Gender and Minorities – Society for Historical Archaeology

Christopher Matthews — Mon, 01 May 2017 14:17:27 +0000

Posted on behalf of William A. White, III and Chris Fennell, guest editors

We are delighted to introduce a new, thematic collection of articles in Historical Archaeology entitled “Challenging Theories of Racism, Diaspora, and Agency in African America.” The studies provide an engaging sample of the diversity of creative approaches to theory and interpretation in African diaspora archaeology. The authors critically examine competing theoretical approaches and apply their perspectives to African-American pasts revealed through evidence in built environments, material culture, embodied experiences, documentary accounts, and archaeological remains. Their focus spans geographies from the far northwest of the United States to the Caribbean, and from urban to rural and island settings across several centuries.

The majority of authors in this thematic issue are individuals from heritage groups that are underrepresented in our community of professionals. They represent an emerging generation of new scholarship by individuals who bring their lived experiences of related heritage and racial dynamics to bear on their analytic sensibilities. The insights of critical race theory promise a bright future for our field with this new wave of experiential and intellectual engagements. Researchers of European-American heritage work to provide contributions as well, engaging in intensive collaborations with members of descendant communities and colleagues who bring such historical sensibilities to the arena of interpretative challenges.

Following the introductory essay, “Navigating Intersections in African Diaspora Archaeology,�?by Chris Fennell (open access online: //rdcu.be/pr57) articles in the forthcoming issue include:

* Where Tradition and Pragmatism Meet: African Diaspora Archaeology at the Crossroads–Anna S. Agbe-Davies * Materialities of Homeplace–Annelise Morris * Homesick Blues: Excavating Crooked Intimacies in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Jook Joints–Jamie M. Arjona * Cruise Ships, Community, and Collective Memory at Millars Plantation, Eleuthera, Bahamas–Whitney Battle-Baptiste * Locating Marginalized Historical Narratives at Kingsley Plantation–Ayana Omilade Flewellen * Imagining Conformity: Consumption and Homogeneity in the Postwar African American Suburbs–Paul R. Mullins * Race and Agency in the Williamsburg Area’s Free African American Population from 1723 to 1830–Rebecca Schumann * Access Denied: African Americans and Access to End-of-Life Care in Nineteenth-Century Washington, D.C.–Justin Dunnavant * Writ on the Landscape: Racialization, Whiteness, and River Street–William A. White, III

This is also the first issue of Historical Archaeology published by Springer. You can view the articles here: //link.springer.com/journal/41636/51/1/page/1. SHA members can access full text PDFs by logging in to the SHA website (www.polegroove.com) and navigating to the Historical Archaeology page where you can find a link to the Springer site.

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Gender and Minorities – Society for Historical Archaeology

test-content — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 14:55:19 +0000

by Laura Heath-Stout Boston University Department of Archaeology This year, I attended the SHA Annual Meeting for the first time. I came to Fort Worth because of my research; not to present it, but to conduct it! My dissertation focuses on diversity issues in archaeology, and the ways they affect the knowledge we produce about the human past. At the SHA conference, I observed and participated in a variety of events devoted to making our discipline more diverse, inclusive, and welcoming.

The Gender and Minority Affairs Committee (GMAC)

One of the first events I visited was the Gender and Minority Affairs Committee meeting. GMAC works on a variety of issues related to gender and race within the SHA, from ensuring that gender-neutral bathrooms are available at conferences to running anti-racism workshops to honoring especially diverse field-schools to setting up mentoring relationships for young archaeologists. One especially interesting development was the effort to reach out to Historically Black Colleges and Universities near Fort Worth to invite professors and students to our conference. GMAC is also working on a special issue of Historical Archaeology on minority issues, so keep your eyes peeled for that!

GMAC Anti-Racism Workshops

One of GMAC’s biggest projects over the last few years has been to offer anti-racism trainings at SHA annual meetings. As in previous years, trainers from Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training came to present their “Introduction to Systemic Racism�?workshop on Saturday morning. In that workshop, each table wrote a six-word essay on why we must do anti-racist work as archaeologists. We wrote, “We can do better historical archaeology,�?and “Collaboratively breaking patterned barriers with intention,�?and “Lean back, let others lean in,�?among others. Then, we discussed the ways that social institutions in the United States value white people over people of color, men over women, straight people over queer people, thin people over fat people, nondisabled people over disabled people, etc. After talking in general, we zoomed in to the specific: how does the SHA as an institution continue these oppressions? The conversation began with discussion of the orthodoxy of the SHA, the expense of coming to conferences, who is invited to symposia, and the scheduling of the conference.

