Call for Papers for TAG 2025, York, UK

Call for papers: 1 June – 1 August
Conference: 15-17 Dec 2025, York, UK
Organisers: Anne Baillot (DARIAH) & Émilie Pagé-Perron (ADS)

A flyer for the Call for Papers, with a red design and information for the panel.

ATRIUM is delighted to invite contributions to the upcoming session at TAG 2025 that critically examine the environmental impact of archaeological practices: both digital and physical. We encourage and support a diverse set of speakers that explore how sustainability challenges can provoke deeper reflection on research workflows, epistemologies, and ethics.

To apply, please send paper abstracts (c. 200 words) by 1 August to Émilie Page-Perron, emilie.page-perron@york.ac.uk .

We welcome papers on topics including (but not limited to):

Assessing the environmental footprint of archaeological methods
Rethinking digital tools and data through a sustainability lens
The role of reuse, open science, and FAIR data in shaping sustainable futures
Colonial legacies and digital inequities in research infrastructures

Towards adaptation: environmental sustainability in archeological workflows

Humanities disciplines generally minimize the environmental impact of their activities by comparing them with natural sciences fields that rely on equipment or heavy computing. By doing so, they discard the systemic character of the environmental impact of scientific activities – the first issue we would like to tackle in this session. To what extent should scientists concern themselves with the environmental footprint of their research activities? Can this lead to epistemological shifts?

Secondly, when it comes to Archeology, the importance of field work (involving carbon-emitting travel) and of the reliance on digital technologies (e.g., for 3D reconstruction or to archive digital surrogates) make it a research area prone to higher emissions than other Humanities disciplines. Which archaeological activities impact the environment, and how could emissions and effect on local biodiversity/water resources be considered in the conception of research settings?

Finally, one way to reduce the environmental footprint of a project is to make it reusable. Sharing resources and infrastructures is key to move towards a more resource-saving way of conducting archeological research. In fact, not everything can be preserved, and the choices in what is made reusable are likely to shape the cultural canon. It requires us to interrogate our own colonial biases, which the technological dimension also emphasizes: while relying on open science tools and FAIR data favors their accessibility and reuse, they suppose a digital literacy that is, in turn, anything but universal. To what extent do digital technologies truly facilitate a sustainable approach to Archeology?

References:

Anne Baillot. 2023. “From Handwriting to Footprinting” in Text and Heritage in the Age of Climate Crisis, Open Book Publishers: Cambridge https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0355

Olivier Berné, Lydiane Agier, Antoine Hardy, Emmanuel Lellouch, Olivier Aumont, Jérôme Mariette, Tamara Ben-Ari. 2022. “The carbon footprint of scientific visibility” in Environmental Research Letters, https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac9b51

Anne-Laure Ligozat, Christophe Brun, Benjamin Demirdjian, Guillaume Gouget, Emilie Jardé, Arnaud Mialon, Anne-Sophie Mouronval, Laurent Pagani, Laure Vieu. 2024. “Setting climate targets: the case of higher education and research” in bioRxiv, https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.03.11.584380 (preprint)