From 1-7 September 2014, Burgos will be hosting the XVII edition of the World Congress of the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (UISPP), organized by the Atapuerca Foundation, an event that was last held in Spain (Madrid) 60 years ago.
During the week-long congress, around 1,800 scientists, researchers and university professors from all over the world will participate in 115 scientific sessions both on prehistory and protohistory, of which 52 will deal with the Paleolithic period, 29 with recent prehistory, and 34 with general prehistory.
In the sessions, a total of 1,653 communications (1,471 oral and 182 posters) will be presented by 3,032 different authors from all over the world. These sessions will be held simultaneously in 24 lecture halls of the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Economics of Burgos University (UBU).
Furthermore, the congress will feature six major keynotes, one of which, entitled "The Human Evolution in Americas. Global Parallelisms and Peculiarities of the Last Continent to Be Colonized", was delivered by Jose Luis Lanata – director of the Institute of Investigations in Cultural Diversity and Processes of Change (LIDYPCA) of the National University of Rio Negro (Argentina), and the world’s maximum authority on prehistoric human migrations – at the Forum Evolution Burgos. In 2007, Lanata was awarded the Simon Bolivar Award for Latin American Studies by Cambridge University, where he is currently Simon Bolivar Professor, as well as being research associate at the Leverhume Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies. He has designed and directed research projects in Argentina, Chile, USA, Spain and Kenya.
It is worth mentioning that Irina Bokova, director general of UNESCO, has lent her support to this new edition of UISPP and expressed her hope that it will be a resounding success. Bokova has stressed the importance of scientific research in prehistory and protohistory, above all in relation to the programme on human evolution adopted by the World Heritage Committee, while accepting the invitation to sit on the Committee of Honour of this XVII edition of the congress.
The World Congress of the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences
Burgos
For Burgos City Council and the city’s convention bureau, the hosting of this congress in a milestone not only because it has not been held in Spain for 60 years, but also because of the international visibility and revenues that it will generate for the city.
Successful bid
The decision to hold the congress in Burgos is by no means a coincidence. Specialists from all over the world are fully aware that the Sierra of Atapuerca is home to the most outstanding active paleoanthropological sites in the world – declared a World Heritage Site in the year 2000 – on which is based one of the world’s most outstanding scientific projects: the Atapuerca Project.
This world congress has not been held in Spain since 1954, or in Europe since 2008. The next edition of the UISPP World Congress will take place in Melbourne (Australia) in 2017.
The hosting of this major event has been possible thanks to the efforts of the Atapuerca Foundation, the regional government of Castile and Leon, Burgos City Council, Burgos Convention Bureau, the provincial government of Burgos, Burgos University and the Repsol Foundation.
