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Post-Meeting COVID Updates

The CDC recommends that people who were in close contact be notified of exposure. A close contact is someone who was less than 6 feet away from an infected person for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period and within 48 hours of the onset of the infected individual’s COVID symptoms or positive COVID test.

Read more: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/contact-tracing.html

The SAA required vaccinations and had a mask mandate even though neither was required by state or local law. The SAA supplied free masks to all attendees who requested them. The SAA staff and board took daily COVID tests. We listed food and drink events on our website to allow attendees to make their own choices. The Hilton Chicago had sanitizer stations and wipes outside of each session room.

The SAA can only conduct contact tracing in relation to the meeting and cannot ask about people’s individual activities outside of the official meeting spaces and events. This means we can notify only the attendees of the meeting, which we have been doing regularly. 

Below is a list of sessions and events where at least one attendee has reported a positive COVID test result to SAA staff. Not all session attendees are testing positive. All attendees are encouraged to take a COVID test and to follow the CDC guidance after exposure. Stay home and away from other people for at least 5 days (day 0 through day 5) after your last contact with a person who has COVID-19. The date of your suspected exposure is considered day 0. Wear a well-fitting mask when around others at home, if possible. Full guidelines can be found here: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/quarantine-isolation.html.
 

This list will be updated as more people notify SAA staff of results. 
(Updated April 8, 2022)

March 30

Student Welcome Reception

9:00 p.m. – 10:30 p.m.

March 31

[7] FORUM AFTER I GET MY DEGREE, WHAT’S NEXT? GOING FROM THE CLASSROOM TO THE PROFESSION
Time: 8:00 a.m.—10:00 a.m.

[13] SYMPOSIUM PRACTICE OF GOVERNANCE: DISTINCTION, BUREAUCRACY, AND URBANISM IN ANCIENT MESOAMERICA
Time: 8:00 a.m.–11:00 a.m.
 
[18] SYMPOSIUM BIOMOLECULAR ARCHAEOLOGY OF SECONDARY METABOLITES
Time: 8:45 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
 
[26] SYMPOSIUM ARCHAEOLOGY OF DEATH AND IDENTITY IN FORAGER COMMUNITIES
Time: 9:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
 
[27] SYMPOSIUM ARCHAEOLOGY AND INTERPRETATION AT EVERGREEN PLANTATION, ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST PARISH, LOUISIANA
Time: 9:45 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
 
[30] SYMPOSIUM ISOTOPIC METHODS, MOBILITY, AND EXCHANGE
Time: 10:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
 
[50] SYMPOSIUM MAKING GROUND: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF WASTE LANDSCAPES

Time: 1:00 p.m.–4:15 p.m.

[54] SYMPOSIUM HOUSEHOLD SIZE, WEALTH, AND INEQUALITY IN THE MAYA LOWLANDS
Time: 1:00 p.m.–4:45 p.m.
 
[69] POSTER SESSION ARCHAEOLOGY OF GENDER AND CHILDHOOD
Time: 4:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m.
 
Public Education Committee Meeting

4:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m. 

April 1

[79] SYMPOSIUM VISIONS OF DEEP TIME: TOWARD A MORE INTERPRETIVE FRAME OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE EARLY AMERICAS

Time: 8:00 a.m.–10:45 a.m.

[88] HYBRID SYMPOSIUM EL NIÑO AND THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF RESILIENCE ON THE PERUVIAN COAST
Time: 8:00 a.m.–11:30 a.m.
 
[91] POSTER SESSION BIOARCHAEOLOGY AND MORTUARY ANALYSIS IN THE CLASSIC MAYA WORLD
Time: 9:00 a.m.–11:00 a.m.
 
[100] FORUM CONFRONTING ABLEISM IN ARCHAEOLOGY: INVITING DISABILITY EXPERTISE TO THE TABLE
Time: 10:00 a.m.—12:00 p.m.
 
[110] SYMPOSIUM MAYA ARCHAEOLOGY, PART II
Time: 1:00 p.m.–2:15 p.m.
 
[111] SYMPOSIUM ADNA, THE DENTAL MICROBIOME, AND TEETH
Time: 1:00 p.m.–2:30 p.m.
 
[119] SYMPOSIUM ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE WOODLAND TRADITION
Time: 1:00 p.m.–2:15 p.m.
 
[137] LIGHTNING ROUND FROM THE PLAINS TO P-VALUES: PAPERS IN HONOR OF KENNETH L. KVAMME

Time: 3:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.

