INTERVIEW WITH THE EDITORS: Suzie Thomas and Carol McDavid, Co-editors of Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage

What are your main research interests?

Suzie Thomas

ST: I’m interested in the ways in which non-professionals engage with archaeological heritage. This spans, for me, all the way from the public participating in events and activities provided for them by museums and other heritage institutions, through community groups carrying out their own archaeology and heritage-based research, through to the more controversial activities of hobbyist treasure hunters. For my PhD I looked at the relationships between archaeologists and metal detectorists in England and Wales, and I have also worked as Community Archaeology Support Officer for the Council for British Archaeology, which saw me trying to get a handle on the wider picture in the UK concerning how many people might be actively getting involved with archaeological activities, and in what ways they were doing this. I’ve also worked on research into the global trafficking of cultural objects before, which of course is a vitally important facet to consider when looking at the impact of treasure hunting.

Carol McDavid

CM: In general terms, I am interested in process -- how archaeologists and other academics can make their work more meaningful to the public, and how we can find ways to make our research more accessible as a tool for community collaboration and reform. I am especially committed to finding ways to use historical and archaeological information (in my case, about the African Diaspora) to dismantle still-existing structures of white privilege. I am also interested how people in the present deploy archaeology and heritage for their own agendas. My training is in the historical archaeology of the African Diaspora, but I also categorize my work as “public archaeology”.

What or who inspired you to work in this field?

ST: I first became interested in the public-facing end of archaeological work while volunteering for the National Trust at Corfe Castle in Dorset, southern England, during my undergraduate degree (at the University of Sheffield). I was placed to work with the education officer, Pam White, and she was pretty inspiring and helped convince me that this was the area of archaeological work for me. During a course on heritage management at Sheffield as part of my degree, I also became familiar with the work of Peter Stone, and resolved to do my Masters degree at Newcastle University so that I could be taught by him. Peter was also my PhD supervisor, following my Masters, so he has been a big inspiration to my work over the years.

CM: I was exposed to the social contexts of archaeology while doing my master’s degree in Anthropology with Dr. Kenneth Brown, as he studied the Levi Jordan Plantation in South Coastal Texas. Ken recruited me to work collaboratively with both black and white descendants to discuss and publicly interpret the lives of their ancestors. At that point (the early 1990s), no one had really tried that sort of thing at a Southern slave plantation, or within historical archaeology more generally. His vision made me see where I could fit in and do work that counted to real people. I was also influenced by Dr. Parker Potter, whose seminal work in critical public archaeology showed how public archaeology could have a meaningful connection to contemporary social issues. Later, for my doctorate in Archaeology, I worked with Ian Hodder at the University of Cambridge, where I looked at how the Internet (at the time, Web 1.0) could be a tool to create multivocal, democratic, relevant and open conversations about archaeology – especially “hurtful” archaeology. Both Ken and Ian gave me enough rope to make my own way, while providing the support I needed. I learned a lot about being a good teacher and scholar from both of them.

Tell us a bit about your role as Editor and your overall goals for the publication...

ST: As Co-Editor, alongside Carol, I work as part of a larger team which also includes John H Jameson as our Assistant Editor – we are also in the process of calling for even more team members, with a call for an extra Assistant Editor and a Technical Editor currently underway. Carol and I deal with incoming papers, making initial reviews and, where it would be useful, suggestions for modification ahead of the peer review process. We also select reviewers for the papers, based on their own expertise, as well as selecting reviewers who may know less about the paper’s specific subject area, in order to make sure that papers make sense to non-specialists as well. As part of this we often invite non-professionals, for example members of community archaeology groups, to act as reviewers for us alongside academics and practitioners. As we are still a very new journal, I think all of the Editorial team take every opportunity they can, through conferences, meetings, and just conversations, to encourage potential contributors to send papers in to us. We are getting a great variety of papers already, but we can always have more. This goes also for guest blog posts to journalcah.blogspot.com – the journal’s blog – and suggestions for books, conferences, events, exhibitions and websites to review.

My overall goal, personally, is for the journal to become the key meeting place for debates and knowledge exchange around activities that can be described in some way as ‘community archaeology’ or ‘community heritage’. For this to happen, we must welcome papers from non-academics as well as academic researchers, and be welcoming of different styles of writing, for example through creative approaches such as poetry, or more fluid ‘dialogue’ articles as well as more traditional papers. Current economics for the arts and humanities are not such that we can make the journal entirely open access unfortunately, but through partnership with the Council for British Archaeology, and in time perhaps more archaeological organizations with a broad membership, I hope we can offer at least an accessible subscription rate for our readers, as well as encouraging contributors to support open access options for their own papers where this is possible.

