Due to the covid pandemics, the ninth International Symposium on Biomolecular Archaeology, initially scheduled for Sept 22nd-25th 2020, will finally be held on June 1st-4th 2021 ONLINE. It is the first time that this conference is organized in France, a country showing an exceptional bio-cultural heritage and a long-standing tradition in archaeological sciences. The conference is expected to attract 500+ international delegates, spanning the whole range of positions in academia, from first-year graduate students to worldwide leaders in the field of biomolecular sciences, including 30+ ERC awardees. It will include 2 keynote talks, 13 sessions (87 oral communications) and 1 poster session (105 posters in total).

Background: The last decade, and the major technological innovations that have emerged in high-throughput DNA sequencing, mass spectrometry, imaging and computational science have truly revolutionized archaeological science. This has provided unprecedented opportunities to leverage the full archaeological record, including small organic residues and biomolecules, in order to reconstruct our evolutionary past at unprecedented resolution. Biomolecular archaeology provides a direct snapshot of how ancient societies and groups lived. Past (human) groups can for example be tracked through space and time, but also how they became adapted to their environment and responded to global environmental crises and historical epidemics. Biomolecular archaeology can also measure the impact of our activities on the environment and the communities we interact with. The conference will represent the whole breadth of research areas in biomolecular archaeology at a time of exponentially increasing possibilities. It will also address new emerging technologies as well as best current methodological standards.

NEW to ISBA9!

There will be three main changes compared to previous editions. First, the conference will start with a keynote talk by Prof Tamsin O'Connell, University of Cambridge:

and will end with a second keynote by Prof Christina Warinner, Harvard University & MPI-SHH, Jena:

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Second, the poster session will be held in the afternoon of the second conference day.

Third, a total of nine young scholars will be shortlisted across the full range of topics to present their work in three sessions closing the first three conference days. On this occasion, the best speaker will receive the first ISBA Future’s Fellow Award.

We look forward to seeing you at ISBA9!