The conversation continued on Sunday morning in the “Second Steps Anti-Racist Workshop,�?where folks who had participated in the introductory training continued our educations. In this workshop, we primarily focused on the SHA, talking about where we stand on the road to becoming a truly multicultural organization. Then, we brainstormed ways to move forward: creating a sliding scale for conference fees, conducting outreach efforts to diverse institutions, livestreaming symposia so that people who cannot attend the conference can still participate, developing a more transparent culture about leadership and governance, and putting one person in charge of making our annual meeting accessible to people with disabilities. I hope that many of these changes will occur over the next few years, and that more people will attend the anti-racism trainings every annual meeting!

Intersectionality as Emancipatory Archaeology Symposium

Anti-oppression work was evident in the archaeological research being presented as well, especially in the symposium “Intersectionality as Emancipatory Archaeology.�?With too many participants for a typical symposium slot, this symposium had two sessions on Friday morning and afternoon. It was organized by Stefan Woehlke, Megan Springate, and Suzanne Spencer-Wood, with Whitney Battle-Baptiste serving as discussant. In sixteen papers, a diverse group of scholars applied the idea of intersectionality to a wide variety of different archaeological contexts. The term intersectionality, coined by Black feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, refers to the way that systems of oppression like racism, patriarchy, and classism, interact with each other to create many different effects on people depending on their many identities. Symposium participants applied intersectionality theory to educating Washington, D.C., youth about archaeology (Alexandra Jones), the Pauli Murray Project (Colleen Betti), analysis of white women planters�?roles at Montpelier (Matthew Reeves), and Black women’s consumption patterns at a postbellum farm in Texas (Nedra Lee), among many other subjects. Intersectionality in archaeology is a hot topic right now: the SAA Annual Meeting in Vancouver this spring also featured a symposium on intersectionality issues.

Women in Diving and Archaeology: Past, Present, and Future

ACUA members took part in anti-oppression work too! On Thursday afternoon, Jessica Keller and Mary Connelly organized a forum with about fifteen women underwater archaeologists discussing their experiences of sexism and advice for young women in navigating the field. Although the panelists agreed that underwater archaeology is a male-dominated world, they argued that through hard work, building networks of women colleagues and mentors, and patience, the field can become more welcoming to everyone.

It was exciting to see so much anti-oppression work happening at the Society for Historical Archaeology meeting. I hope that all these efforts will continue, making archaeology a more diverse and equitable discipline.

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Gender and Minorities – Society for Historical Archaeology

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 20:28:28 +0000

By Linda Stone, SHA Board Liaison to the Development Committee

SHA is asking at least 50% of our regular members (students and others are welcome to join if they can) to donate at least $50 in celebration of the Society’s 50^th anniversary this year. The funds raised will be divided between two programs that are not funded as part of the regular budget. These are the Diversity Initiative and the Student Endowment.

The Diversity Initiative is an exciting new set of endeavors to be more inclusive and proactive around a myriad of issues related to diversity. The efforts will be focused on specific activities and the times we live in. The Diversity Initiative provides access to our conferences via the Harriet Tubman Student Travel Award. Additionally, the Initiative has begun an effort to ensure identification and preservation of abandoned cemetery sites, prompted by several high profile African American historic cemetery excavations in the recent past.

One other current aspect of the Diversity Initiative is the anti-racism workshops that have been offered at the last two annual conferences. The committee has successfully raised funds to cover the costs of the past workshops which have used a paid outside facilitator. But wouldn’t it be better if the SHA could fund future workshops from an endowed pool of money and not require the committee to take on the additional task of fund raising on an annual basis? I think so. One could argue that imposing that additional requirement on the committee organizing the workshops is in of itself is an exertion of power over them and one of the institutional expressions of racism that the workshops strive to open our eyes to. I attended the workshop at Washington, DC conference last January and found it had a lasting impact. In the months since, when I observe institutional racism, as we all do, I try to imagine concrete steps that could be taken to overcome it. In cases where I have the opportunity to make suggestions, I feel it’s my responsibility to do so. Now, did I need the SHA anti-racism workshop be able to do these things? Perhaps not, but I certainly feel the workshop created a level of comfort I didn’t always have with the language and dialogues that are necessary to break down racism’s barriers.

