The Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (ICUB) is pleased to announce the 35th ArchaeoSciences Seminar.
These seminars are an original initiative of the ArchaeoSciences Platform (ASp) at ICUB that aims to provide a setting for professionals in the Archaeological Sciences field from different parts of the world to share knowledge and transmit meaningful information about the latest issues regarding the current methods and approaches used to study the past. It is also a chance for Romanian students to learn more about the various interdisciplinary aspects of archaeology.
This seminar will take place on 26 June 2024 at 10:00 am (EET), and our guest speaker is Dr. Dragana Filipović from the Kiel University (Germany).
She will give a lecture entitled “Past plant production and use in the central and western Balkans and the ‘maturation’ of archaeobotanical research in the region”.Dragana Filipović is an archaeologist specialising in archaeobotany. She was born in Belgrade (Serbia/former Yugoslavia) in 1976. Before and around that time, archaeobotanical analyses in this part of Europe had been conducted thanks to the efforts of some renowned scholars – Maria Hopf, Jane Renfrew and Willem van Zeist. By the time when Dragana earned her bachelor and master degrees at the University of Belgrade, more archaeobotanical work had been completed in the central and western Balkans, adding further famous names to the list of specialists working in the region, such as Helmut Kroll and Ksenija Borojević. Building upon these foundations, Dragana has generated and shared further knowledge on past plant production and consumption here. Decisive for her archaeobotanical career were the initial training received from Elena Marinova, leading her to conduct archaeobotanical analysis at the Vinča site for her master studies (2004), and her long-term participation in the Çatalhöyük Research Project, Turkey, which led her to completion of the doctoral studies with Amy Bogaard at the University of Oxford, UK (2013). She transferred the knowledge gained in these collaborations to many projects in the Balkans, which she joined initially as an independent archaeobotanist and then as a research associate of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Later she joined the Collaborative Research Centre 1266 at the University of Kiel, Germany, where she designed and coordinated studies at a European level and conducted analyses for prehistoric sites in Germany, Slovakia, Hungary and Serbia. She has published widely and contributed to a number of academic and outreach events.
This seminar will explore the evolution of archaeobotanical research in the central and western Balkans, tracing its development from the early days of limited analysis by external specialists to its maturation into a significant field of study. It will highlight the socio-economic factors influencing this growth, the prehistoric development of plant procurement and use, and the integration of regional findings into broader archaeological narratives. The talk will also discuss modern applications of this knowledge within the cultural contexts of the region.
This event will take place on Wednesday, 26 June 2024, starting at 10:00 am (EET) at the “Dimitrie Brândză” Botanical Garden in Bucharest (https://gradina-botanica.unibuc.ro), Administrative Building, Room P04, ground floor.
We look forward to exciting discussions!
ASp Team