Between February 26th and 29th 2024, the University of Bucharest organizes the international conference on the Neolithic collapse titled Three Sides of Every Story: The Balkans, the Steppe, and the Puszta, the Triangular Matrix of the Neolithic Collapse. The event is organized in collaboration with ELTE University – „Eötvös Loránd” Tudományegyetem in Budapest, the Museum of Bucharest and is partnered by Microsoft Romania, Crayon and 441Design Powerhouse.
The opening ceremony will take place Monday, February 26th 2024, starting 2.30 PM, in the Senate Hall at the Rectorate of the University of Bucharest (90 Panduri Street, Bucharest).
The event marks a century of archeological exploration at the Sultana-Malu Roșu site in Romania and integrates, as a premiere, Artificial Intelligence (AI), which will allow participants to interact with the presented content during the conference. AI will also be used to resume the entire event and to contribute, next to the participants, in publishing the volume which will result from the conference. This strategy underlines the University of Bucharest’s engagement as a pioneer in integrating AI in scientific research, thus marking an important step in recognizing AI not just as a simple instrument, but as an interactive contributor to the scientific narrative.
The event reunites prodigious researchers from Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Moldova, Serbia, Ukraine, France, Spain and the UK who are there to explore, from a multidisciplinary perspective, the decline of Eneolithic civilizations in South-East Europe. Researches will focus on various factors, including environmental, biologic, climate, anthropic and cultural changes. Analyzing the phenomenon from different angles, the conference aims to discover the profound causes of this decline, to map out its evolution over the course of a thousand years (4300-3300 b. C.) in a large geographical area and to test the intriguing hypothesis of a “domino effect” which triggered interconnected collapses within the Eneolithic cultures in the region.
Thus, the conference is addressed to both specialists in prehistory, archeology, geoarcheology, bioarcheology and connected domains, as well as to the large audience passionate with archeological finds and the Eneolithic era.