 Well, welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us today and welcome to a webinar on archaeological conservation. This webinar is being hosted by the American Institute for Conservation's Archaeological Discussion Group, or ADG, in collaboration with the Archaeological Institute of America's International Archaeology Day event. So before we turn to our webinar speakers, there are two of us who would like to provide a little introduction. So I'm Frances Lukazuk, a conservator at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory in St. Leonard, Maryland. Next slide, please. And I am Molly Gleason, a project conservator at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And Frances and I are the co-chairs of the Archaeological Discussion Group, or the ADG. Next slide, please. First, a little bit about the AIC. The American Institute for Conservation and Historic and Artistic Works is a national member organization that exists to support conservation and cultural heritage preservation professionals. AIC plays a crucial role in establishing and upholding professional standards, promoting research and publications, providing educational opportunities, and fostering the exchange of knowledge among conservators, allied professionals, and the public. AIC has more than 3,500 members in more than 40 countries. Next slide, please. The ADG is a discussion group within the object specialty group of AIC. The mission of the ADG is to promote communication between conservators and allied professionals and to represent the interests of the archaeological conservation profession. We typically meet once in person at the AIC annual meeting and then work on projects throughout the year. Activities have included developing resources such as an archaeological conservation brochure and a fieldwork checklist, both of which can be found on the ADG webpage. Next slide, please. October 21st is International Archaeology Day, sponsored by the Archaeological Institute for America. This is the second year that AIC has registered as a collaborating organization for the event, and this year we decided to host this webinar to promote the event and archaeology and conservation in general. The field of heritage conservation is many subspecialties. Archaeological conservation is one of them. While archaeology and conservation are two separate disciplines, they are integral to each other, and this will be a recurring theme throughout the webinar. So this webinar will feature three speakers who will each present a different topic. The webinar will wrap up with time for questions from our participants or those submitted ahead of time. And just to let everyone know, we're recording this webinar and it will be available for viewing on the AIC YouTube channel. So let's meet our panel speakers. Hi, Emily. Hi, Francis. Hi. So Emily Williams is the senior conservator of archaeological materials at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Additionally, she teaches an introduction to conservation course at the University of Mary Washington. She holds an MA in conservation from Durham University and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Leicester in the School of Archaeology and Ancient History. She worked in museums and onsites in Australia, Belgium, Egypt, England, Iraqi Kurdistan, Tunisia, Turkey, and Syria. Next slide, please. Our next speaker is Nicole Dow. Hi, Nicole. Hello. Nicole is the head conservator at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory responsible for the preservation of Maryland state-owned archaeological collections and works closely with cultural resource management firms throughout the mid-Atlantic region. She obtained her postgraduate degrees in archaeological conservation specializing in archaeo metallurgy from University College of London and studied classical archaeology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. In addition to North American excavation, Nicole has participated on archaeological projects in Romania, England, Belgium, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, and Jordan. And our third speaker is Suzanne Davis. Welcome, Suzanne. Hello. Thank you, Francis. Suzanne is an associate curator and head of conservation at the University of Michigan's Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, where she is also affiliated faculty for the University's Museum Studies Program. Prior to joining the Kelsey in 2001, she was a conservator for the Underwater Archaeology Branch of the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C. She holds graduate degrees in art history and conservation from the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts in New York University. Her primary research focuses on the conservation of archaeological materials and sites. She has served as the site conservator for excavations in the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, and North Africa, and currently works on archaeological projects in Egypt, Sudan, and Turkey. So welcome to all of our panel speakers. So we appreciate your time and for being here. So before we start diving into the discussion topics, we'd like to get a sense of who is listening in. So if you haven't already done so, can our audience type in like in the chat box, whether they're like a student, archaeologist, conservator, an intern, or other professional that we've not listed here. So thanks and let's get started. Next slide please. So our first discussion topic is this. Although there are methodological divides that separates the training of conservators and their allied professionals in archaeological conservation cross disciplinary training has long been a goal. And so Emily is going to get this discussion started for us. Good morning everybody. Historically many of the important developments in conservation have been linked to the desire to better preserve archaeological finds. Initially many of these activities were aimed at preserving the morphology of the finds, but it was soon realized that scientific understanding of the chemical makeup of artifacts and the burial environment was needed to successfully achieve the conservation goals. And to that end, formal training in archaeological conservation began in 1958 at University College London. It developed from earlier training which was designed to help with the field archaeologists recover finds more successfully and the emphasis on the new training. continued to center on these technical