Symposium organizers can now choose whether their symposium is closed or open to other submissions. If a session is designated as ‘open’ by the symposium organizer, then other authors can submit individual papers to that session once approval has been given by the symposium organizer; the 2027 Program Committee may also direct appropriate papers to the session. Additional papers will be subject to approval by the symposium organizer. Please contact the symposium organizer directly by email before submitting your abstract to an open symposium.
OPEN/IN-PERSON SESSIONS
ACUA Spotlight on Graduate Student Research Symposium: Organizer(s): Heather A Stewart heatherastewart31@gmail.com (University of West Florida, United States of America), Christina Giudici cgiudici@uwm.edu (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
Following last year’s success, the ACUA Graduate Student Associates have once again chosen to chair an open symposium at this year’s SHA conference. The symposium will highlight student research, offering undergraduate and graduate students alike a chance to present their work that may not fit into the confines of a specific session. The work presented covers various archaeological periods and regions with a focus on maritime or underwater archaeology. All participants must present their papers in person.
The Power of Other-than-Humans in Colonial Places: Multispecies Approaches in Historical Archaeology: Organizer(s): David A. Ingleman david.ingleman@gmail.com (Unaffiliated)
This session operationalizes multispecies and post-humanist frameworks that challenge historical archaeology’s traditional centering of human agency and demand a re-evaluation of how interspecies relationships changed during the modern era. The colonial encounter introduced new plants, animals, microbes, and economic systems that undeniably transformed societies and ecologies and, with them, Indigenous multispecies relationships and relational ontologies. To challenge metanarratives of ecological imperialism and human exceptionalism and to demonstrate the role of other-than-human agency in shaping colonial histories, historical archaeologists can re-theorize traditional analyses of archives, landscapes, iconography, faunal collections, paleobotanical assemblages, and other datasets. This session challenges us to write archaeologies that recognize other-than-humans as both tragic ontological victims and powerful co-creators of colonial places.
From Consultation to Co-Creation: Indigenous and Descendant Community Planning in Heritage Preservation: Organizer(s): Sarah Miller semiller@flagler.edu (Florida Public Archaeology Network, United States of America)
Across archaeology, historic preservation, and heritage management, increasing attention is being given to the role of Indigenous and descendant communities in shaping decisions about cultural landscapes, heritage resources, and places of memory. Yet many archaeologists receive limited training in planning theory and participatory decision-making. This session explores methods that bridge this gap, including cultural mapping, focus groups, participatory GIS, oral histories, community surveys, asset mapping, visioning exercises, participatory ranking, and digital tools such as StoryMaps.
We invite papers examining how preservation and planning frameworks recognize—or overlook—community-defined cultural assets, values, and priorities. Comparative case studies are encouraged that assess participation barriers and emerging approaches that elevate descendant and Indigenous voices in heritage decision-making. Topics may include cultural landscape planning, spatial justice, digital spatial reparations, climate adaptation, community-based inventories, and efforts to address historical erasure and inequitable power structures. This session highlights pathways from consultation to collaboration and co-creation in heritage planning.
Take a Sip and Settle In: Alcohol, Drinking Spaces, and Sociability in the Historical Archaeological Record: Organizer(s): Megan R. Victor megan.victor@qc.cuny.edu (Queens College, CUNY, United States of America)
Drinking spaces were ideal locations for commensal politics, the structured sharing of food and drink with the ultimate goal of social negotiation, throughout the early modern and modern periods. Within taverns, coffeehouses, and saloons, inhabitants negotiated social capital, resisted sociopolitical norms, and sought community. Possessing an alcohol-soaked liminality, drinking spaces’ environments encouraged patrons to act and speak in ways that they could not in other social situations, making them integral meeting places in which one experienced reduced accountability and a loosening of inhibitions. This makes them a useful source of data on microeconomics, acts of resistance, and the ways in which individuals sought one another and forged community.
