In recent years, sustainability has increasingly become a topic of debate in regard to how our societies can tackle climate change and improve our future. Proposed solutions often conflict with economic or other personal or social interests, which means that a fundamental rethinking is necessary in many areas. This also applies to academia and archaeological research. We must therefore ask ourselves what contribution archaeology can make towards a more sustainable world.

On the one hand, sustainability itself could become the subject of archaeological research: How were resources managed in ancient societies and what can we learn from it today? On the other hand, we also need to reflect on how archaeological practices themselves can become more sustainable. This includes ensuring that sites are not only excavated, but also properly researched and published. In this workshop we will focus on the latter part, by looking into what can be gained from already existing material as an alternative to always initiating new and resource-demanding fieldwork projects. Museum collections and archives are suitable starting points in this matter, as they contain a wealth of archaeological material accumulated over the last centuries of work in Southwest Asia. Yet, there has been a prevalent notion that old collections are too difficult to study due to the lack of adequate documentation, which leaves a significant amount of data understudied.

Based on different case studies presented by early career researchers, this workshop will discuss how to tackle such issues and show how the re-evaluation of old collections in museums and archives can be a valuable resource to our understanding of past societies in the light of new research. The aim is to compare different methodological approaches to these kinds of collections and to discuss the future prospects of collection-oriented research towards a more sustainable archaeology.