Over three days in September 2021 the Research Centre for Deep History (Australian National University) and the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research (University of Cambridge) convened the three-part Returns and Reconnections Seminar Series.
The series brought together scholars from a range of disciplines and fields of study who are engaging with the deep past through research collaborations with and alongside Indigenous and local communities. The seminars advanced new conversations about the nature of these collaborations, collectively thinking through the role of archives and collections in engagements with the deep past, considering what it means for communities to return to the knowledge and material traces of their ancestors, and elaborating some of the diverse meanings of deep time and deep history across different spaces, disciplines, and temporalities.