skills, but added a focus on the theoretical understanding of deterioration mechanisms, technological change and material interaction. Additionally, additional conservation programs were started in archaeology departments at Cardiff and Durham universities in the 1970s. At these three programs, prospective conservators tended to take some courses such as archaeometry and material culture with archaeology students, but then separate from them as they began focusing on the core conservation curriculum. In the US, the trend until recently has been to train conservators separately from archaeologists. Perspective conservators were trained as objects conservators first and tended to focus on museum collections. The focus of the coursework was not archaeological, but students with an interest in site work could not suspend their internships on site. That situation changed in 2005 with the foundation of the US UCLA Getty training program, which offered a specialized curriculum focused on archaeological and ethnographic conservation. Students at this program have the opportunity to share classes with students at the Kotzen Institute of archaeology. So we are seeing a greater move towards interdisciplinary training between the program. But having said this, the number of publications and conference papers that still advocate for interdisciplinary and improved collaboration between the fields suggests that a lack of confidence remains in terms of how well the two fields are integrated. What are some of the reasons this might be the case? In part, it's due to a lack of opportunities for other forms of cross training earlier in the training of both conservators and archaeologists. The opportunities for student conservators to gain field experience remains limited. And similarly, archaeological students are rarely exposed to conservation labs or to conservators during their training. The exception to this is often in maritime archaeology programs where archaeologists are frequently receive extensive training in conservation techniques. Also, the diversity of subgroups and sub-bocuses in archaeology, which each have their own vocabularies, methodologies, and research frameworks can pose barriers for conservators moving between sites and regions. Although they may have important insights based on their knowledge of material technology and behavior, it may be difficult to frame them in such a way that they are truly recognized. On the other hand, successful conservation requires a certain degree of infrastructure, which can seem costly to archaeologists who are already having to fight for funds for field work and object cataloging. And as a result, research collaboration has sometimes been limited. Until recently, conservators have tended to focus their research on technical studies and developing new treatment methodologies, which have been hard to integrate into archaeological publication. Conservators are, however, beginning to become much more comfortable engaging with material culture on a theoretical level and more comfortable with considering how object histories are shaped by their social meaning and how community decisions and conservation actions shape these histories. And this promises to be a new and very fruitful area of collaboration in the future. That's great, Emily. Thank you for giving us started. Nicole or Suzanne, would you like to add a comment on anything, Emily? This is Suzanne, and I don't know how much people in historic preservation programs are trained alongside archaeologists in terms of attending the same classes with them. I mean, I do think there's been a lot of archaeological site preservation training that's going on in historic preservation programs and archaeological site preservation, like the program at University of Pennsylvania is one that I could mention. So it's, I mean, yes, it's just like people who work on artifacts. That's such a good point, Suzanne, and it tends to focus on a little bit of attention on how myopic our views of our own field can sometimes be. I work primarily with objects and I see the field in those terms, but you're right. I work with a lot of architectural conservators and also preservation architects on sites. So I mean, there are definitely people coming out of programs that are conservation per se that are working on site preservation. That's all I really have to add in conversation. This is Nicole, so I just wanted to kind of add on to that. I agree that I think a lot of times, you know, as somebody who came from the archaeological profession, the first time you really encounter conservation is in a field school setting. It might be, you know, very quickly discussed, you know, in the classroom environment, but it really is, you know, when you're out in the field participating in these field schools that you might have your first interaction with a conservator, or you might first see, you know, some kind of block lift or, you know, kind of remediation treatment, you know, it isn't exposed very much in the classroom environment. I know that's improving, but it's somewhere that all of us could definitely work harder. Very true. Right, great. So any last comments before we move on to the second discussion point? Actually, I think we have one more slide to show related to this discussion point, just with some links to more information and lists. We didn't make a list here of specific programs, but rather links to information and becoming a conservator and various types of cultural heritage degree programs, you know, not just those that focus on objects. And so, and again, these links will be available in the recording, which will be available on YouTube later. We led by Nicole. So conservators are stereotypically associated with a laboratory environment and their primary involvement in the archaeological process occurs after the excavation has taken place. However, there's much to be gained from collaborating with the conservator during the planning phase, consulting while the fieldwork is taking place and assisting with the determination of conservation priorities. All right, thank you, Nicole. Hi, everybody. I just want to give a little bit more background. So I'm currently the head conservator at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, and we are affiliated with the state of Maryland. So we're located, you know, within the offices of the state's historic preservation offices. And a major component of my job is to work with CRM firms