“It’s just a thin wafer…” Technical Skills Workshop Review: Thin Section Preparation with Sydney Analytical
For archaeologists, ceramics provide a wealth of information. Practically indestructible fragments of ancient pottery and terracotta can reveal the technical capacities and social practices of past peoples through petrographical analyses. This involves taking extremely thin sections of the material, a challenging, but vital skill.
Women in the Present, Women in the Past
Dr Rachel Pope (University of Liverpool) recently delivered a powerhouse keynote lecture for the ‘Modern’ Women of the Past? Unearthing Gender and Antiquity Conference. It was recorded and you can stream it now.
Judy Birmingham: impressions and influences
It was Judy’s excited fascination and enthusiasm for archaeology and how to do it that drew me into the subject and set me on a lifetime path of research and teaching
2020 – A Year in Review: one year of the AAIA blog
As the year draws to a close it is natural to reflect on the year that has been, and what a strange and turbulent year 2020 has turned out to be.
Introducing MAARC: a new initiative connecting Australasian archaeologists working in the Mediterranean
The Mediterranean Archaeology Australasian Research Community (MAARC) was conceived in Auckland in February 2020 during the international conference ‘Exchanging Ideas: Trade, Technology and Connectivity and pre-Roman Italy‘ when, over a coffee, we lamented the fact that there was no regional network or annual event that really catered to Mediterranean archaeology. Given that void, we noted …
Surveying the Summer Away: Volunteering on Kythera with APKAS
Nile de Jonge, PhD Candidate at UC San Diego, discovered a love not only of archaeology, but for the island of Kythera, when she took part in the Australian Paliochora Kythera Archaeological Survey project.
Emeritus Professor Alexander Cambitoglou (1922-2019)
We mark with sadness the death of Emeritus Professor Alexander Cambitoglou AO on 29 November 2019. With his passing, we lose one of the most influential figures to have shaped the study of Classical antiquity in Australia.
Covid 19 and Archaeology: A Lesson in Making Things Work
When her fieldwork plans were thrown into chaos by the global pandemic, Emma Jones, an undergraduate student studying archaeology at the University of Sydney, found digital volunteering as a means to stay engaged and learn new skills. Like so many archaeologists, the early months of this year were spent optimistically organising Visas, booking flights and …
Kythera and the gold rush, competing priorities or complementing research?
Richard MacNeill set out to understand the relationship between water catchment and community in Kythera, but ended up shifting to the goldfields of Victoria, Australia. The two are oddly complementary… When I first contemplated post-graduate research I had just returned from participating in the 2016 season of the Australian Paliochora-Kythera Archaeological Survey (APKAS) project in …
Digital Volunteering in 2020
Thomas Romanis, AAIA Volunteer Manager, had to pivot to digital volunteering in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. He tells us how it was done.