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.

Venue:

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

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

14:20-14:50 – Break

Session three: crisis, collapse and drivers of change – Large-scale processes are frequently perceived as the triggers for change; while these may be driven by individual human actions, they are often out of the control of individuals and social groups. These papers interrogate crisis as a change-related process and consider the human role and response to large-scale change

14:50-15:20 – Guy Middleton (Northumbria University) – Collapse and change in the past
15:20-15:50 – Kjetil Loftsgarden (Museum of Cultural History, Olso) – The wonderful 7th century? – tracing the social and economic consequences of the 6th century crisis
15:50-16:20 – Frans Theuws and Femke Lippok (University of Leiden) – Commoners as drivers of change
16:20-16:40 – Session discussion

16:40-17:30 – Reception
18:30 – Conference speakers’ dinner

Day 2 - 20th November 2026
9:30-10:00 – Arrival and morning coffee

Session four: the processes of change – This session aims to think about what process drove change in the past. These processes have broad causes and widespread effects; from climate change to subsistence, considering change thematically allows us to think about what makes change significant

10:00 -10:30 – Oscar Aldred (Cambridge archaeological unit and University of Cambridge) – Movement and change
10:30-11:00 – Morten Fischer Mortensen (The National Museum of Denmark) - Long-term climate change
11:00-11:30 – Louise Felding (Aarhus University, presenter) and Laura Ahlqvist (Museum Vest) - Changing Bodies Changing Worlds? Bodily Biographies from Early Scandinavian Prehistory
11:30-11:50 – Session discussion

11:50-12:30 – Lunch

Session four: the processes of change (continued)

12:30-13:00 – Merita Dreshaj (Aarhus University) – Tracing subsistence novelties in the 'early Neolithic' Dutch wetlands: the case of the Swifterbant culture.
13:00-13:30 - Mink van IJzendoorn (University of Leiden) – Consistency in diversity, or when continuation matters more than change.
13:30-14:30 – Session discussion and concluding remarks