contracted to do work on state-owned lands and ensure that compliance obligations are being met before collections are turned over to the state. And so I find that a lot of these interactions kind of really feed into how conservators can best work with archaeologists prior to the collections being turned over to the owner, whether it's a private or a state or federal agency. And I just kind of wanted to speak a little bit more to how that collaboration early on can be of benefit both to the conservators and, of course, the wider archaeological community. And it can be frustrating at times when conservators called in after the excavation has already wrapped up, the report may have already been written and the collection is about to be handed over to the owner. And it's only at this final stage that conservation is being addressed. And, you know, there can be any number of reasons why this might be the case. Suddenly, you know, people are considering an exhibit opportunity or a publication is coming out where, you know, you want to prepare an object for that publication, or it could just be the whims of the property owner. But in my position within the state, I see a lot of that last minute compliance obligations where, you know, the turnover needs to be met, and conservation is very much an afterthought, and that can be an issue. So there are, you know, frustrations for both the curators and the conservators involved. But we should also focus on how this early collaboration and these early discussions between archaeologists and conservators can actually add to the archaeological data. There's a lot of possibilities there. It might be the potential for research questions that would benefit from some form of archaeological or not archaeological. I'm sorry, additional analysis, advice, you know, that might be provided at the time of recovery to ensure that a clean sample is available. This is especially important in the recovery of organic materials, whether they are floral or faunal. For example, you know, many archaeologists are aware that wet organics need to remain wet, but conservators can help shorten the duration of wet storage, which is problematic in a lot of environments and a lot of labs, and prevent mold growth, which can obviously impact the object as well as be a health hazard. And many times, you know, an object is initially stored wet, and we all can, you know, mess up to this from the time of excavation to the time when materials are processed. A lot of those materials may be allowed to dry out in the months following the excavation, which can prevent future analysis or preservation. And it's those interactions with conservators early on that might save those materials and might make them more significant in both the analysis of the site and the creation of the report. So, I probably sound like I'm a bit on a soapbox here, and I'm probably going to continue with some rants of my apologies. But, you know, another feature in which, you know, conservators can be of help is with the use of X-radiography. It can assist in the production of a more complete site catalog. We're all quite happy to splash out these days on, you know, these technologies, these remote sensing tools like ground penetrating radar or EM conductivity. But X-radiography, which has been around for over 100 years, doesn't get a whole lot of regular use. But it's still very, very useful. It can help identify amorphous concretions or help to establish an identification of your collection of rotten cut nails, so that they can be, you know, identified, included in the report, selectively sampled, and then discarded, but with the rest of the bulk material. But sorry, that's a bit of a tangent, I apologize. But if archaeologists and conservators are able to work together early on in the planning process, you know, conservators might be able to assist with budgeting. And while it's impossible to know the exact quantity or the type of material that may be recovered, it is possible to start setting expectations so that nobody's surprised at the end of a project. Conservation, we recognize, is an expensive process. It relies very heavily on man hours. But at the same time, we have an obligation to these collections. So conservators can also provide training to archaeological crews regarding the best way to handle or package different material types or how to take samples for analysis. So having a conservator, you know, as part of this early process, can really help further your research objectives by stabilizing early deterioration and preserving the evidence for future scientific analysis. These methods, you know, might change from site to site regarding, you know, how you treat your objects when you're recovering them. An underwater site is obviously going to face different issues from a clay pack site in the Mid-Atlantic versus a desert site out west. But conservators can really help with this. And then during the excavation, you know, not all projects can afford to have a conservator on site, and it may not be necessary. But having a conservator at least at the end of a phone when issues do arise can be invaluable. If there is a delicate object or a tricky block lift, an experienced conservator on site can really be an asset. And because archaeology is by necessity a destructive process, we have an obligation to record this, you know, our processes as thoroughly as possible, at least as we are able, given all the constrictions that we all face. And part of that is conservation. And one of my biggest, I guess, pet peeves is when a researcher is visiting the MAC lab and upon review of a site report has asked to see one of the objects highlighted in the report only to be presented with a bag of soil and rust. And really if an object is significant enough to be included in the report, it should always be considered conservation. So I encourage everyone to collaborate with conservators early and often, and it really does help establish your conservation priorities later down the line in terms of meeting your research objectives, as well as any compliance obligations that you may face. So that's my two cents. Oh, terrific, Nicole. So Suzanne and Emily, would you like to also add on to Nicole's points? I have. This is Suzanne. I have a really different kind of job than Nicole does. So it's interesting for me to hear about her work and about, you know, working with compliance issues and maybe as a conservator coming in at the very