Round 2 of Geoarchaeology in Vienna: Pushing Borders

Authors: Valentina Laaha, Thomas Beard, Doris Jetzinger, and Doralice Klainscek

From the 12th to the 14th of February 2025, the second edition of the ‘Geoarchaeology in Vienna’ workshop took place at the University of Vienna. It was generously funded by the HEAS research network and a joint events grant from the Doctoral School of Historical and Cultural Studies and the Vienna Doctoral School of Ecology and Evolution. We organised this event because in geoarchaeology, as it is very interdisciplinary and uses a wide variety of different methods from different fields, many geoarchaeologists would otherwise never meet at the same place or conference. Therefore this event was aimed at getting to know each other and the geoarchaeological research ongoing in Austria and beyond, as last year´s workshop started a network for all geoarchaeologists and those interested in the parallel branches. We were also pleased to further establish collaborations, after noting some that have developed after our initial event. You can find the booklet with the workshop programme as well as the presentation and poster abstracts for this year’s event here. Geoarchaeology in Vienna Booklet

You can read about the first workshop and the network in our blog here.

The 2025 workshop was conceived and organised by Doris Jetzinger, Thomas Beard, Valentina Laaha, and Doralice Klainscek, all students from different departments of the University of Vienna.

This time we held the workshop at the University of Vienna Biology Building (UBB), with our initial keynote lecture taking place in Hörsaal 1. There we commenced with a remarkable public keynote presentation by Lisa-Marie Shillito (titled; ‘Every Archaeological Problem starts as a Problem in Geoarchaeology’) on the evening of 12 February, which was recorded and is available here. The talk perfectly laid the foundation for the discussion of creating networks and connections between geoarchaeologists, along with collaborations leading to interesting interdisciplinary work. The evening was rounded off with a season-fitting ‘Krapfen’ reception, which provided the opportunity to mingle and chat before the actual workshop days.

On Thursday February 13th the main day of the conference was kicked off by a junior keynote, which was given by William Chase Murphree from the Algarve University in Faro, Portugal, on ‘Examining Upper Palaeolithic Fire Use Using a Geoarchaeological Approach’. This talk was aimed at promoting young researchers at the end of their PhD and getting them involved with our network. This was particularly important to us, as we are not just a student organised event, but we also followed up on last year’s major goal of integrating more students into the network. This talk laid a great foundation for a day of interdisciplinary talks from researchers across the broad field of geoarchaeology.

The programme of talks and posters on this first workshop day was as diverse as geoarchaeology itself, even featuring prerecorded poster presentations from a participant at the University of Glasgow, UK. This instantly sparked many ideas for further discussion about the fairness of archaeology and the results we produce, along with talk of collaborations. Particularly important for these exchanges were the extended coffee and lunch breaks, in which lively and animated conversations took place. To shake up the minds a bit after all the exciting talks, and contributions and also to overcome the midday lull, a bingo icebreaker was held. Contrary to the image of a room full of old people sitting in their chairs, all (of course young and dynamic) workshop participants were moving around in pursuit of people, fitting the bingo prompts such as ‘has never heard of geoarchaeology before’, ‘talks to their samples’, or ‘stores way too much ‘dirt’ in their office fridge’. The first participant to complete a bingo line and another to complete the entire sheet, won the prestigious prize of a HEAS water bottle. Needless to say, this broke the little ice left and reenergized the participants for the remaining afternoon session. After a day full of new knowledge and research about topics including paleofeces in different scales, ancient DNA, elemental traces of human activity from mountains to deserts, painted and unpainted marble, and impressive 3D technology, all were ready for some food and drinks at the conference dinner. The dinner was hosted at Elvira´s and provided a nice opportunity to further talk shop, while savouring Ukrainian cuisine.

The third and final day was dedicated to dynamic round table discussions. Here three groups discussed under the umbrella terms of 1) interdisciplinary geoarchaeology, 2) geoarchaeology and landscape, and 3) material studies (objects, sediments, et al.). The aims of these discussions were to assess the status quo of these topics in geoarchaeology and brainstorm on needs, wishes and future developments within these fields. Here especially the international component of the groups was really interesting as it brought many different angles, needs, and ideas to the table.

The most important topics from the groups are summed up here:

Interdisciplinary Geoarchaeology

This group laid their main topic of discussion on the importance of collaboration and establishing good practices and protocols. While disciplines often tend to focus on their own field, exchange is essential to recognize possible applications of their methods to specific archaeological questions. The challenge is how to bring together all these people and topics, which have different standards, different proxies and different scales, to properly compare methods and results to gain transferable skills and follow specific training. Here a strong network is not only of interest but facilitates such exchange and collaboration.

Geoarchaeology and Landscape

Focal discussion points in this group were the importance of the research question, choosing approaches and methods for projects on a landscape scale, and considerations on how to expand the boundaries of what is possible. Here again the networking aspect was at the heart of many of our key conclusions. We argued that specialists from geoarchaeological sub-disciplines and adjacent fields of research should be involved in inter- and multidisciplinary research projects from the get-go to work together on formulating the central research questions. In addition, we need to put more focus on training and supporting young researchers to preserve and strengthen our key areas of scientific competence.

Concerning practical approaches to landscape-geoarchaeology, we argued for promoting minimally invasive approaches. To implement our ideas and further strengthen our geoarchaeology research network we want to utilise upcoming national and international scientific conferences such as the EAA to promote our group and propositions.

Material Studies

A theme that was discussed especially in this, but also across all the round tables, was networking and collaborating within the network. It is consensus that this is how all those involved produce exciting research and profit from the network. Further, also the reach of the network we have created, and how some of our members have already benefited from it, was discussed. On a similar note to the above point, the Material Studies group discussed using the network to find specific equipment and working in a collaborative way to gain access to the needed equipment. We also discussed how approaching the relevant researchers is not as scary as it may seem, as everyone is open to collaborations and we should just ask if we can use the equipment rather than being shy.

After these very fruitful meetings and a tasty lunch we seized the opportunity to have a tour through some of the labs at the UBB. Here we want to thank Tom Higham and Katerina Douka for showing us their radiocarbon dating and Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry labs, as well as Margarete Watzka for the tour through the SILVER lab, where they work on stable isotopes! We hope that these tours facilitate some collaborations from our participants, some of whom voiced their interest during the tours.

This left us with the final discussion of the round tables, for which we convened back into a large group. After, some announcements and idea-collection for further events of the geoarchaeology network were presented by the organisers with input from the participants. We are glad to say that future lab visits to the University of Innsbruck and Zürich are already on the horizon!

This workshop and network meeting again showed the great interest of geoarchaeologists in the developments and research conducted in all the different categories and branches . Here we want to thank all those contributing to the event, with their talks, posters, questions, discussions, and overall genuine interest in the people and topics presented. It was once again a really relaxed but interesting discussion, rich, and motivating workshop!

Thanks also to all those who took the time to give us such positive feedback on how the workshop really motivated them and how they enjoyed this greater and interdisciplinary network. We thus think we can really look back at a very successful event and have to again thank HEAS and our other funding bodies, without which we could not have held the workshop in the first place!