[138] SYMPOSIUM NEW RESEARCH ON THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF GENDER AND CHILDHOOD

Time: 3:45 p.m.–5:00 p.m.

Field Museum Reception

5:00 p.m. 

Reception of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists

5:30 p.m.–7:30 p.m.

April 2

[143] SYMPOSIUM CONTACT PERIOD AND HISTORIC NATIVE AMERICANS

Time: 8:00 a.m.–10:00 a.m.

[156] SYMPOSIUM IN MEMORY OF WENDY ASHMORE: LANDSCAPES OF MEANING, BIOGRAPHIES OF PLACE, AND ARCHAEOLOGIES OF COMPASSION, PART 1 

Time: 8:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m.

[157] SYMPOSIUM ETERNAL MIGRANTS? SCALE, MEANING, AND PRACTICE IN THE ARCHAEOLOGIES OF PAST MIGRATION
Time: 8:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
 
[169] SYMPOSIUM FORENSIC ARCHAEOLOGY, WARFARE, AND VIOLENCE
Time: 1:00 p.m.–2:00 p.m.
 
[170] SYMPOSIUM COVID-19: ASSESSING THE IMPACTS OF A GLOBAL PANDEMIC ON ARCHAEOLOGY
Time: 1:00 p.m.–2:15 p.m.
 
[178] SYMPOSIUM IN SMALL THINGS REMEMBERED: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF AFFECTIVE OBJECTS AND OTHER NARRATIVES
Time: 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m.
 
[179] SYMPOSIUM COMMUNITY AND PUBLIC ARCHAEOLOGY 
Time: 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m.
 
[188] SYMPOSIUM IN MEMORY OF WENDY ASHMORE: LANDSCAPES OF MEANING, BIOGRAPHIES OF PLACE, AND ARCHAEOLOGIES OF COMPASSION, PART 2 

Time: 1:00 p.m.–4:15 p.m.

[190] SYMPOSIUM HOW WILL COVID-19 SHAPE THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC ARCHAEOLOGY? 

Time: 1:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.

[195] FORUM EMERGENT ISSUES IN INDIGENOUS ENGAGEMENT: A CONVERSATION WITH THE SAA TASK FORCE ON DECOLONIZATION
Time: 3:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.
 
[193] SYMPOSIUM UNSTABLE BODIES: INTEGRATING CHEMICAL ISOTOPES AND CRITICAL THEORY IN BIOARCHAEOLOGY
Time: 1:30 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
 
CRM Expo
Time: 1:00 p.m.—4:00 p.m.
 

April 3

[218] SYMPOSIUM INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF LOW-DENSITY URBANISM
Time: 8:00 a.m.–11:00 a.m.
 
 

The SAA Board weighed all options and waited until the last possible moment to make the most responsible decision possible. COVID appears to be a sad but possibly permanent feature of our environment, and we all are going to have to work together to find constructive ways to move forward. 


Vaccination Requirement

SAA’s vendor, 42chat, has been used successfully by several large associations, such as the American Anthropological Association and the Geological Society of America. Their site is compliant with GDPR and California Consumer Privacy Act. See more: https://www.42chat.com/privacy-policy/ No SAA staff will see information uploaded by advance registrants, although SAA staff will receive status reports on advance registrants who have not completed their vaccination validation, so we can follow up with registrants who may be unaware of the requirement.

To build the portal and define requirements for “fully vaccinated,” SAA will use CDC guidance as of January 15, 2022. It will take approximately two weeks to bring the portal online. 

If the vendor 42chat does not approve your proof of vaccination  and you wish to request a refund, please email the vendor rejection to meetings@saa.org, so we can refund your registration. 
 
If a document is rejected, 42chat provides an explanation with the notification sent to you. You are encouraged to upload a new document, based on the information from the vendor. Keep in mind that SAA staff are not involved in these decisions and we cannot provide assistance beyond referring you back to our vendor.
 
To protect the health and safety of all meeting attendees, unvaccinated people will not be permitted to take part in the meeting. If you decide you do not wish to be vaccinated, please let us know in writing by March 1, 2022 in order to receive a full refund. 
 
Please ask any additional questions to meetings@saa.org, so we can help you and enhance this FAQ.

2022 Program

Because of COVID and the dramatic disruptions of this pandemic, the SAA understands that there may be new and unforeseen difficulties for 2022 program participants. For the 2022 meeting, we are implementing new procedures to accommodate these unexpected difficulties this year.