end of the project where there's a collection that's being transferred to you as the custodian. And you might not have been involved in its excavation. So I don't have anything to add, but it was an interesting discussion for me. And I've been in your position, Suzanne, where I have been an on-site conservator and it's wonderful to be so involved at so many different levels in the process where, especially with academic research that's taking place where maybe you're affiliated with a university or other larger projects, they've established their priorities so far in advance and they've acquired all the funding ahead of time. And it's a wonderful situation to be in. And it can be hard and challenging, but part of the fun of it when on the other side of things, you know, an excavation might be taking place because they're putting in a highway. And, you know, they really didn't expect to all of a sudden be thrust into a stage two excavation situation. So I guess I'm sort of interested to like when you're in that situation and you're coming in kind of as the conservation advisor or support, do you do a lot of triage? Like, are you helping set priorities, you know, kind of after the fact or like, you know, in the middle of things? It really does depend. It depends a lot on the excavation, on the materials that are available. We always provide advice, obviously, in terms of how best to pack things up, how to, you know, get them safely back to your lab, how to handle them in such a way that, you know, if you do need to say to Dendrochronology, you know, how to best take a sample so that, you know, we know that we're going to lose some of the material. It's, you know, CRM is a tough field for the archaeologists to work in as well. And they have to meet their diets, their deadlines and their budgets and, you know, the demands of, you know, the owner and the client and the contractors. So, we try to at least preserve the materials for long enough during the excavation process and during post, you know, sorting and cataloging that when it does come time to assess things for conservation, that they're at least in a more stable state and we can do something with some. And then in terms of, you know, setting those conservation priorities, it's always a collaborative process. It's never just the conservators saying, oh, these are falling apart. Clearly, they are in need of conservation. It's really about having a conversation with the archaeologists about, you know, is this a significant object? Is it coming from a closed context? You know, does it meet, you know, your criteria for being a significant find? Just because I think it's pretty and a good candidate does not necessarily make it the best use of limited funds available for conservation. Where do you, like, when you're working at the state level, where do the collections, like, ultimately live when you have things coming in from different CRM projects and, you know, work around the state? Do you take care of those at the facility where you work or are they in, like, a different, like, different regional repositories? So it changes from state to state. Every SHPO office is different. Every facility is different. In Maryland, we are incredibly fortunate to have a very strong SHPO. And the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab, where I'm based, is the state's repository for state-owned archaeological collections, which is rare. Like, normally, the conservation department is either not existent, or is one person, or is in a completely separate location. So we're a really unique situation here. And a lot of the material that comes in from, you know, either CRM or from a state highways project, anything like that, is essentially going to make its way into the Macklabs Curatorial Department. We offer our conservation services prior to that turnover, but nobody is by any means obligated to use us versus one of their own in-house conservators or a conservator in private practice. But we like to collaborate, because maybe we can help them make the best choices so that when they are selecting which objects they want to have, you know, conserved, in accordance to their due diligence to meet compliance obligations, that they aren't just wasting their resources. They're not just, you know, cleaning coins that are already stable. They are, you know, focusing their finances and their efforts on materials that are, you know, really going to benefit from additional preservation treatment. Thank you. Thank you, Nicole and Suzanne. Yes, thank you. This is Molly. So before we move on to the third discussion point, I just want to acknowledge our audience. And we've heard from many of you who have introduced yourselves, which is really exciting. I should have, we should have made it clear that us, all of us working on the webinar. We're all based in the US, but we have people from the US and abroad, which is really exciting. We're really glad that you've tuned in today. And several of you have submitted some questions, and I'd like to encourage you to continue to do that. We may not get to all of them at the end of this webinar, but we'll talk a little bit more about that later. So please, if you do have questions about any of these discussion points or anything else, I just invite you to submit them and we are paying attention. So to move on, our third discussion topic was taken from a 2003 GCI newsletter article on closing the divide between archaeology and conservation. Neville Agnew provided concluding remarks, which included this statement. Perhaps the area of archaeology and conservation still in most need of integration is in a holistic approach to sites. That is from planning and implementation to use and long term preservation. And Suzanne is going to lead us in this discussion. Thank you, Suzanne. So this is Suzanne talking now, and I work for the Kelty Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan, where I'm fortunate to be able to work as a conservator for several of the Kelty's field projects. And usually at any given time we have about seven active excavations, and I usually directly support in any year about three of those. So my perspective, which is pretty different from Nicole's, is I'm working in an academic institution and it's focused on research and teaching. And I'm also working on excavations that are led by American teams, teams based at the University of Michigan, but which are operating overseas. And because of the kind