The Student Endowment Fund was created in 2007 to fund the Ed and Judy Jelks Student Travel Award, the Quebec City Award/Bourse de Québec, the Dissertation Prize, and the Student Paper Prize. To date, the Endowment has approximately $33,000. The 50 for 50 campaign will help the Endowment to maintain its viability and ensure these awards and prizes will be available in the years to come to help our next generation of archaeologists advance their careers.

I was compelled to write this blog to encourage you to think about what a difference one small $50 donation can make if half of our close to 1000 regular members contributed. It would certainly help to create a pool of money that can be used to address diversity issues, increase diversity within our Society and perpetuate our profession via the Student Endowment Fund. Our strength is in the numbers. Finally, in addition to the satisfaction you’ll have knowing that you participated in 50 for 50, SHA is creating a commemorative pin for donors that can proudly be worn at the Fort Worth conference, or anytime you want to express your participation in this important fund raising effort.

Please click here or go to polegroove.com/donate to contribute.

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Gender and Minorities – Society for Historical Archaeology

Fri, 12 Dec 2014 13:45:55 +0000

By Mia Carey

Before my maternal grandmother suddenly passed of congestive heart failure in the early 1990s, our family would gather every Friday night to play cards and cook, while some members drank and told stories of the old days. My grandmother was the matriarch of the family, and I believe it was her cooking that kept our family as close-knit as it was. She was a gorgeous woman, fair skinned with dark bone straight hair which was indicative of her Native American heritage, who got up every morning at the crack of dawn to begin cooking. I remember the house always smelled of cake. At those weekly Friday night parties, people from our neighborhood and our extended family from Northern Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. would travel to her home just to get a plate. My grandmother was traditional African American cook, the type who never premeasured anything but was able to make it the same way each time. If you wanted to know embarrassing stories of your parents, aunts and uncles, or any other members of the family, Friday night was the night for them to be told. The stories are beginning to fade from my memory now, but what I will always cherish is that those fading moments are a unique part of my heritage that have been passed down for generations and told as a narrative over shared meals.

Before I explain it, you should probably know that I am a historical zooarchaeologist. My particular interests are in African Americans and the Diaspora, the post-bellum, post-Reconstruction period (1865-1900), health & nutrition, and historic preservation. I recently finished writing my master’s thesis, which analyses the dietary patterns from two antebellum and two postbellum free African Americans sites in Maryland to assess whether or not dietary patterns remained consistent among the broad and sustained economic, social, and political changes that characterized the 19th century. I opened with this particular snippet of my personal statement for two reasons: (1) I put the personal in personal statement and (2) I deviated from the same cookie cutter response to why and when I became interested in archaeology. Unlike some of my peers, I had no clue what anthropology or archaeology was until my second semester of undergrad. My path to archaeology was gradual. When I first started grad school I wanted to do business until I realized that I couldn’t imagine myself wearing suits and heels for the next forty or fifty years of my life. I ended up in anthropology and finally into archaeology by the end of my sophomore year. In one of my archaeology classes we were required to choose a project, and I chose to analyze animal bones out of all of the other artifact classes. Why? Food had always been a part of my life. As the snippet suggests, food was an important factor in brining my family together and what I believed kept us close. It offered an opportunity for several generations to share their stories and our heritage. It served as a comfort in times of need and a celebration in times of joy. I know that most people can’t relate their research interests with such an intimate part of their lives, but it helps. I was commended several times in my application reviews:

�?The applicant is a strong writer, having brilliantly crafted the personal narrative.
�?In addition, she is descended from Free Blacks and has combined her interest in family history with a scientific study of class in her graduate studies�?/p> My point in all this: Make your personal statement stand out and make it personal. Everyone is going to have a story about wanting to be in their field since they were a child, but it doesn’t make you stand out or memorable. I took a risk with this statement because I never express my feelings about the loss of my grandmother, but she’s been such an inspiration in my work. Think outside the box when applying for an NSF or any other type of fellowship or grant that requires a personal statement. Further tips:

Do not share something that you are uncomfortable with letting people in on. Use caution.
Get started early and seek out people in your department who may have received the award before– if they are like me they would be happy to help.

