Stasa Babic | Filozofski fakultet Beograd (original) (raw)
Papers by Stasa Babic
Etnoantropološki problemi / Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology
From the early modern age, democracy has been regarded as one of the key social values, (meant to... more From the early modern age, democracy has been regarded as one of the key social values, (meant to) secure equal representation of all the members of a community in political decision-making. The roots of this mode of social organization are explicitly linked to the ancient role-model, embodied in the Athenian constitution of the 5th century. The initial knowledge upon which the modern notions of ancient democracy are founded is derived almost exclusively from the preserved written sources. On the other hand, the considerations of the wider context in which the Athenian democracy emerged have often neglected the insights into the social ordering of the communities who simultaneously inhabited the European hinterland, encompassed by the term Iron Age. Archaeological knowledge of these communities, generated over the last couple of decades, indicates a variety of situations transcending the traditional interpretation based upon the concept of chiefdom. Situating the Athenian democracy ...
European Journal of Archaeology, 2017
‘European archaeology’ is an ambiguous and contested rubric. Rooted in the political histories of... more ‘European archaeology’ is an ambiguous and contested rubric. Rooted in the political histories of European archaeology, it potentially unites an academic field and provides a basis for international collaboration and inclusion, but also creates essentialized identities and exclusionary discourses. This discussion article presents a range of views on what European archaeology is, where it comes from, and what it could be.
Apstrakt: Svaka arheološka profesionalna zajednica, pa tako i ona u Srbiji, odr-žava se i obnavlj... more Apstrakt: Svaka arheološka profesionalna zajednica, pa tako i ona u Srbiji, odr-žava se i obnavlja tako što se u nju uključuju novi stručnjaci, obrazovani u za to specijalizovanim institucijama. U slučaju naše disciplinarne zajednice, Odeljenje za arheologiju Filozofskog fakulteta u Beogradu je već više od sto godina jedino zaduženo za obuku budućih arheologa. Tokom tog dugog perioda, korenite pro-mene odvile su se kako u samoj struci, tako i u kontekstu visokog obrazovanja. U poslednje dve decenije, univerzitetski prostor čitave Evrope zahvaćen je reforma-ma koje se obično nazivaju Bolonjskim procesom. Mnogi zahtevi koji se u okviru njega postavljaju pred akademsku zajednicu shvataju se, ponekad s dobrim ra-zlozima, kao nametanje normi koje su u suprotnosti sa samom suštinom huma-nističkih disciplina, pa time i arheologije. Moguće je, međutim, masivne promene univerzitetskog prostora, koje su u toku, shvatiti i kao izazov da se osnaži i una-predi društveni značaj arheologije, kao i...
Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology, 2017
In the Renaissance Europe, along with the keen admiration for Egyptian antiquities, a custom has ... more In the Renaissance Europe, along with the keen admiration for Egyptian antiquities, a custom has been recorded of production and consumption of a powder healing a number of ailments, produced by grating mummies. The practice extended into the 20th century. The belief in the remedial effects of this substance is derived from the Classical and Arabic written sources, and may have been augmented by the ideas about the mystical wisdom of the ancient Egyptians, running throughout the European history and originating among the Classical Greeks. This exceptional example raises the problem of various ways in which the material remains of the past are perceived and classified. In the case of an Egyptian mummy, the object is a human body prepared for Afterlife in a culturally specific manner. Reception of ancient Egypt in subsequent epochs shrouded the practice of mummification, along with other aspects of this culture, in the veil covering the original character of the materialized trace. A ...
