A conference by the subcluster Urban
Roots / Cluster of Excellence ROOTS

Chairs: Patric-Alexander Kreuz (Urban Archaeology) / Ulrich Müller (Historical Archaeology)
Venue: Kiel University (Germany), IBZ Kiellinie

Date: 17/07/2026 – 18/07/2026. Evening lecture on Thursday, 16/07/2026
Chronological frame: c. 1 to c. 1200 CE

Target group: Archaeologists and related historical disciplines focusing on premodern urban
spaces.

Setting: The conference language is English. A publication of the contributions is envisaged.
Contributions should be no longer than 25 minutes to allow for intensive exchange and
discussion.

Within the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS, boundaries function as a key analytical concept for
understanding dynamic social, spatial, ecological, as well as symbolic constructions that
simultaneously enable, structure, and constrain connectivity. They can illuminate how social order
is produced, stabilised, and contested, and why processes of division are as constitutive of history
as those of connection—particularly in urban settings.
Cities in the past, as well as today, are places of density, interaction, and negotiation. They are
characterised by shared places, spaces, and topographies, as well as by a supposedly shared
understanding of what constitutes an urban community and its lifestyle(s). However, urban
environments have always been characterised by intriguing differences—differences lived,
embodied, shaped, and articulated through material, social, and mental boundaries: not only
walls, but especially markets, neighbourhoods, ritualised settings, forms of social affiliation,
patterns of behaviour, or “invisible” lines of belonging, attribution, and exclusion. As such, urban
boundaries were never static but constantly subject to configurations that were reshaped,
stabilised, inscribed, or dissolved through transgression and disruption. However, boundaries
should by no means be understood solely in negative terms, as obstacles, restrictions, or means
of exclusion. They also have enormous potential, for example in their ability to shape and structure
an undifferentiated environment.
Configuration is in this context understood not only as the process of “making”, but also as
highlighting the specific arrangement of heterogeneous elements—actors, practices, discourses,
and spaces—that together form a patterned and meaningful whole. Configurations are thus always
relational, dynamic, and context-dependent: as configurations change (especially through social
practices, technological shifts, or political contestations), boundaries are renegotiated. While
boundary-making produces distinction, configuration captures the relational arrangement in
which such distinction becomes meaningful and effective. In this understanding, both concepts
offer a promising perspective on urban orders as dynamic, situated, and contested formations.
The conference seeks to approach boundaries and boundary-making as a ubiquitous and
pervasive facet of the urban phenomenon and aims to explore this phenomenon by bringing
together archaeological and text-based perspectives. Especially in premodern urban contexts (c.
1–1200 CE), we can observe how boundaries were created, maintained, shifted, crossed, or
broken, and how they impacted urban societies and urban dynamics. The conference invites
archaeologists (Classical Archaeology, Historical Archaeology) to explore the role of the
configuration of boundaries and boundary-making in the urban historical landscape. We will
address the topic in four closely interconnected sections, focusing on (Roman) Antiquity,
Mediterranean Late Antiquity as a transitional phase (“long Late Antiquity”), and the European
Middle Ages. In addition, we will examine transitional urbanity, including Sub-Saharan and East
African as well as Central Asian perspectives.
While the contributions will primarily focus on archaeological approaches to the analysis of
material and immaterial boundaries—especially when developed in dialogue with cultural studies
concepts of boundary-making—we explicitly encourage contributions that approach the topic
from a comparative or intercultural perspective.

If you are interested in joining us in the summer on the Firth of Kiel, we kindly ask you to let us
know by 28/02/2026.
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