22/12/2025
Seafaring Modelling Session in EAA 2026 – Call for Submissions Now Open!
Season’s greetings! We are happy to announce that we are organising a session ‘Seafaring Modelling as Part of Inter- and Intradisciplinary Inquiry’ at EAA 2026 in Athens (26–29 August). The session aims to move beyond the technicalities of model creation to explore what seafaring models can reveal about past societies and conditions through inter- and intradisciplinary perspectives. You can find the full abstract below this message. The topic can be approached in many different ways, and we warmly invite contributions that, taken together, span a wide range of fields and subfields of study. Papers from early-career scholars are very welcome.
The call of contributions is open from 19 Dec 2025 until 5 February 2026 on the EAA webpage https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2026/login. The number of our session is 36 and you can find it under the theme ‘7. Interaction, connectivity and mobility’.
If you have any questions, please contact [email protected].
Hope to see you in Athens!
Wesa, Elisabeth & Ermioni
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Organisers:
Wesa Perttola, University of Helsinki, Finland
Elisabeth Holmqvist-Sipilä, University of Helsinki, Finland
Ermioni Vereketi, NKUA, Greece/University of Cologne, Germany
Session format: Regular Session
Theme: 7. Interaction, connectivity and mobility
Keywords: Seafaring models, Maritime Movement, Connectivity, Interdisciplinarity
Seafaring Modelling as Part of Inter- and Intradisciplinary Inquiry
Seafaring represents the interplay of human endeavour, wind, and water, while seafaring models seek to computationally simulate these intricate relationships. Consequently, such models are inherently, and by necessity, inter- and intradisciplinary (i.e. involving multiple fields or subfields, hereafter IID) efforts, combining data from fields such as archaeology, history, GIS, and the environmental sciences. The maritime connections they simulate did not operate in isolation but functioned often as integral components of past societies, which makes it possible to utilise seafaring models as tools for other forms of scientific inquiry, further amplifying their IID character.
This session aims to bring together scholars who explore seafaring and maritimity — encompassing seas, rivers, lakes, and other aquatic landscapes — to showcase the diverse ways in which seafaring models can shed light on human interactions and/or the environmental conditions that underpin them. The reconstructed maritime connections are viewed as components of wider social, economic, and cultural networks, and by situating modelling within these contexts, the session will examine both its interpretative and methodological dimensions.
Particularly welcomed are submissions that look beyond the technical aspects of modelling and examine how seafaring models are used to build interpretative narratives within IID frameworks. The wide range of topics to be addressed in this session includes seafaring modelling in conjunction with, for example, artefact provenancing, maritime dispersal of humans and other species alongside them, trade networks, and economic calendars, among others. Papers that combine maritime and terrestrial mobility are also encouraged to submit. Overall, the session will highlight how seafaring modelling contributes IID perspectives to the current archaeological discourse in Europe and beyond.
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