If you’re interested in reading my statement or discussing the application process, I’ll be more than happy to speak with you via email: m.carey17@ufl.edu

Mia Carey is a third year graduate student at the University of Florida. She has received a McKnight Doctoral Fellowship (5 years of funding) and the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship (3 years of funding).

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Gender and Minorities – Society for Historical Archaeology

Fri, 21 Nov 2014 15:29:22 +0000

GMAC Diversity Field School Initiative

This year the Gender and Minority Affairs Committee (GMAC) is hosting its second annual Diversity Field School Competition. In an effort to continue making the field of historical archaeology more inclusive of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, abilities, and socio-economic background, the competition will recognize those who have shown a commitment to increasing diversity in the field and encourage further discussion of the topic. Applicants are required to submit a short essay on diversity, a summary of their field school, and some form of multimedia (photo, pamphlet, video clip, etc.) that highlights diversity in their field school. All awardees will be acknowledged at the 48th Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology and recognized on the SHA website, while the first place winner will receive special commendation. GMAC encourages submissions from all SHA members and conference attendees. The Application Form is available online and completed applications—as well as additional questions—may be directed to GMACdiversityfieldschool@gmail.com. For more information, please refer to the Submission Guidelines.

Toward A More Diverse SHA

The idea for the Diversity Field School Competition developed out of a series of larger discussions within the SHA about viable ways to increase diversity within the organization. At the 2011 SHA conference, GMAC members determined that increasing diversity was an important step toward social justice and helping the SHA reflect the diverse communities historical archaeologists serve. These calls for greater diversity were reinforced by subsequent GMAC panels and initiatives such as the GMAC Student Travel Award and diversity training for SHA board members. Last year former SHA president, Paul Mullins, announced his commitment to “make diversity an increasingly articulate part of the SHA mission and our collective scholarly practice.�?Additionally archaeologists abroad are discussing the issue of diversity, particularly after the recent release of the Archaeology Labour Market Intelligence: Profiling the Profession 2012-2013 report which identified 99% of archaeologists working in the UK as white. As a result we hope this competition helps to not only recognize those who have shown a commitment to diversity, but also open dialogue about ways to increase the presence of archaeologists from the many underrepresented groups.

We encourage you to also visit the SHA Events website for more information about other SHA competitions, events, and workshops. Hope to see you all in Seattle!

Interested in becoming a part of the conversation? Let us know how archaeologists can work together to increase diversity in the field.

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Gender and Minorities – Society for Historical Archaeology

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 11:45:21 +0000

The Society for Historical Archaeology is committed to diversity, and is excited to announce its support of:

The 2013 Gender and Minority Affairs Student Travel Award

The Gender and Minority Affairs Committee (GMAC) is sponsoring two travel awards to graduate students who are presenting at the 2013 annual meeting in Leicester. Each award provides a prize of $500 to defray travel costs. Applicants must be currently enrolled in a graduate program, be a member of the SHA, and be presenting a paper or poster at the conference.

The goals of the fellowship are to increase diversity and to encourage student involvement at the meetings. Diversity is inclusive of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, abilities, and socio-economic background. Applications are encouraged from diverse populations including, but not limited to, groups historically underrepresented in archaeology.

To apply, send a CV (the name of your advisor/supervisor should be indicated on the first page), a letter of interest, and your poster or paper abstract submission. In your letter, please address the following: 1) Explain how you will increase diversity in historical archaeology, and why increasing diversity within the discipline and the SHA is important. 2) State how participation in the SHA Conference will advance your career and research. 3) Explain how your paper will potentially benefit those who attend your session. The letter should be succinct and no longer than two single-spaced pages.

Following the conference, award recipients are required to submit a one-page report to the GMAC Chair on their conference experience and their thoughts on diversifying archaeology that will be posted to the SHA Blog.

Please note: individuals can apply for both the GMAC and Ed and Judy Jelks Student Travel awards, but may only receive one in the same year.

Deadline for submission: September 3, 2012 Submit your application materials to Flordeliz T. Bugarin, Chair of the Gender and Minority Affairs Committee, via email at florie_bugarin@yahoo.com.

The award will be announced by October 3, 2012, and the award funds will be distributed at the SHA conference in Leicester.

Don’t forget that in addition to the GMAC Travel Award, there are two other awards available to enable students to attend the SHA 2013 conference in Leicester.

All graduate students who are presenting a paper at the SHA conference should consider applying for the Ed and Judy Jelks Student Travel Award; two awards of $500 are available.

The Quebec City Award, of up to $750, is granted to assist French-speaking students to attend the SHA conference. To be considered for the prize, candidates must be a standing member of SHA, be registered in a French-language university (contrary to the name of the award, you don’t have to be studying in Quebec!) and preparing a thesis or dissertation in French – and they must present a substantive or theoretical paper at the annual conference. Further information about the award, and how to apply, can be found on the SHA Awards webpage.

Good luck!

Image: “Muro Occidentale o del Pianto�?(Western Wall or Wailing Wall) by Fabio Mauri (1993) CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 via Flickr

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Gender and Minorities – Society for Historical Archaeology

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:46:38 +0000

The field of African American historical archaeology witnessed a boom in social and political consciousness from Black scholars during the 1990s. In 1994 Theresa Singleton and Elizabeth Scott broke new ground with the founding of the Society of Historical Archaeology‘s Gender and Minority Affairs Committee. Several years later, African American archaeologist, Maria Franklin (1997a;1997b) published on the lack of racial diversity in the field and archaeology’s affect on the African Diaspora. The 90s also represented a critical time in African American historical archaeology, in particular, with the excavation and later commemoration of both the Freedman’s Cemetery in Dallas, Texas and the African Burial Ground in Manhattan, New York. Cheryl La Roche and Michael L. Blakey’s (1997) article “Seizing Intellectual Power: The Dialogue at the New York African Burial Ground,�?stressed the importance of community collaboration, while Theresa Singleton’s (1999) book, I, too, am America: Archaeological Studies of African American Life, addressed issues of African American representation, and the need for alternative methodological and pedagogical practices within the field.

In years prior, scholars and students alike have historically discussed the need to create an organization (or institute) to identify and address these social and political concerns as well as foster additional dialogue. However, the low numbers of Blacks in the field thwarted previous attempts to solidify an organization until now. More than four decades after the establishment of the Association of Black Anthropologists and a decade after these publications, the Society of Black Archaeologists (SBA) was established.

The groundwork for SBA was laid in 2011 by a few students at the University of Florida who saw the potential to address some concerns within the field of archaeology. At this year’s annual SHA conference in Baltimore, Maryland a group of Black archaeologists came together to discuss their experiences as racial minorities in the field. The meeting brought together veteran and amateur archaeologists, reaffirming the organizations commitment to promote the development of five goals:

To lobby on behalf and ensure the proper treatment of African and African Diaspora material culture.
To promote archaeological research and recruit more blacks to enter the field of archaeology.
To raise and address contemporary concerns relating to African peoples worldwide.
To highlight the past and present achievements and contributions that blacks have made in the field of archaeology.
To ensure that the communities affected by archaeological work are not simply viewed as objects of study or informants. Rather, they should be treated as active makers and/or participants in the unearthing and interpretation of their history.

As of right now SBA currently operates as a listserv as opposed to a formal organization; however, it is currently engaged in two new projects. The first project is interested in exploring the history of blacks in archaeology. SBA is working to collect oral histories from individuals throughout the African Diaspora who have had exposure to archaeology. The Oral History Project was created to collect and archive oral history interviews of Blacks in the field to gain a better understanding of the roles and experiences Blacks have had in the past and present. The first interview was with Whitney Battle-Baptiste, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and can be heard online at the SBA website. Listeners can hear Dr. Battle-Baptiste discuss how her worldview influenced her research, and her humble beginnings in the field of archaeology.

In addition to the Oral History project, SBA members have been working to increase the presence of archaeology in the field of African Diaspora Studies and organized a panel presentation entitled, “Our Things Remembered: Unearthing relations between Archaeology and Black Studies,�?at the National Council for Black Studies 2012 annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia. SBA has also been invited to organize an additional panel for the 2012 Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) convention to be held in Philadelphia this September.