This session examines alcohol, drinking spaces, and the myriad ways that communities and individuals were entangled in the production, transportation, preparation, purchasing, and consumption of wine, beer, liquor, and various other intoxicating drinks.
Brave Men Put In the Ground: Archaeological Perspectives on Military Medicine in North America from Bacons Rebellion to the Civil War: Organizer(s): Eric G. Schweickart eschweicka@cwf.org (The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, United States of America)
The papers in this session investigate medical practices associated with treating sick and wounded soldiers from the 17th through 19th centuries. Each presentation draws upon archaeological data to examine how the socially-mandated standards of care for soldiers were mediated and enacted during wartime. These papers together tell a cohesive narrative of care, scientific discovery, and the complicated emotional reaction of civilians to the violence of war over the course of two centuries. This session demonstrates that archaeological perspectives of space, materiality, and contextualized practice are essential to understanding the past, providing necessary relief to the large-scale narratives of medical practice and military procedure provided by documentary records. Papers in this session cover military medicine from a variety of perspectives, including examinations of institutionalized medicine, conceptualizations of disease and disability, and the treatment and care for the dead.
Shaped by Place, Shaping Place: Historical Archaeology and Human-Environment Relationships: Organizer(s): Nicole Bucchino Grinnan ngrinnan@uwf.edu (University of West Florida, United States of America), Bria R. Brooks briab@stanford.edu (Stanford University)
Places are more than physical settings: they are dynamic socio-ecological systems shaped by human experience and environmental change. Historical archaeology offers unique opportunities to examine how people have understood, utilized, managed, transformed, and adapted to the landscapes they inhabited, as well as to consider how environmental conditions have influenced human behavior, identity, economy, and community formation over time. This session explores the “power of place” through investigations of long-term human-environment relationships across historical contexts. By bringing together a variety of case studies and approaches, this session seeks to highlight how historical archaeology can deepen our understanding of the enduring relationships between people and place while contributing important perspectives to contemporary conversations about environmental futures.
The Archaeology of Educational Institutions: Organizer(s): Colleen M. Betti colleen.betti@meadhunt.com (Mead & Hunt), Erin S. Schwartz eschwartz@cwf.org (The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)
Educational institutions such as one-room schoolhouses, urban high schools, vocational schools, and universities are key centers of socialization due to the formalized learning that occurs in these spaces. The purpose, physical structures, students, teachers, and curricula of these institutions has varied through time and space, but despite these differences, each institution has a similar purpose, to instill knowledge and values. Archaeology at these sites allows us to examine societal values, political and social movements, race, age, gender, and more. This session brings together papers on a variety of educational institutions from elementary schools through universities, focusing on how educational institutions both shape and reflect the communities in which they are situated.
Conflict Archaeology and the Search for the Missing: Interdisciplinary Perspectives: Organizer(s): Piotr Bojakowski piotr.bojakowski@tamu.edu (Texas A&M University), Todd Ahlman toddahlman@txstate.edu (Texas State University)
This symposium explores recent directions in conflict archaeology through interdisciplinary projects that integrate fieldwork and documentation, analytical science, and historical inquiry. Contributions examine diverse case studies ranging from terrestrial and underwater crash sites to geospatial analysis, machine learning, and remote sensing. The papers highlight how archaeologists and historians engage with the material traces of modern conflict to address questions of landscape use, technological change, and the effects of war. They also stress the role of collaborative and training-based models, incorporating student-led research alongside institutional and governmental partnerships.
