Tracing and theorizing significant change in the archaeological record will explore how we define and find significant change in the past across a range of datatypes and ‘big’ archaeological concepts. Its aim is to advance the state-of-the-art by thinking about what change actually means for people living in the past and how we can define its significance for their lived experience.

The conference will be held at

  
Aarhus Institute for Advanced Studies (AIAS)
Building 1632, room 201
Høegh-Guldbergs Gade 6B DK 8000 Aarhus C Denmark

19th & 20th November 2026

Day 1 - 19th November 2026

  
Welcome
9:00-9:30 – Arrival and registration
9:30-10:00 – Sarah Croix, Rowan S. English, Tessi Loeffelmann, Torben Trier Christiansen (Aarhus University and Nordjyske Museer) – Welcome and Introduction to the Milestone Project

Session one: change and archaeological concepts – Change is always happening as a backdrop to the archaeological record. This session thinks about how change relates to, and can be seen in, the core concepts that shape our understanding of the past through archaeological practice and research
10:00-10:30 – Rachel Crellin (University of Leicester) – Change and archaeology
10:30-11:00 – John Robb (University of Cambridge) – Changing our Minds: Three Difficult Concepts in Theories of Change
11:00-11:30 – Guido Furlan (University of Padua) – Change and stratigraphy
11:30-11:50 – Session discussion
11:50-12:30 – Lunch
 

Session two: approaching change with chronology – Change is experienced over time and archaeology as a discipline has long been preoccupied with measuring time. Since the 1950s, this has been done by applying radiocarbon dating methods. These papers consider how change relates to these scientific dates and what they can tell us about the pace of the human past
12:30-13:00 – Helene Agerskov Rose (Gothenburg University) - Defining Change in the Past: A Bayesian Chronological Perspective
13:00-13:30 – Seren Griffiths (Manchester Metropolitan University) - Change and chronology
13:30-14:00 –Emma Brownlee (Historic England) - Typochronologies and Radiocarbon Dating: Towards a generational chronology for Early Medieval European Funerary Practices
14:00-14:20 – Session discussion