 Thank you first of all and very much for to the EAA for inviting me. It's a great honor to give this key lecture It's such an extreme honor for me being In our geometry now 12 years to to have the opportunity to give it a lecture in EAA is a is a dream so thank you very much for this opportunity and I Will like to tell you when when I was asked to give this lecture then I was thinking okay what should I talk about I start to get really really nervous because there's many possibilities I think and Should I talk about my present projects? Should I talk about future projects? And what I thought was maybe most timely is to talk what we know what we normally do not talk about in our geometry That is what we cannot say with our geometry and I will come into what I mean personally What our geometry cannot tell and this will be there for a quite personal talk. I hope you can bear with me with that So first oh here I Will tell you a little bit what our geometry how we define our geometry and I have to say when I say Archaeometry I also mean Archaeological science as a whole and I think our geometry is is a complex field of Many fields in one and I will come back to that what I mean with this And I will go then and talk about a little bit about numbers and data and that can be Interpret in many different Ways depending on the context and I will come with one example of what I mean by that Then I will go on talking about the recent studies that in my view at least is showing signs of Archaeometry moving forward Towards a more or a better integration using our geometry to suggest the wise And I will also give some examples of that and then I will come with some concluding remarks And before I start I would like to quote actually Two scholars that work also within this interdisciplinary field who wrote a paper about Archaeological theory versus archaeological science and they write that we should no longer differentiate between archaeologists on one hand and Archaeological science on the other and then science space archaeology today plays an important role In the formulations of new theories and in challenging long-standing assumptions in archaeology, and I am I agree with this this point of view Totally and that we are moving somehow forward The interesting thing is that one of the authors killick He wrote another paper the same year and and wrote but in spite of its many successes Archaeological science is not yet a mature field of science and archaeological scientist Also need to be aware of Potential sensitivity to the work and to work to build trust and this is something that I think we are all that are working with Archaeometry something that we're really Kind of working with to to make this happen in a better way And I think it's important to understand that I think it is true that is not a mature field yet If we have to this define archaeometry one archaeometry is I try to look in the net for pictures because I think pictures sometimes can give you the Best answers to define something and it was actually very difficult to to find a picture that could Embrace everything that archaeometry is But I found one and this is from the University of Missouri I'm Apologize for the there is not very good resolution. That's the best I could do Because this is a logo of their archaeometry laboratory and what I think is interesting and actually shows my point is that This logo is including actually nine different small logos and each of these logos actually explains a whole field by their own and Actually, if we start to think about our chemistry we can have even any more many more logos To add to this one to make our geometry be represented in all the different fields that we are working on when we're talking about Archaeometry, so I think this logo explains very well the complexity that we have within our geometry If you look in other home page, this is from the Freiburg University And this is a definition of what we think Archaeometry is and is the knowledge and methods of natural sciences to solve Archaeological questions and this is also a way how we normally define our geometry But if we want to define it or explain it in a broader sense because when I normally people ask me People that do know where it with archaeology, but they say what do you work with and I and then I start to sweat And if I have to explain what archaeometries is so complicated so Because you can start to say well archaeometry can be many things it can be anything from Working with pottery and making some petrographic analysis to say something about where the clay comes from But it can also be something about working with lead isotopes analysis still with some ceramics But looking only and the glaze and where the glaze comes from making lead isotope analysis But it can also be something to do with textiles and the doing for example Electro-microscope analysis of the fibers to say something about the fibers and how they were made You can do HPLC analysis to say something about if these fibers were dyed with organic dyes Or you can do of course run to mice tropes also to say something were Potentially the raw material came from So it's many many things you can do Really tremendous things and more and more also with human remains you can do stabilizer tropes analysis that we heard before You can do DNA proteomics calculus analysis osteological analysis The possibilities are many So if we go back again to actually the home page of the free ball University and how they Try to explain what archaeometries I think they do it quite well here when they Show here in the top that you have all these different fields So you can have from earth science to mathematics to physics chemistry life sciences and in the bottom They explains what this can be used for in Archaeology, so how do we use them in when we're talking about the archaeometry? so Whatever you choose of all these answers if somebody asked you what is a chemistry they are all right But nowadays we tend to because we have to be simple We normally tend to say only this even though we know it incorporates Everything else and I think this is a little bit the same when we're talking about the papers that we write today In archaeological science or in archaeometry that actually we are limited in what we can explain in the paper And would mean much more, but this is not always possible to put all in this paper Sometimes we can put it in this planetary information, but as we heard yesterday in several of the sentience that