Symposium
Symposium: The Bronze Age - Setting the Agenda
- Date
- Monday 27 January 2025 - Tuesday 28 January 2025
- Address
- Rijksmuseum van Oudheden
Symposium in memory of David Fontijn
How did the Bronze Age shape the history of European societies? This was the driving question behind archaeologist David Fontijn’s final book, which he sadly never got to finish. The flood of new facts and theories about the European Bronze Age – largely thanks to the third science revolution – made him revisit this question. Our aim at this symposium is to continue in the spirit David Fontijn’s unfinished book, with a critical analysis of the news facts and theories that have emerged, and the daring picture he was planning to paint.
To what extent was the Bronze Age really different from the Neolithic, and which Bronze Age developments really impacted the course of history? Was it a time of progress or standstill, and to which extent it makes sense to speak of a period that was ‘European’? And how do recent archaeological theories on Bronze Age migration, connectivity, and technological innovations figure in present-day, sometimes toxic notions on supposed European identities, ‘progress’ and ‘destiny’?
Programme
Monday 27 January
Public keynote lecture by Prof. Joanna Brück, University College Dublin School of Archaeology
- time: 17.00 – 18.00
- location: Temple Hall | Rijksmuseum van Oudheden
- language: English
Tuesday 28 January
- 9:30 – 10:00 | Registration (in front of the Leemanszaal)
- 10:00 – 10:15 | Welcome
- 10:30 – 11:45 | Session 1: Identity and economy
- 11:45 – 13:00 | Lunch break, possibility to visit the exhibition Bronze Age. Fire of Change.
- 13:00 – 14:00 | Session 2 : Migration, globalisation and organisation
- 14:30 – 15:00 | Tea break
- 15:00 – 16:40 | Session 3 Legacy and cosmology
- 16:40 – 18:00 | Drinks and visit to the exhibition