2020 Ontario Archaeological Society Online Symposium

The 2020 Ontario Archaeological Society will be hosting its annual symposium online this year due to COVID-19. This format will allow us to try out new methods of delivery and give us the opportunity to explore potential improvements for future symposiums.

Deadlines:

Session proposals – Aug. 15

These should be sent to oas-symposium@ontarioarchaeology.org and should include a title, a description of the content and a description of the format.

Paper proposals/abstracts – Oct. 1 – This is a hard deadline 

If your paper fits within one of the described sessions as posted on the web page, please send your abstract directly to the session organizer. If your paper does not fit within one of the described sessions, send your abstract to oas-symposium@ontarioarchaeology.org.

Registration:

The registration will not open until relatively close to the symposium date, to allow for registrants to examine the program and register for all sessions they are interested in. Zoom links will then be sent to registrants to grant access to sessions. The OAS will announce the opening of registration on our social media and through an email to our contacts.

Payment:

This year’s fee structure will be “pay-what-you-can” in recognition of the fact that that some members of our community are facing financial hardship due to COVID-19. We ask that all participants register through the registration page, whether paying or not. We encourage attendance from all.

Sessions:

The sessions for this symposium will be held on the weekend of Nov. 7-8. Session formats may differ slightly from previous years, and we encourage session organizers to take advantage of our particular circumstance to experiment with different formats. The sessions will be held over Zoom. In some cases, materials may be pre-circulated to registrants. In other cases, talks may be pre-recorded. Please see individual session descriptions on our website for particulars of the intended format.

Workshops:

We hope to offer a full slate of workshops on topics that members of our community have expressed an interest in. We anticipate that these will be 1-2 hours in duration and will be held on weekday evenings during the week of Nov. 2-5. The workshops will be held via Zoom.

The Usual Stuff:

Are you wondering about the Awards Ceremony, the Photo Contest, and (last but not least) the Annual Business Meeting? Don’t worry! We will be holding all of these and they will be scheduled so as not to conflict with other activities. Submit your photo entries to oas-symposium@ontarioarchaeology.org!

New Ideas:

We are embracing this new format because it offers us an opportunity to make our symposium more accessible to interested parties from across the province (and beyond). We also hope that it will provide us with a chance to consider different ways of presenting and sharing research.