CM: I agree with Suzie – our goals are much the same. To build on what she said, for me, it is satisfying to have an active part in establishing and building a wider, and somewhat different, discourse in public/community archaeology than I “grew up” with in the discipline. I enjoy helping to forge new ways for people to write about public and community work, and hope that over time JCAH will be seen as raising the bar for such writing. And doing all this in a collaborative way, with an editorial team of really smart and interesting people, is a lot of fun.

How did you get involved with the journal?

ST: I believe it was a chance conversation with Liz Rosindale from Maney when I worked at the CBA! We were discussing something else entirely, but the conversation turned to community archaeology itself, and whether the time was right for this growing aspect of archaeological work and research to have its own dedicated journal. I then contacted first my colleague Dr Adam Gutteridge who was at the time at the University of York, and we also invited Carol due to her expertise and outlook (also realizing we should have a Co-Editor from outside of the UK to expand the journal’s reach and perspectives), and I guess the rest is history. Adam is no longer involved with the editorial team, but his input at the development stage of the journal (which first had to be proposed and then approved by a range of reviewers), remains invaluable.

CM: Suzie summed it up really well. I seem to recall that at one point she and Adam had asked for input on some things, and being a rather opinionated person, I probably gave them more than they wanted! So they maybe they figured I should actually do some work!!

Why is research into community archaeology so important?

ST: Research into community archaeology is research into the importance of archaeology to people. As practitioners and researchers, we ultimately have a responsibility to the wider public, not only because their tax dollars (or pounds or euros or whatever) fund our work, but because archaeology, and more broadly cultural heritage, belongs to and is of interest to everyone. On a practical level, it is vital to discuss both successful and less fruitful initiatives, and to reflect on what works and doesn’t work in community archaeology and heritage projects.

CM: Yes, discussing what didn’t “work” is just as important as sharing what did. That’s what we mean when we ask for papers to be critical and reflexive – our submission guidelines go into this in detail. “Research” about public and community work has to take a variety of different “ways of knowing” into account (anecdotal and experiential, as well as formal). So we ask our writers to share details about the “real” interactions they have with communities, and to reflect upon what their work actually did – in society, in archaeology, or even just in one individual community. That’s when the research starts to really matter.

What advice would you give to postgraduates who want to get into this field?

ST: I guess the main thing is experience. Find out where you can participate in a community archaeology project, outreach service or other initiative, and get involved. That said, don’t do so much that you get distracted from completing your degree programme! And use opportunities at conferences and other events to meet people in the sector and find out about their perspectives and experiences. If what they are doing fits with your own research interests, make sure to keep in touch with them!

CM: First, that context is just as important in public contexts as it is in archaeological ones. There is no “one size fits all” way of doing public and community work, but understanding what others have done before will help a community-engaged person create the new tools they need for any particular context. Understand the literature and seek out the people who did work you admire for advice and support (yes, this is a poorly disguised commercial for our journal, and others!). Second, that theories are tools to think with. Understand them well, and use them instrumentally. They will help you connect the ivory tower ideas you learn in graduate school to real, everyday situations. Third, every public interpretation, site tour, display, or other interpretive device is, in effect, a contingent, situated conversation about both past and present. It’s keeping the conversation going, even with those who disagree, that matters (that’s why Suzie’s work with metal detectorists is so important).

Tell us a fun fact that no one else knows?

ST: Research with colleagues at Helsinki University and Espoo City Museum for an article just uncovered photographs of a Finnish archaeologist using a metal detector for field work…..back in 1954! For me, with all my years of researching metal detecting, such an incredibly early example of an archaeologist making use of the machine, in Finland (where I now work), is a mind-blowing discovery, and something I want to research further.

CM: Not sure if this is all that fun, but I’m an artist, I used to be a caterer, and also used to run a public housing agency. A somewhat checkered past!

