Hi,
I think that I may have a unique view on this matter of the aooarch
presentations, as I am an archaeology student who hope to become an
archaeozoologist. I was present at the last AEA/NABO conference in Glasgow
as an A-Level archaeology student. While many of the presentations were
interesting, there was definitely a problem trying to follow graphs and
charts as they were displayed, explained and quickly whipped away again. I
admit that I do not know as much about the various graphs used as maybe
other archaeologists do, but I have an active interest and wanted to
understand and follow what was being talked about, but found it difficult.
Much of it was made clearer later by talking to people after the
presentation, but that was only as I wanted to find out what had been meant
by the diagrams and such. Someone who is merely present to see what the
current research is or the like may not take the time to do so and would
just leave with a confused idea about both the material presented and
possibly the attitude of zooarchaeologists to those who are not in the
field.
I think that in any future conferences it may be a good idea for anyone
presenting their latest theories or research to make it a little more
accessible to people who are not archaeozoologists, but who are still
interested in the presentation.
David Constantine
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