of institution the Kelty is, that's usually in the area of the ancient Mediterranean. So I have a long term relationship with the projects that I work on, and I have close working relationships with the project directors. Right now for the Kelty, you know, each year I'm working on an excavation in Egypt and one in Turkey and one in Sudan. And each site is very different, each is unique, and each has really different conservation and site preservation needs and challenges. But my work for each has been very satisfying because I've been able to work closely with the project director in some cases since the project began and then in other cases, you know, maybe a few years after the project started. So each site is different, places that you work, each will have different technical challenges that require different kinds of practical expertise. So for projects that want to integrate conservation, archaeological research, and site preservation better, I have some overall recommendations. And these are a very big picture, and they focus on the planning process more than they do on the technical details of like, you need an architect for this and an engineer for that. From the picture perspective, my first recommendation would be to work, and this is really aimed towards archaeologists. I know that we have a lot of conservation students, it looks like on the webinar, but from the perspective of an archaeological project director, I would say working collaboratively with your team to define a mission for your project and a vision for the site is important. And it's good if you can start thinking about this at the very beginning of a project, but you can also do it later after a few years and with most academic research projects in the field, I mean they go on for years, sometimes decades. And what's most important in this process is an attitude of openness and curiosity and a commitment to the process itself. So in defining a mission, you want to think about your goals and try to distill them. And these should include your overall research objectives for the site, but you should also pay attention to the goals of individual team members and think about how these will contribute to your project or how they might not, in which case you might want to adjust your team members' expectations and ideas about their own professional goals. So you want to think also about your goals for long-term site preservation and conservation and your goals for education and training, both for archaeology and conservation students and for members of the local community where your project is located. I recommend to thinking about your long-term vision for the site. Is it a site that will be reburied? Is it a site that you want to present to visitors or maybe it's already being presented to visitors? Will you have some kind of virtual version of your excavation project living on in the digital world? There are a lot of different publications that can be helpful as you think this through for your own projects, and I'll talk briefly about four that I've found especially helpful. What I like about these four are that they go beyond case studies. They each talk about strategies and methods for identifying your big picture goals, and then for prioritizing projects and building capacity to achieve those goals. Next slide, please. Sorry. So the first one, which I think Kate is going to put on the screen momentarily is, okay, here they all are. The first one is an article written by Martha DeMas in 2002, and it's in a book that's available on the Getty's website. The book is Management Planning for Archaeological Sites, and this particular article or essay is Planning for Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, colon of values based approach. And what I really like about this is how practical it is, how accessible it is, and it walks you step by step through the process of creating a conservation and management plan. And although the article focuses specifically on site management and preservation, the process itself is so helpful that you can use it for investigating and planning a lot of other needs for archaeological sites as well. The second publication is by Randall Mason, and it's titled Assessing Values in Conservation Planning. It's in a book, a good book with lots of other good essays. And the previous reference focuses on the process of creating a conservation and management plan, and this article goes deeper into how to investigate and prioritize the values for site conservation and management planning. And truthfully, this is the kind of investigation and thinking and work that you want to do first before you start to write your management or preservation plan. But I listed it second because I think it's a little bit less accessible than the DeMas article, and I love it, but it's a bit long. And as you read it, you might think to yourself, as I always do, even though I reread it frequently, a lot of it's common sense. But it gives you a very helpful framework for how to think about values and conservation planning, and then how to set priorities for conservation at the archaeological sites where you work. And after you read the first article, I think you will be inspired to read this one. So the third publication that I've listed here is by Sonya Adelaide. It's a book. It's titled Community-Based Archaeology Research with, By, and For, Indigenous and Local Communities. And this book talks about methodology for collaborating with local communities, and it draws on the author's experience working in the United States and in Turkey. And the beauty of this book is this information about how to cultivate a sort of research and work ecology that supports collaborative archaeological research in local communities. It talks about how to help foster shared interests and values, and basically about how to build capacity for many different kinds of work, including for conservation and preservation. And it also includes several case studies that I think are quite helpful, especially because the author kind of walks you through how she thought about a particular challenge, like before she began doing the work, and then how her thinking changed and how she adapted, and then how things have worked out kind of over the longer term. So I think these case studies are helpful almost no matter where you work in the world. And then the final publication, the lead author is Stephanie Moser. This is an older one. It's based on a