at least I was in That normally people do not read this So this is difficult to find the balances where can we make it to explain the whole thing? so My career to archaeometry was not a direct one was a little bit indirect Interact in a way, but for me archaeology and I come and geology they are Very well fitting together, and I have always been split between the two So I'm I feel very blessed that I could do both in In academia, but I started working in I did my master's degrees in iswa in Greenland Where we work with the oldest rocks on earth in the iswa supracostal belt of Greenland and these rocks they have been going through and they are 1,700 about million years old so they have been growing through their life through many many many different Processes so their identity their original original identity has changed through time through the processes of Pressure and and temperature So is there that we I started to work with isotopes to kind of see what we could With the help of isotopes say what they were originally So it's there that I started to understand what isotopes could be used for and it can be used for many things But to maybe to come back tell you the story of these rocks But what is more important? I learned about that the data or the numbers can actually Say many different things depending on the interpretation that you give them so numbers as just data Should not be necessarily regarding only as absolutes But they also have to be interpreted within a contextual framework and this is the key Especially when we're talking about archaeometry to understand that they're not just absolutes We all the time put some interpretation on them And they can all be valid So to give you some example of what I mean with these with numbers and data I will show you some of the Christian Christians Work in these projects the rise one and the rise two that I'm also participating in and also some of the data that we use in taste of rancid women and people some of the projects that I direct and One of the last papers that we did that just came a couple of weeks ago Is the mapping human mobility during the third and second millennium VC in present-day Denmark? And here you can see all the sites that we did these are seven thirty seven sites in total and We studied these 88 individuals and they come from a very wide range of Of grave types so from gallery graves to other megalithic tombs to burial mounds to bog finds and to flat graves and if we put the data from this individual the strontium isotopic data from these individuals and We order them according to the sample numbers that we have given them within the rise one project So you can see there randomly in a way Then we get this diagram And as you can see the diagram so these are sorry I have to go back these are the people so the X-axis and the y-axis is the strontium Isotropic ratios if you look at this you will see okay Yeah, there seems to be something that most of the individuals lie have low values But otherwise there doesn't seem to be no obvious pattern when you look at this Let's see if we put the same values the same data But we plot it differently so we order them according to strontium isotope values as a bar diagram So from highest strontium isotopic values to lowest so think this is the same and Let's assume that we don't know nothing about the baseline in this area and we use this to say something about the baseline for example So we could for example say okay, where is the first break that we find and one of them could be here Okay, this will be about 60% of the individuals that represent that But maybe another scholar we say I think the first break is here And this represents 80% of the populations But it could be another one and says I think the first break is here And it represents 90% of the populations to be local and the rest no local. I Think it's just to represent these represents for me at least the fact that you can because all these interpretations are valid But and they are using the same numbers But they can tell you different things And this is something that we constantly need to keep in mind I think so if we put another parameter to these the same numbers and we put the C14 values So you can see here in the x-axis you have the radiocarbon dates into sigma in the in the in the bars in And then you can see if you if you say this is what we consider That's what we consider the the gray background the light gray background is what we consider to be the baseline And then you can see it of course chronologically you can see that most individuals again fall of course in the lowest values And that means that the majority of them individuals here are local But there's a few known locals all the time So there seems to be a continuity in mobility But there's seen something also to happen very clear when you put them like this There is a clear shift in time in mobility and there's people coming from places that they did not come from before So we have people coming from new areas than in the previous period So I think this is very interesting to see that the same numbers depending on The parameters that you put them and the context can tell you different stories And it's a matter of interpretation some years ago we actually Started to look at at the cremated remains because we have so many of those of those But so little that we could do with them. So I think to my knowledge This is the first paper that actually look into these subjects to try to do to find a substitute for tooth enamel samples to say something when people To came from using strontium isotope analysis of the Petra's bone And within this study we also Conducted some strontium isotope analysis of some cremated remain as for as our case study and You see these nine individuals and again This is the baseline and most of them fall within the baseline so they're local But there is three there are no local at that time We did not think much about it because it was just a case study to see if we could use this method But now if we look into pictures predictive and we add the 88 individuals that we had before So if the picture looks like this then we can see that this pattern Seems to continues with this high value So the people that comes from new areas that did not come from in the Neolithic But now suddenly people coming from new areas in the Bronze Age not that there are many there's a few Most are definitely local, but the few known locals come from different areas with Strontium isotopic