April's experience is probably not unusual. Think about it: you go to a
conference at which most of the papers are about animal bones, and there
is a session on ceramics. Do you go? But what if there is a paper in
one of the 'bone' sessions that shows how important pottery
fragmentation and abrasion are in helping us to understand bone
taphonomy? Then we sit up and listen.
Keep the papers that are of interest only to other zooarchaeologists for
the specialist zooarchaeology conferences, but contribute to archaeology
(and zoology, palaeontology, veterinary science) conferences in ways
that make our research relevant to those conference themes. Then,
maybe, other archaeologists will no longer be able to assume that we
have nothing useful to tell them. Some archaeologists take the opposite
view - that there is a lot of information that we could be telling them,
but we don't. Maybe that's a different problem, though dialogue on
equal terms is still the only way forward.
So keep going to the 'general' archaeology conferences, but present
zooarchaeology results in ways that make it relevant to main conference
themes, not to a specialist sesion that fewer and fewer people will
attend. I think Trotsky called it 'entryism'!
Terry
"April M. Beisaw" wrote:
>
> Dear List;
>
> I have just returned from the Society for Historical
> Archaeology conference in Alabama and would like to
> bring up the issue of the place of zooarch
> presentations at these general archaeology
> conferences.
>
> There was (and usually is) only one session devoted to
> faunal analysis at the SHAs and, as usual, it was
> poorly attended. Even the few zooarch papers in larger
> sessions saw their attendance drop significantly from
> the presentation before it.
>
> I brought up this attendance issue with several
> archaeologists at the conference and the consensus was
> that they (non-zooarchaeologists) are not interested
> in faunal analyses because it does not tell them
> anything they don't already "know" (their words). They
> are especially not interested in faunal presentations
> as they contain too many graphs/formulas and other
> elements that are difficult to follow and often even
> difficult to see.
>
> What I am interested in is what is the general
> consensus among zooarchaeologists...Do you think we
> should change the way we present zooarch research at
> non-zooarch conferences or should we continue to
> preach to the few who do attend our presentations?
>
> -April
> _______________________
> April M. Beisaw, RPA
> Zooarchaeology and Taphonomy Consulting
> http://www.taphonomy.com
>
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