Every Why Hath A Wherefore: submerged landscapes before and after the flood came: Organizer(s): Jessica W. Cook Hale j.cookhale@bradford.ac.uk (University of Bradford, United Kingdom), Marya Del Carmen Robles Montes mayra.robles@uabc.edu.mx (SECIHTI / CICIMAR-IPN)
It has been more than twenty years since “After The Ice” was published. Since then, the study of submerged landscapes has significantly advanced globally. This symposium on submerged palaeolandscape reconstruction and archaeological prospection therein explores these advances. These landscapes preserve evidence offering insights into critical archaeological questions and recent developments in the discipline are allowing researchers increasing opportunities to access them. Unravelling the spatial information gaps concerning submerged landscapes addresses epistemological problems of archaeological interpretation biased by terrestrial evidence. We focus here on several aspects concerning drowned portions of the archaeological record, including site formation processes, persistent occupation of these landscapes over time, and other aspects of submerged landscapes reflecting the temporal depth of these sites. Furthermore, we aim to support global perspectives in this discipline by bringing together an international group of researchers to further enhance cross-continental exchange of ideas, development of new collaborations, and assessments of remaining challenges.
Reckoning with Loss: Assessing and Valuing Damage to Archaeological Resources: Organizer(s): Ellen L Chapman ellen@culturalheritagepartners.com (Cultural Heritage Partners, United States of America)
Archaeologists in government, compliance, tribal, and descendant community contexts periodically encounter damaged or destroyed sites. The Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA) and related guidance offer one model for assessing and valuing such damage to support civil and criminal penalties, but this approach often falters in permitting contexts or others where ARPA does not apply. Yet documenting physical destruction, and translating that loss into terms that support restoration, restitution, penalties, and remediation, remains essential to addressing archaeological damage and its impacts on communities. This session invites papers that confront these challenges and identify solutions. We welcome contributions on remote sensing, geospatial, and other new methods for identifying and quantifying damage; case studies that center stakeholder, descendant, and tribal engagement in defining harm and response; and reflections on valuation models, including ARPA, the System Unit Resource Protection Act, and other federal, state, and tribal frameworks.
Contemporary Archaeology in the Unconsidered Realms: Organizer(s): Zada Komara zadakomara@uky.edu(University of Kentucky, United States of America), Matthew Palus mpalus@umd.edu(University of Maryland, United States of America)
Nine intrepid archaeologists enter the Unconsidered Realms and scan the landscape. Various under-considered artifacts beckon. “Over here,” whispers a plastic vape from a sewer drain. “Me, first!,” beckons the postcard from the archive. The party divides for various side quests, each spinning stories from encounters with contemporary things and people that live in concert before rejoining to gift their annals to the Library of All Knowledge. You see, the Contemporary Archaeology Guild addresses current and recent social and environmental concerns toward greater collaborative place-making. This session invites you to join our narrative adventure of delight, disgust, compassion, awe, discovery, creativity, and world-building from the 20th Century to the present in lands both far and near. Legendary scrolls presented in this campaign consider modern plastics, postcards, Covid paraphernalia, municipal waste, sewers, blackout rage gallons, and more. Wisdom check not required; come to learn!
Reciprocal Research in Historical and Underwater Archaeology: Organizer(s): Isabelle R. Guerrero isabelleguerrero@unr.edu (University of Nevada Reno, United States of America), Audrey B. Andrews audreybrianaandrews@gmail.com (Southern Ute Indian Tribe)
This session explores themes of reciprocal research in historical and underwater archaeology, including projects that engage multiple publics or communities and focus on long-term and meaningful impacts. Questions addressed may include: What does it mean to conduct reciprocal research? How do archaeologists give back to the communities they work with? What are the long-term possibilities of public engagement in community and collaborative based research? How can archaeologists achieve longevity in public outreach? What are the realities of engaging with descendant communities, stakeholders, and/or the general public? How do you involve and invest the public in archaeological research? Contributors to this session are encouraged to share their research, challenges, and successes in developing and executing projects alongside one or more communities. In this symposium/session we aim to showcase emerging practices in community and public engagement and further discussions on science communication beyond the archaeological community.
