ICAS-EMME 5 congress in Nicosia opens its call for abstracts, due by 31 December 2026

Abstracts are now being accepted for ICAS-EMME 5, the fifth archaeological sciences congress for the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, which meets at The Cyprus Institute in Nicosia on 9–13 March 2027. STARC, the Institute's Science and Technology in Archaeology and Culture Research Center, announced the call on 6 November, following the save-the-date notice of October.

There are two deadlines. Speakers who need help with travel or a visa should send their abstracts by 30 November 2026; everyone else has until 31 December 2026, according to the congress website, which also says that every presentation must be given in person.

The sessions page lists nine themes. They range from artificial intelligence in immersive technologies such as extended reality to integrated archaeological science, drawing on the OneArchSci programmes on Keros and Cyprus. Farming and herding in Cyprus and the wider region, from prehistory to the present, have a session chaired by Angelos Hadjikoumis, Ralf Vandam and Evi Margaritis. Others cover human skeletal remains, climate change and cultural landscapes, and the Cyprus node of the European heritage science infrastructure E-RIHS, chaired by Sorin Hermon and Anthi Kaldeli. Th. Rehren chairs one on archaeological materials (stone tools, pottery, metal, glass, pigments), and there is a session on maritime archaeology. A memorial session for Thomas Rose, of the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum, invites papers on tracing ancient metals by lead isotope analysis, a method also applied to the ores and oxhide ingots of Cypriot copper.

The registration page sets the fees: €150, or €75 for students, for early registration by 20 January 2027, and €200, or €100 for students, by 15 February. A guided excursion with lunch costs €40 and the conference dinner €15, both booked by 15 February.