Reconstructing Past Economies: Interdisciplinary Methods and Applications
A special issue of Heritage (ISSN 2571-9408).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 86
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This Special Issue, entitled “Reconstructing Past Economies: Interdisciplinary Methods and Applications,” aims to explore the diverse approaches, analytical frameworks, and emerging techniques used to investigate economic practices in past societies across prehistoric, protohistoric, and historic contexts. Economic life—encompassing subsistence strategies, production systems, exchange networks, craft specialization, resource management, consumption patterns, and human–environment interactions—formed a fundamental dimension of social organization and cultural development. Reconstructing these processes is therefore essential for understanding the long-term trajectories of human adaptation, resilience, and transformation.
Recent advances in archaeological science and digital technologies have significantly expanded the possibilities for studying past economies. Methods such as archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, residue and use-wear analysis, isotopic and aDNA research, materials characterization, geoarchaeology, GIS-based spatial analysis, remote sensing, network analysis, and computational modelling now allow scholars to investigate economic behaviour with increasing precision and at multiple scales. At the same time, historical records, ethnographic analogy, and comparative theoretical approaches continue to provide valuable interpretive frameworks for integrating scientific data with broader social and cultural perspectives.
This Special Issue welcomes contributions that apply interdisciplinary methods to reconstruct economic life in diverse temporal and geographical settings. Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following: agriculture and foodways; animal exploitation and pastoralism; hunting, fishing, and gathering strategies; craft production and technological organization; trade, exchange, and mobility; household and community economies; labour organization; storage and surplus management; environmental adaptation and sustainability; and the relationship between economic practices and social complexity.
By bringing together case studies, methodological innovations, comparative analyses, and theoretical discussions, this Special Issue seeks to advance dialogue across archaeology, heritage studies, anthropology, history, and the natural sciences. It aims to demonstrate how integrated approaches can deepen our understanding of past economies while also offering broader insights into human responses to environmental and social challenges over time.
Prof. Dr. Wei Ge
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Heritage is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- past economies
- economic archaeology
- archaeobotany
- zooarchaeology
- residue analysis
- subsistence strategies
- craft production
- exchange networks
- human–environment interaction
- resource management
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