March 9, 2022
Almost 800 people spent last Saturday at ArchaeoCon—AIA’s annual public outreach program that celebrates archaeology and archaeologists. 2022 was our fourth year hosting ArchaeoCon and our second year hosting it as an entirely virtual event. After the AIA switched ArchaeoCon to a virtual event in 2021, the response was overwhelming. People from all over the world logged in to see live presentations, participate in live workshops, and peruse the on-demand content, including interviews with archaeologists, that we created for the event.
ArchaeoCon 2022 featured live presentations from Maya archaeologist and illustrator, Heather Hurst, who discussed Maya murals at the site of San Bartolo in Guatemala, and maritime archaeologist, James Delgado, who gave attendees a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the story behind National Geographic’s show, Drain the Oceans. In between the talks, archaeologist Ilaria Patania hosted a breadmaking workshop that featured her take on a Pompeiian bread recipe from 79 AD. While the dough was rising, Ilaria, gave viewers a brief history of Roman cuisine.
In addition to the live presentations, ArchaeoCon attendees had access to a variety of on-demand activities including trivia games, galleries featuring entries from AIA’s photo contests and Build Your Own Monument contest, and pre-recorded interviews with Egyptologist Kara Cooney and archaeologist Debby Sneed.
ArchaeoCon is a public outreach event and is attended by people of all ages who are excited about archaeology and are looking for a fun way to engage with archaeology and archaeologists. The excitement about archaeology is global and people from 11 countries logged in to ArchaeoCon 2022. While we had many experience ArchaeoCon participants return this year, about 63% of our audience was brand new to the experience. We hope that they enjoyed their first ArchaeoCon and will continue to search out archaeological experiences.
We would like to thank all of you who attended ArchaeoCon and made it a resounding success. We would also like to thank our main presenting sponsors—Kathleen and David Boochever and Mark Hurst and Christine Cronin-Hurst—and our event sponsors Sophie and Larry Cripe, Mathea Falco, Elizabeth Greene, and Laura Rich.
