The Amerind Foundation, a CfAS Partner, has agreed to fund a design workshop to be held at the Amerind Museum in Dragoon, Arizona in fall 2023. A design workshop incubates future research by bringing together a diverse group of 10-15 interested individuals to outline one or more research proposals on a specific topic. The Amerind Museum previously hosted the highly successful CfAS design workshop on understanding human migration from a long-term perspective that was sponsored by Society for American Archaeology and European Association of Archaeologists.
The Amerind Foundation views design workshops as a necessary and powerful component of collaborative synthetic research and was drawn to CfAS’ commitment to advance scientific understandings and benefit society. The Foundation has placed no restrictions on the topic for the design workshop. Instead, it has left that decision to the CfAS community. The CfAS Board of Directors must choose a topic by the end of January to ensure that we can hold the workshop in 2023. Our first order of business, therefore, is to decide what topic to pursue in this design workshop and we are asking for your input. Please take a moment to offer a few sentences outlining your idea for the subject of a design workshop. Ideas should be submitted to CfAS Secretary, Sarah Herr (moc.tresed@rrehs) by January 6, 2023.
As you ponder possible topics, it might be useful to review the 2020 report of the New Initiatives Committee, which identified and prioritized general themes, with brief summaries, for synthesis projects. The priorities were ranked through a survey of CfAS Associates. The themes, in rank order are: 1) Colonialism, 2) Social Inequality, 3) Climate Change, 4) Food Security, 5) Infectious Disease, 6) Enslavement, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking 7) Demography, 8) Coping with Natural Disasters, 9) Archaeology of Genetic Identities and Ancient DNA, 10) Town and Country / Urban and Rural, and 11) Creative Destruction/Resilience.
CfAS greatly appreciates the support of the Amerind Foundation. We were thrilled to receive this award and have acknowledged the Amerind’s support by naming the workshop the Amerind Foundation/CfAS Design Workshop.