ratios that are higher and more radiogenic than in the previous period and Potentially for far from farther areas not necessarily but potentially So to quote One colleague of my professor in Archaeometry Patek degrees and to my knowledge. He's also the first professor in Archaeometry in Belgium He wrote in his inaugural lecture in the abstract that archaeology is always a matter of interpretation You have to explain your findings and place them into the bigger hole and Also as an archaeologist you make choices based on the environment in which you are working And actually I think the same can be said about archaeometry That so this is what I will add to it is that archaeometry can also be a matter of interpretation so we do not take it as absolute but also as part of interpretation and Also to cite Christian Christian from the EAA in 2017 when he had his Key lecture at EAA. He said that in his experience now work in many years with cross-disciplinary That to work across disciplines takes time and I love when he said and it takes really long time You know he was like and I feel exactly the same way I really think is something that takes really long time and there's something that we have to Take into account also when we apply for projects that we need a lot of time for discussion and dialogue From the beginning to the end and I still think that Even though Archaeometry or archaeological science is not a mature field yet And it will probably not be for many years to come but it's going Forward is moving to a more mature field. So to say and I think is the case when I'm looking at the literature of the recent literature that you can see that people are starting Proposing some kind of the walleye coil wise scenarios. So not just presenting the data But saying something about why what do they mean? so going back to Martin on Torres and and Kilik there where they said that Science-based archaeology today plays an important role in the formulation of new theories And in the challenging of long-lasting assumptions in archaeology, I think that's what we are seeing Again, so that's I think what they also recognize in their in their studies To give an example of how we in our research group We're trying to move forward and come with some kind of Modellings of the wise because like Alison Sheridan in her talk yesterday She say she said that there is a sea of data and this is so true There's so much data and we in normally go for sites or specific regions to look at it But how do we look in bigger terms? So here we try to present a very simple model in the European general of archaeology that was Just recently coming out where we try to look and is a model that probably will change in time and can be added more But it's just to come with a first model so we can discuss why mobility is there So we have first of all what I think is the most important of the four or five type of mobilities is The non-mobility because actually we tend to talk a lot about and people and Journalists are always interested in to talk about the people that move But most of the people do not move and they tell also a very important story And this we also have to remember to focus on So they are there because we have to remember them because for me they they are the ground and They can be for many different so we try to give some Some hypotheses of why they are local and they're of course many many more So is this is just as I said Just a starting point and then we can have point-to-point mobility again for different reasons Back and forth mobility again for different reasons and then we have repeated mobility and this can be two types It can be cyclical mobility or non-cyclical mobility But one of the papers where I think was very good in in showing some step forwards in trying to explain the why Is the is the one which I think is a little bit of a seminal paper of Knipa Adal in 2017 that I should most of you have seen already Where they look at at seven sites in the late from the late neo little bell beaker complex and the early Bronze Age in the Lake River Valley in southern Germany And they have 84 Individuals that they investigated and they did C14 analysis oxygen strontium and metrocondrial DNA and I'm sure you have seen this one also many times, but just again to to repeat their their results This is oxygen versus strontium and these are the females and these are the the males and soobattles and Here is what they consider to be the the local range So it's obvious that there's many females that seem not to be locals why most of the of the males are locals and only few One tile and one male seem to be no local But what I think is interesting in this is that they conclude that The the isotope Races disclose the majority of the females to be non-local While this is the case for only a few males and sub-adults But they go a step farther and try to explain why this is because this will be just saying this for the data tells us That's what the number is going to tell us. That's our interpretation of the numbers But they go a step farther farther and they write that the results also attest to female mobility as the driving force For regional and super regional communication and exchange at the dawn of European Metal ages, so I think these shows again We are moving forward, but there's more examples of this kind and they are coming as we speak I think so very recently also from this year. I think it was in January This paper from Kavassu di Iral in plus one where they investigate in northern Italy mobility in northern Italy And I'm sorry that I put a lot of bronze age, but this is the period that I'm working on So excuse me for that, but I think it's extremely interesting period and They investigated 104 individuals 50 inhumansions and 54 cremations from three different sites from different periods within Within the bronze age and they did also oxygen strontium and Osteological analysis of them and this is the oldest of the three sites So these are the results of the oldest of the three sites and you have here oxygen versus strontium isotopic values and They represent if you look at the numbers here, maybe they're too small to see but here is like a kind of a blow-up picture of what we normally will Do when we when we do a diagrams for strontium and you will see this just in a second, but the authors here think that They interpret these values to say something that the early bronze age population at this side of Santa Eurasia might be regarded as rather mobile but