LANDSCAPE ARCHAEOLOGY CONFERENCE

LAC2022: onsite section

12-16 SEPTEMBER 2022
VATRA DORNEI, SUCEAVA COUNTY, ROMANIA

The 7th edition of the Landscape Archaeology Conference is the first edition to take place in Eastern Europe. Around the word togetherness LAC2022 has gathered the six themes of the conference: Responsibility, Defragmentation, Integration, Sensitivity, Explanation, and Comprehension and Cooperation.

The main conference part of LAC2022 is held online with the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași as main organiser (https://lac2022.rdrp.ro/). The two onsite sections of LAC2022 are supported by the University of Suceava (Geography Department) and the GEOCONCEPT Association of Applied Geography. Both the online and onsite parts of LAC2022 are endorsed by the International Association of Landscape Archaeology (IALA).

For this 7th edition of the bi-annual LAC conference (IALA) we offer two interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary onsite sections focusing on Human-Earth interaction from the Quaternary to the Anthropocene and Perspectives through palaeoscience for future environmental sustainability in Europe.

The proposed sections are open to research rooted in and operating with approaches specific to a wide range of disciplines and will provide valuable insight into the most recent advances in Human-Earth interaction and paleoscienceas well as help enhance interdisciplinary collaboration in research and generate a positive impact on policymaking agendas.

The two onsite sections will be hosted at Vatra Dornei, a typical mountain town in the region of Bukovina in northern Romania. This region is known for its centuries-old painted monasteries which are part of the UNESCO World Heritage as well as for its uniquely preserved agro-forest-pastoral landscapes and environments and its traditional cuisine, music and folk dancing.

section description

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Human-Earth interaction from the Quaternary to the Anthropocene: natural, social and cultural processes affecting landscapes

Environmental data is demonstrating significant changes to contemporary climate systems globally and locally, affecting landscape system thresholds and altering the spatial pattern, intensity and magnitude of landscape processes. Whilst empirical evidence demonstrates that destabilized ecological systems can repair, the extent of human of landscape modification from infrastructure, modern farming and forestry exacerbate environmental problems leading to catastrophe for both the natural environment as well as the indigenous population. In this session we aim to make advances in the truly interdisciplinary fields contributing to the study of landscapes, and specifically anthropogenic landscape dynamics. In the Anthropocene human activities are leaving a significant signature on the Earth, by altering its morphology and ecosystems.

This session highlights how landscape archaeologists can contribute to debates concerning the global environmental change and consider how the research community can shape future research agendas and policy frameworks. In detail, we are looking at analyses about the scale and magnitude of landscape (e.g., land use changes such as agricultural land and urban growth, human-induced geomorphic features) and Earth surface processes and their modification, including tectonics, glacial dynamics, soil erosion, land sliding, surface runoff, forest environment and ecosystems, and the combination of human practices and management to study landscape modifications and how it can inform us in the present.

We welcome papers that connect to environmental planning strategies for the mitigation of the consequences of such human alterations, as well as broader syntheses on energy regime shifts, breaking points and irreversible shifts. In particular, early career researchers are invited to present their research. We welcome contributions that strive to integrate environmental and social to reflect on decision-making processes as well as on academic research agendas.

Keywords: Human-Earth interaction, Anthropocene, natural, social and cultural processes, landscapes

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Perspectives through paleoscience for future environmental sustainability in Europe

Paleoscience has advanced the understanding of present-day vegetation composition and structure, landscape dynamics, disturbance regimes and effects of climate change on the environment by unlocking information of their past variability from natural archives. Disentangling the complex interactions between climate, vegetation, humans and the environment over timescales ranging from decades to millennia is essential to establish adequate baselines to predict potential environmental threshold responses under future scenarios of climate variability and anthropogenic disturbance.

This session invites contributions from the broad field of paleosciences that focus on different types of archives (lake sediments, peat, soils, cave records, glacial deposits, tree rings, ice, documentary evidence, etc.) to investigate patterns and drivers associated with the dynamics of the lowland and higher elevation environments in Europe throughout Late Glacial and Holocene. Relevant work may include palaeoecological studies of vegetation and land-use history, the role of humans in past environmental changes, paleoclimate reconstructions that elucidate the natural climate variability, reconstruction of past disturbance regimes (e.g., fire, bark-beetle outbreaks, forest clearance, paleogeomorphic processes) linked to ecosystem changes or turnovers, and innovative bio/geochemical proxies that open new windows in the past to understand the development of present-day environments. Contributions are encouraged from researchers at all stages of their careers.

