Irish Archaeological Research Digital Magazine

As with all previous conferences, the 2012 meeting was hosted by an academic institution, in this case the
Archaeology Department of York University, which is situated in the beautiful late medieval Kings Manor building
just outside the historic city walls. This academic context led to a predominance of papers discussing scientific
experiments, with nine out of twelve presentations taking this approach. The standard of these was generally
high: of particular note was Spiteri’s work on recreating residues on prehistoric cooking pots, which argued that
vegetable residues were unlikely to survive even if extensively used, and Chu and Thompson’s innovative
abrasion of lithics within an annular flume to demonstrate no macro‐ or micro‐scopic difference between the
abrasion of bedded or free‐moving flints in fluvial systems.
Irish Archaeological Research Issue 2 Jan 2012
Whilst there were some commercial archaeologists and museum professionals among those attending the
conference, most attendees were academics. As a result the two final papers by Fillery‐Travis and Wood, raising
the issues of defining who we consider to be experimental archaeologists and how we measure the impact and
engagement with our discipline respectively, produced limited debate. It was disappointing that although
practical demonstrations were a feature of the second day, there were few craftspeople formally present at the
conference as attendees. Their involvement in discussions would have brought wider perspectives to the
debate, and better contextualised some of the work presented.
Despite these limitations the meeting stands out amongst many archaeology conferences for the enthusiastic
and approachable nature of its attendees, and the open and un‐bureaucratic nature of its organisation. The
welcoming nature of the conference is a direct reflection of the vibrant nature of the experimental archaeology
community, with many new friendships made over a pint in the evening. Following the success of this 6th
edition of the conference, myself and colleague set up a website to archive abstracts and posters from the
series, and to act as a portal for news on the upcoming 7th conference (http://experimentalarchaeology.org.uk/).
Anyone interested in the conference or the type of work undertaken by experimental archaeologists is
encouraged to visit, and feedback is gratefully received.
It is hoped that those papers from the 6th Conference reporting scientific work will be published as a special
addition of the Springer journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences in December 2012, and that we will
see a 7th Conference, possibly in Cardiff, before January 2013. This conference is not limited to British
contributors and represents a fantastic opportunity for practitioners and archaeologists of all kinds to
communicate their work to a wider audience and see examples of what experimental archaeologists are
currently working on. I recommend anyone, whatever methodology they utilise, to consider submitting an
abstract at the next call for papers. It is my personal hope that the growing profile of the conference will
encourage experimenters from outside academia to attend, and the conference itself will continue to expand
and embrace a wider audience.
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