project that the author worked on in Egypt, and the article focuses on work pretty early in the life of the project. And there's not a lot of follow-up to it that's particularly satisfying. But what I like about it is that it suggests seven very practical strategies for fostering relationships with local communities and investing in local capacity, which is important in caring for archaeological resources long term. And this article also has a really great bibliography that lists a lot of work prior to its publication, and that's kind of useful. So these are big picture, again, and there are many other wonderful publications. But these four emphasize the fact that in thinking about mission and vision for archaeological projects, including conservation planning, you need input from a lot of people, not only from the research team, but depending on your goals from members of the local community, from tourism operators, from various governmental agencies, who are the responsible agencies for the areas where you work. And then depending on specific projects, as you become more detailed in your conservation planning, you need to involve additional specialists like structural engineers, like architects, graphic designers. You might even need to consult economists in some situations. These publications also emphasize the idea that it's good to not be exploitative in your research and your care for archaeological sites. So, I mean, I feel like this is changing, but the model used to be that you would go in, you would do your research, you would advance your own career, whether you're an archaeologist or a conservator, and then you would leave. And so all of these encourage you to think about the state that you'll leave the site in and to think about what value you're adding to the community where you're working. And I think that it's helpful to be able to think about and investigate heritage in these kinds of broader contexts and ask questions like, what is local capacity? Are your ideas for the site sustainable? What are you contributing not just to knowledge in your own field, but to training and education in the area where you work, to the economy, basically to capacity building in the area where you're working? And I think it's good if you can approach projects with this larger picture perspective. In my experience, a lot of conservation planning in particular can be kind of ad hoc. Often after you discover you have either something amazing that needs to be preserved, or that you have a big problem that you're going to have to deal with. But if you can think about it early and integrate it into your project's mission and into your vision for the site, it can pay big dividends over the long term. Not only in terms of site preservation, but also in terms of research, since conservators bring a different professional skill set and a different perspective. And then finally, I just wanted to talk a little bit about money, because this kind of integrated planning I think can sound expensive. And it's not necessarily cheap, but mostly what I think you need for it is time, and you have to be willing to set aside time for it. And that's time also invested in local relationships. I don't just mean like residents who are living in the community. I also mean that for your projects to be designed well and be sustainable in terms of site preservation and management. You need to invest time building local professional contacts like local archaeologists, local architects, local engineers, construction managers, conservators. And you need some time for that each season so that you are fostering those relationships and so that you're continuing to work with your team on bigger mission and vision goals so you're making progress. You also need time in the off season. Basically, you just need to invest time in planning and defining your goals. And then you also probably will eventually need money for specific projects. And we're going to talk about this, I think, a little bit later as well. But there's not a secret funding source for conservation on archaeological sites. Like I feel like a lot of archaeologists that I work with just think that out there somewhere there's got to be like a source of money that's just for site preservation or just for archaeological conservation. And then I'm going to know about that because I'm an archaeological conservator, and I do know about that and like that doesn't exist. Like there's not a special secret sum of money waiting for you. You can find some corporate sponsorship and then a few kind of professional organizations have smaller amounts of money like the Archaeological Institute of America has a site preservation grant that's about $25,000. A lot of the projects that I work with also have individuals who are interested in impact giving and they sponsor a lot of the more expensive projects like conservation projects for those archaeological excavations. You can also build site management and conservation planning and work into your federal grant proposals. And that's a good way to go. And that wraps up really my long-winded big picture vision planning. Thank you so much. This is great and thank you so much for putting those resources. I'm looking forward to looking at some of them that I haven't read before so. Well, I kind of feel like it's almost a quarter of one and we've gotten so many great questions that people have written in. So I kind of think we should just jump to our Q&A portion of this webinar. And we're going to kick off with a couple questions that were submitted ahead of time. The first one is fairly basic, but it also ties into a question that we got from Amy Reid. It's how do I know if I need a conservator and who can I call if I have a question about conservation? And Amy wrote in specifically saying that she is a background in archaeology. Most of the conservation here in Texas is very marine-centric and there seems to be a real lack of conservation professionals in training that specializes in the conservation of terrestrial archaeological materials from prehistoric sites. What is the best way to collaborate with a conservator that specializes in this? I feel like that's kind of linked to this question. And so I'm going to open this up to our speakers to answer it. So obviously I'm going to go ahead and mention the Find a Conservator tool on the AIC website. There it is. That's a gimme because it is a really good tool for at least getting things started to