Call for Conference Papers

Creativity: An Exploration Through the Bronze Age and Contemporary Responses to the Bronze Age

10th – 11th April 2013
Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, UK

At the same time as we assume creativity as embedded in human history, it is unclear how we locate, explore and analyse creativity. The explicit aim of this conference is to engage with this challenge. We will discuss creativity through a focus on its outcomes – in this case material culture – and through an exploration of creative practice. The European Bronze Age provides an interesting focus for discussions of the outcomes of creativity because in this period we see the development of new and pre-existing materials that we take for granted today. We also see new ways of working with them, accompanied by the growth of technical skill, to produce complex forms and elaborate decorated surfaces. This conference will explore how viewing these through the lens of creativity has the potential to offer fresh insights into the interaction between people and the world. An understanding of creativity further demands that we examine the processes that lie behind creative expression. To consider this, the conference will explore how the distant Bronze Age may be able to act as a stimulus and inspiration for creative practice in the present.

Speakers will include: Prof. Lise Bender Jørgensen (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Archaeology and Religious Studies), Dr Karina Grömer (Natural History Museum, Vienna), Prof. Tim Ingold (Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen), Prof. Janis Jefferies (Department of Computing, Goldsmith’s University of London), Dr Flemming Kaul (National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen), Dr Joanna Sofaer (Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton), Dr Marie Louise Stig Sørensen (Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge), Prof. Bengt Molander (Dept. of Philosophy, Norwegian University of Science and Technology), Dr David Fontijn (Faculty of Archaeology, University of Leiden), Dr Julian Stair (potter and academic, University of Westminster), Dr Alex Gibson (Archaeological and Environmental Sciences, University of Bradford).

Abstract submission deadline: January 15th 2013
Submit abstracts to: cinba@soton.ac.uk

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