Center for the Human Past
Talks of the Past
Seminars open to academins, studens and researchers interested in interdisciplinary research in fields of palaeogenetics, archaeology and archaeolinguistics.
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Talks of the Past Open Seminar: Archaeology, Genetics and Language, with examples from Germanic and Celtic
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Read more →: Talks of the Past Open Seminar: Archaeology, Genetics and Language, with examples from Germanic and CelticInvited seminar speaker: Kristian Kristiansen – an interdisciplinary researcher, professor of archaeology at the Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg, and an affiliate professor at Globe Institute, Lundbeck Centre for Geogenetics, Copenhagen University.
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Talks of the Past Open Seminar with Gwenna Breton
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Read more →: Talks of the Past Open Seminar with Gwenna BretonTitle & Abstract TBA Gwenna Breton is a geneticist and bioinformatician at the University of Gothenburg.
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Talks of the Past open seminar: From Phonology to Phylogeny: Inferring Language Trees from Cognate Word Forms
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Read more →: Talks of the Past open seminar: From Phonology to Phylogeny: Inferring Language Trees from Cognate Word FormsAbstract Linguistic phylogenies are commonly inferred from abstract cognate classifications that encode relationships among lexemes. Although widespread, this practice has well-recognised limitations: it discards phylogenetic signal contained in segmental word forms, restricts the range of evolutionary questions that can be addressed, and treats cognacy judgments, which are hypotheses in their own right, as observed data.…
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Talks of the Past Open Seminar: The Yamnaya Impact on Prehistoric Europe 5000 Years Ago, speaker Volker Heyd
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Read more →: Talks of the Past Open Seminar: The Yamnaya Impact on Prehistoric Europe 5000 Years Ago, speaker Volker HeydAbstract This lecture examines the westward migration of Yamnaya populations from the Pontic-Caspian steppes into southeastern Europe around 3100–3000 BCE, reaching as far as the Tisza region in present-day Hungary. Archaeological evidence, particularly distinctive kurgan burials with standardised funerary practices, marks their presence across regions such as Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Hungary. Despite the apparent…
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Talks of the Past Open Seminar: Cultural Creolization in Ostrobothnia, Finland: An Interdisciplinary View on Burials, Exchange, and Social Identity, speaker Anna Wessman
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Read more →: Talks of the Past Open Seminar: Cultural Creolization in Ostrobothnia, Finland: An Interdisciplinary View on Burials, Exchange, and Social Identity, speaker Anna WessmanThe seminar was canceled due to unexpected events out of anyone’s control. We apologize for inconvenience. Abstract This talk explores a remarkable Iron Age burial from Pukkila in western Finland, dating to around AD 700, where a cremated individual was laid to rest in a boat alongside weapons, ritual objects, and artefacts from across Scandinavia,…
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Talks of the Past Open Seminar: Talking about food in prehistory: Linguistic evidence for dietary practices in Indo-European, speaker Julia Sturm
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Read more →: Talks of the Past Open Seminar: Talking about food in prehistory: Linguistic evidence for dietary practices in Indo-European, speaker Julia SturmAbstract What did prehistoric peoples eat? This question can be approached through various scholarly disciplines, including historical linguistics. More specifically, historical linguistics methodologies are tools for addressing the question of what ancient peoples discussed when they spoke about food, including sourcing, preparing, consuming, and sacrificing it. This talk will examine linguistic evidence for the shared…
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Talks of the Past Open Seminar: Transdisciplinary approaches toward resolving the Austronesian problem, speaker Hugo Reyes Centeno
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Read more →: Talks of the Past Open Seminar: Transdisciplinary approaches toward resolving the Austronesian problem, speaker Hugo Reyes CentenoAbstract Despite consensus on the movement of peoples from mainland Asia to Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific over the past five thousand years, the mode of dispersal and biocultural change remains highly contested. While some hypotheses posit Austronesian-speaking agriculturalists rapidly dispersing via Taiwan, other scenarios postulate, for example, additional dispersal routes, the gradual and…
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Talks of the Past (ToP) Open Seminar: Human skeletal remains of Ilin Island, Mindoro Occidental, Philippines, speaker Tanya Uldin
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Read more →: Talks of the Past (ToP) Open Seminar: Human skeletal remains of Ilin Island, Mindoro Occidental, Philippines, speaker Tanya UldinAbstract Ilin Island, located off the southern coast of Mindoro, possesses favourable geological features, such as numerous caves and rock shelters, that enhance the preservation of archaeological materials. Recent surveys and excavations have revealed a complex settlement history, highlighting the adaptive strategies of human populations in response to climatic and environmental fluctuations. Evidence includes a…
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Talks of the Past (ToP) Open Seminar, 7th May, 2025: Discussing mobility and cultural change in the context of Aegean Neolithization, speaker Mehmet Somel
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Read more →: Talks of the Past (ToP) Open Seminar, 7th May, 2025: Discussing mobility and cultural change in the context of Aegean Neolithization, speaker Mehmet SomelAbstract Mehmet Somel will present some recent results on the first steps of the Neolithic expansion westward, “out-of-Anatolia”. For this study, his group generated 30 new paleogenomes from six settlements in West and Central Anatolia dating to c.10,000-8,000 years ago. The researchers further compiled a digitalized material culture dataset comprising 58 cultural elements, from architecture…
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Talks of the Past (ToP) Open Seminar, 2nd Apr 2025: Uralic spread, Seima-Turbino and flower pots, speaker Outi Vesakoski
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Read more →: Talks of the Past (ToP) Open Seminar, 2nd Apr 2025: Uralic spread, Seima-Turbino and flower pots, speaker Outi VesakoskiAbstract The seminal paper by Grünthal et al. (2022) advances a new scenario of Proto-Uralic disintegration and spread. They suggest a rapid spread of Uralic languages through Common Uralic, a dialect continuum whose breakup formed the Finno-Ugric language families. They suggest that the vector for Uralic spread was the Seima-Turbino trading network (ST), within which…
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Talks of the Past (ToP) Open Seminar, 5th Mar, 2025: Prehistoric plant DNA and the agricultural history of the Canary Islands, speaker Jenny Hagenblad
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Read more →: Talks of the Past (ToP) Open Seminar, 5th Mar, 2025: Prehistoric plant DNA and the agricultural history of the Canary Islands, speaker Jenny HagenbladAbstract The intimate relationship between humans and crop plants means that traces of human cultural practices become embedded in the crop genome. Aspects of past cultures not documented in written records can consequently be studied with genetic analyses of archaeological crop remains. Such analyses, however, come with their own particular set of challenges, not the…