Registration is open for the international conference “Humans and Communities I: Archaeology and Prehistory”

On 29–30 October 2026, the Latvian National Museum of History in collaboration with the interdisciplinary research incubator “The Beginnings of Latvia” will host an international conference titled “Humans and Communities I: Archaeology and Prehistory.” This will launch a series of international conferences thematically dedicated to the community as a persistent yet ever-changing phenomenon in the course of history.

The international conference series Humans and Communities (2026–2029) explores the role of communities as structures for shaping social, political, and economic life across different historical periods in Latvia and the Baltic Sea region. The series treats community not as a fixed category but as a dynamic process — encompassing the formation of bonds in pursuit of shared goals, the creation and maintenance of identity through signs, symbols, and rituals, and the ongoing negotiation of membership and belonging. These characteristics are recognisable across all historical periods and in communities of every scale and kind.

The first conference in the Humans and Communities series focuses on prehistoric societies and on questions of community formation, interaction, and transformation as approached from archaeological and related interdisciplinary perspectives.

The study of communities in prehistory is a complex undertaking, shaped by the particular character of available sources and requiring the integration of insights from multiple disciplines. An ongoing scholarly debate concerns the extent to which evidence from material culture illuminates prehistoric social relationships, identities, and forms of belonging and how other disciplines, including emerging ones, are contributing to obtaining a more consistent picture of interpretations of the social, military, and political structures of the Baltic Sea region prior to the Crusades. However, the material culture provides compelling evidence of possible social hierarchies, diverse cultural traditions, and extensive networks of exchange. Thus, it serves as a persistent catalyst, prompting scholars to return to the interpretation of social structures time and again.

The understanding of fundamental concepts such as kinship, ethnicity, migration, and intercultural contact has been substantially advanced by interdisciplinary research — drawing on linguistics and ethnology alongside the natural sciences, including archaeogenetics, isotopic analysis, and environmental archaeology. These methods and techniques open new avenues for approaching longstanding archaeological questions. The conference explicitly welcomes contributions that engage with this methodological breadth: from field archaeology and artefact analysis to computational approaches, historical linguistics, and biomolecular research. It is through such cross-disciplinary collaboration and methodological innovation that researchers continue to develop fresh perspectives on humans, communities, and prehistoric society in the Baltic Sea region.

The questions of community and social structure, moreover, carry significance that extends well beyond the academy. Interpretations of ethnicity, kinship, and early forms of political organisation continue to shape contemporary national and regional identities, making rigorous, reflexive, and historically informed scholarly engagement with these questions all the more important. The conference welcomes contributions that are attentive to this broader civic and cultural context.

To advance current research on prehistoric societies and to foster new interdisciplinary collaborations in the Baltic region, the conference invites contributions examining how prehistoric communities emerged, functioned, and interacted, with particular attention to the Baltic Sea region and the territory of present-day Latvia.

Conference Themes
The conference welcomes contributions addressing the following themes, among others:
— Archaeological evidence and the interpretation of cultural and social phenomena
— Ethnicity, power, and social hierarchies: interaction and coexistence
— Interdisciplinary approaches – natural sciences, linguistics, and cultural studies – in the study of kinship, migration, and intercultural contacts: possibilities, limitations, and new findings
— Early forms of political organisation and social structure: interpreting material culture alongside written sources
— Linguistic, archaeological, and genetic (aDNA) data in the study of ethnic and linguistic group history and migration
— Material culture as an expression of community identity
— Specialised and professional communities (e.g., traders, artisans, warrior retinues) and their representation in the archaeological record

Please submit using the online form by 15 June 2026.

Presenters will be notified of decisions by 1 July 2026. Selected contributions may be considered for publication in a conference proceedings volume, with further details to be announced in due course.

For further information about the conference series, please contact the organisers at olga.mihelovica@lnvm.gov.lv or liv@lu.l