6th Baltic Archaeological Seminar (BASE 6) ‘Continuity and Change in the Past‘

You are kindly invited to the 6th Baltic Archaeological Seminar (BASE 6). This time the Seminar will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania on 25th–27th October, 2013. The Seminar is organised by the Department of Archaeology, Vilnius University. We have the pleasure to invite archaeologists from Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania.

The topic of the Seminar is 'Continuity and Change in the Past'. Different changes occured in the past, including local, regional, global, as well as technological, economical, social, ideological, etc. But some things are not changing for a long time. Archaeologists use different approaches and differently understand the reasons of change or continuity. Some of them search for internal reasons, others – for external, some – for specific, others – for general. Different questions related to the topic arise, such as what does change and continuity mean? Why have changes occured in the past? Why do some things continue for a long time? How can archaeologists reconstruct different kind of changes or continuity from material culture? When is it possible to talk of change rather than just variation? Both change and continuity need deeper understanding and explanations. The aim of the Seminar is to discuss different aspects on the proposed topic.

The Seminar will consist of oral presentations, discussions, a social event and an excursion. The working language will be English. Two days will be devoted to oral presentations and one day to an excursion to East Lithuania archaeological sites.

We are expecting 4 oral presentations per country and 3–4 participants without presentations. We are planning approximately 30 participants in the Seminar. The oral presentation should be 15–20 minutes long, followed by questions and comments (10–15 min.).

The contact persons are kindly requested to submit a list of participants and preliminary titles of oral presentations from their country by 31st March, 2013.

The contact persons are:

- Valter Lang (Estonia) ;

- Mika Lavento (Finland) ;

- Andrejs Vasks and Andris Šnē (Latvia) , ;

- Algimantas Merkevičius (Lithuania) .

We are planning to publish the abstracts of oral presentations before the Seminar. The abstracts should be max. 300 words in English. The dead line for abstracts is September 1st, 2013.

Extended versions of the Seminar papers will be published in a peer-reviewed publication „Interarchaeologia" in 2015.