In 1989, two developments of global impact coincided in Europe: the ‘Iron Curtain’ fell between East and West, and Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. In the meantime, the International Council for Archaeozoology (ICAZ) was coming of age, having been founded 18 years earlier at a conference in 1971 in Budapest, Hungary. Archaeozoology is the study of ancient animal-human relationships, relying primarily on the evidence of animal remains recovered during archaeological excavations. Archaeozoologists, holding a special session on domestication, arrived at the 1971 conference from 18 countries. They included the founders of what was to become ICAZ, the first and largest representative body in archaeozoology. By 1971, Hungary was equally accessible to ‘socialist’ and ‘capitalist’ scholars in the wake of the Cold War. Some participants already had personal contacts in the opposite half of Europe. Some German colleagues had known each other from before the 1961 erection of the Berlin Wall and archaeological projects with United States participation in non-aligned former Yugoslavia also served as points of personal contact. Personal networks and the keen awareness of the need to crosscut political boundaries have become fundamental to ICAZ. In 1990, the organization had its first meeting outside Europe, further broadening networking opportunities. This chapter is a review of the role personal contacts have played in diachronic diversification within ICAZ during the past 50 years in light of its conferences and recent membership data.