RECEPTION & BANQUET

Reception

The Friday reception is included in the fee for the conference. The reception will be held from 6:00-7:00pm at Hunan Chinese Restaurant, one of Carbondale's finest eating places. There will be a selection of hot appetizers, as well as a cash bar. This is also an excellent place to eat dinner after the reception. Hunan's menu is available on their website and includes dishes from many regions of China. Directions to Hunan from the Health Center and the hotels can be found here. There will also be a shuttle service from the conference/hotels.

Banquet

The Saturday evening banquet features keynote speaker Graeme W.W. Barker, and will be held at Touch of Nature Environmental Center, from 6:00-8:30pm. There is a $25 extra charge for the banquet. Touch of Nature is a conference center, campground, outdoor laboratory, environmental education center, and recreation area owned by Southern Illinois University Carbondale. It is a beautiful location, bordered by Giant City State Park, the Shawnee National Forest and the Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge. The banquet will be held in the Friend's Room of the Little Grassy Lodge. There is ample parking and a shuttle service will run from the conference/hotels to Touch of Nature. Directions available here. Cash bar.

Professor Graeme W.W. Barker is the director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and the Disney Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge University. The Disney chair was endowed by Charles Disney in 1853, and has previously been held by such notable archaeologists as Dorothy Garrod, Grahame Clark, and Colin Renfrew. Professor Barker has worked in Britain, Italy, Libya, Jordan, Mozambique, and Borneo, focusing on the relationship between people and their landscapes in different environments. His published works consist of over 20 books and more than 200 papers on topics that include Mediterranean landscape use, subsistence systems, human impacts on desert and rainforest ecosystems, and the transition to agriculture.