Australian Archaeological
Association Annual Conference 2022

We are delighted to announce the theme for the 2022 AAA annual conference. It has been almost three years since we have been able to gather in person for the annual conference. This year we especially look forward to welcoming you in Darwin this December.

CONTACT: LEARNING FROM ENTANGLED ENCOUNTERS

‘Contact’ implies interactions between groups of people: positive and negative, colonial and shared, initial encounters and entangled relationships. For some researchers, the concept applies to the interactions between First Nations Peoples and colonists, implying a singular place and time. For others, it relates to shared and continuing interactions between and within cultural groups through time. The recent Forum on ‘Contact’ in Australian Archaeology (issue 88(1)) shows that inter-group relationships, encounters, and responses are complex and enduring – insights first made more than two decades ago. What original ideas remain to be explored further? What new opportunities have arisen? What are the priorities in this field for Australian archaeology today?

Building on last year’s theme of Reconciliation, the conference organisers seek sessions and papers on any ideas relating to Contact and related words: encounter, connection, dispossession, entanglement, accommodation, self-determination, competition, alienation, resistance, and colonialism, to name a few. We seek presentations from practitioners on the continuum between the theoretical and the applied, and across all cultural backgrounds and experiences in the field of Australian archaeology.

We welcome all attempts to create a “third space” for a discourse that transcends colonial history and existing power relationships. It is vital that multiple perspectives are shared, respectfully and openly. The theme encompasses any time or place where different cultures, or even the same cultures, encountered and continue to encounter one other, and how these experiences improve understanding of history, human behaviour, or our practice as archaeologists.