Fort St. Joseph at the SHAs

The Society for Historical Archaeology’s (SHA) annual conference in Washington D.C. was a great way to start the New Year. This was my first conference which I attended and it was a great experience. I got to see several great presentations that really caught my interest and I got to present my project that I had been working on for the past six months. I got to work with the other students from Western Michigan University to prepare for my speech and I gained a lot of new knowledge on how to present and what a good paper looks like.

Austin George presenting at the SHA

Presenting at such a young age really opened my eyes as to what I need to do next. While I was at the conference I learned a lot about all the different types of archaeology and projects that were going on around the world that I could research more about. I enjoyed hearing presentations that related to events and activities that took place at Fort St. Joseph. Erika Loveland said, “Attending and presenting at the SHA’s was great! I was able to go to talks on a variety of topics that I am interested in as well as receive feedback and ideas on my own research.” We all learned a little bit more and got a lot of good feedback on our presentations which will help us in future times to come. As John Cardinal stated, “The first time going to the SHA's annual conference was an enjoyable and exciting opportunity where I was able to discover new projects, presented a poster focusing on the 2015 field season, and won a number of awards in the ACUA's photo contest. Overall it was a very enjoyable experience.”

Fort St. Joseph alumni in Washington D.C.

Getting the opportunity to attend and present at the SHA’s was such a rewarding opportunity for me. It was neat to see the past generations that have worked at the fort and get to hear stories about events that happened during their field season. The really neat part was when they told us about their jobs and where they were going in their lives. I really enjoyed the conference and cannot wait for next year.

-Austin George