International Workshop/ENLIGHT Regional Academy Event, 17–19 February, University of Bern.
Was the past sustainable and how can archaeology contribute towards a more sustainable future?
The ETN ENLIGHT Archaeologies of Sustainable Environments (EASE), founded at the universities of Uppsala, Groningen and Bern, aims at fostering the discourse on sustainability in archaeology. With this workshop we aimed at its scientific discussion, build new networks among archaeologists from ENLIGHT universities and discuss future collaborations.
Since 2015 the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) developed by the UN have become a guiding tool to tackle nowadays challenges. Although the goals and connected indicators are targeted towards modern social and economic systems, archaeology can contribute to sustainability in a variety of ways. Archaeology and related disciplines can offer a unique deep time perspective which allows to track human endeavors and their sustainability over timespans longer than a human life or archival records. They can offer baseline data to assess current or future sustainability or can provide historical and modelled analogues for human-environment interactions. Also, archaeological institutions can and need to act sustainably to ensure long-term preservation of heritage and collaboration with local communities.
From February 17th to 19th Archaeologists from seven ENLIGHT Universities (Bern, Bratislava, Galway, Göttingen, Groningen, Tartu and Uppsala) gathered at the University of Bern to discuss different aspects of sustainability in archaeology. The aims were a) to explore how and in which ways archaeology can contribute to the discourse on sustainability from a scientific perspective and b) how future collaboration between the archaeologies within the ENLIGHT alliance could look like. The workshop started with a public evening session on February 17 with an introductory lecture by Marco Hostettler (University of Bern).
On the following day, 16 researchers with different backgrounds gave insights into their work relating to sustainability and archaeology. The sessions started with an opening speech delivered by Claus Beisbart, dean of the humanities at the University of Bern and was followed by four sessions dedicated to different aspects of sustainability in archaeology. Covering case studies from a vast geographical area from Ireland to Southwestern Asia we looked at how sustainable or unsustainable past societies were, how archaeological projects can not only uncover sustainability in the past but can engage in the present and how archaeology can try to achieve sustainability on an institutional level.
The second day was reserved for a closed discussion among the representatives of the different institutions to concretely explore future collaboration. The discussion session fruitfully led to several new ideas for future collaborative teaching and other forms of collaboration.
The workshop was well attended by researchers and students alike. It led to the creation of new contacts among archaeologists from ENLIGHT Universities and can be seen as a starting point for future collaborative projects.