The American Revolution on Lake Champlain: Organizer(s): Chris Dostal dostalc@tamu.edu(Texas A&M University, United States of America)
The American Revolution on Lake Champlain examines the lake as a contested military corridor through its underwater archaeological record, whose significance extends well beyond the Battle of Valcour Island. This session brings together papers on submerged Revolutionary War sites, vessels, artifact assemblages, battlefield landscapes, and preservation challenges associated with military activity along the Champlain corridor. Contributors draw on documentary research, geophysical survey, diver investigation, artifact analysis, conservation, 3D documentation, and museum interpretation to reassess how naval operations, retreat, loss, recovery, and commemoration are preserved beneath the lake’s waters. Particular attention is given to Valcour Bay and the gunboat Philadelphia, while situating those remains within a wider submerged landscape of movement, supply, improvisation, and conflict. Together, the papers approach Lake Champlain not merely as the setting of a pivotal battle, but as an integrated underwater archaeological landscape central to understanding the American Revolution.
Armed Landscapes: Military Footholds and the Power of Collective Memories: Organizer(s): Rebecca L Shelton bshelton.rpa@gmail.com (Texas Historical Commission, United States of America), Aubrey Banks aubrey.brooklyn.banks@gmail.com (Providence Environmental Consulting), Maximilian Hall max@acaciaheritage.com (Acacia Heritage Consulting)
Texas has a long history with military fortifications, installations, and battlefields. Communities that shaped history and archeology in Texas are vast and include indigenous tribes, European explorers, early settlers, and ultimately Americans that participated in military activity across the Texas landscape. Military sites in Texas extend far beyond the highly visible forts, such as Presidio La Bahía in Goliad, or the expansive 20th century installation of Fort Hood and Fort Bliss. Lesser-known cultural landscapes included battlefields, maneuvers, campsites, and military targets which contribute to a history that spans across all regions of the state. These papers will examine significant places that have shaped Texas military history, archeology, and memories through the usage of the archeological record and historical narratives found in archives, museums, and oral histories.
New Tales of Old-Time Texas: Public Archaeology and What’s Next: Organizer(s): Lauren D. Bussiere lauren.bussiere@austin.utexas.edu (University of Texas at Austin, United States of America)
For generations, Texans have grown up on stories as big as our state. Many of those stories, though, have tended to highlight only some versions of history, obscuring the complexity of the past. Archaeologists working with public audiences in Texas are confronted with a responsibility to challenge the exclusionary and revisionist nature of previous narratives of place, to add depth and nuance through real science, and to shed light on stories previously buried–both literally and figuratively. In this session, archaeologists from state agencies, academic institutions, and private companies demonstrate how engagement with the public can connect communities to one another and to their shared past.
Place and Legacy in Chesapeake Historical Archaeology: Organizer(s): Philip Levy Plevy@usf.edu (University of South Florida, United States of America)
Sites often present themselves front-loaded with meanings and stories that constitute their power of place. Excavations often create complicated relationships with these stories, lineages, and canonical meanings. Sometimes archaeology confirms cherished stories, other times it disrupts them. The Chesapeake region has a long history of archaeological research, and this work has itself created its own materially-informed place meanings. These have been literally built into the landscape or have become woven into storytelling and place meanings. But as excavation and research continues, even archaeologically derived place meanings can find themselves challenged. Changes in research agendas, methods, and foci create new lenses that can mean that new work runs into a place meaning created or informed by earlier excavations. The papers in this panel look at how recent work in the region works with or against place meanings inherited from almost a century of historical archaeology.
Households of the Black Atlantic: West Africa to the Americas: Organizer(s): MyKayla Williamson mykayla@stanford.edu (Stanford University, United States of America), Madison Aubey madisonaubey@g.ucla.edu (UCLA)
This session explores the household as a space of power, socio-political negotiations, and placemaking within the Black Atlantic. Since the emergence of household archaeology, scholars have developed diverse and culturally specific frameworks for understanding the household
unit across societies and historical contexts. Drawing from the archaeology of the African Diaspora, this session brings these conversations into dialogue through papers that examine Black households across multiple geographies and temporalities of the Atlantic World. These papers consider how African diasporic households operate as sites of continuity, adaptation, labor, memory,and social reproduction. Engaging insights from Black feminist thought, this session conceptualizes the household as a locus of resistance, affective care, political agency, economic practice, and multi-scalar ideological formation. From captive households formed under slavery to households navigating the contemporary afterlives of enslavement and racial capitalism, this Society of Black Archaeologists-sponsored session highlights the enduring centrality of domestic life to the making and remaking of Black worlds across the Atlantic.
