XVIII° CONGRES UISPP PARIS JUIN 2018

You are warmly invited to take part in the XVIIIe Congrès de l’UISPP, which will be held in  Paris, France, from 4^th to 9^th June 2018
Personal ornaments are polythetic artifacts that are intimately connected to identity, social organization, and ritualized material practices. Their analysis, when performed with appropriate tools, offers unique insights into the social organization of prehistoric societies and, when considered longitudinally, cultural evolution. Evidence that has been uncovered in the last twenty years has substantially altered the timeline for the emergence of symbolic behavior and also shown that instead of a sudden emergence, personal adornment has a complex and mosaic prehistory marked at certain times and places by intensified investment. The conditions that motivate investment in symbolic material culture are complex and varied, and untangling them is crucial to understanding the contribution of symbolic practices to the form and function of human societies. This session will focus on methods and approaches that further a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the factors that have influenced personal adornment production and use over time and space, going beyond typology and technology to examine broader economic, social, and cultural contexts. Examples are welcome from a wide range of contexts across pre- and proto-history, from hunter-gatherer bands of the Pleistocene to early pastoral and farming societies and including ethnographic and ethnohistorical examples, without geographic restriction. Contributions should focus on analytical methods and techniques (including microscopy and imaging, use-wear analysis, sourcing, morphometrics, GIS analysis, and statistical approaches) that contribute to discussions of production organization, social organization, demography, mobility, landscape use, technology, exchange, and cultural transmission. The primary focus of the session is beads and pendants in biogenic materials (tooth, shell, ivory, bone, antler, amber, ostrich eggshell), but we invite contributions based on other materials related to adornment such as minerals, metals, pigments, residues, and perishable materials
such as hide, sinew, and hair.
The general theme held for the congress is :
ADAPTATION AND SUSTAINABILITY OF PREHISTORIC AND PROTOHISTORIC SOCIETIES CONFRONTED TO CLIMATE CHANGE