protected] . Any inquiries regarding the conference may be sent to the same address.