Upcoming Seminars

Gerry Wait has over 30 years of experience as an archaeologist and heritage consultant. His real passion is in finding ways to make the past relevant to people and communities in building their future, with the belief that successful communities have firm roots in their past. Gerry is an expert in conservation and management planning, and has led Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs) or IESC due diligence in the UK, USA, Romania, Ireland, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Burkino Faso, Niger, the Mauretania, Republic of Congo, Mongolia, Morocco, and Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkey, and Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Uganda and Tanzania.

Gerry served as Chairman of the UK’s Institute for Archaeologists and a number of terms on the Board of CIfA, and is Co-Chair of the Committee on Professional Associations in Archaeology of the European Association of Archaeologists. Gerry has a B.A. in Anthropology, a M.A. in Anthropology and Archaeology, and a PhD in European Archaeology from the University of Oxford. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, the International Association for Impact Assessment, and of many other professional and academic associations.

International Cultural Heritage Management (ICHM), like heritage management in any context, can seem romantic and simultaneously like a great deal of work. Above all, it can be immensely rewarding. This two-hour course will provide participants with an introduction to the ways in which ICHM is like and unlike domestic Cultural Heritage Management work in other contexts. The seminar will discuss ethics and standards and team-work/collaboration in cross-cultural contexts. Outputs, capacity building, and sectoral development will also be discussed. Participants will learn about available resources for finding best practices and sources for support and guidance and be pointed to the existence and use of standards and publications.

Participants will be better able to assemble and lead teams or contribute as team members by:

1. Learning how to work through ethical concerns arising from working internationally in different cultural contexts;
2. Identifying the basic issues of international team management – cultural differences, time keeping, team roles and management, and styles of communication;
3. Connecting the relationships between standards of performance, outputs (project, commercial and academic) and capacity building; and
4. Learning how to find resources and support/guidance.

As a practicing archaeologist at FAR Western Anthropological Research Group, Inc., Dr. Lucas R. M. Johnson applies XRF analysis to obsidian, other volcanic rocks, and other materials in conventional and often creative ways. Conventional analysis of obsidian includes knowledge of statistical methods in terms of sourcing small and thin artifacts and producing technical reports. Other analyses have included residues/pigments on ritualized materials (e.g., ochre versus cinnabar), historic era ceramic glazes, and general sourcing of metavolcanic ground stone. Dr. Johnson understands how to characterize a wide range of elements and their respective concentrations if present. As a member of a laboratory team, Dr. Johnson has stayed current with XRF literature describing analyses of various materials, taught other lab staff the fundamentals of XRF, and trained them to use an XRF instrument.

Applications of X-Ray Florescence (XRF) in archaeology have expanded beyond the analysis of homogenous materials, such as obsidian, to include more heterogenous materials used, created, formed, or associated with human practices. Applications therefore include characterizations of ceramics, metals, glasses, soils, sediments, plasters, pigments/residues, cherts, and metavolcanic or metasedimentary rocks. While obsidian analysis is relatively straightforward, the other materials require additional caveats before conclusions can be drawn. This webinar summarizes fundamental aspects of how XRF works and then discusses a series of case-studies to illustrate how XRF technology can be applied to various anthropological questions. Intended for students, with little to no hands-on XRF experience, the presentation outlines important technical topics that should be considered before using XRF. These include a critical evaluation of material, the limitations of XRF instruments, and how XRF spectral data are used to make inferences and conclusions. Through discussing these topics, the instructor will indirectly address current debates in the literature regarding the use, reliability, and accuracy of handheld portable instruments. Regardless of which instrument is used, considerations of reliability, accuracy, and precision are essential.

1. Understand what is required for XRF analysis of a given material and by extension understand the limitations of XRF in analyzing certain materials.
2. Present case-studies by which students may learn how to perform a specific analysis.
3. Understand the fundamental physics of XRF and how software transforms XRF spectral to analytical units (i.e., calibrations).
4. Understand the basics of analyzing parts per million or weight percent versus untransformed photon peak counts (i.e., statistical procedures).

Nicola Jones received a Masters in Journalism from UBC (2000), and then went on to work at New Scientist Magazine and Nature in London. At Nature, she served as a news and features reporter and editor; online news editor; and commentary editor. She has been working with SAPIENS since 2017, developing and editing many essays and opinion pieces by anthropologists for a general audience.