find somebody who is affiliated with AIC, which I think is very important that you're having somebody that appears to the ethics and professional standards that's set out by AIC. But once you find a person, the archaeological community, especially in the U.S., I feel is quite small. We all know each other quite well. And if the person that you initially contact isn't exactly suited to your project, I guarantee that they will pass on the name of a colleague to help you really find just the right person to help you with your issue. I know I do that on a regular basis. I totally agree, Nicole. That's a good point. Does anybody else have anything to add to this? I can recommend specific conservators in Texas. I won't do it on the call. Well, that's another good point. We are not going to be able to get to all of these questions I can already tell, but we are going to do a follow-up blog post. And there's a way that our participants can contact AIC after this, and we can make sure that we put people in touch with specific questions like that. So thank you, Amy, for that question. And please do be in contact with us because we can, Suzanne, or one of us can talk with you. Yeah, we will. Okay. Okay, great. So let's go on to our next question. Next slide, please. I know there's a lag. Oh, sorry. What should you ask a conservator when you call them? And conversely, what should conservators be asking archaeologists? So this is Suzanne, and I would say that when you're calling a conservator as an archaeologist, I mean, you know why you're calling that person. And so you want to find out what kind of training they've had and where they've worked, and if they've worked on a problem like the one or a situation like the one you have. And, you know, just be specific. Describe what's going on at your site or the reason that you want a conservator and find out if they've done similar work. And if not, like Nicole said, you can get from them some recommendations about other people that might be appropriate. And as for what conservators should be asking archaeologists, I'm not exactly sure where we may have put this resource. But we have a questionnaire that we use at the Kelsey to ask our new projects, our new field projects, to hone in on what they're going to need going forward. Yeah, Suzanne, we didn't include it on the webinar slideshow, but I have it next to me and I was thinking that we can find a way to share this in any form that you'd want to share it. Because I think it's wonderful and really, anyway, really, really useful resource, both for conservators and archaeologists to look at. So that will be included in our follow up materials. Emily or Nicole, do you have anything else to add to this before we move on to our next question? Well, I think that SHA's conservation FAQ site also has some basic questions of what you might want to be prepared to tell a conservator about your site and what a conservator might ask you. And so that's a resource that was developed by a series of conservators who, you know, were taking the questions that they most frequently got from archaeologists and also the questions that they wished that archaeologists would ask them and develop a series of answers for it. And it's posted on the Society for Historical Archaeology website. There are plans to update it and add more details to it. So if people have questions they want to ask, that's all, you know, send a man. People would like to answer them. That's a really, it's a good resource. I refer people to that all the time, actually. Yeah, as do I. Great. And we have a link to that on one of our later, excuse me, one of our later slides. So it is, again, it's accessible through this webinar slide show, which will be available later as well. So terrific. Okay, let's move on to our next question. So since most, this is another one that was submitted ahead of time. Since most conservators do not hold PhDs, can this ever become an issue on archaeological digs where many people are either studying for or have already acquired a PhD in an applicable area of study for the field work. This is Emily. I never thought that it was an issue. Although I heard other conservators say that they felt that they sometimes needed to get one in order to be taken to be seen at the same level as the other people on the dig. I thought it was a problem until I started my own PhD. And I will say that I have been offered so many new opportunities by the archaeology field since starting that that I do perceive that I'm seen slightly in a different light. But one of the things that I also think is perhaps a different problem but is related to this is in how conservators and archaeologists are trained to speak. Conservators are very often trained to qualify their observations to say I see this and it is possible that it means this it is probable that it means this and often with people who have less familiarity with the material or with what the person is talking about that is seen, not as a qualification but rather as a degree of uncertainty about what the individual is saying. And so I have found that when I'm in a field setting I think very carefully about my language and I try to state things as positively as I can and that that has also really helped me in my communications with archaeologists. I have, and this is Suzanne. I don't have a PhD and I haven't found it to be a problem. I would say that if you are a student, if you're a conservation student now getting a master's degree, and there's a topic that you're interested in pursuing doctoral work in, like do it. I mean the time to do it is when you are young and you're finishing a master's degree program. I don't think it's going to hurt you. I don't think it's going to hurt you later. So if you have the time and the interest and you don't have a mortgage, like, you know, do it. I guess I do not have a master, or I do not have a PhD degree either, but I would often see it as a hindrance because there aren't a lot of job opportunities available outside of academia. True. So, you know, it's a, you know, cost benefit analysis there. That's true. I work in an academic world. I forget that like not everything is like a research university. All right. Thank you all. We're going to now turn to some questions that have been submitted during the webinar. And I'm going to ask this one because I think it's interesting. A question from Courtney books. What are your thoughts on digital surrogates as a mode of