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Archaeology of violence, warfare topic of conference
“The Archaeology of Violence: An Integrated Approach to the Study of Violence and Conflict” was the topic of the second annual visiting scholars conference held last weekend at UB by the Institute for European and Mediterranean Archaeology (IEMA).
About 70 scholars from U.S., Canadian and European universities participated in the two-day conference organized by Sarah Ralph of the University of Cambridge, UK, the institute’s 2008-9 visiting scholar.
Peter Biehl, assistant professor of anthropology and associate director of the institute, notes the conference provided a forum for participants to consider the causes, actions and effects of violence through the study of skeletal remains, identity, literature, iconography, ritual behavior and landscapes.
“The interdisciplinary nature of the conference allowed for a variety of research to be presented, and highlighted the diversity of approaches to violence and the consequences for understanding social, political and economic relationships between individuals, kin, communities and society as a whole,” he says.
He added that the papers presented examined a variety of topics, ranging from Neolithic massacres to Iron Age bog bodies and Roman gladiators to 18th century battlefields.
The proceedings of the conference will be published as the second volume of the institute’s new publication series.
The IEMA was created in the College of Arts and Sciences in conjunction with the strategic strength in cultures and texts identified as part of the UB 2020 strategic plan. It aims to combine existing UB faculty expertise in the fields of anthropology, classics and visual studies with first-rate research facilities available at UB in such disciplines as geographic information systems, virtual reality and materials science.
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