The Department of History and Archaeology at The University of the West Indies, Mona will host an educational workshop for archaeologists from Friday, December 3 to Sunday, December 5, 2010 at the N1 Lecture Theatre, in the Faculty of Humanities & Education at the UWI, Mona Campus. The theme of the workshop is  “Increasing sensitivity to the past through information and guidance on material culture”.

The workshop is the first phase of the Archaeological Society of Jamaica’s  effort to heighten the awareness of archaeology and ancestry in the Jamaican people in communities across the island.  The programme is designed to raise awareness of Jamaican archaeology throughout the island by providing parishes with resource personnel who have the ability and time to address matters of material culture.  The next phase of the programme will be targeting schools and community groups and is likely to have an impact on high school graduates who may subsequently pursue studies in archaeology.

The programme, through its resource personnel, also expects to point to financial benefits which may be accrued from developing heritage tourism sites using pre-Columbian and historical sites as attractions. Jamaica’s heritage tourism is a sleeping giant with hundreds of sites having the potential for development.

The workshop will train Archaeology Resource Officers, drawn for the most part from UWI archaeology graduates across the island, to talk about the Jamaican ancestry which dates back to the earliest known occupants of Jamaica.
The ASJ expects to launch this awareness programme at its annual Archaeological Symposium April 13-14, 2011.