Last month a group of staff travelled from the ADs to Birmingham for the Annual Chartered Institute of Archaeologists Annual Conference. The ADS, Heritage Science Data Service (HSDS), and Internet Archaeology were well represented as exhibitors over the two days of engaging activities, including keynote addresses, sessions and training workshops.
This year’s conference theme, ‘Shaping the Future (of Our Profession)’, marked ten years since CIfA received its Royal Charter. The event provided a valuable opportunity to reflect on the past decade, while looking ahead to the challenges and innovations shaping archaeology’s future. The opening session featured sector leaders, including representatives from the HS2 project, who shared insights on embracing new technologies and forward-thinking approaches.
One highlight from the morning sessions was “Challenges and Opportunities in Post-Excavation: Lessons from Archaeological Mega-Projects”, which focused on the impact of large infrastructure developments on post-excavation processes. The HS2 Historic Environment team shared key learnings and made specific reference to archives held by the ADS.
After a well deserved lunch and a chance to talk to the delegates about the work of the ADS, there was a choice of three sessions:
- Crossing the Divide: Starting a conversation to improve communication, collaboration, coordination and creativity between the commercial and academic sectors.
- The Contribution of Heritage to the Design and Delivery of Major Infrastructure Projects: Stonehenge scheme and TransPennine railway upgrade.
- Don’t call it a T3D Talk: the future of the profession in big ideas.
These sessions allowed for discussions surrounding the higher education crisis and whose role it is to train the next generation of archaeologists, key innovations of working on key landscapes, and the next big ideas for the future of archaeology as a profession.
The end of the day saw a sunny walk to the New Indian Brewery & Taproom while discussing the sessions we had been a part of, and catching up with colleagues.
The start of day two began with a rush of delegates to the ADS, HSDS, and Internet Archaeology table to secure the now highly coveted swag on offer, which led to many productive conversations about the work of all three services.
‘Shaping the future: Ensuring legacy and accessibility of archaeological resources’, organised by Alphaeus Lien-Talks, kicked off the morning session and explored the growing challenges in ensuring accessibility, reusability, and long-term value of archaeological data. This session also featured a talk from Manda Forster exploring how a national collection for archaeological archives could operate, as well as a later talk on Heritage Data.
The last sessions of the day included: Shaping the Future: Ensuring legacy and accessibility of archaeological resources; Archaeology that doesn’t cost the earth: building green competencies for all archaeologists; and Raising Representation: Wikipedia Editathon, where throughout the conference delegates could contribute to the University of Manchester’s efforts to help raise the representation of marginalised archaeologists.
We left on Thursday afternoon to catch a train back to York, pleased to have been able to represent the ADS, HSDS, and Internet Archaeology at such a prominent event while also connecting with colleagues from across the heritage sector.
