Anthropology Department students and faculty took part in several events at the recent Society for American Archaeology annual meeting in Chicago. The SAA is the premier archaeological organization in the United States and its meeting is the largest gathering of archaeologists. This was the first in-person meeting of the SAA since 2019.
The IUP Ethics Bowl team competed in the Ethics Bowl. The team, consisting of Applied Archaeology MA Program students Mikala Hardie, Stephanie Zellers, Shannon Boyne, Kris Montgomery, and Amanda Filmeyer, advanced to the third round of the competition. While they did not win, they did an excellent job highlighting how archaeological ethics and US cultural resource laws combine to protect our heritage.
The Applied Archaeology MA Program was also represented at the CRM Expo. The Expo brings together cultural resource management firms and graduate programs specializing in CRM to provide a one-stop-shop for archaeologists interested in a CRM career. The vast majority of US archaeology is conducted in a CRM context, and IUP is one of only a few programs that offer specialized training in this industry.
Francis Allard and Ben Ford presented their recent research. Allard presented a talk, "The Early Maritime Silk Road: A View from the South China Sea and Southeast China," in the session "The Current State of Archaeological Research Across Southeast Asia," sponsored by the Southeast Asian Archaeology Interest Group.
Ford presented a poster, "Is That an Iron Chute?" to solicit input on an anomalous feature at the Newport Archaeological site in Indiana County.
Several current students also attended the conference and the department organized a dinner with current and past students to facilitate networking.