[1] Women, Sacred Landscapes, and Ritual Mobility in the Ancient Mediterranean.
Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, 2026, Conference Session 174.
Alexander Nagel

We are pleased to announce a Call for Papers for the session "Women, Sacred Landscapes, and Ritual Mobility in the Ancient Mediterranean" as part of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in 2026 in Athens in Greece, August 26-29. The deadline to submit your paper proposal would be Thursday, 5 February 2026. More information is available here -- Conference Session 174: https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA2026/contributions

The session explores the intersections of gender, movement and sacred space in the ancient Mediterranean by foregrounding women’s active engagement with religious space and cult. Across diverse cultural and ethnic contexts, women carried out acts of devotion that transcended domestic boundaries and reshaped religious environments. For this session, we seek papers examining the impact of female agency on the formation of votive and cult practices beyond household and town settings, from peri-urban sanctuaries and cave shrines to sacred centers and distant dedication sites.

We welcome papers that explore women’s religious identities, practices and offerings and the social roles through which women negotiated agency and community membership. While the ancient Greek world is central, papers addressing other Mediterranean contexts or cross-cultural interactions are also encouraged. Of particular interest are expressions of women’s ritual agency along routes of colonization, maritime trade, warfare, migration and refugee movement, and enslavement —contexts where ritual ex-votos circulated across cultural spheres and in which devotion may have intersected with obligation, secrecy or despair. Contributions should consider the material, textual, and iconographic evidence with special emphasis on the embodied ritual practice.

Interdisciplinary approaches drawing on anthropology, art history, religious studies, and ancient history are welcome to illuminate how women’s activity intersected with dedication journeys and cross-cultural exchange. Ultimately, this session seeks to reassess the gendered dimensions of ancient cult and move beyond traditional male-centered or binary interpretive frameworks. It seeks to highlight women both independently and in conjunction with men sustaining cult traditions. By tracing the relationship between female devotion, space and mobility, we gain insight into networks of gendered power and memory that shaped a connected religious world through women’s ritual presence and movement.

Please send a title (max. 20 words), an abstract (max. 300 words) and your affiliation via the EAA website for our session #174.

Session Organizers:
Alexander Nagel (USA, State University of New York, FIT)
Stella Katsarou (Greece, Ephorate of Palaeoanthropology-Speleology)
Agathi Karadima (Greece, Independent Researcher)

For further information, please contact: Alexander Nagel (alexander_nagelfitnyc.edu)

[2] Archaeological Objects in Motion: Un/Belonging, Re/Integration, Dis/Placement.
Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, 2026
Leticia R. Rodriguez

Recent work on the archaeology of migration has fruitfully adopted interdisciplinary and contemporary methodological approaches to the study of human movement in the ancient world. This session seeks to complement this often data-driven research by exploring object-centered transculturalisms and biographies of ancient material culture in motion: i.e., un/belongings, re/integrations, and dis/placements deeply entangled with and/or reflective of various ‘migratory’ processes, as understood through objects, practices and human agents of circulations past, present, and future. How are such movements visually commemorated, or materially documented (and re-documented) in and across the ancient world? In what ways do ‘immigrant’ objects resignify, reinforce, alter, and interact with established cultural and religious landscapes, in ancient and modern contexts alike? With regard to the afterlives of ancient objects in later periods, the historical canon in material culture studies has focused heavily on early modern artisanal production, reproduction and newfound global circulations, while 19th-century histories of commerce and materiality in relation to antiquity remain relatively understudied. Therefore, we invite papers that address these questions (and more) in regions spanning the ancient Mediterranean world, broadly defined; proposals might include the examination of ancient objects created by or for migrant communities, objects that have themselves become émigrés through networks of movement, or case studies on the integration, incorporation and/or reevaluation of (previously) ‘foreign’ artefacts in academic and museological discourses. These examples are only meant to be suggestive, however, and papers on related questions of material culture in motion are also most welcome.

Organizers invite scholars to submit proposals for 15-minute presentations. Questions about the session can be directed to Dr. Leticia R. Rodriguez at lrrodriguez9uh.edu.

Key information:

Submission period: December 19, 2025 – February 5, 2026
Submission portal: https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2026/login
Important guidelines:

Membership: You must have an EAA ID to submit. Membership payment for 2026 is not required at the time of submission.
Please always include EAA IDs for your co-authors if they already have one.
Abstract text: Between 150-300 words.
Title: Max. 20 words.
Further details:

Please find further details regarding contributions at https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA2026/contributions.
For questions or assistance, please visit the EAA 2026 conference website or contact us at helpdeske-a-a.org.