The International Work Group for Palaeoethnobotany (IWGP) is an informal, international collective of archaeobotanists, with the main goal of establishing and maintaining international communication and collaboration by a series of conferences. These conferences focus mainly, but not exclusively, on the study of plant macrofossils in order to reconstruct past subsistence, trade, construction, ritual, and the environment.

Origins

The idea of an international group focussed on human-plant interactions originated at the 7th International Congress of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences in 1966, by the researchers

Maria Hopf Maria Hopf (13 September 1913 – 24 August 2008) was a pioneering archaeobotanist, based at the RGZM, Mainz. Career Hopf studied botany from 1941–44, receiving her doctorate in 1947 on the subject of soil microbes. She then worked in phytop ...

, Klaus-Dieter Jäger, Maria Follieri, Emanuel Opravil, Zdeněk Tempír, Árpád Patay, and

Jane Renfrew Jane Renfrew, Lady Renfrew of Kaimsthorn is a British archaeologist and paleoethnobotanist noted for her studies on the use of plants in prehistory, the origin and development of agriculture, food and wine in antiquity, and the origin of the v ...

, in discussion with Fatih Khafizovich Bakhteev, Moisej Markovič Jakubziner, and

Willem van Zeist Willem van Zeist (March 12, 1924 – October 7, 2016) was a Dutch archaeobotanist and palynologist. He was the director of the ''Biologisch-Archaeologisch Instituut'' at the University of Groningen. Education Van Zeist studied biology at the U ...

. The first meeting in 1968 consisted of 12 people and took place at

Kačina Kačina is a significant Empire style castle in Svatý Mikuláš in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. In 1945, it was designated a national property. History Kačina was built from 1806 to 1824 in place of the defunct medieval ...

, near Prague. The meeting was termed the Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Paläoethnobotanik (IAP). The second meeting took place in Budapest in 1971. The name “International Work Group of Palaeoethnobotany (IWGP)” was adopted in 1983 in Groningen. The IWGP was partly founded in order to enable the compilation of archaeobotanical data, partly as a means of establishing and maintaining an international research network.

Organisation

The IWGP conferences take place triennially. Papers from the conferences were initially published in book form, including ''Plants and Ancient Man'' in 1984 and ''Old World Palaeoethnobotany'' in 1991. In 1992 the journal ''Vegetation History and Archaeobotany'' was founded and became the location for publication of papers emanating from the IWGP conference series. The conferences are usually organized as geographical or methodological themed sessions. Recent conferences have occurred at the

Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle The French National Museum of Natural History, known in French as the ' (abbreviation MNHN), is the national natural history museum of France and a ' of higher education part of Sorbonne Universities. The main museum, with four galleries, is loc ...

Paris in 2016, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2013, and Wilhelmshaven in 2010. The IWGP is overseen a by an international committee of archaeobotanists, including

Naomi Miller Naomi Miller is an archaeobotanist who works in western and central Asia. Miller is based at the University of Pennsylvania. Biography Miller completed her Ph.D. dissertation in 1982 in the Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan ...

Amy Bogaard Amy Bogaard Fellow of the British Academy, FBA is a Canadian people, Canadian archaeologist and Professor of Neolithic and Bronze Age Archaeology at the University of Oxford. Education Bogaard earned a PhD from the University of Sheffield in 2 ...

, and Dorian Fuller. Major achievements are considered as Jürgen Schultze-Motel’s international literature indices, which was continued by Helmut Kroll, which is now the online database ArchBotLit. Another core achievement was 1991’s publication “Progress in Old World Palaeoethnobotany. A retrospective view on the occasion of 20 years of the International Work Group for Palaeoethnobotany“, edited by Willem van Zeist, Krystyna Wasylikowa, and Karl-Ernst Behre, and published by A. A. Balkema.

Previous Conferences

* 19th Conference of the IWGP in

České Budějovice České Budějovice (; german: Budweis ) is a city in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 93,000 inhabitants. It is located in the valley of the Vltava River, at its confluence with the Malše. České Budějovice is t ...

br>2022
* 18th Conference of the IWGP in

Lecce Lecce ( ); el, label=Griko, Luppìu, script=Latn; la, Lupiae; grc, Λουπίαι, translit=Loupíai), group=pron is a historic city of 95,766 inhabitants (2015) in southern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Lecce, the province ...

br>2019
* 17th Conference of the IWGP in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

br>2016
* 16th Conference of the IWGP in

Thessaloniki Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area, and the capi ...

201

* 15th Conference of the IWGP in

Wilhelmshaven Wilhelmshaven (, ''Wilhelm's Harbour''; Northern Low Saxon: ''Willemshaven'') is a coastal town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the western side of the Jade Bight, a bay of the North Sea, and has a population of 76,089. Wilhelmsha ...

br>2010
* 14th Conference of the IWGP in

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

200

* 13th Conference of the IWGP in

Girona Girona (officially and in Catalan language, Catalan , Spanish: ''Gerona'' ) is a city in northern Catalonia, Spain, at the confluence of the Ter River, Ter, Onyar, Galligants, and Güell rivers. The city had an official population of 103,369 in ...

200

* 12th Conference of the IWGP in

Sheffield Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is Historic counties o ...

200

* 11th Conference of the IWGP in

Toulouse Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Par ...

br>1998
* 10th Conference of the IWGP in

Innsbruck Innsbruck (; bar, Innschbruck, label=Bavarian language, Austro-Bavarian ) is the capital of Tyrol (state), Tyrol and the List of cities and towns in Austria, fifth-largest city in Austria. On the Inn (river), River Inn, at its junction with the ...

br>1995
* 9th Conference of the IWGP in

Kiel Kiel () is the capital and most populous city in the northern Germany, German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 246,243 (2021). Kiel lies approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the southeast of the J ...

br>1992
* 8th Conference of the IWGP in

Nitra Nitra (; also known by other alternative names) is a city in western Slovakia, situated at the foot of Zobor Mountain in the valley of the river Nitra. It is located 95 km east of Bratislava. With a population of about 78,353, it is the fifth la ...

-Nové Vozokan
1989
* 7th Conference of the IWGP in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

br>1986
* 6th Conference of the IWGP in

Groningen Groningen (; gos, Grunn or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen province in the Netherlands. The ''capital of the north'', Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of the northern part of t ...

br>1983
* 5th Conference of the IWGP in Halle/Saal
1980
* 4th Conference of the IWGP in

br>1977
* 3rd Conference of the IWGP in

br>1974
* 2. Symposium der IAP in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

br>1971
* 1. Symposium der IAP in

br>1968

Journal

The IWGP publishes the journal ''Vegetation History and Archaeobotany'' with

Springer Springer or springers may refer to: Publishers * Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag. ** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...

''.'' The current editor-in-chief is Felix Bittman.

References

{{reflist Archaeological organizations Organizations established in 1968