Call for Papers: Trans-Atlantic Dialogues on Cultural Heritage: Heritage, Tourism and Traditions

Trans-Atlantic dialogues on cultural heritage began as early as the voyages of Leif Ericson and Christopher Columbus and continue through the present day. Each side of the Atlantic offers its own geographical and historical specificities expressed and projected through material and immaterial heritage. However, in geopolitical terms and through everyday mobilities, people, objects and ideas flow backward and forward across the ocean, each shaping the heritage of the other, for better or worse, and each shaping the meanings and values that heritage conveys.

This conference is brought to you by the Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage (IIICH), University of Birmingham and the Collaborative for Cultural Heritage Management and Policy (CHAMP), University of Illinois and offers a venue for exploring three critical interactions in this trans-Atlantic dialogue: heritage, tourism and traditions.

The goal of the conference is to be simultaneously open-ended and provocative. We welcome papers from academics across a wide range of disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, art history, architecture, business, communication, ethnology, heritage studies, history, geography, landscape architecture, literary studies, media studies, museum studies, popular culture,  postcolonial studies, sociology, tourism, urban studies, etc. 

Topics of interest to the conference include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The heritage of trans-Atlantic encounters
• Travelling intangible heritages
• Heritage flows of popular culture
• Re-defining heritage beyond the postcolonial
• The heritage of Atlantic crossings
• World Heritage of the Atlantic periphery
• Rooting and routing heritage
• Community and Nation on display
• Visualising the Trans-Atlantic world

Abstracts of 300 words with full contact details should be sent as soon as possible but no later than 15th December 2014 to ironbridge@contacts.bham.ac.uk

Further information on the Conference and the Call for Papers can be found on the website www.transatlanticdialogues.wordpress.com

'Building Strong Culture through Conservation' ICOM-CC 17th Triennial Conference, Melbourne, Australia

The 17th Triennial Conference of the International Council of Museums Committee for Conservation (ICOM-CC) will attract leading international keynote speakers and up to 800 delegates, including conservators, scientists, historians and art historians, curators, librarians, archivists, students, collection managers and directors from the world’s leading cultural institutions and the private sector.

The culmination of ICOM-CC’s three-year cycle of collaboration and research, the Conference offers technical sessions of the twenty-one specialist Working Groups, keynote speeches, behind the scenes visits to local conservation laboratories and sites of historic interest, cultural and social events as well as numerous opportunities to meet and forge ties with colleagues from every region of the world. Twenty-seven years after its memorable 8th Triennial Conference in Sydney, ICOM-CC is pleased to return to the Australian continent, this time to Melbourne.

Each Triennial Conference is a joint initiative of ICOM-CC and partners in the host country. The Australian National Organizing Committee for the 17th Triennial Conference is comprised of the The Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation of the University of Melbourne and The Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Material (AICCM), Australia’s leaders in conservation training and practice. Together, we are working to provide an invigorating, productive, and exceptional Australian experience in September 2014.

Support for the selection and publication of papers and posters in our publication, ICOM-CC Triennial Conference Preprints, has been provided by the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Foundation has provided support for travel grants for cultural heritage professionals from economically challenged and emerging countries.

Register for the conference today >

View the list of papers >

Preserve or prosper? Georgia's gold mine dilemma

What happens when a nation's opportunity for cultural enrichment is in direct conflict with an opportunity for financial prosperity?

 

That is a question Georgians have been grappling with since their government gave permission for industrial excavation to start at what scientists claim is the oldest known gold mine in the world.

According to the BBC:

'The archaeological area, known as Sakdrisi, is a small grassy hill in the Bolnisi region, in the picturesque foothills of south-eastern Georgia. For 10 years Professor Thomas Stoellner, a leading specialist in mining archaeology from the University of Bochum, Germany, has been studying the archaeological record at Sakdrisi together with his Georgian colleagues.

"When we went to do the first survey we found hammer stones - typical mining tools - thousands of them," says Prof Stoellner, who believes that tunnels inside the hill date back 5,400 years.

"At once I realised the importance of the site. When we got the first value carbon dates, and they were around 3,000 BC, it was clear that this was an exciting find which had never occurred in pre-historic mining."'

This is certainly a discovery of considerable cultural significance and offers the opportunity not only to learn more about Georgia's past but also to invest in the education of its youth and develop scientific and archaeological studies around the site.

Unfortunately it appears Georgia has made up its mind. Despite a protest camp that was set up in mid-April which is still in full swing, they will proceed with mining on the site as company RMG Gold has already invested $300m in the project.

I'm sure that this is not the first time the status of being a 'protected cultural heritage site' has been both a blessing and a curse for a nation's government and in the long run, if and when the money runs out, hindsight will be 20/20 in this case.

'Georgia's Gold Mine Dilemma' >

Turkish delights: European Association of Archaeologists 20th Annual Meeting

Date: 10-14 September 2014
Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Registration: https://www.eaa2014istanbul.org/paket 
Papers and posters: https://www.eaa2014istanbul.org/sayfa/142 

Due to its central location among distinct cultural geographies, Istanbul has always been a world city of focal importance from early prehistory to the present, adorned with the fabulous relics of three great empires. Linking east and west, past and present, the city is unique as a multicultural metropolis.
 

The organizing committee has taken the 2014 EAA Meeting as an occasion to conduct a series of parallel cultural activities to create synergy on cultural heritage in Istanbul by setting archaeological and art exhibitions, book and restoration fairs in different parts of the town. The participants to the Congress will be provided with a rich and varied selection of archaeological and cultural tours providing an opportunity to visit sites and monuments all over Turkey.
 
EAA Istanbul 2014 Meeting, hosted by Istanbul Technical University, will be held at Taşkışla Campus of the Faculty of Architecture. Taşkışla Campus is a historical building, centrally situated in the European part of Istanbul overlooking the Bosphorus. It is in a walking distance to major hotels, budget accommodation facilities and Istanbul’s world famous hub of entertainment.

Become a member of the EAA >

"Stuff matters": The crucial work of the American Institute for Conservation - Collections Emergency Response Team

An interview with Eric Pourchot, Institutional Advancement Director at the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation

Why was the American Institute for Conservation - Collections Emergency Response Team (AIC-CERT) established?

It came out of the experience we had after Hurricane Katrina as many of our members from AIC had served on teams that went down to the New Orleans and Gulf Coast area to help cultural institutions recover as best they could from that disaster. They realised that there were a lot of good intentions and well-meaning people that came from a different background and had different training, and therefore it didn’t work as efficiently, as smoothly or as safely as it could have. Also people, including the participants, didn’t know how FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and other emergency management systems worked and how they fit into the bigger relief effort as of course people had little way of communicating with each other with the phone lines being down.

 

It really came of the feeling we can do better, so we created a grant proposal for the IMLS (Institute for Museum and Library Services) a federal agency that would train 60 people (3 groups of 20) across the USA and it would combine conservators, curators, librarians, archivists - people who could bring a lot of different skills and knowledge depending on what kind of collection was at risk.  Everyone would go through the same training and learn about health and safety issues, how to work as a team and how to work with the response agencies. 63 people were trained in the first round and then another grant in 2011 expanded it to a group of 107. It wasn’t the number of people that needed to be increased but we needed people spread across the country so that we were within close vicinity of a disaster’s location, had someone who could drive and not need a flight or rental car. The main calls we were getting were from smaller historic museums that had a wide range of materials - decorative arts, wooden artefacts, architectural issues - and we needed more expertise in those areas. So when we selected people the second time round, it was 2/3 conservators and about 1/3 other professionals. We learnt from a situation in which we had a call from Minot, ND which is closer to Canada and people who responded were 10-12 hours away. 

What is the most recent event the team has to respond to?

Well, the short answer to that is Hurricane Sandy in New York which was huge effort and unusual for us in that it involved private artists and galleries as well as public institutions, our mission is to serve the public collections but it was clear that in New York we’d be losing an incredible amount of artwork and cultural artefacts if we didn’t include them.

We knew what the possible track of the hurricane was going to be and we were able to send out press releases and reach the regional art and history organisations saying “If you need us, here is how to contact us” and there is a 24 hour hotline people can call that the volunteers staff. I don’t think anyone knew how devastating this was going to be and even the museums there who had been affected by Hurricane Irene little over a year before didn’t know it would be significantly worse. The Noguchi Museum for example had gotten through Irene with no problem but the flooding from Sandy was so high water was coming in through exhaust vents and people had sand bags and raised things up on tables but a 3 foot storm surge comes through and knocks out the windows, lifts the tables, topples book cases and some of the basement storage areas not only flooded but the strength of the water was enough to smash doors in. It was hard for people to realise the power of moving water as opposed to dripping water.

