Connecting People and Ideas

Laura Coltofean is an archaeologist and historian whose research focuses on the development of interdisciplinary practices, knowledge production and transfer, social networks, and political ideologies in the history of European archaeology, as well as on gender issues, oppressive behaviours, safety, and well-being in the current archaeological profession. She is a member of Research Cluster 5: History of Archaeology of the German Archaeological Institute. Previously, she was a research assistant, DAAD and DAI Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Römisch-Germanische Kommission of the German Archaeological Institute, Germany (2021-2022), a researcher at the University of Barcelona, Spain (2018-2020), and a museum curator at the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Romania (2012-2018). She is an active member of international professional and scientific networks, such as the European Association of Archaeologists, the Archaeology and Gender in Europe Community, the European Society for the History of Science, and the International Union for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences, some of which she has served as co-chair and secretary. Her recent publications include the edited collections Interdisciplinarity and archaeology: Scientific interactions in nineteenth- and twentieth-century archaeology (Oxbow Books, 2021; with M. Díaz-Andreu), Gender stereotypes in archaeology: A short reflection in image and text (Sidestone Press, 2021; with B. Gaydarska and U. Matic), Handbook of the history of archaeology (Oxford University Press, 2024; with M. Díaz-Andreu), Gender trouble and current archaeological debates (Springer, 2024; with U. Matic, B. Gaydarska and M. Díaz-Guardamino), and Archaeology and the global Cold War: Scientific practices and political ideology (Routledge, forthcoming 2025; with S. Grunwald, F. Link and K. Rösler).

Bettina Arnold obtained her BA in Archaeology from Yale University and her MA and PhD degrees in Anthropology from Harvard University. She is a Full Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Adjunct Curator of European Archaeology at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Her research interests include pre-Roman Iron Age Europe, the archaeological interpretation and analysis of complex societies as reflected in mortuary contexts and the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages; the archaeological interpretation of gender; and the socio-political history of archaeology and museums in nineteenth and twentieth century nationalist and ethnic movements in Europe and the United States. She published a ground-breaking article on the use and abuse of archaeology for political purposes in Nazi Germany in Antiquity in 1990 that has been reprinted repeatedly since first appearing. As a bilingual dual citizen who conducts research in southwest Germany but was raised and educated in the United States, she can relate to the experience, both positive and negative, of serving as a conduit for trans-Atlantic information transfer. The final report of the excavations she co-directed in two early Iron Age burial mounds near the Heuneburg hillfort on the Danube River in Swabia will appear in two languages next year.

László Bartosiewicz is an archaeozoologist working at the Osteoarchaeological Research Laboratory at Stockholm University, Sweden. He studied Animal Science at the University of Gödöllo, Hungary. He was granted a DSc degree by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for his work on the archaeology of cattle exploitation. Between 1978-1995 he worked as full-time researcher at the Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His research interests include human-animal relationships throughout history, as well as the variability of using animals as media in human communication. His specialization in animal palaeopathology helps fine-tuning the osteological evidence of such attitudes towards animals. Bartosiewicz taught archaeozoology at the University of Budapest, Hungary, from 1996 to 2015 and Edinburgh University, United Kingdom, from 2004 to 2015. In 2015 he received the chair in osteoarcheology at Stockholm University. Bartosiewicz has been analyzing animal remains from an archaeological perspective in Hungary, Switzerland, Slovenia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Israel, France, and Bolivia for over forty years. He was elected for two terms president of the International Council for Archaeozoology (2006-2014).