<p>Archaeology is one of the academic disciplines whose aim is to make sense of the past. A... more <p>Archaeology is one of the academic disciplines whose aim is to make sense of the past. Among other things, we organize and classify the material culture of the past into distinctive units according to a number of scholarly established criteria. In the course of the history of the discipline, these criteria have changed, and some of the previously prevailing modes of classification have been severely criticized, above all the concept of archaeological culture (e.g. Jones 1997; Canuto and Yaeger 2000; Isbell 2000; Thomas 2000; Lucy 2005). These reconsiderations have brought forward that the past may not have been as orderly organized and readily packed into the units we have designed to manipulate and explain its material traces. Consequently, we have started investigating other possible paths of thinking about the lived experiences of the people whose actions we seek to understand (e.g. Díaz-Andreu et al. 2005; Insoll 2007). However, some of the archaeological practices of organizing our subject of study have remained largely unchanged from the very beginnings of our discipline to the present day, such as defining one of the very basic units of observation—an archaeological site. The archaeological process may be said to begin 'at the trowel's edge' (Hodder 1999, 92ff.), by distinguishing the features in the soil indicative of past human activities and demarcating their spatial limits. This basic anchoring in the spatial dimension, regardless of subsequent procedures, that may vary significantly depending upon the theoretical and methodological inclinations of the researcher(s) in question (Jones 2002; Lucas 2001; 2012), renders the past tangible and manageable, transforming a patch of land into an object of study, further scrutinized according to a set of rules laid down by archaeologists. Once investigated in their physical form in the field, the sites are converted into a set of information, analysed, commented upon and valorized both by archaeologists and the general public. In the process, some are judged to be more important than the others and lists of particularly valuable sites are compiled, such as the UNESCO World Heritage List.</p>
Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology, 2016
The idea of universal linear course of time is an important element of the basic framework of ref... more The idea of universal linear course of time is an important element of the basic framework of reference of the archaeological research into the past. However, even the fundamental theoretical premises of the discipline, such as the conceptualization of time, may be changed and differently interpreted, depending upon the social and cultural context of research. The history of archaeology in Serbia testifies that, contrary to the generally implicit linear course of time, the regional past is seen as a series of repetitions, stagnations and detours, implying the assumption of a different, a-historical course of time in the Balkans. This narrative is especially noticeable in the works dealing with the role of the Classical Greek-Roman civilization in the Balkan past. The ambivalence of the leading narratives in Serbian archaeology towards the presumed sources of the European culture corresponds to the images of the Balkans identified by M. Todorova as the discourse of Balkanism.
European Journal of Archaeology, 2002
This article critically explores the century-long history of research into a particular set of ar... more This article critically explores the century-long history of research into a particular set of archaeological finds. The ‘princely graves’ – funerary assemblages dated to the early Iron Age (seventh to fifth centuries BC) containing, among other things, luxurious objects produced in Archaic Greek workshops – are known from various parts of temperate Europe, and were first recorded in the central Balkans region by the end of the nineteenth century. By their very nature, these finds pose several important theoretical and methodological problems, one of them being the need to bridge the divide between the procedures of prehistoric and classical archaeologies. The first attempts to account for these exceptional finds, in Europe as well as in the Balkans, were guided by the culture-historical procedure, typical of the archaeological investigation of the time. During the 1960s New Archaeology brought about the notion of chiefdom as a tool to account for the Iron Age societies. The concept...
On-line archive of research work from the University of Leicester.
European Journal of Archaeology, 2016
As an academic discipline, archaeology is deeply rooted in the cultural, social, and political pr... more As an academic discipline, archaeology is deeply rooted in the cultural, social, and political practices of Western Europe of the nineteenth century. The emergence of local scholarly communities in other parts of the continent tends to be described as a process that saw the even spread of ideas and concepts in their original form. This further implies a uniform, unilinear sequence of paradigms (culture-historical, processual, postprocessual), each with their own internal logic. However, more often than not, these transfers of disciplinary knowledge from one academic community to the other have introduced distortions of the original concepts, designed to meet the demands of the different cultural and intellectual traditions and research agendas. In this article, we explore the foundation of academic archaeology in Serbia and of the pivotal figure in this process – Miloje M. Vasić, educated at German universities and considered to be the first academically trained archaeologist in the...
Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology
Over the last decades, some archaeologists have adopted the approaches from philosophy and anthro... more Over the last decades, some archaeologists have adopted the approaches from philosophy and anthropology that may loosely be denoted by the term new materialism. The key assumptions are that archaeological investigation, regardless of the theoretical stance applied, has always been burdened by the modern mode of thinking and dichotomies such as nature/culture or subject/object, wherefrom stems the anthropocentric approach to the study of objects, primarily in respect to humans. It is suggested that the reality consists of a plethora of diverse elements, all deserving equal attention and all their existences being of equal relevance. Objects, animals, plants, all have the potential to act in a network of equal actors. A researcher must therefore respect the flat ontology, where none of the actors has primacy. The paper problematizes some of the (un)intentional implications of the ontological turn for the theory and practice of archaeology. First of all, the proposed flattening destabi...
