29 years ago, in 1991, Ruth Tringham published an article entitled “Households with Faces: The Challenge of Gender in Prehistoric Architectural Remains” where she emphasized that we, as archaeologists, see the individuals of past communities as “faceless blobs”, although they constitute the core of our research. Decades later, today, one can suggest that archaeology has come a long way in this vision. As a discipline that interprets the past based on material culture remains, archaeology has moved beyond the descriptive narratives of material culture and developed novel approaches and methodologies in “identifying” the individuals as active agents of the past.
 

As a multi-faceted concept, identity refers to how individuals and societies define themselves within the surrounding material world. Identities define, change, and transform our experiences, roles, and lives. The intersection of our age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, as well as our families, beliefs, jobs, and socio-cultural backgrounds form our identities. Within this intersection, each experience different layers of identities in unique ways of countless possibilities that depend on the cultural context. Social identities, on the other hand, are formed by socio-cultural and ideological codes. Thus, the concept of identity is entangled with ideologies both on personal and social scales. One becomes a “social person” through the identities they own and feel familiar with. However, our personal identities are influenced by our personalities, taste, and values, and may overlap or collide with ideologically determined social identities.
 

The history of identity research in archaeology coincides with the paradigm shifts in social sciences. Archaeologists today have abandoned dichotomous approaches to societies and began questioning the intersections, patterns, and differences between different social categories. Moving beyond the categories of modern Western thought, archaeologists now incorporate themes of gender, sex, sexualities, age, status, inequalities, hierarchy, and power in their research agendas. Methodologically, contextual and micro excavation and analyses methods yield data groups through which such themes could be debated.
 

The politics and history of Turkish archaeology were debated in the first meeting of TAG-Turkey (2013, Izmir). It was an invaluable attempt at revealing the roots and identity of the discipline in Turkey. The second meeting (2015, Istanbul), on the other hand, dealt with the entanglement of things and people in the past through various chronological, regional, and theoretical approaches and case studies.
 

After a relatively long period since the last meeting, we are calling for papers for the third meeting of TAG-Turkey. We wish to discuss personal and social identities through various archaeological approaches and methodologies. We call for papers dealing with themes including but not limited to gender/sex, sexualities, age and childhood, status, hierarchies, power, social, collective, and regional identities, as well as the construction of identities in funerary rites, studying identities through the lens of material culture, personhood, and social differentiation. Studies focusing on methods and approaches in identifying identities in the archaeological record are especially welcome.
 

Under the current circumstances of COVID-19 and considering possible travel restrictions, the conference will be held virtually on zoom in 6-9 May 2021.