  • If you are a PRESENTER in a symposium or general session, your session chair is responsible for downloading all presentations in advance of the meeting and bringing these presentations on a laptop to the session room. If your session chair is comfortable, they could allow you to send a video recording or a voice over power point presentation. SAA cannot guarantee the stability of the internet, which is not suitable for streaming a video or presentation stored remotely. It is important that the recording be on the laptop and not streamed. Because presenter abstracts are reviewed by the Program Committee in September and October, we cannot accept replacement presentations.
  • If you are a DISCUSSANT in a symposium, forum, lightning round, or electronic symposium, your session chair has the option of replacing a discussant. A replacement discussant must register for the meeting and become a member of SAA by January 30, 2022, so staff can produce a correct final program and meeting app. No replacement discussants are possible after January 30, 2022. The session organizer needs to email cheng_zhang@saa.org with their session title, and the name and email of the replacement. Because presenter abstracts are reviewed by the Program Committee in September and October, we cannot accept replacement presentations.
  • If you are a POSTER PRESENTER, SAA staff will support traditional poster sessions at the 2022 physical meeting and has developed an electronic portal for PDFs of posters. The poster presenter guide provides details about presenting in-person and the e-Poster option. We recommend PDFs be uploaded to the e-Poster site by March 15, 2022. After March 16 and until April 6, SAA staff may not be able to help you with your upload because staff needs to set up, support, and take down the physical meeting.

    Please note that all poster presenters will continue to have a presentation time slot during the 2022 annual meeting, so you may wish to ask a co-author or a colleague to bring and present your poster during your designated session time. The hotel does not recommend mailing any posters to any hotel guest as packages are difficult to locate. SAA staff will not able to help locate and pin posters to bulletin boards.
 
Because of new and unforeseen complications from COVID, session organizers can add discussants for 2022 sessions as long as their session remains within the annual meeting submission format rules. (In other words, if a forum already has 12 discussants, it may not add a new discussant.) All new and existing discussants must register for the meeting and become a member of SAA by January 30, 2022, so staff can produce a correct final program and meeting app. Session organizers need to email cheng_zhang@saa.org with their session title.
Planning for each annual meeting begins immediately following the previous annual meeting. Venue session and event rooms are specifically prepared for the SAA annual meeting. Each room is set up with furniture (e.g., head table, chairs) and audiovisual equipment (projector, sound patch, etc.). Vendors hire labor to set up the rooms and ensure the equipment is on-site for our meeting. In some cases, vendors ship equipment to our conference venue (such as when they need to ensure there are enough sound patches to cover all our concurrent rooms). Changes to the sets at the last minute are, at best, costly and, at worst, impossible, because the labor or the equipment is not available to rent.
The SAA deposits hundreds of thousands of dollars in advance of in-person meetings to ensure session and event rooms are set up correctly and in time for our meeting. In addition, Society members will pay a hefty cancellation fee to the meeting venue. Pivoting to a virtual meeting for 2022 will more than double the cost of the annual meeting when considering the money lost and the added expenses of hiring a virtual meeting vendor and hosting a virtual meeting site. Pandemic insurance is no longer offered to anyone.

Thanks to the work of the Virtual Components Task Force, the Chicago meeting will have two virtual components: (1) two experimental hybrid sessions, and (2) e-Posters, which are the posters presenters have uploaded to a virtual meeting site.

The two experimental hybrid sessions will be in person and online. Meeting registrants can attend in person in Chicago or online, and recordings of the sessions will be available afterward. The symposium “El Niño and the Archaeology of Resistance on the Peruvian Coast” will be live 8:00 a.m.–11:30 a.m. Central and the forum “Maritime Prehistory of Northeast Asia 1: Boating and Pleistocene Maritime Migration” will be live 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m. Central on Friday, April 1.
 
Please note that posters presented in person at the Chicago annual meeting may not be available in the e-Poster Hall. Each poster presenter will choose whether or not to upload their poster to the e-Poster Hall. You can find abstracts for posters, hybrid sessions, and any of the in-person sessions in the final abstracts. 
 
In addition to these two virtual components, as we did in 2021, SAA staff will support the online State Archaeology Poster contest and a Zoom “Student Welcome to the SAA.”
 
 

All 2022 advance registrations include complimentary access to the virtual components as part of their meeting registration. (Advance registration will close on March 1.)

In addition, after March 8, individuals can purchase a virtual components access fee which will only give you access to the e-Posters and the two experimental hybrid sessions.

