It feels enormously, deliciously nice to be back home again after several weeks of being only there for a very short breather and then off again to something somewhere. Even though I enjoyed all the away-time a lot – Christmas with the family, New Year with friends, the EAC with colleagues – I am now really content with being home for some time, getting stuff into order and taking care of all the interesting things that were on the back-burner all this while. And catching up on cuddling the cat!

But you probably want to know about the conference much more than about how happy I am to be home again, so…

 The EAC took place in two locations - one of the university buildings (which was ample room for the ~100 participants of the conference) and at St Fagan's, a little ways outside Cardiff. It started with a very nice meet-up in the Pen and Wig on Thursday evening and then went into a tightly-packed programme of papers all Friday long. The topics were varied and interesting, and I enjoyed most of the papers very much. (With a few, I had some trouble understanding everything, since the speakers sometimes mumbled a little, but that's to be expected.) 
I especially enjoyed the paper about the ovens used for cooking on the Mary Rose, which was a totally astounding contraption that I'd love to cook in. Well, maybe not really, seeing as it's for feeding about 500 people.

After the papers, there was wine, snacks and a poster session before almost all of us walked off to a conference dinner.

Saturday we were taken to St Fagan's in a bus that seated 70 persons (though the persons it was intended for were much younger than archaeologists usually are), which was a little cramped but must have looked very amusing to anyone watching the bus spit out almost 70 adults instead of the schoolchildren that its bright yellow colour would lead one to expect.

The papers at St Fagan's were as nice as those the day before, but unfortunately the weather was not. Any open air museum will look much nicer in sunshine and good weather than in fog, grey clouds and drizzling rain - but I still enjoyed having a little walk around the premises and peeping into a few of the houses.

As all conferences, this one was too short, and unfortunately I was quite tired and not up to my best networking abilities. There's always the trade-off at conferences between a programme packed full of papers*, getting much into a short time, or leaving lots of room for questions and socialising at the cost of having fewer presentations. Cardiff EAC clearly opted for a full programme which left me more exhausted than I would have wished. So somehow I have the feeling that I could have gotten more out of it - but then one never knows what will follow later. At least I did manage to deliver my talk, do a spinning presentation and meet a good number of new people, as well as catch up with old aquaintances. And hear about a number of very interesting topics!

And I fear the something making it slow is contagious - at least I feel quite slow too these days! At least yesterday evening was successful in terms of cookie baking. Something productive done, yay!

Now for your content of today:
Registration for the Experimental Archaeology conference in Cardiff in January is still open, and will be until December 22. So if you are inclined to visit Cardiff on January 11 and 12 (or a bit longer, even), this would be a perfect excuse.

And I'm already looking forward very, very much to this - it will mean meeting nice colleagues again and hanging out in Cardiff. (I will not bore you with Dr. Who and Torchwood fanpersoning now... but if you would like to join me in saying "Cardiff!" in an excited way, feel free.)

* It is never a good idea to spill your coffee in the car. Mostly out of two reasons: You will have much less coffee, and you will have to clean the car.

* It would be so handy to have a scanner with an automatic paper feeder thingie, so that I could just digitise my paper copies of articles.

* The Internet is full of weird stuff. (I knew that before, but it bears repeating.)

* Our little cat does not care for snow and prefers to stay inside when it's cold, except for a very quick dash outside to take care of cat business. The stinky kind.

* Clearing space on your study floor by sorting out those stacks of stuff and finding better storage places for other things actually means that you can see more floor.

* No brownies appeared over night (again!) to continue my book-sorting. Or to put up the Forum photos onto the Forum website. (I have not forgotten, Harma.)

* The end of year is nearing, and there are the usual "won't you give us money" phone calls.

* I will be giving a paper at Cardiff conference in January, and possibly also a demonstration. Registration is still possible, should you like to come.

* Time flies. (Yes, I know. Not new as well. But like the internet being full of weird stuff... I am convinced that this may be repeated from time to time.)

It's back to the home desk for me today, after spending a wonderful long weekend abroad. The little conference in the Czech Republic was thoroughly nice, with lots of friendly people and interesting topics (even though most of the costume topics were a little later than my main interest time). The only thing I regret is that I do not speak or understand Czech better than I do; as it is, I can order dumplings, tea or coffee, but I probably won't understand the answer. The lovely people at the conference, however, took great pains to supply me with translation of all the talks of the day - no mean feat, and something I greatly appreciated.

