Margaret Conkey

All of this local level re-organization has served as a vital reminder of how small-scale cooperation can lead to bigger things. In the past months, we have, for example, developed an internship program with the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where a Berkeley graduate student is doing sample preparation of AMS samples. We have begun discussions with other local agencies about undergraduate internship programs in archaeology. We have begun to formalize our school outreach program, and expect to see new programs and outreach arrangements in place by the Fall 1997, thanks to Sonya. Our web site for the ARF:

(http://www.qal.berkeley.edu/arf/) is actively maintained by Lisa Holm, and we find our abilities to reach a wider audience have increased dramatically. We hear regularly from school children using email and the web to find out more about being an archaeologist and to find out more about archaeology at CAL. Soon we will have an email address for the Outreach Program; look for it on our web site!

Indeed, the technologies of the present and the future will make archaeology a different enterprise, but there is little that could replace the on-going and active fieldwork that still characterizes the lives of most ARF archaeologists-Israel, Hawai'i, Bolivia, Turkey, France, Africa, Japan, California, Greece, Honduras, Carribbean, to name but a few. Most of these projects involve graduate and undergraduate students, and for many, these are experiences of a lifetime, even if archaeology turns out to not be their chosen field. The skills of teamwork, interdisciplinary research, and the physical and intellectual challenges, often in a foreign country, make for exceptional experience. Thanks to increasing contributions to our various gift funds, more students are able to participate in some of these projects. If you would like to know more about on-going ARF research projects that involve students who are supported, in part, by private donations, we will be pleased to send it to you.

As is the case with the wider University of California system- now that we have slipped to being just a "state-assisted", rather than a "state-supported" institution, due to the decrease in funding from the state- we are all increasingly dependent upon the various donations from those of you who support archaeology at Berkeley, who support actual fieldwork and research, and who support the active involvement of students with field work and research in archaeology. All of us believe that archaeology is a perfect domain for the teaching of critical thinking, for the evaluation of evidence and what constitutes evidence, for inferential reasoning, and for engaging with our relationship with the human past. We look for your on-going and increased support. As Director of ARF, I have been pleased to have many of you from the wider community come to visit, to see our facilities, meet our students, and attend various events. I hope to hear from and see more of you in the near future!