AACAI Sessions at AAA
Dr Diana Neuweger
Hi
AACAI is encouraging all consulting archaeologists to contribute to our sessions at the AAA conference this year.
The AACAI sessions are entitled:
Sweating it Out in Consulting Archaeology: The AACAI Sessions
A session dedicated to recent Australian archaeological consulting projects. The session invites papers that showcase innovations, current trends, and themes from the work of consultant archaeologists around Australia. Papers from AACAI members an all consultants working in Oceania are welcomed for this session.
Please have your papers in to AAA by the 27th of June.
Diana
Dr. Diana Neuweger MAACAI
Director & Principal Heritage Consultant
Archaeo Logical Heritage Pty Ltd
_________________________________________
Phone: 08 6142 8420 / Mob: 0414 562 628
PO Box 1217 Canning Bridge Applecross WA 6153
Email: di...@archaeo-logical.com.au
Website: www.archaeo-logical.com.au
Michael Lever
Personally, I would be very reluctant to participate in any way in a session, the very title of which perpetuates the commonly held false binary between on the one hand, consulting archaeology as "sweating it out"- as an essentially physical and non-intellectual discipline, and on the other hand, academic archaeology as a cerebral one.
It is undesirable enough as it is that AAA conferences such as this one, assume as normative the interests of the academic workplace. A workplace which to my best ability to estimate, only employs some 5-10% of fully employed Australian archaeologists. Interestingly, there is not a single mention of the word 'academic' in any AAA policy document I have viewed.
I believe that the current makeup of the office bearers, activities, publication, conference mode and conference sessions of AAA is a representative inversion of who the membership and potential membership of AAA is. A directly proportionate representation of members and member interests would see an exact reversal of the current situation - and would see sessions such as AACAI as the overwhelming norm, with perhaps a 5-10 % seasoning of academic representation.
I think this situation will with time change, to one where a representative body of the majority of Australian archaeologists (be it AAA or ACAI or whatever) provides services such as professional conferences and forums for its members.
In the meantime however, I don't think it is helpful for the majority (consultants) to engage in the intellectual self-marginalisation which I believe the wording of this session implies.
Nevertheless, best luck with the session !
Dr Diana Neuweger
Dear Michael,
Let me firstly say that the conference title was in no way meant to marginalise or alienate anyone. As I was putting a session together for AACAI I wanted it to be as general and inclusive as it could be so that any of our members or none members (working in the tropics or not) felt they could contribute to the conference. I honestly thought that this was just a bit of fun, and did not consider it would cause offence.
I guess I take no offence to the title because I don’t agree with the concept that consulting archaeology is physical and non-intellectual. I have worked in the heritage industry for 15 years and for 10 of those have been as a consultant. I find myself in a position today, where I would love to be doing more physical archaeology. My career finds me more and more in the office or the board room negotiating with clients, strategizing for positive management outcomes, and managing a business and its needs, and not in the field doing the physical hard yakka.
I honestly can’t speak for the makeup of the AAA membership, but I have to admit I have never seen it as exclusive of non-academics, and I think what also need to be considered is what the purpose of conferences are. Conferences are one of the best ways of disseminating new research, which more often than not comes from the academic sphere. Thus I don’t expect the make-up of papers at conferences will ever change that greatly, and they certainly will never accurately reflect the proportion of those working in academia and consulting.
Which is not to say that I not encouraging consultants to participate and present papers at the conference… please archaeological consultants, do participate whether you think the session title sucks or not!!!!
Diana
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "OzArch" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ozarch+un...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to oza...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/ozarch.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Michael Lever
I have to imagine that most archaeologists reading this are like yourself, often experienced in Australian archaeology - and often in archaeology only.
And, not having experienced other professions at work, may not perceive the highly inordinate degree to which the academic tail often wags the body of Australian archaeology.
After all, the current scenario is all that many Australian archaeologists have experienced.
May I assure you that this is not how other research-based professional organisations work.
The telling diagnostic is the massive disparity between what the daily activities of consulting archaeologists are, and the focus and content of conferences such as these.
You tellingly depict a workplace much like that which I observe for my directors, in which " My career finds me more and more in the office or the board room negotiating with clients, strategizing for positive management outcomes, and managing a business and its needs, and not in the field doing the physical hard yakka". Precisely.
These activities you describe, along with those such as my daily preoccupation with legislation and reporting requirements, are a huge part of consulting archaeology - but an aspect that I have never seen addressed as an area that should be vitally targeted at a conference which purportedly exists for the benefit of the majority of its members.
Like yourself, my directors and I spend nearly 100% of our time on such aspects of archaeology, which receive 0% cover in a mileu which takes the academic as normative.
In huge contrast to academic conferences, what professional conferences do, is to target the needs and interests of the majority of their members and provide content to suit.
Professional conferences are not academic conferences.
And if the vast, vast majority of Australian archaeologists are consulting professionals, I don't see why our representative body and its conferences should not primarily reflect this.
Check out conferences for bodies such as:
Medical associations - http://www.gpconference.com.au/program/
Teaching associations - http://www.historyteacher.org.au/?page_id=14
Or Accounting -http://www.cpaaustralia.com.au/training-and-events/conferences/management-accounting-conference/day-one
The key distinguishing feature between these professional conferences and academic conferences is that professional conferences are primarily focused on delivering relevant content to their members, rather than on providing a platform for speakers.