If you have an interest in archaeology and would like to join our listserv please e-mail sbarchaeologists@gmail.com. The organization is still in its foundational stage and we are currently looking for relevant information to post on the website including job openings, internships, field schools, and articles for the blog attached to the website. We are always open to comments and suggestions.

Please check out the SBA website often for updates at www.societyofblackarchaeologists.com or find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/sbarchaeologists

References

Franklin, Maria

1997a “Power to the People�? Sociopolitics and the Archaeology of Black Americans. Historical Archaeology 31(3):36-50.

1997b Why are there so few black American archaeologists? Antiquity: an international journal of expert archaeology 71(274).

La Roche, Cheryl and Michael Blakey

1997 Seizing Intellectual Power: The Dialogue at the New York African Burial Ground. Historical Archaeology 31(3):84-106.

Singleton, Theresa (editor)

1999 “I, Too, Am America�? Archaeological Studies of African-American Life. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville

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Gender and Minorities – Society for Historical Archaeology

Michael Nassaney — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:02:41 +0000

It is common for us to feel invigorated by the annual conference, after hearing great papers, discussing innovative ideas, renewing relationships, and embracing a new resolve to do the work of making SHA a better organization that we all be proud of. Although our poster wasn’t officially sponsored by the Gender and Minority Affairs Committee (GMAC) (they helped to inspire it), Cheryl LaRoche and I presented on “Race and the Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA): Steps Toward Claiming an Anti-Racist Institutional Identity.�?It generated considerable interest, raised important issues, and will serve to support the board’s decision to embark on anti-racism training, for which they should be commended. The board’s commitment to doing this work is a bold step in an important direction that can truly transform our organization and make it more inclusive.

What follows is the text of our poster, a considerably condensed version of an essay we contributed to the Winter 2012 issue of the Newsletter.

Archaeology and Racial Hierarchy

Archaeologists know that racial hierarchy structures the material world, yet we have seldom considered how white privilege influences our practice.

The Whiteness of the SHA

White men created the SHA and structured it to meet their needs as members of white society. This is reflected in its personnel, programs, constituency, and mission, and the ways historical archaeologists are trained in the academy.

Racial Socialization

We all have been socialized in a racist society and consequently carry and perpetuate attitudes of either internalized racial oppression or internalized racial superiority. This socialization process serves to maintain racial hierarchy.

Transforming the Discipline

We can effectively address the racial disparities in our profession and begin to claim and put into practice an anti-racist organizational identity by examining the way we recruit students, foster their development, and inculcate academic values. In order to transform the SHA into a truly diverse and welcoming organization we must address the barriers to access that continue to maintain our organization’s white, male, heterosexual, and middle class membership and principles.

Our Collective Responsibility

The mission of seeking diversity involves all historical archaeologists and should be our collective goal as we work to transform our field and our organization in an effort to claim an anti-racist institutional identity.

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Gender and Minorities – Society for Historical Archaeology

Barbara Hines — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:52:19 +0000

It’s hard to believe that only a year ago the Gender and Minority Affairs Committee (GMAC) reconvened in Austin. Much came out of that collaboration, fueled by the active participation of SHA members in the committee organized forum, “Where do we go from here? GMAC at the crossroads.�?Panelists and attendees raised key issues and discussion focused priorities for the committee going forward. One question consistently raised was: how do we create diversity within our organizations? Since Austin, a number of initiatives were started to work towards this effort. The new GMAC Student Travel Award is one such effort. This award facilitates student efforts to build and maintain networks as well as participate professionally in annual conferences. The committee also felt that, in the same vein, mentors for underrepresented students would support organizational diversity. This is why the GMAC, in collaboration with the Academic and Professional Training Committee, is developing a mentoring program and seeks to connect students with SHA members who share research and other interests. Mentoring serves to build relationships over both long and short term as well as foster career growth. It is through these types of engagements that underrepresented students can obtain advice about critical skills and confront problems or issues specific to their experience. To learn more and share ideas about mentoring, attend the GMAC sponsored forum, “Mentorship in Historical Archaeology�?on Thursday, January 5 at 1 PM. The only way we can create a more equitable and diverse SHA is to get involved. Join us for the Gender and Minority Affairs Committee meeting on Thursday, January 5 at 7:45 AM or join the Student-Subcommittee of GMAC on Friday, January 6 at 7:45 AM.

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