Once a year, ANEE gathers with the entire Centre to present and evaluate the year’s accomplishments, discuss future avenues, mingle, and inspire new collaborations. 2024’s Annual Meeting was held on the 20th–23rd of August, a hop across the Baltic in beautiful Tallinn, at Tallink Spa & Conference Center.
This time around, the academic programme departed partly from the conference structure of past years’ annual meetings. While this year’s programme featured also conventional research papers, a significant portion was reserved for practical workshops revolving around ANEE’s research and community. Big thanks to Caroline Wallis for designing and running the workshops. As our lodgings were at a spa not too far from the Old city, windows were reserved to ensure that the participants had time to also enjoy these possibilities.
The meeting was opened on the 20th of August with welcoming words by Saana Svärd, Director of ANEE, and an introduction round with our new post-docs and research assistants. The first workshop, titled “Who dun’it?”, was then held; in this exercise detective duos were formed to track down the authors of given abstracts, all participants of the meeting. The duos and the authors then discussed these research pieces within the framing of the four research packages that ANEE’s work revolves around. The purpose of the exercise was to highlight the work that has been done toward ANEE’s goals, especially in cases where individual achievements may not be known to everyone.
The following morning began with the first session of the annual meeting: “Governance and changing socio-economic, cultural and ecological landscapes”, in which we enjoyed the following interesting talks.
- Comparative history of Phoenician earthen architecture: the expansion of mudbrick tradition and its socio-environmental challenges in the western Mediterranean (Benjamín Cutillas-Victoria)
- Identifying superior-subordinate relationships in the Lahun letters from late Middle Kingdom Egypt (Kaisa Autere)
- Empire, patronage, identities (Emanuel Pfoh)
- An empire without end: Roman governance, romanisation and the spectre of social and cultural change in the study of empires (Kaius Tuori, keynote)
Following the session, the second workshop, “Magnetic poetry”, was held. The idea behind this workshop was to first individually write a response to ANEE’s main research question, i.e. “How do changing imperial dynamics impact social group identities and lifeways over a millennium?”, and then formulate answers in small groups. Then, in order to approach the question and the answers in new and creative ways, each group was tasked with piecing together a version of their answer using a varied assortment of magnetic poetry sets. The poetic creations were naturally read aloud for everyone to enjoy. After the day’s academic programme, the participants were treated to a tasty dinner at restaurant Härg.
The following morning, Joanna Töyräänvuori presented the ANEE white paper: collaborative writing as a tool of interdisciplinary research, in the writing of which participated also Ellie Bennett and Rick Bonnie. Tero Alstola and Andrea Berlin then gave their talk Seals and personal identity in the Murashu archive. Thanks to both groups for the interesting talks. After coffee and a light bite, the second session was held, titled “Religious phenomena and social networks”, consisting of the following fascinating papers.
- Sensing divinity: smelling gods in the ancient Greek world (Esther Eidinow, keynote)
- Neo-Assyrian imperial religion counts: a quantitative approach to the affiliations of kings and queens with their gods and goddesses (Tero Alstola, Heidi Jauhiainen and Saana Svärd with Amy Rebecca Gansell)
- Imperial New Year celebrations: stars, gods, taxes and debts (Caroline Wallis)
It was then time for the third and final workshop: “Elevator pitch for exit strategy”. The Centre of Excellence is after all coming to end, and while the focus is currently on carrying ANEE’s promising projects to their fruition, it is also good to keep an eye toward the future.
The social programme for Thursday’s evening consisted of a lively quiz designed by Rotem Avneri Meir, Repekka Uotila and Paula Gheorghiade.
The floor was opened on Friday morning with Doğa Karakaya’s thought-provoking presentation Recent advances in the archaeobotany of 1st millennium BCE: a view from the northern Levant. This was followed with a snappy “poster slam” featuring the authors and organised by Lena Tambs.
The academic programme was concluded with the valuable comments from ANEE’s Scientific Advisory Board, represented this year by Andrea Berlin, who finished by inviting ANEE’s team leaders (Saana Svärd, Jason Silverman and Antti Lahelma) to share a critical fork in the road in their careers. The team leaders, in turn, prompted all of the annual meeting participants to share their own fork tales.
Before boarding the ferry back to Helsinki, the annual meeting participants made a walking tour of Tallinn’s old harbour environment, guided by Priit Lätti from the Estonian Maritime Museum, who shared fascinating stories regarding his own shipwreck excavations and pesky seals. Quite fitting the shipwreck theme, the walking group was caught in a sudden downpour.
The tour brought the group to Kadriorg palace, an early 18th century baroque palace commissioned by Peter I of Russia. Due to the weather, it was decided to leave the palace gardens for another visit. Nowadays, the palace building functions as the Kadriorg Art Museum, the knowledgeable Director of which, Aleksandra Murre, was kind enough to give us a guided tour of the premises, and their art exhibition.