Riparian Landscapes of the Carolinas: New Perspectives on Cultural Identity, Maritime Heritage, and Tidal Engineering: Organizer(s): Lynn B. Harris harrisly@ecu.edu (East Carolina University, United States of America)
Archaeological investigations in marshes, tidal creeks, estuaries, rivers, and other riparian environments present distinctive methodological and interpretive challenges. These include the application of effective intertidal field strategies, the development of theoretical frameworks for interpreting complex palimpsests of material culture, and the examination of cultural identity as expressed through the archaeological record. This session brings together papers addressing a broad range of topics, including Native American heritage, submerged shipwrecks, tidal engineering features such as rice trunks and water mills, and the archaeology of clandestine moonshine production. Featured research includes the Santee Delta Project, the Old House Plantation site (38JA72) in Jasper County, and the Wadboo Creek Plantation and Revolutionary War site (38BK285) in South Carolina. Collectively, these studies span the prehistoric period through the Reconstruction Era, highlighting the diversity of archaeological resources and research opportunities within dynamic riparian landscapes.
Making Place Virtual: Community-Engaged Archaeology in a Landscape of Virtual Reconstruction: Organizer(s): Patricia G. Markert pmarkert@uwo.ca (The University of Western Ontario, Canada), April Kamp-Whittaker akamp-whittaker@csuchico.edu (California State University, Chico)
Increasingly, archaeologists, communities, and interdisciplinary collaborators are using virtual reconstructions to present place-based narratives of the past and share research in creative, non-linear ways. Virtual reconstruction represents both a method and an output, both of which are deeply entangled with places, memory, community and researcher needs, and ethics. This session explores how community engagement across different phases of research and project types impacts both the process and outcomes of virtually reconstructing past places. We will explore questions like: How can we work with communities to blend knowledges and co-produce sensitive reconstructions that reflect unique histories and community memories? What issues face virtual reconstruction related to ethics, privacy, data management, cost, and accessibility? How do we balance community expectations and diverse perspectives in this work? Presenters will share outputs at various stages and narratively reflect on the process of using virtual reconstruction in community-engaged work.
Collections, Curation, and the Making of Place: Organizer(s): Elizabeth A Bollwerk ebollwerk@monticello.org (Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, United States of America), Lori Thompson lthompson@newsouthassoc.com (New South Associates)
Drawing from the conference theme, Reflection on the Power of Place, the papers in this session explore collections and curation as active forces in place making. Collections — archival records and artifacts — document place: where objects came from, where they ended up, what was collected and what wasn’t. But curation decisions also construct our understanding of places and people in the past. What we preserve, how we describe it, and who has access shapes how communities and landscapes are remembered. For many sites and communities, institutional repositories hold irreplaceable material records — but they are not the only ones. Descendant communities carry their own collections, oral histories, and place-based knowledge that are equally foundational to understanding the past. What does it mean to steward these records responsibly, and how should that shape curation standards, research, community partnerships, and the stories we tell?
Reimagining Images in the Historic Americas: Organizer: Jenny Ni jn2512@columbia.edu (None, United States of America)
From Catholic crosses to Plains ledger art, images in various forms were widely circulated among and between Euro-American and Indigenous communities. Both Indigenous and Euro-American image-makers encountered, adapted, embraced, and rejected new ways of making images within the image’s position as a key medium for exchanging ideas, communication, political negotiation, consolidating social and religious identity, among others. This session explores how images, their creators, and practices of image-making engaged with and responded to the particular local entanglements between Indigenous and Euro-American communities and networks. Following a broad definition of images, it encourages submissions including but not limited to drawings, sculptures, rock art, architecture, etc.
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