Welcome to the second 'The Transformation of Europe in the Third Millennium BC' conference

Mark your calendars as the second hybrid conference pursuing to develop and deepen the aspects that in recent years have contributed to outlining a new interpretative framework of the cultural and social transformation of Europe in the Third Millennium BC is taking place mid-April in Budapest, Hungary.

We are proud to present you yet another exciting cross-disciplinary conference: The 'Transformation of Europe in the Third Millennium BC' conference initiative is set to continue in April in Budapest, Hungary. This hybrid conference will bring more exciting progress in our understanding of Third Millennium BC archaeology in Europe.

The Part 1 of this conference series took place last October in Riva del Garda, Italy and it mostly dealt with the Bell Beaker phenomenon in Europe. The website is still up; so feel free to have a look at: www.TransformEurope1Riva2023.com

Since then, we have been busy setting up the Part 2 conference of our initiative and make sure its program gets as exciting as the one of Part 1. The conference will take place on 24-27 April and it now has its website ready: www.TransformEurope2Budapest2024.com.

This second conference - under the local guidance of Gabriella Kulcsár, the Institute of Archaeology HUN-REN RCH, and funding by the ERC YMPACT project and National Cultural Fund of Hungary - will be held in the Research Centre for Human Sciences of Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. 

The conference will cover the late Fourth and first half of the Third Millennium BC, and here particularly Yamnaya, Globular Amphoras and Corded Wares in the east, center and north of the Continent. There will be the following six thematic sessions:

  1. Early Steppe interactions from the mid to the end of Fourth Millennium BC between Caucasus and Carpathians;
  2. Yamnaya divided? Yamnaya East – Yamnaya West;
  3. In the Carpathian Basin and around at the end of Fourth and in the first half of the Third Millennium BC;
  4. Globular Amphoras in changing worlds; and
  5. Corded Wares and parallel societies in the Third Millennium BC.
  6. A special session at the end of the conference will be devoted to the ‘Big Picture’ of Eurasia, bringing also both conferences together, while altogether emphasizing migrations, interactions/admixture and cultural change.

We encourage you take a look at the program, and feel free to register by March 28, 2024 via this site. You are warmly welcome in Budapest to take part in person or to join us remotely via our streaming service. 

In case you have research materials related to the end of the fourth and first half of the third millennium BC that you want to present, please consider submitting a poster. We will also be able to publish the posters online on the conference website.

We look forward to your participation, 


Franco Nicolis (Archaeological Heritage Office, Trento, Italy)

Volker Heyd (University of Helsinki, Finland) 

Gabriella Kulcsár (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary)