My role as Director of the Maritime Archaeology Trust (also known as the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology but forthwith referred to as the Trust) has been to precipitate a growth in public archaeology within the organisation and within the maritime archaeological sector. The Trust was inaugurated in 1991 with the objective of promoting archaeology in the region and Great Britain by research, training and education. It was set up by the civic authorities in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight at a time when there was a legislative void regarding holistic management of the submerged archaeological resource. Shipwrecks were being discovered and several were being excavated or even protected but collective management was yet to be considered. The Trust was formed to fill this vacuum in the region and it was set up with the belief that comparable organisations would be established across the country.

Throughout the 1990s core funding from the local authorities and central government enabled the listing of local wrecks, survey, excavation, the setting up of diver trails, the publication of booklets, and support for a local exhibition. Public involvement was strong but I realised there was a much larger audience that needed to have access to the world of underwater archaeology if broader public interest was to be sustained and with it, public support. This was becoming particularly pertinent as our core funding was being reduced each year.

The opportunity to increase awareness by developing a more sophisticated education and outreach programme came following 2002 when the UK’s National Heritage Act extended the powers of the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission to encompass underwater archaeology within UK territorial waters for the first time. This coincided with a levy on aggregate extraction in territorial waters that provided funds for maritime research. In turn, this provided a source of funding for extended education and outreach programmes. A successful application by the HWTMA resulted in a range of teaching resources, activities and educational books aimed at young children aged between 7 and 11. The educational resources were taken to schools where interactive teaching aids were framed around the stories of shipwrecks and drowned lands. The courses included global issues including pollution, rising sea level and geography. Science and survey was interwoven into projects that linked directly to the teaching curriculum while the subject matter was constructed around familiar events to provide context within which the children could identify.

The education and outreach programme was supported by detailed research and complemented by academic publications that ensured the source material was at the forefront of current thinking. This was exemplified in a European project where international teams joined to investigate submerged archaeological sites. The results were translated into three languages and taught in schools from each nation who interacted through the internet with web based education tools. In the UK, a travelling maritime bus has been created to access schools and more remote environments. Here it has been used to provide a tangible teaching resource. The vivid display and dynamic teaching methods used have proved particularly effective at engaging with more challenging pupils and groups.

I would argue that an understanding of ones historical background gives people a connection with the past. It takes time for society to form, and while doing so, the story of its evolution is archived in its history and material remains. Reference to this resource can embellish lives by providing a longer term link with the historic environment and engendering a sense of place in a community. This breeds collective self confidence and a civic pride that is the bedrock of any stable society. In the current times of uncertainty the need for secure social cohesion is becoming ever more important and strong anchors to the past can provide a grounding that binds people together. These are the foundations that need to be laid if we hope to get common respect for our place and each other. All too frequently we see that people are more ready to do harm to those from whom they feel excluded and distant rather than members of their own community. I would advocate that public historical and archaeological education is a tool that can make the past accessible to a wide audience of people who would otherwise not be reached. Yet, if we do not read that record we cannot learn from it and understand the present – not to mention that we would be less able to learn from our mistakes.

As the current economic climate worsens, available funding from public sector sources is focusing more and more on statutory requirements. In the UK, support for public archaeology is not statutory and as such does not qualify for mandatory funding. However, as it is education, it is taken for granted by the public in the UK who expect the state to pay for it. As it is not mandatory, civic authorities do not cover the costs. So despite the improved profile we have seen over the last decade, public archaeology is now facing its greatest challenges.

Many excellent tools and delivery methods have been developed on both sides of the Atlantic since the turn of the centaury. Public enthusiasm exists but it remains somewhere in the ‘not quite ready to pay’ zone on the fringes of popular culture. The same applies to civic leaders who like to be affiliated when they can afford it but seldom recognise the deeper social benefits that underlie the subject. The issue now is one of sustainability. Should we look to communities at ground level to help fund activities they will be involved in? Should we pursue support from the public purse? Should we persuade commerce and industry that they would benefit from supporting the sector?

I fear we will not achieve long term sustainability unless high level decision makers can fully appreciate the value of history and archaeology. So, SHA members, how are we going to achieve that?

The birthplace of French North America and the only walled city north of Mexico, Québec is an open-air treasure chest that will delight history and culture buffs alike. Its European background and modern North American character are set off by a heady blend of history, traditional and contemporary art, and French language culture, all of which make Québec City a destination like no other.

Québec City is a place to rejoice in the old and explore the new. One of the oldest cities in North America and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is also a hub for exploring new media and technology. Visitors flock to Old Québec. This fortified part of the city exudes old world charm, with its winding streets and a profusion of boutiques, museums, and attractions. From timeless Grande Allée to the trendy Saint-Roch neighborhood, Québec City is a place to slow down and savor the finer things in life. No matter what your plans are for your stay in the Québec City area, you’ll love the safe surroundings and warm hospitality.

Québec City has been showered with all kinds of awards from the tourism industry. The November 2011 issue of Condé Nast Traveler ranked it the sixth best destination in the world, as well as the third best destination in in North America, and the first in Canada! Meanwhile the August 2011 edition of Travel + Leisure magazine placed it 10th in its list of the best cities in the United States and Canada in announcing its World’s Best Awards 2011. Québec City is renowned for the quality of its fine dining and has a little black book’s worth of local and European-style restaurants and cool bistros where you can enjoy local produce, fine cuisine, and innovative global fare. The historic old city alone has no fewer than 100 memorable restaurants.

Winter is also a great time to visit, as the city is draped in a romantic blanket of white. What better time to discover all kinds of wintry adventures! How does a visit to the Ice Hotel grab you? Or a turn at dogsledding, ice climbing, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, downhill skiing, or snowmobiling! Talk about nirvana for sports enthusiasts. A national wildlife area, a national park, two wildlife preserves, four ski resorts, and some thirty cross-country ski centres are just some of the area’s many outdoor attractions. You can also take in a game of the world’s fastest sport with the city’s Remparts ice-hockey team while you’re here.
Québec City is easy to get to: Jean Lesage International Airport is directly served by several international carriers. Connecting flights are available through Montréal, Toronto, Ottawa and several US airports. Jean Lesage International Airport is just 16 km from downtown. Ground links, either by rail, bus or road, go through Montréal in most cases.

Québec City at a Glance:

• • Founded in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain
• • Cradle of French civilization in North America
• • Historic Old Québec is a UNESCO World Heritage Site
• • Capital city of a province of 7.5 million people
• • Seat of the province’s National Assembly
• • Population of 632,000 (Greater Québec City Area)
• • 250 km northeast of Montréal
• • The city is very safe and offers a warm welcome in all seasons!

Regular information about the conference will be posted on the SHA 2014 website (sha2014.com/). Please follow us on Facebook and on Twitter (using the hashtag #SHA2014) for updates about the conference throughout the year!

The Questions in “Diversity”

This year I have reported several times on the SHA’s effort to make diversity an increasingly articulate part of the SHA mission and our collective scholarly practice (compare columns on Global Historical Archaeology, Historical Archaeology in Central Europe, and Diversity and Anti-Racism in SHA).  There are a cluster of practical questions raised by “diversity”:

• - What does it even mean to be “diverse”?  Many of us have become somewhat wary of the term “diversity,” so this demands some concrete definition;
• - Why might we or any other discipline or professional society desire diversity?;
• - What access barriers face various archaeologists and SHA members across lines of difference?;
• - What are the international implications of diversity when we step outside the familiar lines of difference in America?

Many of these questions are to some extent rhetorical in the sense that they have no satisfying answer with utter resolution, but the honest, reflective, and ongoing discussion of all of them is critical.  The most recent discussion on these issues came in a Gender and Minority Affairs Committee Panel at the 2013 conference in a session that included Carol McDavid (Community Archaeology Research Institute) and Maria Franklin (Texas) as Chairs, with panelists Whitney Battle-Baptiste (UMass), Chris Fennell (Illinois), Lewis Jones (Indiana), and Michael Nassaney (Western Michigan).  They were joined by Richard Benjamin (International Slavery Museum, Liverpool) and Bob Paynter (UMass).  Some of the issues are familiar to long-term members, but Board of Directors’ goal is to produce increasing clarity and concrete action.  These thoughts are simply my own as an audience member in the session and a Board Member who is committed to an inclusive SHA.

Welcoming Diversity in SHA

The GMAC session revolved around, to paraphrase GMAC Liaison Carol McDavid, making SHA a welcoming environment to a variety of voices.  This is perhaps a more difficult thing to measure than mere demography of the membership, because it fundamentally defines diversity as a shared social and emotional sentiment.  Nevertheless, it is an absolutely worthy goal that consciously embraces curiosity about and acceptance of people unlike ourselves across time, space, and every conceivable line of difference.

A “welcoming” professional home ensures that colleagues with distinctive experiences and scholarly voices can have significant impact beyond little circles of specialists.  We should not underestimate the influence of even a single thoughtful voice, and SHA should be absolutely certain that such a voice feels welcome and supported and can secure a firm and fair foothold in our midst even if we disagree with their scholarly conclusions.  I very strongly believe that since the moment a group of 112 people gathered in Dallas in 1967, the SHA has been fundamentally committed to casting itself as a democratic, international scholarly organization, and we have long taken pride in archaeology’s capacity to “give voice” to historical agents who have been overlooked by other scholars.  I do not believe that this means SHA is not a “welcoming” professional environment, but some of our members are reluctant to become part of some scholarly discourses or SHA governance, so we need to systematically ask how we can create comfortable places and roles for all our members.  Many of the measures to fashion such an environment are apparently modest mechanisms that we can do now, and I have three general thoughts that came out of the GMAC session and broader discussions in Leicester and over the previous year.

Feeling and Being Diverse in SHA

First, I fundamentally agree that in North American historical archaeology in particular the absence of people of color inevitably risks compromising our scholarship.  Many of us self-consciously sound the mantra that the meeting seems aesthetically homogenous, which is an inelegant way of saying we are overwhelmingly White and do not appear to reflect society.  I am not in disagreement with this observation as much as I hope we can push it to some substantive action.  I do not personally think that any scholarly discipline actually “reflects” society in an especially substantive way:  that is, scholars gravitate toward the academy, academic production, and particular disciplines because we have specific sorts of creativity, experiences, and personalities.  Nevertheless, even within that aesthetic of homogeneity there are a breadth of class, ethnic, international, or queered voices who come to SHA through a rich range of paths, and a vast range of us partner with community constituencies.  During the GMAC session Tim Scarlett suggested that it may well be that one thing we need to do is more assertively tell our unacknowledged stories of difference to encourage others that their voices matter in scholarship and SHA governance: that is, being an SHA member is a mechanical act of paying dues, but feeling that we are each an important part of the SHA discussion may be different for our colleagues who feel most marginalized because of race, class, sexuality, age, disabilities, or myriad other factors.

International Diversity

Second, a question sounded in Leicester was what constitutes diversity as we move beyond the confines of North America?  As we grow and become a truly international, wired organization connected across increasingly complicated lines of space and difference, SHA needs to assertively work to advocate for all our members and the diverse worlds in which we all live.  Our international membership provides a rich way to confront Americans’ distinctive experiences of lines of difference, so I hope we will cast diversity in the most complex social, historical, and international terms that are compelling to all our members and make all of us feel welcome in SHA.  We are an international organization in a transnational moment in which many of us are increasingly threatened by the decline of jobs in the private sector, agencies, and the academy alike, and for many of us SHA provides a refuge and a voice for our collective scholarship.  We must always assertively and self-critically assess shifting lines of difference, so I do not believe what we call diversity will ever settle into a few neat categories.

Diversity as Good Scholarship

Third, like all scholars, we will continue to have standards of scholarly rigor we are all held to regardless of our demography or identity.  Some of our work will always be somewhat particularistic and descriptive, and not every project or research context needs to be focused on inequality or public engagement: lots of us need to do the fine-grained artifact and documentary research that makes historical archaeology so compelling in the first place.  Respect for scholarly rigor and difference alike breeds civility and personal humility that encourages talent and makes for good scholarship: multiple and often-dissentious voices constantly destabilize normative methods and narratives, while homogeneity simply reproduces itself and is at best boring scholarship and at worst socially reactionary.  It is absolutely true that we are all part of employment and educational contexts that have a variety of structural inequalities that risk yielding social and intellectual homogeneity.  We should be prepared to acknowledge when some standards hinder our colleagues, and in SHA I think this means always pressing to be transparent, respectful, encouraging, and clear about the scholarship, service, and communication done in our collective name.  We remain committed to diversity simply because a welcoming and creative intellectual environment produces the best scholarship.

Diversity as an SHA Value

Will SHA resolve all those questions I posed at the outset of this blog?  Of course we cannot resolve structural inequalities that took a half-millennium to develop and now have a rich range of international faces.  SHA is one professional organization, and while we advocate for a rich range of scholars and our members touch the lives of countless people beyond our membership, our mission remains focused on encouraging the scholarly study of the last half-millennium.  Nevertheless, in recent years the Board of Directors has undergone diversity training, a Gender and Minority Affairs Travel Scholarship has been created, and we have begun to examine the concrete ways we can invest the organization from top to bottom with an embrace of difference.  Now we need every SHA Committee to ask itself what its stake is in this discussion on diversity: If these moves are going to create genuine change in SHA, then diversity needs to be on the agenda for all committees and not simply the GMAC.

At the 1968 SHA meeting in Williamsburg, Kathleen Gilmore, Dessamae Lorrain, and Judy Jelks were among a very small number of women at the conference, which apparently included no people of color at all.  Today our membership is nearly evenly split between men and women and our Presidents have included 12 women, including 11 of the last 24 Presidents.  We continue to work to ensure that we are the best possible advocates for all our members because we carry an important role, and we should never underestimate the many lives each of us profoundly touch, sometimes without even knowing it.  While we will not resolve the inequalities that hinder access to the academy or scholarship, we can place these issues in discussion, embrace them as our core values, and persistently press to be a good example of inclusion, respect, and acceptance.  I truly believe SHA members have always been committed to a truly democratic scholarship, and I think in many ways we are simply continuing to articulate the values of many scholars before us.  It is important to keep articulating those values and doing all we can to move this discussion to the heart of SHA’s culture.

So, this entry is about a recent shift in the way I think about the archaeology that I do, the methods I employ to engage with multiple stakeholders, and the ability to compare my experiences across time and space. This all started when I began to notice that many of the archaeologists around me were starting to talk about this thing called heritage.  I presented a paper at an annual conference sponsored by the UMass Amherst Center for Heritage and Society (CHS) about the recent trends in African Diaspora archaeology. I had incredible exchanges with heritage professionals, archaeologists from around the globe who were using unfamiliar language like tangible and intangible heritage, polylogues (as opposed to monologues), and concepts like sites as extensions of public value. I was shocked to learn how different this new heritage differed from my archaic understanding of what heritage was. It was no longer simply the idea of preservation, the built environment, or a tool for nation building, it was about all people, even those who were often marginalized, neglected and underrepresented.

My formal relationship with CHS began when I became a part of a larger project on Eleuthera, an outer island in the Bahamas. Initiated by a local organization, One Eleuthera Foundation (http://oneeleuthera.org/), CHS became a partner in an effort to identify projects and opportunities to “strengthen Eleuthera’s communities and further the economic, environmental and social development of the island” (http://oneeleuthera.org/). This partnership, already going on for a year, involved community engagement, focus groups with a variety of stakeholders, and historical research. There were several viable components to the project, one of which was the possibility for some archaeology of an abandoned 500 acre plantation on the southern tip of the island. I was drawn by the lure of plantation archaeology outside of the Southern United States. However, I quickly discovered that this trip was not about me initiating excavations at Millars plantation, this thing I now know as critical heritage opened my eyes to see realities of lived experience that had to be addressed before a single shovel or trowel ever touched the dirt.

What I found was an island that did not benefit from constantly docking cruise ships or “all inclusive” resorts scattered across the landscape. I found an island impacted by severe un/underemployment, the invisibility of a Haitian labor class, the negative imprint of failed tourism, steady outward migration, and the political and social involvement of second-home owners. I arrived thinking I was there to help the “community,” without knowing what that really meant. Eleutherans were easy to talk to, I learned a great deal about history, family, connection, in many ways I felt like I was returning to a home I had longed for, but never knew existed. The people looked like me, I could relate to the frustrations of the empty promise of tourism and how it fostered apathy in the minds of young people. I was not the archaeological expert, standing in the center of town as an empty vessel to be used to recuperate the buried past. My role was seeing myself as a facilitator between the elder and the youth, the Eleutheran and the Haitian laborer, the community organizer and the second-home owner. The fading history of the island was held close by those who stayed, those who looked to heritage as the means for a sustainable collective memory. Archaeology could tell a story that chronicles the history of an abandoned plantation, the experiences of post-emancipation life, and possibly provide a narrative that can be powerful enough to reclaim a fading Eleutheran identity, but this project was more about dialogue, about reaching a larger audience on and off of the island. As one informant said plainly, “we need you to help remind us all that we have, because we are sitting on it and take it for granted” (Roderick Pindar, personal communication, 2012). And then I went back home, to Western Massachusetts.

On my return I was invigorated and confused. I had to process the trip, knowing that Eleuthera was forever in my system. I had just scratched the surface on my first trip and I continued to delve, very slowly, into this thing called heritage. It was some months later as we were conceptualizing the 2012 UMass Amherst Heritage Archaeology Field School (http://umassheritagearchaeology.com/), that it struck me. I was starting to see my current site, the W. E. B. Du Bois Homesite, differently. I began to think critically about how I had been defining “community” in Great Barrington. Who were we trying to reach through our interpretation and archaeology? I wanted to employ the idea of local and associated stakeholders, mark the contrast and follow where it took us. I was reminded of how Anna Agbe-Davies articulated the reality that many historical archaeologists enter into engagement with very weak theoretical understandings of community (Agbe-Davies, 2010). And then I had one conversation that would again shift the very foundation of my thinking.

That “local” community I was searching for was not as distant as I had imagined. They were witnesses to a transformed landscape that no longer reflected their generational memories. There was a sense of disconnect from what Great Barrington had become and there was a sense of loss and apathy. Although, it does not involve an African descendant community, in the traditional sense, the Du Bois Homesite is surrounded by a rural, descendant group of people that are not invested in the site that occupies a space in their neighborhood. This local community has experienced a steady outward migration of young people, a politically and socially active second-home owner community, the effects of New England seasonal tourism, and massive un/underemployment. The needs of this local community are different than I initially expected or even considered. This community did not look like me, we didn’t share a collective past, but there is a need for their voices to be a part of the dialogue of how we understand the Du Bois Homesite. Therefore, I am beginning to see the possibility of facilitating a conversation, developing a longer relationship to the site and its surroundings and expanding the story/narrative of life in Great Barrington, in the past, present and future.

From critical heritage I have learned that I am no longer just the expert. I have learned that I can serve as a facilitator for the needs of local and associated communities, use an archaeology that includes dialogues that exposes students to the complications of human interaction and conflict. And how these messy situations can become teaching moments, the means to create sustainable relationships between communities and sites, and how, for the first time in my career, my ability to put those lofty theoretical ideas I have about engagement into practice. Whether it is on an outer island in the Bahamas or a small, plot of land on the South Egremont Plain in rural Western Massachusetts, critical heritage has opened my eyes wide enough to see a lasting value in the work that I to do.

• Agbe-Davies, Anna
  • 2010 “Concepts of community in the pursuit of an inclusive archaeology,” In International Journal of Heritage Studies 16(6):373-389.
• Pindar, Roderick
  • 2012 Personal Communication, Governor’s Harbor, Eleuthera, Bahamas.

What kind of students and research win the award? Mullins concisely described the work of last year’s two recipients and we were curious to learn a little more about Corey McQuinn and Adrian Myers as students. We interviewed McQuinn and Myers and the following is a summary of their responses.

Corey McQuinn, a master’s student concentrating in Historical Archaeology at the University of Albany, researches enslavement in the Northeast, an understudied topic. He examines the Mabee Farm in Rotterdam, New York, and how different archaeological models of enslavement and racialization apply to the Northern context. Through another project focused on the Underground Railroad in Albany, New York, he studies how the construction of a community that supported the Underground Railroad relates to New York’s earlier history as a slave state and its continued economic dependence on enslaved labor corps.

McQuinn working with students at the Schoharie River Center archeological field school in Montgomery County, New York. Dragon site on the Schoharie Creek (2008).

In addition to this academic research, as a project manager for the cultural resource management firm Hartgen Archaeological Associates, Inc., McQuinn says he must be flexible and cover a broad range of time periods and historic contexts. He has worked in a variety of historical contexts, including cemetery excavations, tavern sites, Shaker village sites, farmsteads and industrial contexts. He has also helped to run Hartgren’s youth archaeological field school summer programs, getting students involved in community archaeology.

McQuinn and students screening at Stephen and Harriet Myers house youth field school in Albany, New York, last summer.

The Ed and Judy Jelks Travel Award helped McQuinn attend his first SHA conference, where he presented a paper, met other professionals in his field, including authors of papers and books he has read. A highlight of the conference was getting to know people and learning about work in progress. He finds both the annual conference and quarterly newsletter valuable resources for identifying potential partnerships and opportunities in the future.

Though his three kids, Remember, Beatrix, and Jasper, are his greatest successes, McQuinn also received the New York Archaeological Association’s William Beauchamp Student Award in 1998 and the 1997-1998 Dana Student Internship Grant from Ithaca College. He is looking forward to completing his master’s thesis next semester and his PhD in the future.

Myers excavating at the PoW camp in Manitoba.

A PhD candidate at Stanford, Adrian Myers, learned of the Ed and Judy Jelks Travel Award through attending the SHA conference, SHA business meetings, and from the HISTARCH email listserv. The award enabled him to present a paper, “Dominant Narratives, Popular, Assumptions, and Radical Reversals in the Archaeology of German Prisoners of War in a Canadian National Park” in the session chaired by Michael Roller and Paul Shackel, “Reversing the Narrative.” The paper was about all the surprising and counterintuitive things he encountered while studying the history of Nazi soldiers in a prison camp in Canada during World War II. Long interested in the history of the Second World War, his dissertation research is a historical archaeological study of a prison camp in Manitoba, Canada. Over three seasons of work he and colleagues surveyed, mapped, and excavated portions of the camp. Myers also travelled to Germany and met with three men who had been prisoners of the camp.

Myers has participated in a variety of other projects, including the “Van Project” at the University of Bristol, the Stanford Gymnasium Dig, and Bonnie Clark’s field school at the Granada Relocation Center, a World War II Japanese internment camp in Colorado. He also used free Google Earth imagery to map the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, assembled and co-edited a book on archaeology and internment camps, did a study on 20th century porcelain electrical insulatorsand also manages to work part-time in CRM archaeology.

Myers interviewing German PoWs in Germany.

Also a recipient of the National Geographic Society Waitt Grant (2009), Myers suggests undergraduate students pursue ideas for projects, even if it seems impossible and incredibly far off, especially if they are passionate about the subject. He suggests finding a supportive graduate program and, with effort the research can probably be done. He also says having an awesome adviser helps.

Both McQuinn and Myers sound passionate about their research and actively pursue opportunities to participate in projects and make connections with their peers in historical archaeology. They recognize the SHA as a resource for students and advise them to participate in the organization by speaking or corresponding with other archaeologists and presenting at conferences. The Academic and Professional Training Student Subcommittee (SSC) is starting a group discussion on student professionalism and the Society for Historical Archaeology. Please become a member of the conversation by joining the SSC Yahoo! group. Email your request to JCoplin@gc.cuny.edu and include your email to join.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Like its British and American counterparts, the Nordic version of TAG is broadly conceived, including a host of straightforward archaeological case studies as well as more abstract theory-driven deconstructions of materiality.  In that sense it is not really all that much different from the British and American versions of TAG, and a vast range of the papers would be perfectly at home in an SHA conference as well.  Most of the Nordic TAG attendees were Scandinavians working with northern European data, and the case studies reached from distant prehistory to contemporary materiality.  Much of the conference would be familiar to archaeologists outside the Nordic world, but some modest distinctions about northern European archaeologies were underscored at Nordic TAG.

Seventeenth-century ceramics from Tornio (courtesy Risto Nurmi)

Historical archaeology is defined myriad ways in northern Europe (when the discipline is even recognized at all), and it encompasses truly interdisciplinary methods and questions and a breadth of theoretical frameworks.  Some of its distinction revolves around the material data featured in Nordic archaeologies, which routinely focus on architecture, space, and idiosyncratic things.  Tiina Aikkas, for instance, gave a paper on sieidi stones, sacrificial sites at which indigenous Sami left offerings of animals, metal, or alcohol to ensure hunt success (for more details, see her co-authored paper in Norwegian Archaeological Review).  Aikkas outlined complex material, spatial, and ritual analysis to ambitiously examine the full breadth of sounds, actions, odors, and material practices associated with these sacred stone sites that date as early as the 11^th century AD, with use well through the historic period if not the present.  The paper included zooarchaeological, ethnographic, and GIS data that would be familiar in any archaeological study, casting these rituals as evidence of the inseparable relationships between Sami ritual, religion, materiality, and subsistence.  Lots of Nordic TAG papers examined a comparably broad range of data and defined materiality in its broadest senses, and this is increasingly what archaeology looks like in many places.

Some of the distinction in northern European archaeology revolves around its theoretical ambitions.  For instance, Bjornar Olsen’s session “What About the Things Themselves?” advanced the absurdly clever proposition that material culture studies are not compelled to include humans as a compulsory dimension of the analysis; that is, instead of focusing on the relationship between humans and things, can archaeologists understand things unto themselves?  Olsen punctuated his ontologically novel contribution to the session with a stream of oddly aesthetic images of discarded things and vacant places (for similar work, compare the thoughtful Ruin Memories project).  Northern European archaeologists tend to read theory very broadly and borrow from a vast range of challenging and often-creative philosophical foundations when they focus on theory, so TAG always expands my bibliography.  Still, much of northern European archaeology is firmly rooted in material description, highly focused research questions, and dense scientific methodology that does not devote much if any of its energy to explicit theorizing.

In the foreground, the Keminmaa Old St. Michael’s Church was built between 1519-21. Besides being a fascinating medieval building, it holds one of the most interesting spectacles in northern Finland: when Lutheran priest Nikolaus Rungius died in 1629 he was buried under the church and is on display in the church floor today. The church in the background, the new Saint Michael’s, was built in 1827.

The handful of northern Europeans who call themselves historic archaeologists sometimes struggle to define the discipline’s essential questions.  That struggle may be familiar to many North American historical archaeologists as well:  do we study a chronological period (since 1492, for instance)?; is our focus the transition to modernity?; is historical archaeology properly an archaeology of capitalism?; and so on.  Some of the battle is simply establishing the scholarly value of the “recent” past, which in Europe includes much of the period from 1700 onward.  For instance, with my Finnish colleagues Titta Kallio-Seppa and Timo Ylimaunu, I presented work on an 1822 creamware assemblage in Oulu, and such 18^th and 19^th-century ceramic papers would be absolutely commonplace in Atlantic World historical archaeology conferences.  However, Nordics often lump the period into 500 undifferentiated years of modernity; in some cases archaeologists have not devoted much if any time to artifacts from the last half-millennium; and relatively few northern European archaeologists have studied the 19^th and 20^th centuries (despite a rather rich contemporary archaeology scholarship).  Many of the mass-produced goods found on northern European sites after the early 19^th century are more familiar to North American archaeologists than they are to northern European scholars, but marketing, trade embargoes, and cultural distinctions shaped northern European consumption significantly, so the assemblages still have some concrete differences from the well-studied Anglo world.  The same material things in the Nordic world may not always mean the same thing they meant in places like North America, and some of our conventional questions on things like cost status or consumer display are not especially useful in the distant reaches of Finland.

This police officer lords over the Oulu Marketplace.

The most interesting and common question I was asked at this conference was some variation on “Why are you doing this archaeology here?”  That question is asked persistently, curiously, and without much self-consciousness by colleagues who rarely understand that they sit atop astoundingly rich post-1500 sites (and often curated collections) that can be woven into their existing medieval analyses of emergent globalization in exceptionally powerful ways.  Most European colleagues are open to the possibilities and keen to share their data and local sites, though, and in many places very creative scholars have built a strong foundation for historical archaeology that they are happy to share.

CRM archaeologists and academics alike recognize that much of our contemporary practice revolves around efforts to fund our research, and our Nordic colleagues share many of those same challenges.  There are precious few European academics who might be called historical archaeologists, and most Nordic countries have only a few archaeology departments and a handful of positions covering any period, so academic historical archaeology jobs are especially rare.  Salvage projects in northern Europe overwhelmingly focus on sites dating earlier than the 18^th century depending on specific national preservation codes, so there is not much compliance archaeology on “late” historic sites at all.  A vast range of Nordic scholars based in museums and state agencies work alongside post-doctoral researchers on a persistent enterprising search for extended funding, and Nordic TAG included continual hallway conversations about research partnerships, collaborations, and joint grant applications.  Despite the bleak North American job market, the shrinking opportunities for contract firms, and the demoralizing cuts to agencies like Parks Canada, there is still a well-established historical archaeology community in North America and a relatively firm footing in the academy and preservation law.  The UK likewise has an exceptionally productive historical archaeology community, and while they face many of the same challenges we deal with in the US the discipline has a strong foundation.

Nordic historical archaeology is in an early growth moment much like Atlantic World historical archaeology witnessed a half-century ago, and northern European historical archaeologists are actively building the discipline’s regional and national foundations.  This has included cementing international research partnerships, so there are some truly exciting possibilities for North Americans who want to expand their work to very new places.  Many of us in North America cannot contemplate European projects for concrete financial reasons, but increasingly more North American universities are supportive of faculty and students conducting international research and have modest but consequential “seed” grant funds for scholars beginning such projects; in my case, for instance, there was financial support for my travel to the Nordic world that I could never secure for work in my own hometown.  Those seed grants actually did produce more research opportunities for me and my students, so do not be too rapidly intimidated by the challenges of international historical archaeology research.  As Nordic TAG confirmed for me, there is a lot of interesting work beyond our narrow North American circles and lots of possibilities to borrow from it or even make a contribution to the discipline’s scholarly growth.

This statement came before I had arrived.

The Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre, on Leicester's 'Golden Mile'

The next SHA conference in Leicester in January 2013 takes the theme of globalization, immigration, and transformation, themes that are central to practice and research in historical and post-medieval archaeology. The conference theme is particularly pertinent for the host city Leicester, a multicultural city that, like many others in the United Kingdom, has been transformed since the middle of the 20th century through its interaction with global networks, particularly immigration from South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean—a pattern of immigration that reflects the once-global nature of the former British Empire.

These issues of globalization, immigration, and the transformations brought about by those processes, whether that entailed the global spread of European capitalism alongside the expansion of European colonialism, the willing or forced migration of millions of individuals to new homelands, or local, regional, and national transformations across the world, will be explored throughout the conference, and in particular during the Plenary Session.

In keeping with the conference theme, the 2013 plenary session will involve an international panel of speakers, who will present short case studies from their own work, followed by a panel discussion relating these case studies to the conference theme. At the time of writing, the confirmed plenary session participants include Daniel Schávelzon (Patrimonio e Instituto Histórico de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires & University of Buenos Aires), Innocent Pikirayi (University of Pretoria), Jon Prangnell (University of Queensland), Natascha Mehler (University of Vienna), Lt. Cmdr. Somasiri Devendra (Sri Lankan Navy, retired), and Giovanna Vitelli (St. Mary’s College of Maryland); the session will be cochaired by Alasdair Brooks (University of Leicester) and Eleanor Casella (University of Manchester).

Conference Committee
The 2013 Conference Committee will be working hard this year to bring you an enjoyable and stimulating conference in Leicester; you can find out more about the committee members by following the links below. If you have any questions or suggestions, please get in touch with the relevant committee member.

Conference Chairs: Audrey Horning (Queens University Belfast); Sarah Tarlow, (University of Leicester)
Program Chair: Alasdair Brooks (University of Leicester)
Terrestrial Chairs: Audrey Horning (Queens University Belfast); Craig Cipolla (University of Leicester)
Underwater Chair: Colin Breen (University of Ulster)
Underwater Program Committee: Joe Flatman (Institute of Archaeology, UCL)
Local Arrangements Chair: Ruth Young (University of Leicester)
Trips, Tours, and Visits Chairs: Marilyn Palmer (University of Leicester); Chris King (University of Nottingham)
Public Event Chairs: Debbie Miles-Williams; Richard Thomas (both University of Leicester)
Social Media: Emma Dwyer (University of Leicester)
Volunteer Coordinator: Sarah Newstead (University of Leicester)
Publicity: Ralph Mills
Roundtables: Deirdre O’Sullivan (University of Leicester)
Workshops: Carl Carlson-Drexler

[CC BY-NC-SA 2.0] via Flickr

As Quentin recognized, contemporary archaeology has a firmer footing in the UK and Europe than it does in North America, or at least it is not an especially recognizable scholarly niche quite yet in the US.  The work of scholars in the UK and Europe has turned to some materiality that is admittedly distinctive if not unique, such as the extensive scholarship of the landscapes of 20^th century warfare (for instance, English Heritage’s ambitious Cold War Monuments project, Gabriel Moshenska’s work on British air raid shelters and children’s homefront experiences of World War II, Heinrich Natho’s study of Norwegian World War II coastal defenses, and Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal’s analysis of Spanish Civil War Monuments); Laura McAtackney’s work on “peace walls” in northern Ireland; Anna Badcock and Robert Johnston’s study of protest camp sites in Derbyshire; and contemporary graffiti (John Schofield has cleverly captivated many journalists and questioned what archaeologists value with his assessment of Sex Pistols graffiti).  Yet for all these distinctive dimensions of British and European heritage we could certainly point to just as many equally interesting material experiences in every corner of North America.  Some of the visibility of contemporary archaeology is inevitably linked to a British and European willingness to conduct material analysis that does not require excavation.  Outside North America a vast number of scholars call themselves archaeologists while studying space, the built environment, and a broad range of material things without necessarily wielding a trowel.  In the US historical archaeology has fashioned a particularly productive niche by focusing on field excavation and everyday materiality, and much of our training is devoted to field methods and analysis of a distinctive range of commodities like ceramics, glass, and faunal remains that are routinely recovered from excavation contexts on nearly any historic period site.

There clearly are plenty of archaeologists who have done creative and challenging work outside the confines of an excavation unit and looking at goods beyond the most commonplace things.  Americans routinely point to William Rathje’s Garbage Project as an example of the profoundly consequential political insights provided by contemporary material analysis done within a relatively familiar archaeological methodology, and certainly some American archaeologists have done challenging if not truly activist work on contemporary materiality.  For instance, my colleague Larry Zimmerman has conducted archaeology of homeless camps in Indianapolis, Indiana that aspires to transform how communities serve homeless residents (work paralleling the UK scholarship of Rachel Kiddey and John Schofield on homeless materiality) and Jason De Leon’s study of undocumented migration.  Nevertheless, these projects are exceptionally rare in their public political implications, disciplinary impact, and perhaps even in their status as a scholar’s research focus.  Certainly lots of professors incorporate some contemporary materiality in their standard historical archaeology courses; still, relatively few of us have stand-alone courses on contemporary material culture that are conceptualized as appropriate training for historical archaeologists, who likely will spend their careers conducting conventional field excavations.  The vibrancy of contemporary archaeology beyond American shores may reflect the influence of international heritage studies in which archaeology, materiality, and history are defined very broadly and tend not to be separated disciplines.  Perhaps a more critical issue that slows the growth of North American contemporary archaeology, as Quentin indicated in his blog posting, is that there are virtually no job announcements in the US that are explicitly seeking scholars of contemporary materiality.

Yet the boundary between an archaeology of contemporary materiality and a historical archaeology somehow set in the past is increasingly blurred in North America, as it is in most of the world.  North American historical archaeologists have long embraced engaged archaeologies with conscious community ties if not activist implications, and the SHA conference and journal include increasingly more papers on 20^th century contexts and projects that revolve around contemporary community scholarship.  Our broadly held commitment to an archaeology that is focused on everyday materiality and field excavation is not likely to shift radically, but the distance between contemporary archaeology and historical archaeology is probably not that great at all.

I spent a week in September, 2011 in York working with decorative materials from Hungate, which has a nearly unparalleled ambition to examine two millennia of continuous occupation of a ten-acre site in the heart of York. While York is best-known for its Viking history, and it is in a region with a rich history of Roman archaeology, it has a post-medieval archaeological record that includes 18^th century domestic material as well as tenements from the mid- 19^th-century into the 1930s. It is those latter materials I looked at in York, since my work looks at tenement life in Indiana, and I am interested in broad international patterns in the construction of poverty and the process of displacing people from “slum” contexts in the 20^th century throughout the world. The York Archeological Trust has devoted the same thorough attention to that tenement period as it has given to the Roman, Viking, and medieval material from Hungate, and the record of all those periods is exceptionally rich. Like most of us, they want their research to be useful to scholars outside narrow archaeological specializations and outside Great Britain itself, and the York Archaeological Trust has a long record of running public programs examining the northern British city’s heritage as revealed by extensive archaeological research. They were kind enough to share much of their decorative material culture—figurines, display ceramics, and assorted household goods—to examine what it meant to be impoverished in York and assess how that compares to impoverishment in the US and places like Indianapolis.

Hungate is the single largest excavation ever conducted in York, which has been the scene of relatively continuous occupation for at least two millennia. Today York remains circled by well-preserved perimeter defensive walls, and it has exceptional architectural preservation of astounding sites including Clifford’s Tower, the massive York Minster, and numerous medieval structures that welcome numerous tourists throughout the year. The York Archaeological Trust began excavations in York in 1972 and has excavated sites that reach across several millennia, with particularly rich work on the Viking period that led to the creation of the JORVIK Viking Centre. Working across so many periods demands a vast range of specialists, and the Hungate team includes Romanists, medievalists, and post-medievalists alike who focus on historical research, zooarchaeology, ceramics, assorted small finds, and every other possible specialization.

What should interest many North American historical archaeologists is that the Hungate scholars have found quite a lot of community interest in the post-medieval archaeology on the site, especially the tenement period that is within the memory of many residents. Where the post-medieval period was once something overlying the “real” archaeology, the Hungate team recognized that there are local constituencies and an international scholarly community interested in these most recent material remains. Much of that work has examined how poverty was constructed in 19^th and 20^th century York, and they hosted a conference in 2009 on the archaeology of poverty that included North American scholars such as Mary Beaudry, Charles Orser, Adrian Praetzellis, Diana Wall, and Rebecca Yamin. That work subsequently was part of an SHA session in 2011 that included Hungate Project Director Peter Connelly and Historical Researcher Jayne Rimmer. In addition to a forthcoming journal collection from the project, the Hungate team plans an ambitious series of technical reports and accessible public scholarship.

Many North American historical archaeologists are interested in the same issues as our Atlantic World, European, Latin American, and Pacific colleagues, and there are increasingly more grants targeting international research and encouraging American graduate students to work with data outside the US. My own University was exceptionally supportive providing seed grants to conduct the work in York as well as trips to work in museums and universities in London, Newcastle, Manchester, and Finland. For those who cannot make it overseas because of cost and all the genuine practical realities, though, there are still enormous possibilities as increasingly more scholarship is digitized and many of our once-distant colleagues are accessible electronically. With the 2013 SHA Conference set for Leicester, we will have the chance to meet many of those British and European colleagues, so start planning ahead and think about extending your work to international settings.