Call for Contributions - EAA 2026

19 December 2025

Call for Contributions

We are delighted to announce that our session “Archaeological Heritage on Social Media: Identity Nexus, Contact Zone, or Battlefield?” has been accepted at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA 2026) in Athens next year.

The session is part of the conference theme “Crossing the divide. Archaeology and the open world” and focuses on how social media reshape identities, participation, and contestation around archaeological heritage.

We invite you to submit to present as part of our session via the official EAA submission system, which will be evaluated by the EAA programme committee. As this is a session with precirculated papers, authors of accepted contributions will be required to submit their full paper by 1 August 2026.

We very much look forward to your contributions! More detail about the objectives and themes of the session can be found below.

Athens

Detailed session information

Theme: Crossing the divide. Archaeology and the open world Session format: Session with precirculated papers

Session rationale

The pervasive presence of archaeological heritage on social media is profoundly reshaping the theory and practice of public archaeology across communication, participation, and contestation. From text-based platforms such as Facebook and Wikipedia to image-based environments like Instagram and video-sharing platforms including YouTube and TikTok, archaeological heritage is increasingly encountered, interpreted, and mobilised in everyday digital practices.

This session explores how archaeological heritage on social media operates as an identity nexus, a contact zone, or a battlefield. On the one hand, social media platforms enable crowdsourcing, citizen science, and forms of “digital curation in the wild,” supporting participatory culture, co-creation, and creative engagement with the past. Archaeology-related online communities may function as affiliative or “creolised peripheral spaces,” facilitating interaction across national boundaries, professional divides, and distinctions between institutional (“capital I”) and informal (“small i”) identities.

On the other hand, these same environments are characterised by intense contestation. Archaeological heritage is frequently entangled with populist and nationalist discourses, pseudo-archaeology, memory wars, and the normalisation of heritage-based hostility and hate speech—dynamics that can spill over into offline conflict. Emotional responses to material remains are amplified through the semiotics of user-generated content and the algorithmic logics of platforms, raising critical questions about power, mediation, and responsibility.

Against this backdrop, the session brings together empirical, methodological, and theoretical contributions that critically examine the role of archaeology within contemporary networked communication and digital heritage ecosystems.

Submission details

Details for submission are:

  • Call for Contributions: 19 December – 5 February
  • Submission system: https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2026/login
  • Please select Session #211 when submitting your abstract.
  • Abstracts are evaluated by the EAA Programme Committee.
  • Full paper deadline (for accepted contributions): 1 August 2026.

Further information on the conference, sessions, and submission procedures:

  • https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA2026/EAA2026/Home.aspx
  • https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA2026/sessions
  • https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA2026/contributions

Session organisers

  • Costis Dallas (Vilnius University; Athena Research Centre, Greece)
  • Chiara Bonacchi (University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom)
  • Ingrida Kelpšienė (Vilnius University, Lithuania)
  • John-Paul Martindale (University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom) </ul>