If you paid for an advance registration, you will receive an email on March 16 with the subject line: SAA87th! Accessing the Virtual Components website. 

If you paid for the virtual components access fee, you will receive an e-mail with the link to the virtual components website as soon as the digital purchase is complete. You may need to check your spam filter for this email message.

SAA staff prepared a virtual components attendee guide to help. 

All 2022 advance registrations include access to the virtual components site. All program presenters must be registered for the meeting and be a 2022 member.

Someone who does not plan to come in person and is not a program participant may be interested in online access to the virtual components. Access to the virtual components–only portion of the annual meeting will be available to purchase after March 8, 2022. The virtual components access fees will be

  • Regular members: $20
  • Students/retired/international-rate* members: $10
  • Regular nonmembers: $30
  • Students/retired/international-rate* nonmembers: $15

(*See the SAA Member Rates and Categories page for the list of international-rate countries.)

The e-Posters and the hybrid recordings will remain online and available to view for meeting registrants and all who pay the virtual components-only access fee until May 15, 2022.
 
 
The e-Posters that are uploaded by presenters are available online to meeting registrants until May 15, 2022. SAA staff e-mailed all advance registrants on March 16 with details about how to access the e-Poster site.
Sadly, the costs for a hybrid session room (in which some presenters are remote and some in person) are extremely expensive, and there is little room to negotiate the cost. A hybrid session requires rentals of cameras, multiple screens, additional mics, sound mixers, development of a website, hardwiring of the room, and multiple technicians. However, the Virtual Components Task Force and the board felt the SAA needed to experience what is required in terms of staff time, equipment rental, speaker training, and organizer expectations to make an interactive in-person and virtual session successful. 
 
To be responsible with member resources while also supporting this experience, the Virtual Components Task Force and the SAA Board of Directors authorized one test session. We initially offered this experiment to the opening presidential session organizers, who declined given their sensitive topic of human remains. We are grateful that Ben Fitzhugh volunteered to test a hybrid format for his forum on “Maritime Prehistory of Northeast Asia 1: Boating and Pleistocene Maritime Migration.” After planning, staff discovered the additional audiovisual equipment and technicians cost is the same for an 8-hour day as a 2-hour day. Thus, the symposium organizer for the morning session scheduled in that room, Dan Sandweiss, graciously agreed to also test a hybrid symposium, “El Niño and the Archaeology of Resistance on the Peruvian Coast.”
 
The specifics of this format are being developed, and we will share a write-up about the experience after the annual meeting. Due to cost, no other session rooms or dates will be hybrid.
 
Yes! The posters submitted for the State Archaeology Celebration Poster Contest will be displayed at the annual meeting in Chicago and on the SAA website. Voting will take place entirely online, like the past two years. This year, anyone will be eligible to vote along with SAA members and meeting registrants. Entries are being accepted now through March 1, and the contest will open for voting later in March. Support local heritage and your favorite design by viewing the posters and voting: www.saa.org/postercontest. The contest is sponsored by the SAA’s Public Education Committee and the Council of Allied Societies, and is made possible through donations to the Public Education Endowment Fund.

Posters

Please review the Poster Presenter Guide, which describes both presenting in person and also uploading your e-Poster to the virtual site. Poster presenters are encouraged to take advantage of both platforms. 

If you plan to upload your poster to the e-Poster site, please upload your PDF before March 15, 2022, if at all possible. Completing by March 15 gives you time to print your poster (to bring to Chicago) and to upload your final e-Poster to the virtual platform site. Unfortunately, after March 16 and until April 6, 2022, SAA staff may not be able to help with your poster upload, because we will need to set up, support, and take down the physical meeting. In other words, if you end up uploading after March 16, SAA staff may not be able to help you until April 6.
 
The e-Posters that are uploaded by presenters are available online to meeting registrants until May 15, 2022. SAA staff e-mailed all advance registrants on March 16 with details about how to access the e-Poster site.

IMPORTANT DATES

  • May 03, 2022

    Submission System Opens

  • September 08, 2022

    Submission Deadline 3PM EDT

  • November 10, 2022

    Meeting Payment Confirmations Sent

  • November 15, 2022

    Membership Join Deadline for Nonmember Participants

  • December 01, 2022

    Withdrawal Deadline

  • December 06, 2022

    Participation Decision Letters from Program Committee

  • January 30, 2023

    Membership Renewal Deadline for Current Member Participants