Friday 25 April 2014

LIVE AT THE SAA 2014: What are you enjoying about this year's conference?

The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) is the largest organization of professional archaeologists of the Americas in the world. The Society was founded in 1934 and today has over 7000 members. Its annual conferences have been running every year since 1935 and is a major event in an archaeologist’s calendar.


This year’s meeting is in Austin, Texas and we’ve been asking delegates what they are most looking forward to and why they love the SAA 2014!

“I'm interested in historical archaeology, especially of the Caribbean. SAA is such a great opportunity to see people. It's a gigantic conference so it's impossible to do everything.” - Todd Ahlman, Historical Research Association

“I'm looking forward to a session on Conflict, Archaeology and the Press. It's a really under-discussed area and the session will cover areas like Egypt and the Arab Spring, and various battles - it's going to be a varied and interesting session. Interacting with the media can be risky, archaeologists don't have control over how their comments are conveyed. We had a module on the press when I did my degree at Newcastle but that's pretty unusual.” - Suzie Thomas, University of Helsinki

The Defining Spatial Archaeometry session is one I'm really looking forward to - I'll pick up new techniques and ideas regarding modelling. I've been coming to SAA for about 20 years now and it's just fantastic for interacting with professionals, meeting old friends and developing collaborations. It recharges the inspiration batteries!” - Tad Britt, National Center for Preservation Technology

Value of Archaeological Collections and Research is perfect for me as I work in this field. There's also a great poster session on interactive interpretative technologies which is going to be really interesting. This is my 2nd SAA and I'm impressed with how much is going on. There's more historic archaeology too this year which is great!” - Tristan Harrenstein, Florida Public Archaeology Network

“I'm looking forward to Saturday's session, Subsistence and Landscape Change in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is about climate change in the Holocene. I'm based on the United States island territory of Guam. The west Pacific will be affected by climate change over the next 50 years with changing sea levels - it's quite scary for a lot of people. There's lots of debate in this area. Many islands will become uninhabitable. I'm very interested in doing climate change research in this region.” - John Peterson, University of Guam

And what are we looking forward to the most?…..probably a very large Gin & Tonic! J

Read all of the SAA session abstracts here

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