National Archaeology Week 2024 has been and gone and as always it was a busy week.
Just ahead of the week was Sydney Historical Archaeology Practitioners workshop (SHAP) 2024. This year was hosted by AMBS Ecology and Heritage and held at the Australian National Maritime Museum. 2024 saw SHAP turn 21 years old and to celebrate this the founder of the workshop, Denis Gojak, gave a 21st birthday speech! He spoke about the industry at the time needing a space for archaeologists to connect to others in the industry and provide a safe place for archaeologists to talk and share their recent work. After 21 years it is safe to say this day has not only survived but flourished and grown to the amazing annual event that all Sydney archaeologists look forward to. It was great to have the mix of talks that were given, including a fantastic key note speech from Dr James Hunter on some of the numerous wrecks in Sydney Harbour.
On Friday 24 May I attended the forum ‘Women in Archaeology’, presented by Regal Heritage, Sustainable Heritage, and the Chau Chak Wing Museum. In this celebration of women in archaeology, some of the leading women in NSW archaeology, from academics to consultants and government agency officers discussed their start in archaeology, how their careers have progressed, how their passion for the job is maintained, career pathways for students and early career professionals and the ups and downs of the job. The conversation continued on to the pub!
On Saturday 25 May I took part in ‘Discover Archaeology’, an annual event (year 3!) hosted by Inner West Library at Marrickville Library. The free event encourages the members of the public to come and hear about post excavation artefact processing, cataloging, analysing and report writing. They were encouraged to handle the artefacts kindly loaned by University of Sydney and the Inner West Council.
So this is what I got up to! What about you? what did you do? What was your fav? Let me know. Send me some photos and a few words and I’ll add it to the blog. In the mean time here are a few pictures from the events I attended (I didn’t take any of the forum, I was to engrossed in the discussions, sorry).
