The Mediterranean Archaeology Australian Research Community (MAARC) was conceived in Auckland in early 2020 during the international conference 'Exchanging Ideas: Trade, Technology and Connectivity and pre-Roman Italy' when, over a coffee, Jeremy Armstrong and Gijs Tol lamented the fact that there was no regional network or annual event that really catered to Mediterranean archaeology. As a result we noted that many of us look predominantly towards Europe and the United States for our networks, limiting interactions between the many excellent scholars and postgraduate students working on the ancient Mediterranean from universities in Australia and New Zealand, and creating serious issues of access and equity to such overseas networks based on personal research budgets and postgraduate funding. MAARC is working to fill this gap.

 

​MAARC is intended to facilitate a sense of community and encourage interaction, communication, and collaboration between those researching the archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean,  in the broadest possible sense. A key element of this will be an annual meeting that rotates around the various institutions in the region that harbour an Ancient History/Mediterranean Archaeology program. These meetings are intended to be low key, informal and affordable, with free registration and attendance, and no annual membership fee. It will also hopefully include the publication of a brief directory of regional scholars working on relevant topics (forthcoming).

 

Our standing committee serves as a point of contact and information dissemination, and also to allow the rotation of a (yearly) meeting around the various institutions involved.  The current standing committee includes:

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Jeremy Armstrong (University of Auckland)

Amelia Brown (University of Queensland) 

Hamish Cameron (Victoria University of Wellington)

Andrew Connor (Monash University)

Melanie Fillios (University of New England)

Alison Griffith (University of Canterbury)

Yvonne Inall (Australian Archaeological Institute in Athens)

Melissa Kennedy (University of Western Australia)

Ania Kotarba (Flinders University)

Ray Laurence (Macquarie University)

Margaret O'Hea (University of Adelaide)

Dan Osland (University of Otago)

James Richardson (Massey University)

Ted Robinson (University of Sydney)

Gillian Shepherd (La Trobe University)

Gijs Tol (University of Melbourne)

 

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