Conferences
The KIŠIB project hosts a series of international conferences over its duration, each dedicated to exploring the role of seals and sealings in establishing and maintaining trust on both interpersonal and societal levels in ancient West Asia.
Each conference brings together specialists in ancient Near Eastern studies with colleagues from related fields—including history, social sciences, anthropology, visual culture, and media studies—to examine how sealing practice and seal design conveyed trust between contracting parties across different periods, regions, and institutional contexts. The conferences alternate between Munich and Berlin and produce peer-reviewed open-access proceedings.
First KIŠIB Conference 2026
Why sealing? From sealed clay to social interaction in ancient West Asia
22–24 July 2026 at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities Munich and online
The new academy project KIŠIB. Digital Corpus of Ancient West Asian Seals and Sealings invites you to its first scholarly conference. Inspired by Edith Porada’s 1993 essay “Why cylinder seals?”, we ask: “Why sealing?” and aim to explore both the materiality of sealed objects and seal impressions, as well as the actions and social networks in which they were embedded. Thereby, we address core concerns of the KIŠIB project: sealing on clay as a communication strategy for establishing ownership, building trust, and asserting authority across millennia.
Long before the emergence of written records, property-related storage and transactions could be traced through the sealing of commodities or doors. The invention of the cuneiform script did not replace the act of sealing; rather, it opened up new possibilities for documenting more complex relationships and decisions. The material remains of these practices offer rich yet challenging insights into ancient thought and action. A comprehensive analysis, therefore, requires a multi-level approach encompassing materiality, spatial context, personal attribution, social and bureaucratic dimensions, and the significance of seal imagery and seal inscriptions. By analysing sealings and seal impressions rather than the original seals, we seek to render visible the people, norms, and actions behind the artefacts.
Programme
The preliminary programme, including all speakers and abstracts, can be downloaded here.
Venue
Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Alfons-Goppel-Straße 11, 80539 Munich, Germany.
How to join?
We warmly invite you to attend the conference, which is designed to facilitate an exchange of ideas and allows ample time for discussion.
The conference will be held in person and also streamed online via Zoom. If you want to participate, please register with Dr Albert Dietz, stating whether your participation will be in person or online: Albert.Dietz@kishib.badw.de.
A link will be sent to all registered participants a few days before the conference.