Images of Rome Perceptions of Ancient Rome in Europe and the United States in the Modern Age 2001 Isbn 1 887829 44 X Pags 167 182, 2001
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2015
Literary History, 2016
Ancient Greece has been postulated to be the source of ultimate role models for artistic, ethical... more Ancient Greece has been postulated to be the source of ultimate role models for artistic, ethical and philosophical values of the modern European culture in the second half of the 18th century, through the writings of J. J. Winckelmann. Soon accepted among the German-speaking intellectuals, the Pan–Hellenic narrative was spread further through Wilhelm von Humboldt’s educational reform, formulated around the concept of Bildung. The Hellenic virtues, as defined by Winckelmann, were perceived as a perfect harmony of aesthetic and ethical values, to be pursued in order to achieve the goal of the Enlightenment – free cultivated citizens. Fur-thermore, the Greek ideal became a universal reference point, even in the fields of research far removed from the original context of the works of art evaluation. In or-der to fully understand the influences of Pan–Hellenic narrative upon the modern worldview, the paper argues that strict disciplinary demarcation should be aban-doned in favor of a more problem–oriented approach.
‘European archaeology’ is an ambiguous and contested rubric. Rooted in the political histories of... more ‘European archaeology’ is an ambiguous and contested rubric. Rooted in the political histories of European archaeology, it potentially unites an academic field and provides a basis for international collaboration and inclusion, but also creates essentialized identities and exclusionary discourses. This discussion article presents a range of views on what European archaeology is, where it comes from, and what it could be.
• Abstract – From the inception of academic archaeology, the position of theory in the discipline... more • Abstract – From the inception of academic archaeology, the position of theory in the discipline has been marked by influences from other fields of research, both in terms of the concepts applied and the general outlook on the proper modes of investigation. The relationship between theory and method has remained an open issue for archaeologists, not resolved by two massive changes usually marked by the processual shift of the 1960s and the postprocessual critique from the 1980s. The recent developments aim to address this tension, but the academic community remains fragmented and archaeological theory diverges in several disparate directions.
Etnoantropološki problemi / Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology
From the early modern age, democracy has been regarded as one of the key social values, (meant to... more From the early modern age, democracy has been regarded as one of the key social values, (meant to) secure equal representation of all the members of a community in political decision-making. The roots of this mode of social organization are explicitly linked to the ancient role-model, embodied in the Athenian constitution of the 5th century. The initial knowledge upon which the modern notions of ancient democracy are founded is derived almost exclusively from the preserved written sources. On the other hand, the considerations of the wider context in which the Athenian democracy emerged have often neglected the insights into the social ordering of the communities who simultaneously inhabited the European hinterland, encompassed by the term Iron Age. Archaeological knowledge of these communities, generated over the last couple of decades, indicates a variety of situations transcending the traditional interpretation based upon the concept of chiefdom. Situating the Athenian democracy ...
European Journal of Archaeology, 2017
‘European archaeology’ is an ambiguous and contested rubric. Rooted in the political histories of... more ‘European archaeology’ is an ambiguous and contested rubric. Rooted in the political histories of European archaeology, it potentially unites an academic field and provides a basis for international collaboration and inclusion, but also creates essentialized identities and exclusionary discourses. This discussion article presents a range of views on what European archaeology is, where it comes from, and what it could be.
Apstrakt: Svaka arheološka profesionalna zajednica, pa tako i ona u Srbiji, odr-žava se i obnavlj... more Apstrakt: Svaka arheološka profesionalna zajednica, pa tako i ona u Srbiji, odr-žava se i obnavlja tako što se u nju uključuju novi stručnjaci, obrazovani u za to specijalizovanim institucijama. U slučaju naše disciplinarne zajednice, Odeljenje za arheologiju Filozofskog fakulteta u Beogradu je već više od sto godina jedino zaduženo za obuku budućih arheologa. Tokom tog dugog perioda, korenite pro-mene odvile su se kako u samoj struci, tako i u kontekstu visokog obrazovanja. U poslednje dve decenije, univerzitetski prostor čitave Evrope zahvaćen je reforma-ma koje se obično nazivaju Bolonjskim procesom. Mnogi zahtevi koji se u okviru njega postavljaju pred akademsku zajednicu shvataju se, ponekad s dobrim ra-zlozima, kao nametanje normi koje su u suprotnosti sa samom suštinom huma-nističkih disciplina, pa time i arheologije. Moguće je, međutim, masivne promene univerzitetskog prostora, koje su u toku, shvatiti i kao izazov da se osnaži i una-predi društveni značaj arheologije, kao i...
Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology, 2017
In the Renaissance Europe, along with the keen admiration for Egyptian antiquities, a custom has ... more In the Renaissance Europe, along with the keen admiration for Egyptian antiquities, a custom has been recorded of production and consumption of a powder healing a number of ailments, produced by grating mummies. The practice extended into the 20th century. The belief in the remedial effects of this substance is derived from the Classical and Arabic written sources, and may have been augmented by the ideas about the mystical wisdom of the ancient Egyptians, running throughout the European history and originating among the Classical Greeks. This exceptional example raises the problem of various ways in which the material remains of the past are perceived and classified. In the case of an Egyptian mummy, the object is a human body prepared for Afterlife in a culturally specific manner. Reception of ancient Egypt in subsequent epochs shrouded the practice of mummification, along with other aspects of this culture, in the veil covering the original character of the materialized trace. A ...
<p>Archaeology is one of the academic disciplines whose aim is to make sense of the past. A... more <p>Archaeology is one of the academic disciplines whose aim is to make sense of the past. Among other things, we organize and classify the material culture of the past into distinctive units according to a number of scholarly established criteria. In the course of the history of the discipline, these criteria have changed, and some of the previously prevailing modes of classification have been severely criticized, above all the concept of archaeological culture (e.g. Jones 1997; Canuto and Yaeger 2000; Isbell 2000; Thomas 2000; Lucy 2005). These reconsiderations have brought forward that the past may not have been as orderly organized and readily packed into the units we have designed to manipulate and explain its material traces. Consequently, we have started investigating other possible paths of thinking about the lived experiences of the people whose actions we seek to understand (e.g. Díaz-Andreu et al. 2005; Insoll 2007). However, some of the archaeological practices of organizing our subject of study have remained largely unchanged from the very beginnings of our discipline to the present day, such as defining one of the very basic units of observation—an archaeological site. The archaeological process may be said to begin 'at the trowel's edge' (Hodder 1999, 92ff.), by distinguishing the features in the soil indicative of past human activities and demarcating their spatial limits. This basic anchoring in the spatial dimension, regardless of subsequent procedures, that may vary significantly depending upon the theoretical and methodological inclinations of the researcher(s) in question (Jones 2002; Lucas 2001; 2012), renders the past tangible and manageable, transforming a patch of land into an object of study, further scrutinized according to a set of rules laid down by archaeologists. Once investigated in their physical form in the field, the sites are converted into a set of information, analysed, commented upon and valorized both by archaeologists and the general public. In the process, some are judged to be more important than the others and lists of particularly valuable sites are compiled, such as the UNESCO World Heritage List.</p>
Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology, 2016
The idea of universal linear course of time is an important element of the basic framework of ref... more The idea of universal linear course of time is an important element of the basic framework of reference of the archaeological research into the past. However, even the fundamental theoretical premises of the discipline, such as the conceptualization of time, may be changed and differently interpreted, depending upon the social and cultural context of research. The history of archaeology in Serbia testifies that, contrary to the generally implicit linear course of time, the regional past is seen as a series of repetitions, stagnations and detours, implying the assumption of a different, a-historical course of time in the Balkans. This narrative is especially noticeable in the works dealing with the role of the Classical Greek-Roman civilization in the Balkan past. The ambivalence of the leading narratives in Serbian archaeology towards the presumed sources of the European culture corresponds to the images of the Balkans identified by M. Todorova as the discourse of Balkanism.
European Journal of Archaeology, 2002
This article critically explores the century-long history of research into a particular set of ar... more This article critically explores the century-long history of research into a particular set of archaeological finds. The ‘princely graves’ – funerary assemblages dated to the early Iron Age (seventh to fifth centuries BC) containing, among other things, luxurious objects produced in Archaic Greek workshops – are known from various parts of temperate Europe, and were first recorded in the central Balkans region by the end of the nineteenth century. By their very nature, these finds pose several important theoretical and methodological problems, one of them being the need to bridge the divide between the procedures of prehistoric and classical archaeologies. The first attempts to account for these exceptional finds, in Europe as well as in the Balkans, were guided by the culture-historical procedure, typical of the archaeological investigation of the time. During the 1960s New Archaeology brought about the notion of chiefdom as a tool to account for the Iron Age societies. The concept...