My presentation, as well as that of another speaker, were also translated for the benefit of the audience, which for me meant cutting out all the bells and whistles and asides and extra jokes that I normally insert. It has never become as clear to me before how much of all that is in all of my normal presentations that are not stripped for easy translation.

And now I also know Prague a little better than before, having had two long walks through the city; I have had the traditional Wenceslaus sausage (that I love) and sampled several different Czech sandwiches; I have been stuck in a train for more than three hours due to several accidents on the track all happening in one afternoon; I have also learned that not only plain Czech coffee is very different from plain German coffee (something that can be well expected), a Czech Latte Macchiato is also very different from the German (or even the Italian) one. But the most beautiful thing to become aware of (again) during this trip? Laughter is international, and you do not need to understand each other's language to be able to laugh together.

Sometimes, it seems to take ages until Friday arrives - but then in some weeks, it seems as if it's Friday instantly. And this was one of these weeks.

That is surely partly due to my cutting away some of the normal week length by travelling. Tomorrow is the Clothing Seminary in Zlin where I will be speaking about crafts, experimental archaeology and spinning, and I'm already looking forward to this very much - it will, I hope, be a very interesting meeting.

And next week it's back to writing article and working at the home desk, with a nice hot coffee and all autumny colours outside the window. This is a good time of year to sit indoors, read and write! (The cat, by the way, agrees. Not with the reading-and-writing part, but with the sitting indoors part; there are mornings now when she thinks it's enough to take a little sniff of the cool outdoors air and then settles back for another nap.)

Nobody can do research without money. Because researchers, like all other people, need to sleep (preferably somewhere dry and not too cold), to wear something (yes, really) and to eat something (not only chocolate, though it should be in there somewhere if you ask me). And all that needs some money.

If you are more or less involved in museums, archaeology research facilities or similar institutions, you will know that money is always scarce there. I remember being a student helper when I was still studying; we'd get paid for doing necessary preparatory work for papers such as taking and sorting slides, or helping when there was a conference. There was scarcely enough money to pay for the work that really needed to be done. Nobody doing a phd would have a chance of getting paid from the Uni - either you got funding somewhere else, or you were self-funded. You had a chance to get a work space (as in "a table") in one of the department's rooms, though they were limited, and you had to bring your own computer.

There's no law that says good research cannot be done with a low budget. But a low budget is severely limiting research in several ways: time, resources, possibilities, presentation.
Someone researching topic X with no money for it has to provide not only for the necessities of life, but also for the research. Books and articles are expensive, as are trips to libraries further away. All this has to be paid for - or our researcher has to do without. Time has to be spent on other, paid work. No funding also means little possibility to use newer analysis methods. And finally, no funding as in "you pay for going to that conference* all by yourself" means fewer possiblilties to exchange knowledge and experience with other researchers, limiting not only that one person's research, but also its impact. (Even worse when the conference has no funding and thus publication takes ages and ages and ages. Ask me how I know.)

Why am I writing all this? The next summit of the EU heads of states on 22-23 November 2012 will be a decisive step in determining the EU research budget for the next seven years. The conditions are not favorable: the financial crisis has put severe constraints on the national budgets and several countries, in particular the "net-payers", are demanding cuts on the total EU budget. Research and innovation will compete with other policy priorities.

Fourty-two Nobel Laureates and five Fields Medallists (something like Nobel, but for Maths folks) have written an open letter urging the EU to keep funding research. This has turned into a petition that you can sign here - and then join me in hoping this will be enough to keep the EU from cutting budget.

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* The conferences are not as pricey as, say, medical conferences usually are - but still: you need to sleep somewhere, you need to eat something, you need to get there and back again, and pay the conference fee. Conferences (and I so love going to them) are one of the big spending points in my budget.

Summer is over, all the leaves are turning into colourful leaves (except those that have died of the cold already, like the morning glory in the garden), it's getting cold in the evening and the night, and my consumption of hot caffeinated beverages... no, it's not more frequent. But that's not due to the weather.

Things, otherwise, are progressing here as well: The achilles tendon of the most patient husband of them all is slowly healing, the heaps of washing after the season have been cleared away, the bookkeeping has been done, and I am in the middle of planning sessions for conferences and other activities in the near and middle future - among them a trip to Cardiff to the experimental archaeology conference there.

Just now, however, I will take a few days off. Things have been rather hectic around here since before the Textile Forum, and now that the most urgent stuff has been dealt with, I will take a little time to regenerate. I will be back on the blog on Monday.