The team is still indirectly responding to the disaster by taking calls and we had people on site for 3 weeks after the devastation then we set up a facility in Brooklyn, a cultural recovery centre that we ran for 3 months, where people could bring items that they had pulled out of the basements and the studios. We cleaned them, decontaminated them, mended them, did surface cleanings and stored them safely until a full treatment could be done. While Sandy was happening we had a fire in Massachusetts and a fire in Oklahoma that effected collections and we sent people out in January and February to help with those, typically one or two people for a few days.

What plan of action is put in place by the team when major disasters such as the 2010 earthquake in Haiti strike?

The planning is very difficult as we have a very small budget for on-going maintenance of the team. We do have a coordinator, Beth Antoine, who is a conservator in New Orleans and she has a very small stipend to keep the teams together and to communicate with them to make sure people can get to small events whilst also manning the phone lines each month.

When we get to a big disaster like Haiti or Sandy and even Irene, we usually have to ramp up a bit and that means finding funding and if it is a domestic disaster that is effecting public institutions, typically there is some public money we can tap in to. After New York we basically started from nothing, we had already spent our year’s budget by the end of October and fortunately we were able to tap into some funds from Sotheby’s and other corporate funders and hire people on the ground in New York to coordinate volunteers. In New York we had 23 AIC-CERT members who volunteered but there were 80 other people, mostly conservators, who also volunteered and worked very hard.

In Haiti, another situation we weren’t prepared for, the need for help was so strong the Smithsonian was able to take a lead role in that response and they asked AIC-CERT to find volunteers to help with their efforts, mainly those who conserved artwork. We were led by Stephanie Hornbeck who was hired to direct the Smithsonian’s response. It started very rough – people were using pipes for hammers, credenzas for weights and you did whatever you could with what you had. Gradually we were able to get more supplies and equipment and establish a pretty good triage centre, not a full conservation laboratory, but at least something to provide people with the supplies they needed. It also involved a lot of training, mostly of Haitian artists who learned how to clean, care and mend the paintings.

Are there any particular artefacts of cultural significance or note that have been rescued by the team?

The really short answer is they are all significant – you go into a small museum in Iowa and it’s flooded, those collections may not have iconic status but for the community they are very important. These objects tell the story of their region. We work very closely with the owners of the collections to figure out what is critical and what can be replaced. In public libraries it is often cheaper to replace the fiction if the books are still on sale. Identifying what is important to tell their story is what our people are trained to do – a librarian can talk to a librarian, an archivist can talk to an archivist.

People are in shock as often what we go into is not just a burst pipe, but a flood that means their home and their spouse’s place of work is under water. In hurricanes you may not even know where all your
co-workers are as communication is very difficult. A workshop at this meeting [41st American Institute for Conservation Annual Meeting] was on psychological issues in disaster recovery and how you help people deal with the stress and make quick decisions.

In Haiti, some of the most significant collections were in private galleries and they don’t have the same public/private divisions. Iconic paintings were crushed under the rubble and had to be pulled back out. It was part of their heritage and what they needed as a country to survive. One of the surprising items rescued in a historical society in Iowa was a very large painting that had come off the wall and was down on the floor, we’d been walking on it so we then recovered it, restored it and returned it to the collection.

In New York we worked with at least 19 artists in the cultural recovery centre who brought their things in and explained what their needs were, sometimes it was just “I need space because I’ve filled every inch in my apartment and I can’t put them back in the basement as it’s not open to public access”. There was the Martha Graham company collection, props and costumes that date back forty years and are still being used, the Smithsonian was very interested in helping them as they knew these were iconic items that meant something to the country not just the dance company.

Why in times of crisis is it important to rescue our cultural heritage?
In Haiti, a lot of volunteers would go over on flights and there’d be doctors, nurses and engineers and the volunteers asked themselves ‘What am I doing, why am I taking up space?’. There are quotes from the Haitian communities saying they can build houses but heritage is what makes it worth all the effort and it makes their lives have meaning.
AIC-CERT isn’t going to be the first ones there, and we shouldn’t be, the health and safety of people and the structural integrity of buildings has to come first but there is a real need to help these communities to recover and continue. It is quality of life versus quantity of life - you could just tear everything down, put up pre-fab buildings and call it a city but that’s not how cities are formed. We are drawn to places, we are drawn to things, it is what gives us identity and I’m honoured to be working with people who have devoted their lives to the concept that “stuff matters”.

>> Read the blog 'Rescuing Haitian Paintings'