On-line archive of research work from the University of Leicester.
European Journal of Archaeology, 2016
As an academic discipline, archaeology is deeply rooted in the cultural, social, and political pr... more As an academic discipline, archaeology is deeply rooted in the cultural, social, and political practices of Western Europe of the nineteenth century. The emergence of local scholarly communities in other parts of the continent tends to be described as a process that saw the even spread of ideas and concepts in their original form. This further implies a uniform, unilinear sequence of paradigms (culture-historical, processual, postprocessual), each with their own internal logic. However, more often than not, these transfers of disciplinary knowledge from one academic community to the other have introduced distortions of the original concepts, designed to meet the demands of the different cultural and intellectual traditions and research agendas. In this article, we explore the foundation of academic archaeology in Serbia and of the pivotal figure in this process – Miloje M. Vasić, educated at German universities and considered to be the first academically trained archaeologist in the...
Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology
Over the last decades, some archaeologists have adopted the approaches from philosophy and anthro... more Over the last decades, some archaeologists have adopted the approaches from philosophy and anthropology that may loosely be denoted by the term new materialism. The key assumptions are that archaeological investigation, regardless of the theoretical stance applied, has always been burdened by the modern mode of thinking and dichotomies such as nature/culture or subject/object, wherefrom stems the anthropocentric approach to the study of objects, primarily in respect to humans. It is suggested that the reality consists of a plethora of diverse elements, all deserving equal attention and all their existences being of equal relevance. Objects, animals, plants, all have the potential to act in a network of equal actors. A researcher must therefore respect the flat ontology, where none of the actors has primacy. The paper problematizes some of the (un)intentional implications of the ontological turn for the theory and practice of archaeology. First of all, the proposed flattening destabi...
Images of Rome Perceptions of Ancient Rome in Europe and the United States in the Modern Age 2001 Isbn 1 887829 44 X Pags 167 182, 2001
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2015
Literary History, 2016
Ancient Greece has been postulated to be the source of ultimate role models for artistic, ethical... more Ancient Greece has been postulated to be the source of ultimate role models for artistic, ethical and philosophical values of the modern European culture in the second half of the 18th century, through the writings of J. J. Winckelmann. Soon accepted among the German-speaking intellectuals, the Pan–Hellenic narrative was spread further through Wilhelm von Humboldt’s educational reform, formulated around the concept of Bildung. The Hellenic virtues, as defined by Winckelmann, were perceived as a perfect harmony of aesthetic and ethical values, to be pursued in order to achieve the goal of the Enlightenment – free cultivated citizens. Fur-thermore, the Greek ideal became a universal reference point, even in the fields of research far removed from the original context of the works of art evaluation. In or-der to fully understand the influences of Pan–Hellenic narrative upon the modern worldview, the paper argues that strict disciplinary demarcation should be aban-doned in favor of a more problem–oriented approach.
‘European archaeology’ is an ambiguous and contested rubric. Rooted in the political histories of... more ‘European archaeology’ is an ambiguous and contested rubric. Rooted in the political histories of European archaeology, it potentially unites an academic field and provides a basis for international collaboration and inclusion, but also creates essentialized identities and exclusionary discourses. This discussion article presents a range of views on what European archaeology is, where it comes from, and what it could be.
• Abstract – From the inception of academic archaeology, the position of theory in the discipline... more • Abstract – From the inception of academic archaeology, the position of theory in the discipline has been marked by influences from other fields of research, both in terms of the concepts applied and the general outlook on the proper modes of investigation. The relationship between theory and method has remained an open issue for archaeologists, not resolved by two massive changes usually marked by the processual shift of the 1960s and the postprocessual critique from the 1980s. The recent developments aim to address this tension, but the academic community remains fragmented and archaeological theory diverges in several disparate directions.