Honestly - other than items of general interest, I dont see more than 4 sessions at the entire AAA conference, which may possibly directly bear on my practice of archaeology. As for the content of the other sessions - I don't need to fly to Cairns for these. If their abstracts seem interesting I will contact the authors.
So yes, I do feel marginalised by these conferences with their token 5% of sessions such as AACAI which address the interests of 95% of archaeologists in Australia. And when this, the only such professional session takes on what seems a less-than intellectual self-portrayal, I am further disappointed.
Perhaps I am overly sensitive or overly vocal, but I believe I am expressing the general attitude of most archaeologists in Australia.
For when it comes to conferences such as these, the overwhelming majority of the consulting archaeologists I know, simply do not go.
Finally let me pre-empt the inevitable. No, I don't think it is up to me or any other individual to rectify this situation. On the contrary. I think it is incumbent at a very basic ethical level upon any organisation which claims to be a representative one, to accurately determine the makeup and needs of its membership.
I am sorry to have directed this to you - your post simply acted as a trigger for the frustration I felt at the unrepresentative nature of this event.
Cheers,
Oliver Brown
Comparing the papers presented at the Australian Archaeological Association Conference in the oldest (2001) and most recent (2010) programs available online [yes, the data are a few years old but still hold], plus a hard copy of the 2011 conference, the general pattern of increasing involvement by consulting archaeologists can be seen (Figures 1-3). In 2001, academics presented 78% of all papers; by 2010 this was down to 70% and in 2011 had dropped to below half with only 49%. Papers by consultants on the other hand went from a mere 5% in 2001 to 8% in 2010 before jumping to 22% in 2011. The other notable increases are also in the wider field of cultural heritage management (CHM) as reflected by the increase in papers with both academic and consulting authors and those by government archaeologists (mostly heritage managers and the regulators of consultants who are often ex-consultants themselves). Grouping these CHM papers together their sum goes from 18% in 2001 to 27% in 2010 with a further leap to 46% in 2011.
Developing these types of numbers with a more even spread of data from 2001, 2005, 2008 and 2011, the trend can be seen to be fairly steady. Overall, we seem to have comfortably reached a situation where the Australian Archaeological Association Conference is as much a forum for professional cultural heritage management as an academic research forum.
It should perhaps be noted that the stats above relate to the affiliation of the papers’ authors rather than their topic. In some cases consultant archaeologists are presenting academic research, either from previous work done in academia or their own sideline research. By the same token, academics are increasingly engaging in research related to CHM, either because they are tracking its increased profile in the profession or they are collaborating in work that continues to blurs any divide.
This appears very much to be the future profile of AAA conferences. With the consulting industry continuing to expand, AAA conferences are the most suitable format for giving a formal paper [with postscript apologies to Iain for the absence of consideration of historical archaeology here]. Written publications by consultants, as judged by AA alone, are as yet slower to rise in number – whilst quadrupling over the last ten years on average, still trending at only around 10%. However, in the broader category of CHM papers (papers by consultants, or including them as co-authors or by government cultural heritage managers) there is a trending increase to around 30% of AA papers now from ~10% ten years ago and a corresponding decline of papers solely by academics (including non-academic indigenous co-authors) from over 80% to below 60%. The reasons that an even more notable increase in written papers by consultants has not occurred as I see them are: a) that a written version of the research invariably already exists as a consulting report, and; b) that a conference version can be pulled together in a few days from that pre-existing documentation whereas a written journal paper might need weeks to prepare. Weeks that are hard to come by in a commercial environment. Moreover, with output measured by publication not the bread and butter of a consultant career, conferences will continue to have the greater appeal for their social, networking and marketing opportunities.
Oliver Brown
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "OzArch" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ozarch+un...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to oza...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/ozarch.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
BA (Hons), MAACAI
Consultant Archaeologist
1/1 Park Street Clovelly NSW 2031
0427 414 226
o...@obca.com.au
sven ouzman
sven
Ulm, Sean
I can only conclude that some of the comments expressed on this list recently about the AAA and its conference reflect a lack of experience both in engaging with the conference and the organisation itself.
I note that the president of AAA is long-term consulting archaeologist and director of a major consulting company and, until recently, one of the vice-presidents was director of one of the largest consulting companies in Australia for many years. Other members of the executive, while currently based in an academic department, have vast experience in consulting archaeology. The results of the 5-yearly Profiling the Profession Survey show that this is the norm - there is significant career fluidity between “academic” archaeology and “consulting” archaeology, often at the same time. Arguing that these are somehow separate aspects of the discipline creates a false dichotomy.
As Oliver shows, professional aspects of the discipline identified by Michael are core parts of each and every AAA conference.
I look forward to seeing you, Michael, in Cairns and then look forward to your posts informed by that experience. Please note that Early Bird Registration for the joint AAA/ASHA conference closes on 15 August.
I look forward to buying you a drink at the bar Michael.
Regards,
Sean
A/Prof. Sean Ulm PhD FSA MAACAI
ARC Future Fellow
Deputy Director, Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science
School of Arts and Social Sciences
James Cook University
PO Box 6811, Cairns QLD 4870, AUSTRALIA
t +61 7 4232 1194 | www.jcu.edu.au/sass/aas/