mobile within a very small regional area So if we go back to the third of the three sites that they investigated this is from the Babiani and We see we put the numbers from Santa Eurasia on top of this Then we get sorry Then we get this so you can suddenly see how different it is So yes, all these people might have been local, but here we can see that is a whole different picture from from this site than it was in the in the site before and The range of values or the interpretation of values is very different. So here the authors of course interpret that there's mobility That our the results suggest that 20 out to 28 out 16 individuals are not indigenous Both from they some come from the hinterland and some come from areas that are farther away Of course as you can see here with some values that are so high and These people that have moved through their life and It seems that the red ones are females that there's also in this case more females that are moving than men So these are the the models that they did that I think Explained quite well why they mean so in the first one where you have mobility But within a smaller region and the last one where they you have mobility but in a much broader sense you have internal mobility within the region, but you also have much farther away and I don't know if you can see it, but most of these people here are females But here again is an example of the why so they don't only just interpret the data, but they go a step farther and This suggests they write that this suggests that a demographic perspective the processes towards a more complex Social political system in Bronze Age northern Italy was triggered by a largely but not completely Internal process stemming from the dynamics of intra-polity networks and local and rational relational power relationships So again is another example of this why and one of the last ones that came I think a few weeks ago This is a investigative mobility of livestock in Bronze Age West Frisia in the Netherlands By Bruce Goydall and I think this is very interesting because also They also mentioned this in the paper that we sometimes forget to look also at livestock And I think livestock has really a very high importance for for for archaeology and for humans So I think we is great that there's coming some papers looking into this as well mobility of the livestock And in this paper they have six Bronze Age sites from five different locations and they analyze 52 cattle From settlement in context and six sheep goat from settlement as context as well And they did the strontium isotope analysis on those and here are the results that they had and here you can see the different sites and The strontium isotopic ratios and between the two bars is what they interpret to be the local baseline So you can see most of the animals are local, but there are three individuals two cattle and one sheep goat that is not local and They could as well just say okay, this provides that Evidence for long distance or exchange of livestock, but they try to go into the why which I think is the interesting part And that's also why I I love archaeology. That's it trying to explain the why And they write besides their monetary value We suggest that livestock and in particular cattle may have been perceived as equal to people in terms of labor and Production and as members as as members of the household I think this is fantastic to to it's a fantastic. I mean thought I think to to To take it there and try to explain one scenario of the why Um, maybe in in the studies we have made we we would love to also look more into the why if we go back into the Into the data that that we have produced in Denmark and we look at at this change we see in mobility And then there is a new paper coming. So this is the change that we see in human remains But there's a new paper by Heidi Neuregoerdel That also came in plus one one about a month ago, and it was super interesting to see that They made analysis Some geochemical analysis including lead isotope analysis of over 200 metal objects From Denmark and they could see that first of all there was a huge increase here I don't know if you can read but this is metal per weight per hundred years So you could they could see a huge increase in the metal in the amount of metal that was coming into Denmark About in 1600 and at the same point they could see that there was a new source of copper That was dominant coming in and that was probably calco pyrite, which is associated with the mida bag and If we put these things together so more parameters are coming in and maybe we can there Try to see the why or try to explain the why then This is my why so doesn't need to be right. It's just a way to or my interpretation seeing these numbers Is that the increase and change in source of metals might be a result of human mobility from new places and Yesterday I was in one of these sessions that were talking about mobility And it was very interesting because the concluding remarks of Professor Colleen Renfrew was saying that if I understood right That's how I understood it at least is that he could see from all the papers that are coming and all the presentations that If you look at the Neolithic and end of the Bronze Age and there's a lot of studies Especially based on DNA that you can see that there are these massive migrations, but it seems to be different Towards the Bronze Age and that you're starting to see Individual migration and he said that maybe what we are seeing is moving traders And maybe I think actually he's very right because we are singles We are seeing single individuals that are moving and at the same time at least in our area It seems to happen very parallel to the metal trade or the change in the metal trade so I think this is an interesting scenario also to look at and from the time I have worked a lot especially with with Professor Christian Christiansen in In all these very big Project and also in the center of textile research where we can see we work a lot Cross-disciplinarity in within cross-disciplinarity I think what I learned that if you want to get fruitful Archaeometry you need fruitful teamwork and to get that you need lots of times of dialogue patience and respect So in my view Archaeometry cannot tell you why things happened, but it can provide you or it can provide us with some additional clues of the what happened and To end with With the the EAA theme of this year. I think Archaeometry can help us think beyond paradigms Thank you