‘Island Archaeology’ has become an established framework to explore notions of isolation and connectivity in the social developments of past societies in many insular parts of the world, especially in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and the Pacific. The concept emphasizes the importance of communication and interconnectivity over water, but may also be used to approach isolated inland communities.

Recently, the usefulness of ‘Island Archaeology’ as a general interpretative framework has increasingly been questioned: not all islands are alike, pronounced differences in the nature and dynamics of social developmental trajectories in different parts of the same island have been documented, and the archaeological signatures of isolation or connectivity can be the result of the social-cultural choices taken by prehistoric people. Divergence can also be observed in the operationalization of the concept in different parts of the world: whereas in the Caribbean and the Pacific the issues of island identity appear to be among the main research topics, Mediterranean archaeologist emphasize the notions of connectivity.

These and other topics will be explored in the two-day Archon Graduate Workshop on Island Archaeology on 12-13 February 2015 at Leiden University, the Netherlands.