Education

10/2020 – 01/2024
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Master of Arts in Central Asian Studies

10/2018 – 07/2019
University of Oxford
Master of Studies in Archaeology                                                                      

09/2015 – 07/2018
University College London
Bachelor of Arts in Archaeology

Archaeology & Heritage Experience

07/2023 
Horse Power, Mongolia
Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie and National University of Mongolia

07 – 08/2022     
Valcamonica Rock Art Recording, Italy
Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici

08 – 09/2021
Rise of Altai Mountain Pastoralism Project, Russia                             
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Altai State University

07/2017
Petroglyphs of the Chu-Ili Mountains, Kazakhstan                               
Al-Farabi Kazakh National University

Teaching Experience

at the Institute of Asian and African Studies, HU Berlin

SoSe 2023
Being-in-the-field: research ontologies of knowledge sites                               

WiSe 22/23
The Lives of Inanimate Objects: theories and methods in object research    

WiSe 21 – SoSe 22
From colonising thinking to more-than-human beings: archaeological and anthropological perspectives in Inner Asia              

Animating archaeological landscapes in Mongolia: An ethnographic-archaeological approach

In the context of radical socio-political changes, archaeology has become an academic discipline of national importance in Mongolia. This doctoral project is concerned with ontological perspectives of archaeology and landscapes across Mongolia, in association with the ERC project Horse Power. Mongolian archaeological landscapes are typically composed of diachronic funerary sites, standing stones and petroglyphs. But these extensive landscapes, which seasonally become the workplace of archaeologists, are first and foremost inhabited by pastoral people, animals, and, from a local point of view, spirits. I will interrogate how archaeologists, both Mongolian and foreign, and local inhabitants relate to these multi-sited landscapes using excavation, ethnography, and mapping. Regional variations, as well as differences between local contexts and the national level, are expected. The main goal is to understand whether these two groups have different ontological perspectives – experiences of how something is – regarding the same places, and how such tensions might be mediated in order to practise archaeology more inclusively.

Das Projekt wird durch ein PreDoc-Stipendium der BerGSAS/Freien Universität Berlin gefördert.

2023
Conte, C. 2023. Review: Warwick Ball. 2021. The Eurasian Steppe: people, movement, ideas. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Antiquity. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.87

Conte, C. and Hopper, K. 2023. The Steppe Sisters Network and Conference. ArchéOrient Le Blog, 17 février 2023. https://archeorient.hypotheses.org/22109