26th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (virtual)

The EAA Annual Conference did not take place in Budapest, Hungary, in August 2020. It was therefore held online thanks to the technological prowess of the EAA secretariat. ArchaeoConcept participated in two sessions.
Aurelia Basterrechea, Ben Thomas (American Institute of Archaeology, USA) and Sofia Fonseca (Teiduma, Consultancy on Heritage and Culture, Ireland) organised a session on the transmission of archaeology entitled "Sensitizing and Engaging the Public: The Role of Online Learning in Archaeology and Heritage Education". Eight papers were presented during this session illustrating virtual communication projects around archaeology, whether through augmented reality, digital training or the use of social networks. Aurélia Basterrechea's presentation, "Site of the month, an online strategy to have the past of Switzerland discovered", focused on the site of the month project and the issue of digital communication. This session met with the interest of the international publishing house Springer, which offered to publish the papers from both sessions. After having contacted all the authors, a table of contents has been prepared and the contributions are expected in September 2021. Aurelia Basterrechea will write an article on the Sites of the Month project, including the treatment of archaeological content on video platforms such as Youtube.
Also at the EAA 2020 conference, Cynthia Dunning Thierstein and Peter Kienzle from the Roman Museum and Site of Xanten (Germany) organised a session on communicating on archaeological sites open to the public "So What? How to Gently Kill Your Darlings or How to Communicate to an Audience as Wide as Possible". This included the secrets of story-telling, accessibility and inclusion on sites and in museums, and public participation in excavations. A third theme was the language used to express the definition of heritage and archaeological results. The success of this session could be measured by the number of people present virtually - one of the highest numbers at this conference!

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