Public Talks and Conference Highlight Archaeology
The Council for Northeast Historical Archaeology will hold its annual meeting and conference at the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax from Thursday, Oct.5, to Sunday, Oct. 8. Professional archaeologists from Canada and the U.S. will meet to report on their most recent archaeological investigations, take part in workshops, and network with colleagues.
The council, founded in 1967, is a non-profit organization dedicated to archaeological scholarship in the American Northeast, including the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, and the U.S. states of Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia.
The council's purpose is to encourage and advance the collection, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge derived from the practice of archaeology on historic sites. It is concerned with the entire historic time period from the beginnings of European exploration in the New World to the recent past.
Members of the public can attend the conference and should refer to the website at http://nsas.ednet.ns.ca/cneha1.htm for conference details. Registration takes place at the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax, on Oct. 5. The fee for non-members is $45; and $35 for student non-members, with identification.
Everyone is also invited to attend a series of free, public talks called Connections with the New World, presented in conjunction with the conference. The series is sponsored by the history section of the Nova Scotia Museum, the Nova Scotia Archaeology Society, Parks Canada, and Saint Mary's University. All talks will be held in the auditorium of the Museum of Natural History, 1747 Summer St., Halifax.
The first talk in the series took place on Sept. 27. Titled Inuit/Norse Contact in the High Arctic: Fact or Fiction, the talk featured Peter Schledermann. Dr. Schledermann is well-known for his excavations on Ellesmere Island and his finding of nearly 100 Norse objects dating from 800 years ago on a Thule Inuit site.
On Wednesday, Oct. 4, beginning at 7:30 p.m., James Tuck will give a talk called The Colony of Avalon: Lord Baltimore's First New World Adventure, 1621. Dr. Tuck, of the archaeology unit at Memorial University of Newfoundland, has been involved in the major excavations which have been happening annually since 1992 at Ferryland, Nfld.
Scottish Island Life at the Time of the Highland Clearances is the title of the last talk in the series. James Symonds will deliver the talk on Wednesday, Oct. 11, at 7:30 p.m. Dr. Symonds will talk about discoveries he has made since 1995 at Milton, South Uist, an island in the Outer Hebrides.