Czech yourself before you wreck yourself: 19th EAA Annual Meeting in Pilsen

The annual meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) is almost upon us and in this week's blog post Rachel Young, Maney Publishing's new Executive Publisher in archaeology and heritage, cherry picks the sessions that catch her eye:

 
"I’ve been looking forward to attending the 2013 EAA Meeting for some time. Looking at the programme I feel a bit like a kid in a sweet shop. Generally anything with the words ‘lithic, ‘stone’, and ‘landscape’ catches my eye, and there are plenty of sessions to choose from in this year’s programme.

As there are so many enticing sessions on offer it’s been hard work honing my list. The ‘Public Archaeology’ session on Thursday 5th September is a ‘must attend’. Lorna Richardson has co-organised a round table to discuss the definition of the discipline which should be lively. It will be interesting to see Estella Weiss-Krejci’s session on ‘Archaeology meets modern art: artists’ approaches to prehistoric data’ given the dismissive comments made about the contribution of modern art in many reviews of the British Museum’s recent ‘Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind’ exhibition. Don Henson and Diane Scherzler’s session on digital heritage also catches my eye as I have an infatuation with laser scanning and its potential in multi-scale archaeological interpretation after a recent scanning demonstration. The main digital heritage session, ‘New digital developments in heritage management and research’, is co-organised by Julian Richards, Franco Niccolucci and Elizabeth Jerem and held over Friday. I am planning to see as much of this as I can, digital archives, data standards and open access are going to be core concerns for archaeology publishers over the coming years!
 
Aleks Pluskowski’s session on ‘Indigenous Communities in Conquered Landscapes’, looks fascinating as does 'Creating Landscape Visions: managing the past while imagining the future'. I’m hoping that there will be some imaginative presentations and perhaps some new methods of presentation.
 
Iain Banks will be presenting at ‘The Archaeology and Heritage of the Prisoner of War experience: researching and managing a fragile resource’. As this overlaps with the main digital heritage session I will do my conflict archaeology stint in the ‘Archaeology and cultural heritage during and after armed conflict’ session on Saturday afternoon.
 
With all of this it looks like I won’t get a lithics fix this year, even though these two sessions look very interesting: ‘New Perspectives on Lithic Scatters and Landscapes: Different scales, different approaches?’ and ‘Managing lithic tools: The contribution of technological and functional studies to the understanding of stone tool management during the Neolithic’, especially if there was a discussion on stone selection.
 
Do please come and visit the Maney Publishing stand to tell me what I’ve missed. If I’m not there you know what sessions I’m likely to be attending or just possibly I'm somewhere enjoying a cold Czech beer!"