Notes from AHOY December 2024
Our December 2024 AHOY meeting wrapped up a full calendar year of meetings with a fascinating guest lecture!
Many thanks to Dr. Mark Polzer for his talk "Ships, feasting and cultural transformation: The late-seventh-century BC shipwreck at Bajo de la Campana, Spain" which blew our minds. Mark shared that the luxury and prestige items which formed part of the shipwreck material were likely not part of general trade but a special assemblage for a particular chief or king. Did you know that ostridge eggs were used as drinking vessels? Or that alabaster jars, originally gifted by Egyptian nobility, were purposefully broken up to share amongst descendants or give more widely as gifts? Fascinating!
Discussion
- The Society for Historical Archaeology conference is coming up in New Orleans, 8-11 January 2025. Check out their website for more information.
- More locally, the World Archaeological Congress will be held in Darwin this year from 22-28 June 2025. A number of maritime archaeologists will be attending and AIMA is hoping to have a presence there too.
AIMA Updates
- John McCarthy represented AIMA at the annual Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology. ACUA is a larger US-based organisation and John shared his observations and thoughts from the meeting.
- Our Australasian Journal of Maritime Archaeology Volume 48 (2024) will be distributed later this December. Congratulations to the Editorial team on another volume prepared on time. No small feat! Thank you to all the authors who have helped make up this Volume.
- Calls for AJMA Volume 49 (2025) are open. Please contact the Journal Editor Jeremy Green on publications@aima-underwater.org.au if you are interested in submitting an article or with any questions. Papers can be submitted throughout 2025 with a cut off of 30 September for the yearly volume. Please read the instructions on the Journal webpage for more information.
- We had a long discussion about the technical aspects to getting past and future AJMA articles online with individual digital object identifier (DOI) numbers and web links in order to enable easier access to these articles and achieve SCOPUS requirements. The plan will be for member-only access to the last 5 years of volumes and free public access to older volumes.
- Keep an eye on your inbox! The AIMA Newsletter is being resurrected with a new issue to be sent to to members this December. For information to submit to the next issue, and the issue deadlines for 2025, check out the Newsletter webpage. Congratulations to Louise Brookes and Justine Buchler for putting this issue together!
- Have you noticed lots of activity on the AIMA Facebook page? Our new Social Media Administrator John Waskiw has been sharing loads of interesting posts! Contact him through the Facebook page if there's anything you'd like shared.
- The AIMA website now has a Calendar webpage listing AIMA deadlines, events and meeting dates. It also includes future AHOY meeting guest speakers and workshop topics as they are confirmed. This will be updated throughout the AIMA year. Please use it as a reference.
- An AIMA/NAS Part 2 course was run in Victoria last month and a couple new AIMA/NAS tutors are preparing to run their first AIMA/NAS Part 1. Well done all, and especially our Senior Tutor Mark Ryan!
- The AIMA Executive will be running the first AIMA Strategic Plan meeting on 19th December at 6:30pm AEDT to gather progress updates from position holders, KPI Champions and the wider membership. These meetings will become quarterly throughout 2025 to encourage more engagement with the Plan and to refocus on its goals.
The next AHOY meeting will be on Monday, 13th January. Until then, wishing you all a safe and enjoyable festive season!