I'm back from a wonderful trip to Ireland, where it was comparatively cool - and now I'm back to baking in the German late-summer heat. (Way too warm for the season, actually.)
The conference in Belfast was easily and by far the largest archaeology conference I've ever been to, with about 3000 participants altogether (online and on-site combined). I don't know how many people there were in Leeds when I attended it, many years ago, but it felt similarly huge. It's fascinating, and certainly has its pros, but personally I do prefer smaller conferences where I have less decision-making issues (what session will I go to?) and there's a little less noise in the common functions, and fewer people so it's easier to find somebody.
The programme was also very, very tightly packed, which meant that any of the (unavoidable) technical issues that could occur would throw the plan, and meant less time for questions and discussion. But these things aside, it was just wonderful to go there and experience this huge get-together of archeologists!
My own presentation was in the very last panel time slot of the conference, so everyone was already a bit tired (myself included). Nevertheless I think nobody fell asleep on me.
A friend made this photo of me during the presentation. As usual, I had a lot of fun doing the "dance" (I tend to hop around when presenting), and it was so nice to show the results of our membrane thread process reconstruction to other interested people!