Keywords: paleoenvironmental archives, proxies, vegetation history, disturbance regimes, landscape dynamics, climate variability

INVITED SPEAKERS

Sjoerd KLUIVING

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,
The Netherlands

Sjoerd Kluiving is a geologist and physical geographer involved in applying earth sciences to archeology in interdisciplinary research and teaching, with emphasis on the Anthropocene. Sjoerd co-leads the newly established Environmental Humanities Center and the Research Cluster Biodiversity and Landscape of the Amsterdam Sustainability Institute of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He receives in 2018-2022 Horizon 2020 funding in TERRANOVA and NWO Melting Pot and takes part in other funded projects. Sjoerd is (co-)supervising 7 PhD students in the field of landscape in the interface of archaeology, Anthropocene and the earth sciences. Sjoerd is President in the IALA Board (2018-2022).

Angelica Feurdean

Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum & LOEWE Biodiversity
and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), Frankfurt am Main,
Germany

Angelica FEURDEAN is a senior researcher at Goethe University and Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center Frankfurt am Main in Germany. She received a PhD in Quaternary Geology from Stockholm University in 2004 and was subsequently awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship at the University of Oxford, UK. Her research uses sedimentary archives to reconstruct past vegetation response to recurrent climate fluctuations and disturbance by fire and human impact in various ecosystems in Central and Eastern Europe, with increasing focus on boreal and arctic systems. Recent work combines fossil data with plant functional traits and statistically ecological modeling to understand the role of plant traits in ecosystem resilience to disturbance by fire.

Erle Ellis

University of Maryland,
USA

Erle Ellis is Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) where he directs the Anthroecology Laboratory. His research investigates the ecology of human landscapes at local to global scales to inform sustainable stewardship of the biosphere in the Anthropocene. His recent work examines long-term changes in Earth’s ecology produced by human societies. Other projects include online tools for global synthesis of local knowledge (The GLOBE project) and inexpensive tools for mapping landscapes in 3D (The Ecosynth project). He is a global highly cited researcher (2018 to 2021), a UMBC Presidential Research Professor (2021 to 2024), a member of the Anthropocene Working Group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy, a Fellow of the Global Land Programme and a Senior Fellow of the Breakthrough Institute. He teaches environmental science and landscape ecology at UMBC, and has taught ecology at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. His first book, Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction was published by Oxford University Press in 2018.

Walter Finsinger

The Institute of Evolutionary Science of Montpellier (ISEM – University of Montpellier, CNRS, IRD, EPHE, CIRAD, INRAP)
France

Dr. Finisinger interests relate to long-term environmental changes, typically on time scales ranging from >10,000-10 years, particularly interested in responses of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems to rapid environmental changes and disturbances (e.g. climate change, land-use changes, fire disturbances). Thus, his main research interests are in Palaeoecology, Vegetation history, Biogeography, and Macroecology as reconstructed from natural archives (e.g. lacustrine sediments, peat). Recently he has focused on late-Quaternary vegetation dynamics and its responses to climate change, disturbances (mainly fire), and human activities in Europe. He also established collaborations with colleagues conducting research in ecosystems on other continents as well (North America, South America, Asia) to broaden the geographical coverage of his research activities. His analytical skills are in pollen, plant-macrofossil, charcoal analysis, sedimentology and geomorphology.

Derk Loorbach

Erasmus University Rotterdam
The Netherlands

Professor Loorbach is director of DRIFT and Professor of Socio-economic Transitions at the Faculty of Social Science, both at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Derk is one of the founders of the transition management approach as new form of governance for sustainable development. He has over one hundred publications in this area and has been involved as an action researcher in numerous transition processes with government, business, civil society and science. He is a frequently invited keynote speaker in and outside Europe.

Registration and abstract submission

Register for

Session 07: Human-Earth interaction from the Quaternary to the Anthropocene: natural, social and cultural processes affecting landscapes

Register for

Session 09: Perspectives through palaeoscience for future environmental sustainability in Europe

For any questions and details

please contact us by email at mindrescu@atlas.usv.ro.

Registration dates:

Early-bird registration – 1 June 2022
Late registration – 21 August 2022

Registration fee

The registration fee for the onsite sections of LAC2022 includes:

  • all registration costs (conference materials),
  • coffee breaks, accommodation and meals for the duration of the event.

Participants will need to cover transportation costs. 