conservation? Is this something that is often turned to more or less? Are we talking about photogrammetry and 3D scanning and that type of surrogate? That's kind of what I'm thinking. Courtney could certainly type right into qualify this, but yeah, I mean, I think that's what it sounds like to me. I don't know if it's necessarily a surrogate, but I definitely like it as an additional means of preservation, especially when you've got objects that are inherently fugitive because of the material that they're made of. You are going to have a degree of deterioration regardless oftentimes of what conservation measures are taken, you know, and to have as much data capture as possible can only be a valuable addition. I would agree. Go ahead. Okay, I'm going to talk. I like digital surrogates for a lot of reasons. I mean, one reason is I work in remote sites, and so now everybody can go to visit them. So if you have a digital version available, people can study it remotely, and I think that's useful. I also think it can be useful if you have to rebury a site for conservation reasons. And I also think that digital surrogates can be useful for creating replicas because sometimes you want to have your priceless object or inscription in a museum, but you want to have something that looks like it on the site for, you know, for good site interpretation. So I'm a fan. I mean, I wouldn't, I can't imagine making the argument that you should create a digital surrogate and then do something, you know, to destroy your original, but I think digital surrogates can be very useful. I would agree that they're great for augmenting the information that you're receiving from a site, but we all can cite cases where somebody returned to an object 1015 100 years after it was excavated and learn something entirely new from it use the technique that wasn't available at the time. And if we develop curation practices that favor only the digital surrogate and not the object itself, we risk losing that ability to go back and re interrogate things. I think it's so true Emily and we also are always wishing there was better documentation of stuff that was excavated a long time ago. So it's certainly a compliment to, you know, learning as much as we can about these artifacts. Okay. The next question we have a couple related to. Well, I'll ask this question. It's kind of about funding so we can touch on this again. A question from Kimberly Roche. I know many emerging conservators who are eager to participate on site during excavations, both terrestrial and marine. Why do you think there's still lack of funding for trained conservators on archaeological sites? I guess that's a great survey on that. You should definitely be the one. I think it's just a lack of, I mean, there's not a lot of money for archaeology to start with. And then you just, you have to plan for it. So it has to be in the project budget. And, you know, the projects that I work with, we're planning our conservation budgets a couple years out. So if I think we need more conservators, you know, we're trying to raise the money for that. So, I mean, I really, I just think it comes down to planning. It comes down to, you know, the archaeological project director working with a conservator and planning and budgeting adequately. And then, you know, you have to be decent at raising money. I don't know if that was a very satisfying answer though. As you're talking, I'm just going to ask for the next slide, please, because we only have a couple minutes and related to this, we have some additional resources that include some of those grants that Suzanne was talking about, along with the FAQs and facts. So I just wanted to mention that. Yeah, and I guess I can say that there are country-specific funds often. So like the United States Agency for International Development often has funds specifically for cultural heritage overseas. The World Monuments Fund has money for site preservation. The Archaeological Institute of America has some money for site preservation. There are various corporate sponsors that have money for conservation and preservation and excavations like Bank of America. There are a bunch of others that have, you know, and these are usually like slightly smaller amounts of money. There may be like $15,000, but you can, you know, put these things together to achieve a decent budget for conservation. And then, like I said, you can build it into your federal funding applications. And you can also, you know, try to work with sponsors who care about impact giving in the heritage sector. Just a little footnote in the world of compliance, because a lot of the funding is coming from the construction of a project, whether it be a hotel or a parking garage or a highway. The resources are often pretty defined early on by that, you know, that group or that individual or that corporation. And it's very hard to do anything during the excavation because they are trying to do it as cheaply as possible. Their research objectives are demanded by the state. It's not something that a lot of these contractors do out of choice. So the only time where we actually do have some leverage in getting conservation funding directly from these individuals or corporations is during the turnover of collections. Which is why I have so many frustrations, but at that point in the game when they have to meet their legal compliances with the state or with the feds, that is when we can demand money. So very, very different situation from from what you guys often have to deal with. Thanks, Nicole. I think with that we're going to have to it's one o'clock so we're going to have to go to our last slide and Francis is going to sum up. Yes, thank you Emily Nicole and Suzanne for leading these discussions today and taking these questions. Again, we wanted to apologize that we weren't able to get to all of the audience's questions, but we plan to follow up with a blog post on the AIC blog and so you can see here is a link to that and then also to AIC's YouTube channel. Again, yeah, because this webinar was recorded so be sure that you check out the YouTube channel. And we also would like to thank the audience to thank you all as well for attending International Archaeology Day is next Saturday on October 21 and there'll be events around the world continuing throughout this month so check out the IAD website to find the news. And again, thank you for spending time with us. Thanks everybody. Thanks Francis and Molly.