Notes from AHOY October 2024

Our first AHOY AIMA members meeting for the 2024-2025 AIMA year!

AHOY meetings will be moving to Monday starting next month, with the next meeting on Monday 11th November - same time and place. A full schedule of the meetings will be made available on the AIMA website with Zoom links sent to current financial members before each meeting.

Discussion

  • We talked a lot about offshore windfarms and the demand on maritime archaeological consultancies in Australia. For some high-level industry information, as well as an introduction to the management of submerged Aboriginal heritage places, refer to the Symposium for Assessment of Submerged Landscapes hosted by Victoria's First Peoples State Relations agency last year. This link will direct you to recordings of all the papers on YouTube:  Symposium for Assessments of Submerged Landscapes | firstpeoplesrelations.vic.gov.au
  • John McCarthy showed off an impressive 3D printed model, hand painted!
  • We discussed stone fish weirs and their archaeological study across oceania by Prof. Akifumi Iwabuchi, Prof. Bill Jeffery, Dr. Paul Montgomery and others. Their project website is here but they also have strong pages across social media:  Indigenous People, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and Climate Change: The Iconic Underwater Cultural Heritage of Stone Tidal Weirs - The Cultural Heritage Framework Programme (oceandecadechfp.org)
  • The World Archaeological Congress (WAC) is heading to Darwin on 22-28 June 2025! Proposals for themes closes 31st October, Proposals for Sessions close 31 January and Proposals for Papers, Posters and Displays close 30 April. More info here:  WAC-10 – Darwin 22-28 June 2025 (worldarchaeologicalcongress.com)
  • We continued the discussion held at the AIMA AGM regarding any barriers to applying for conference bursaries and student engagement with AIMA generally. Some ideas that have been discussed and were further added to tonight include:
    • Opening the student bursaries to part-time students too
    • Allowing more time between papers being accepted, bursary applications and decisions, and bookings for the conference
    • Raising the student bursary amount (to cover more expenses/lost income) or lowering the student bursary amount (to be shared amongst more people)
    • Raising the bursary for international attendees
    • Natali shared the 2025 Indonesia Council bursary approach which is to not require separate written applications, but to allow students to apply for the bursary using their accepted abstract alone. Information here:  Indonesia Council Open Conferences — Indonesia Council
  • John provided an update from Informit and the potential to have all past Journal articles (before 5 years) made freely available with DOIs - a requirement for SCOPUS consideration. It's coming together!
  • We discussed ideas for a central AIMA digital repository for every AIMA position holder to use. This has been needed for years and would greatly assist in record keeping, sharing knowledge and resources, handovers, and provide somewhere to store AIMA's archive. 
  • We also talked about AIMA Counillors and others giving talks to dive clubs, non-Flinders universities and other groups to raise awareness and interest in AIMA. An idea was to produce some standard slides to book-end presentations that outline AIMA and the protection of UCH.
  • AIMA also needs to be visibly active to hold momentum and keep new members. This year we will reinvigorate the AIMA newsletter and website feed.

AIMA updates

  • The 2024 Conference was a huge success! Congratulations to Kurt Bennett and Matt Gainsford!
  • The 2024 AGM was also successful, the fastest in recent history.
  • Handovers are still being undertaken by those exiting and entering AIMA positions with an aim to be completed by end of October.
  • The new Executive team will be meeting for the first time this coming Monday, and will again have monthly meetings this year.
  • Some of the focusses for this year will be: the Strategic Plan, reviewing the Roles and Responsibilities document, reviving the Newsletter, achieving a SCOPUS rating, introducing workshops to the AHOY meetings, and reaching beyond AIMA members.

Next month's AHOY meeting will have a guest lecture! Keep an eye out for announcements. See you then!