As this New Year gets underway I’d like to share an extraordinary occasion I experienced in Shanghai in the days before Christmas – and brief you on plans for Kalambo Falls.

The Shanghai Archaeology Forum (SAF) is a celebration of achievements in world archaeology, with awards given for outstanding discoveries and research.  To be honest, I didn’t know about SAF until a former colleague put my name forward for one of the awards for my work on the discovery of the world’s oldest wooden structure in Zambia. I had to do a little research on SAF first before agreeing.  To my surprise I learned in November that I would indeed be a recipient of the prestigious Discovery Award.

SAF organised the travel to Shanghai, I organised the visa and provided them with my presentation and 3000-word summary.  It wasn’t the best timing. Late December is a busy time academically with teaching and marking. There was the added stress of completing paperwork for a new joint master’s degree in Human Evolution (with colleagues at Liverpool John Moores University). And of course, there was Christmas shopping to do, plus the additional stress of my wife having a major operation – a date offered at short notice – a day after my return from Shanghai. 

The award ceremony was a mind-blowing blend of the Olympics, half-time at the Super Bowl and the Eurovision Song Contest.  I loved every over-the-top moment from the adrenaline rush of receiving a gold medal to a fanfare, presenting to a packed hall with photographers jostling and just being treated like royalty.  This will surely be a once in a lifetime experience. 

There was another side to the conference which will be longer lasting. The underlying theme was the Archaeology of Climate Change and Social Sustainability.  After that first day of awards, we got down to the serious business of discussing how we as archaeologists can contribute to understanding human responses to climate change, past and present. We are uniquely positioned to give the long view of human resilience and suffering in the face of rapid changes to a world of once predictable seasons.  Ours is not the first generation to experience unexpected extremes of temperature and rainfall, combined with sea level rise.  But we are the first generation to be able to predict the threats posed by climate change and discuss collective responses at a global level.

I came home with beautiful gifts, bags of loose-leaf tea and an embarrassing 15-foot-long poster of me which hung in the entrance to the conference hall.  Not sure what to do with that memento.

And what next for Kalambo Falls and the 500,000-year-old wood that remains buried?  As tempting as it is to raise the funds for a new and larger project to uncover more of the structure, my priority is conservation rather than excavation. I am working with colleagues in Zambia and with the geographers on the Deep Roots Project to develop an application for the World Heritage listing of Kalambo Falls. It is undoubtedly a site of global cultural significance. (Hence one more picture of me, below, with the Falls taking a starring role as they deserve.) Only then will my thoughts return to that enigmatic structure and what lies beyond and below.