So Close and Yet So Far: A Critical Approach to Mobility in the Past

Data evento
2 April 2025

This two-part workshop series hosted by the British School at Rome (BSR) and Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (DAI) aims to create a platform for sustained and critical discussion on bioarchaeological approaches to mobility and their potential to address archaeological questions. The spring workshop at the BSR on 2 April 2025 will focus on the methodologies used to investigate human and animal mobility. A second autumn workshop at the DAI on 13 November 2025 will explore key case studies.

Mobility has emerged as a central theme in contemporary archaeological research, driven by both current events and the development and diffusion of scientific techniques that enable use to ask new questions of old materials. Advances in bulk and high-resolution multi-isotope analysis, trace element analysis, ancient DNA, dental histomorphometry, and isoscape mapping have enhanced our understanding of human and animal mobility across diverse contexts and spatio-temporal scales, with studies now able to provide detailed reconstructions of life histories and genealogies. However, at the same time, there is growing recognition of the complex relationship between archaeology and bioarchaeology, as well as the potential limitations of current methodologies and interpretive frameworks in addressing complex questions of human life in the past.
The contributions to this spring workshop explore methodological advances in and challenges to reconstructing mobility across analytical approaches and archaeo-historical contexts, from the intricacies of isoscaping and kinship relationships, to culturally oriented questions on the definition of ‘non-local’ and ‘local’. The event aims to strengthen collaboration between the UK, Germany, and Italy in the field of archaeological science, and to engage university students and a broader audience in debates at the intersection of cutting-edge science and human questions of how we identify and interpret mobility in the past. Students and early career researchers are especially welcome.

https://bsr.ac.uk/workshop-so-close-and-yet-so-far-a-critical-approach-to-mobility-in-the-past/