Povodom kongresa "Fourth International Congress on Black Sea Antiquities", Istambul, Turska, i "T... more Povodom kongresa "Fourth International Congress on Black Sea Antiquities", Istambul, Turska, i "The 31st Annual Conference of the Theoretical Archaeology Group", Darem, Velika Britanija
Session abstract: This session aims to bring together researchers involved in interdisciplinary s... more Session abstract: This session aims to bring together researchers involved in interdisciplinary studies examining the contemporary heritages of Iron Age, Roman and Early Medieval pasts in Europe. It will present and discuss the regional variability of the methodological approaches that have been adopted and the results achieved so far. In inviting contributions, we embrace a broad understanding of heritage as the 'uses, values and associations' carried by the historic environment for different stakeholders (Smith and Waterton, 2012:1). This is a meaning of heritage that transcends 'authorised heritage discourses' and acknowledges the stakes of a wide range of individuals and groups (Smith and Waterton, 2012:2). Questions that we would like to ask are: how are different materials and ideas relating to Iron Age, Roman and Early Medieval pasts lived, enacted, and interpreted across European territories? What regional commonalities or specificities can be identified in the ways in which heritage values are shaped, and emerge from different contexts of production and consumption? What is the contemporary legacy of historical structures which cut across the roughly 1,000 years between 700BC and AD800? How have these contributed to place-making and identity trans(formation)s that are visible today? What has been the impact of formal archaeological practices and the role of archaeologists in these processes?
Craft production and its significance for understanding social relations are one of the essential... more Craft production and its significance for understanding social relations are one of the essential topics in prehistoric archaeology. Standardization of raw materials, products, and manufacturing procedures, and the presence or absence of specialized artisans still challenge scholars engaged in the studies of technology, social archaeology, exchange and distribution networks and economy in the past. In this volume, seven case studies covering a chronological span from the Neolithic to La Tène Europe explore the notions of standardization and specialization, the nature of their interrelationship, the methods for assessing their presence in the archaeological record, and their significance for the reconstruction of social relations and emergence of social complexity, while two ethnoarchaeological studies focus on the organization of production and methods of estimation of a number of artisans. This volume brings together research from prominent scholars, based on different theoretical perspectives, thus giving new insight into the fundamental issues related to artisans and their crafts.
Statement of the European Association of Archaeologists, adopted at its Annual Meeting in Bern, S... more Statement of the European Association of Archaeologists, adopted at its Annual Meeting in Bern, Sept. 6th 2019
see https://www.e-a-a.org
Enlarged and kind of explanatory version to the 2019 Bern Statement of the EAA
2019 EAA Bern Statement - Serbian translation
The Archaeology of Identity. Approaches to gender, age, status, ethnicity and religion, 2005
Ch 1 Introduction; Ch 2 Gender identity; Ch 3 The archaeology of age; Ch 4 Status identity and a... more Ch 1 Introduction; Ch 2 Gender identity; Ch 3 The archaeology of age; Ch 4 Status identity and archaeology; Ch 5 Ethnic and cultural identities; Ch 6 The archaeology of religion
The Archaeology of Identity presents an overview of five of the key areas that have recently emerged in archaeological social theory: gender, age, status, ethnicity and religion. This book reviews the research history of each of them, and the different ways in which they have been investigated, as well as offering potential ways forward. Emphasis is placed on exploring the ways in which material culture is structured by these aspects of individual and communal identity, with a particular stress on social practice. A wealth of scholarship is brought together in this book, which provides an integrated approach to identity not commonly found in similar studies. This book is suitable for students and readers interested in issues of identity, as well as social scientists dealing with similar aspects in sociology, anthropology and history.
At the EAA Virtual Annual Meeting in 2020 part 1 of our session addressed the professional and ac... more At the EAA Virtual Annual Meeting in 2020 part 1 of our session addressed the professional and academic exchange in the decades before and after World War 2. In the follow-up session we want toin accordance with the EAA 2021 conference mottowiden the horizon and to include further aspects and expand the time period under investigation. The post-war generations were indeed widening horizons and increasingly put the socio-political implications of archaeological interpretations on the agenda and discussed how archaeological results became used for political ends. This awareness culminated in archaeology losing its innocence. This conforms to Theme 6, seeing the changes in understanding of material culture and how it could be interpreted to reveal insights about past societies. Part 2 of our session on the 20 th century history of archaeology thus addresses the rise and challenge to culture history in the mid-century and the attempts to develop New Archaeologies. We suggest considering on the one hand whether these developments lead to a split of research traditions across Europe into Western, Northern, Central, and Eastern European schools of thought or whether diverse traditions already existed before, and on the other hand whether or to what extent personal connections and institutional international links circumvented a split. Communication and exchange surely existedbut what was communicated: methods, theories, or results? And how far were these taken up? Did the 1960s and 1970s experience a loss of the previous European perspective, regained only in the 1990s? We encourage addressing individual biographies, institutional level networks, and trans-national to transcontinental research agendas.