Part of the reason of the blog’s silence last month was because I was in Siem Reap for the 20th Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association Congress in Siem Reap, Cambodia. It is *the* largest gathering of archaeologists in Asia, and in particular Southeast Asia, and this year we had some 750 participants presenting about 500 papers.
Conference banner
My business at the conference was to chair the session on rock art; it’s a really good time for rock art research – at the last IPPA Congress in Hanoi, there were barely any rock art papers presented. During this conference, we heard 13 papers during my session alone; other papers were run by other colleagues – Rachel Hoerman from the University of Hawaii chaired a session of rock art conservation issues in Southeast Asia and Lindsay Llyod-Smith from Sogang Universty chaired one on megaliths. I presented part of my PhD work on the rock art of the Pak Ou Caves in Laos.
My traditional audience photo – attendees to the rock art session at the IPPA
The rock art nerds’ dinner
Of course, no conference at Siem Reap would be complete without a visit to Angkor:
The tricky job of trying to take a group photo of hundreds of archaeologists in front of Angkor Wat
I also had the opportunity to organise a pre-conference tour to Beng Melea and Poeung Komnou, another rock art site that I am looking into for my PhD:
Pre-conference to Poeung Komnou
Over the course of the conference, there were a bunch of participants who were tweeting live from the venue. It was a great way to follow the conference, particularly during concurrent sessions. You can follow the conference tweets here.
Most of the tweeters at IPPA
I certainly enjoyed myself at IPPA – it was a great time to listen to the latest research, but more importantly, to catch up with old friend and colleagues, and also to make new ones. Kudos to our Cambodian hosts for a job very well done!