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| The FSJ staff, past and present, that were in attendance at the conference |
This year’s Society for
Historical Archaeology’s Conference on Underwater and Historical Archaeology was
held at the Omni Hotel in Fort Worth, Texas for its 50th
anniversary. This is one of the bigger conferences that archaeologist attend
throughout the year, so we saw a lot of people from past Fort St. Joseph field seasons that had
gone on with their careers to do many great things. This year Liz and I attended
the conference as well as Dr. Nassaney and we all had something different to
present on. Liz presented a poster that discussed the various things we do at
FSJ to involve the community through public outreach and the activities we
partake in. Several of the people that we met at the conference talked to us
about how they were involved when the project first started. I presented a
paper and video about the GoPro video that Erika Loveland and I made
throughout the 2016 field school. Our goal was to attract younger people to
archaeology through this video. We then had a survey that looked at how younger
generations react to the video. I discussed how our survey results show that
the videos did indeed make the younger generations want to know more about
archaeology as well as wanting to know how to get involved with the project. I also submitted several photos that I took throughout the field season into the photo competition; one of them won first place and people’s choice. Dr. Nassaney gave a presentation on the “Advances
in Methods and Theory” but, unfortunately, we were scheduled to present at the
same time and I was not able to see him speak. This conference had so much to
offer. There were quite a lot of presenters that discussed their findings from underwater wrecks that were fascinating to watch and learn about.
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| Picture of the Cattle Run through the Historic Stockyards |
Outside of the conference there
was an array of things to see and do around Texas. Liz and I went down early
so that we could attend the Cotton Bowl because Western Michigan was playing
Wisconsin and since we were already heading there for the conference, why not
attend the game as well? The other neat thing about Fort Worth was the Historic
Stockyards. It is set up like an old west town with brick roads and old salon
looking buildings all over the place. They even do a cattle run through downtown and have rodeos on the weekends. While I was there I attended a Wild
West show and got a true Texas-style steak. Definitely one of the best experiences I
have ever had and to top it off I got to experience an amazing conference. I
can’t wait until next year when we go to New Orleans to present.
- Austin George