Learn how (and why) to write about your work for the public, from an expert editor. Nicola Jones has spent more than a decade editing essays by academics, originally for the science journal Nature, and more recently for the online anthropology magazine SAPIENS (www.sapiens.org). Nicola will walk you through the steps of how, when, and to whom to pitch an essay or opinion piece; how to frame an argument; and how to write in a compelling and persuasive way for the general public.

1. Discover different ways that writing for the public can help your career
2. Learn how to pitch an essay or opinion piece
3. Learn how to write compellingly and persuasively for the general public

Dr. Della Scott-Ireton is Associate Director for the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) and has spent her career developing public interpretation for submerged archaeological sites and engaging and training citizen scientists to participate in underwater archaeological research and preservation.

Sarah Miller is Director of the Northeast/East Central Regions for FPAN. She created the Cemetery Resource Protection Training (CRPT) program in 2011 that has since graduated 1,400 stewards from 81 trainings statewide, as well as Heritage Monitoring Scouts of Florida (HMS Florida) launched in 2016 that has so far resulted in 432 Scouts monitoring 864 sites in two years.

Della Scott-Ireton and Sarah Miller of the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) invite you to join them to discuss the development and implementation of archaeological site stewardship programs. Heritage managers increasingly rely on dedicated volunteers and concerned stakeholders to serve as citizen scientists in the field, assisting with non-disturbance monitoring and recording of sites threatened by looting, erosion, development, sea level rise, and climate change. FPAN has had success in creating and executing such programs, both on land and under water. Sarah and Della will discuss the impetus for FPAN’s programs, as well as development of training curricula, promotion and marketing, partnering with other agencies, dealing with data, and on-going strategies for attracting, training, and retaining participants. Sustainability is a factor to consider, therefore challenges and opportunities for sustaining these kinds of programs also will be addressed.

1. To provide information, resources, and support for those wanting to develop effective and sustainable site stewardship/monitoring programs.
2. To discuss pros and cons, benefits and pitfalls, challenges and solutions of non-disturbance citizen science programs.
3. To stimulate ideas and offer suggestions for new or similar programs in other areas.

S. Terry Childs recently retired as the manager of the Department of the Interior Museum Program that provides policy, oversight, training, and technical assistance to the ten DOI bureaus and offices that own over 206 million museum objects and archives. She has advocated for attention to archaeological collections curation, preservation, and use through numerous books and articles since she began working for the National Park Service’s Archeology Program in 1993. She is the primary author of the Federal regulations on the disposal and deaccessioning of federal archaeological collections proposed to be added to 36 CFR 79, the Curation of Federally-Owned and Administered Archeological Collections. These proposed regulations were issued in November 2014 for public comment, which she then revised based on the numerous comments received. The National Park Service is currently working to publish those regulations as final. Childs also was the first Chair of the SAA Committee on Curation, now Committee on Museums, Collections, and Curation, in 2000-2006; served on the SAA Board of Directors in 2013-2016; and chaired the Archaeological Collections Consortium in 2017-2018.

Jenna Domeischel is the curator of the Blackwater Draw Museum at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, New Mexico where she has implemented several deaccessions. She has served on The Society for American Archaeology’s (SAA) Committee on Museums, Collections, and Curation, and is currently a member of the Archaeological Collections Consortium, a multi-agency national task force concerned with archaeological curation. Jenna is also the founder and chair of the SAA Curation Interest Group.

Deaccessioning is a collections management tool that is available for wise and judicious removal of archaeological collections. This two-hour seminar is designed to help archaeologists, curators, collections managers, repository managers, and others make good decisions about the appropriateness of a potential deaccession and both the means and the steps necessary to implement a deaccession of archaeological collections or objects. Critical to decision-making is knowledge about the ownership of the archaeological material proposed to be deaccessioned and pertinent laws and policies. Case studies of successful deaccessions will be presented.

1. Learn to assess whether or not to deaccession archaeological materials and what tools are necessary to make good decisions.
2. Learn the steps involved in deaccessioning, including who should be involved, the need to document every step, and the costs involved.
3. Learn the opportunities afforded by the deaccessioning process, including curatorial and educational benefits.