Blue!

🚨DEADLINE ON FRIDAY!🚨 Do you do art-related archaeological research? Are you itching to discuss how we identify individual artists in the past, or the agency art had in societies? Then make sure to get your abstracts in for @tag2025york.bsky.social! You can send them to me at: izzywisher@cas.au.dk 🏺

Join me and @izzywisher.bsky.social at @tag2025york.bsky.social this December! Abstract deadline is 1st August

ORGANISER(S): Izzy Wisher and Derek Parrott AFFILIATION: Aarhus University CONTACT: Izzy Wisher, izzywisher@cas.au.dk ABSTRACT: Art was, and continues to be, an active agent in societies. The first traces of artistic behaviour can be glimpsed in etched patterns produced nearly 100,000 years ago, and flourished into the rich, material culture visible in a wide array of both prehistoric and historic societies. It has the relational power to build new connections between individuals, generate cultural identities, or exert political or religious authority over a population. There have been significant efforts in recent years to shift away from “grand theories” of art – whether typological or narrative in nature – to instead appreciate the dialogical, multisensorial, and distributed engagements of art making and reception. Yet there remains a central challenge. In the fragmentary archaeological evidence of past artistic actions, how can we visualise individual artisans? In this session, we intend to bring together a diverse range of perspectives that examine art from a range of spatial and temporal contexts to identify the actions of individual artists in the past. We particularly encourage submissions that have developed new theoretical and high-resolution methodological approaches to address this challenge. Our session will not be limited in period or object type – the organisers themselves specialise in Palaeolithic art (IW) and Viking Age art (DP), but share a common theoretical thread in their conceptions of art. Themes could therefore include, but are not limited to: Material engagements in artistic practices Art and agency perspectives Craft networks and the role of the artisan High-resolution digital modelling Archaeometric approaches to art

How can we visualise the agency of art and artists in past societies? Mine and @dparrott.bsky.social's session at @tag2025york.bsky.social intends to bring together exciting new research to explore this question! Interested? Why not submit an abstract!✋ 🎨🖌️🏺

Photo of a PhD dissertation entitled “Models and Moulds: Berdal brooch moulds from Viking Age Ribe through the lens of 3D modelling”

A photo of two people having wine.

A photo of five people standing in front of a red brick building

Officially Dr. Parrott!

My pal wrote a book! I have read a chunk of it and I can say it’s pretty great. If you have any interest at all in Rome, I can highly recommend (it’s out now!)

Chocolate cake with raspberries and blueberries shaped like Viking Age oval brooch

One happy boy sitting in front of his completed thesis on a computer screen.

3 years ago I completely uprooted my life and moved to Denmark, to begin my PhD. Yesterday I handed in my thesis for examination. These have been some of the most challenging and rewarding years of my life, and it’s hard to believe it’s over.

(Thanks to
@izzywisher.bsky.social for the brooch cake)

A purple and green dancing cartoon bear

A close up of an oval shaped brooch depicting two squat mammalian creatures with large ears that are grabbing at their mouths

A good friend (@nateswitzer.bsky.social) recently pointed out to me that the gripping beasts adorning early 9 c. oval brooches are essentially just the Grateful Dead bears and now it’s all I can see

📸 me (brooch is from the Danish Island of Fyn)

Another brilliant paper by a brilliant archaeologist, and I’m not even biased a little bit

Can confirm

Interested in the #Gjellestad #Viking ship discovered a few years ago? Read all about its context in this special issue of the journal Viking. journals.uio.no/viking/issue...

Why did our ancestors make startling art in dark, firelit caves? | Aeon Essays New research transports us back to the shadowy firelight of ancient caves, imagining the minds and feelings of the artists

Want to know more about why our Ice Age ancestors make art in the all-encompassing darkness of deep caves? Why not read my Aeon essay, that explores the sensorial experience of Palaeolithic cave art making 👇

(It also serves as a perfect introduction to my research!)

aeon.co/essays/why-d...

Would love to be added!

I guess I should introduce myself- I’m an archaeology PhD researcher at Aarhus who’s project focuses on the intersections between craft and art in the Viking Age, 3D scanning, and oval brooches from the early Viking Age (early 9th c) (like this gorgeous example from western Norway)

Went hunting for Bronze Age burial mounds yesterday with @dparrott.bsky.social! It was just a little bit windy 💨