CRITICAL ROMAN ARCHAEOLOGY CONFERENCE

**ABSTRACT DEADLINE: December 1st, 2007**

A conference hosted by the Stanford Archaeology Center
Stanford, California

March 1-2, 2008

with sessions chaired by:
David Mattingly
Sandra Scham
Nicola Terrenato
Peter van Dommelen
Jane Webster

Roman archaeology, as a field which studies the material heritage of the
Roman empire, holds a particular place within the broader discipline of
archaeology by virtue of its enormous geographical and chronological focus,
rich archaeological and documentary evidence, and ideological locus as the
heritage of the West. Roman archaeology therefore has great potential for
making cutting-edge contributions to the broader field of archaeology, as
well as to interdisciplinary research with, for example, anthropology,
Italian studies, and history. The conference will challenge the present
state of Roman archaeology by interrogating the current models and paradigms
at the forefront of present research, so as to develop theoretical and
methodological approaches to ask focused questions of the evidence, advance
richly contextual answers, and develop ideas with broad relevance to the
archaeology of other periods and places. Thus our aim is to forge a new
identity for Roman archaeology as an innovative branch of archaeology with
strong interdisciplinary engagements. As a result, we also encourage
conference participants to take a critical look at the contemporary context
and broader implications of the material heritage of the Roman empire (such
as issues of heritage, the practices of Roman archaeology, and the
management of material heritage) in order to evaluate the performance of the
discipline in the contemporary world and engage with the situated ethical
requirements of archaeological practice.

The conference is divided into four sessions (full session abstracts below):


-Responsibilities and Ethics

-Place-making

-Economies of Heritage

-Diaspora and People on the Move

We strongly encourage participants to reflect on how these themes depend on
one another, being both constitutive of, and imbricated within, the
intersecting practices and objects of study of Roman Archaeology.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words must be sent by email to
CRAC2008 AT gmail.com by SATURDAY DECEMBER 1st 2007. Please include your name,
affiliation, e-mail, postal address, and the session(s) in which you think
your paper would best belong. Papers will subsequently be revised after the
conference for publication.

The authors of the accepted abstracts will be notified by DECEMBER 12th
2007. Papers will be pre-circulated before the date of the conference to
encourage more productive discussions, so final papers of no more than 20
pages (double-spaced) in length must be submitted by WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY
15th 2008 for advance circulation. Each speaker will be given 15-20 minutes
for their presentation. Further details, updates, and the papers for
advance circulation will be posted on our conference website at
http://humanitieslab.stanford.edu/CRAC/Home .

For further questions or comments, please contact the conference organizers
at CRAC2008 AT gmail.com
Corisande Fenwick
Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels
Darian Totten