GAO Conference
We are delighted to announce the Call for Papers for the GAO Conference 2026!
This year’s GAO Conference will focus on aspects of health, illness/sickness, as well as manners
of treatment in the past. Securing health has always been and will be a panhuman goal. However,
different peoples in the longue durée of history have had different attitudes regarding healthy states,
causes of illness, and the necessary means to treat it. As archaeology progressively embraces
interdisciplinarity, new methods and theories shed more light in matters of health and ways of
living. Therefore, themes of this conference could include but are not limited to:
• Physical and mental health/illness
• Approaches to ancient medicine
• The cult of healing deities and magico-religious healing
• Aspects of disability in the past
• The role of diet in health and treatment
• Environmental factors contributing to health and sickness
• Socio-cultural behaviours regarding ailments
We warmly invite graduate students and early career researchers from all fields of Archaeology and
Archaeological sciences (osteoarchaeology, palaeopathology, archaeobotany etc.), and across all
geographical locations and historic eras, to participate by submitting an abstract of up to 300
words for a poster or paper they would like to present. The paper presentations are expected to
last 15 minutes followed by 5 minutes of questions. The proceedings of the Conference will be
turned into a peer-reviewed publication.
Please send your abstracts to gao2026@arch.ox.ac.uk by the 16th of January 2026.
We are looking forward to seeing your work!
Kind regards,
Evangelos Skoupas and Logan Davis
GAO Conference 2026 Co-organisers