AMOUNT:

  • EUR 300 (RON 1480) for early-bird registration (by 1 June 2022)
  • EUR 350 (RON 1730) for late registration (by 1 September 2022)

The registration fee must be paid using one of the options provided below:

  1. Paypal (EUR)
  2. IBAN: RO68PIRB3500746993001000 (RON and EUR)
    Bank name: First Bank
    Bank BIC/SWIFT Code: PIRBROBU
    Account holder: ASOCIATIA DE GEOGRAFIE APLICATA GEOCONCEPT
  3. IBAN: RO07BTRL03404201198285XX (EUR)
    Bank name: BANCA TRANSILVANIA
    Bank BIC/SWIFT Code: BTRLRO22
    Account holder: Marcel MINDRESCU

Official Language

 

The official language of LAC2022 is English.

Publication

 

Based on our experience from previous scientific events, we expect that, provided a sufficient number of high-quality contributions are submitted for the onsite sections of LAC2022, we will publish a dedicated volume in a WoS journal. A preliminary agreement in this regard has already been made.

Special requests

Participants who have specific dietary restrictions or requirements are kindly asked to communicate any special requests upon registration.

We would like to inform you that the accommodation will be made in twin rooms. Participants who prefer to occupy a single room are asked to mention this requirement and will pay a supplementary accommodation fee.

How to get there

Distance Education and Long-Life learning Office Vatra Dornei, University of Suceava

Centrul de Pregatire si Formare Continua Vatra Dornei, Universitatea Suceava 

Address:
Strada Parcului 2, Vatra Dornei 725700, Suceava county, Romania.
Coordinate: 47.3418816, 25.3574445
WEB

Preliminary program

12 September 2022Arrival and check-in
13-14 September 2022Presentations
15 September 2022Field trip
16 September 2002Check-out and departure

FIELD TRIPS

For the field trips we propose multiple options, of which the most appropriate will be decided closer to the event, including:

the Moldavian Plateau, where material and cultural traces of the Cucuteni-Trypillian civilization are abundant and currently investigated at various archaeological sites. Aside from the Cucuteni sites (and Cucuteni museum), the visit will include lacustrine sites where paleorecords have been collected and indicate material civilization traces.

the highlands of Calimani and Rodna mountain ranges, known for their impressive landscapes and landforms including glacial features, glacial lakes, old-growth forests, traditional pastoral activity, as well as human impact sites (the sulfur open-pit mine of Calimani).

the painted monasteries of Bucovina, dating back to the Middle Ages, which are now part of the UNESCO World Heritage and their surrounding traditional rural landscapes.

the main archaeological sites of Bucovina: Suceava fortress, Baia, Gura Humorului, Zamca etc.

IMPORTANT:

The current pandemic context requires significant changes to the classical format of scientific gatherings. Depending on the pandemic situation in Romania and in Europe at the time of the event, the organizers of the onsite sections of LAC2022 are fully committed to taking all necessary precautions and providing participants with the highest standards of safety for the duration of the event and ensuring that both the participants and the staff are under no health risk, in accordance with public health regulations.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

CHAIRMEN

Marcel MÎNDRESCU
Department of Geography, University of Suceava, Romania, and Geoconcept Association of Applied Geography
+40 742 051 475
marcel.mindrescu@gmail.com

Sjoerd KLUIVING
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
s.j.kluiving@vu.nl 

SECRETARY

Ionela MÎNDRESCU
Geoconcept Association of Applied Geography, Romania
Faculty of Geography, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania
ionela.gradinaru@gmail.com 

MEMBERS

Ionut-Alexandru CRISTEA
Department of Geography, University of Suceava, Romania

Gabriela FLORESCU
Department of Geography, University of Suceava, Romania

Aritina HALIUC
Department of Geography, University of Suceava, Romania

Scientific Committee

Sjoerd Kluiving (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

Anneli Ekblom (Uppsala University, Sweden)

Marcel Mindrescu (University of Suceava, Romania)

Erle Ellis (University of Maryland, USA)

Jan Rotmans (Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands)

Carol Crumley (Uppsala University, Sweden)

Anco Lankreijer (Amsterdam University College, The Netherlands)

Angelica Feurdean (Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum & LOEWE Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), Frankfurt am Main, Germany)

Ionut-Alexandru CRISTEA (Department of Geography, University of Suceava, Romania)

Gabriela Florescu (University of Suceava, Romania)

Aritina Haliuc (University of Suceava, Romania)

Supported by: