Power, Gender and Mobility

Photo: Kvindegrav fra Egtved

Power, Gender and Mobility

Features of Indo-European Society

Online Conference, March 26–27, 2021

The Indo-Europeanization of Europe and part of western Asia is not only a matter of language change. In recent years, a fruitful combination of linguistic reconstruction and archaeological and archaeo-genetic data has uncovered how the immigration of Indo-European-speaking populations also caused transformations of social structures that would profoundly determine Asian and European history.

Without doubt, the hierarchic structure of early Indo-European societies, with its elements of quest for political and military alliances, patron-client relationships, guest-friendship, fosterage and female mobility, paved the way for the spread of Indo-European languages and cultures. It is the aim of this conference to investigate this complex issue from different viewpoints – linguistic/philological, archaeological and bio-archaeological. In particular, we would like to focus on the following subjects:

• Female mobility

• The role of women

• Fosterage

• The foreigners

• Guest-friendship

• Alliances

• The underprivileged

• Slavery

• Patron-client relationships

• Power structures and sovereignty

On behalf of the organizing committee,

Benedicte Nielsen Whitehead, Birgit Olsen, Guus Kroonen, Riccardo Ginevra, Simon Poulsen, and Stefan Höfler

Roots of Europe, University of Copenhagen

Program (PDF)

This conference is organized as part of the project ‘Of beasts and men. The animals of the Proto-Indo-Europeans’, which receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. H2020-MSCA-IF-2018–835954.