Encounter in the Topelia’s corridor

Janna Laajaranta

Bianca Preda-Bălănică is a post-doctoral researcher at the Universtiy of Helsinki, working in the Yamnaya Impact on Prehistoric Europe Project. Her research focuses on the funerary archaeology, burials customs and material culture of the Yamanaya populations, as well as their interactions with and impact on local societies. In the ECA community, she coordinates the mentoring programme.

The Early Career Archaeologists Community is dedicated to professionals from the academic, heritage and commercial sectors, who are generally under-represented and under-supported in archaeology. The community aims to listen to, and communicate the issues that particularly affect early career archaeologists.

Kuva: Bianca Preda

1. Bianca, you’re a founding member of ECA. How, what for, and who with did you start this community?

The Community started as a Taskforce of the EAA (European Association of Archaeology) in 2019. Archaeologist Maxime Brami from Mainz had the initiative, and involved, besides me, other colleagues from different parts of the world. The purpose was to raise awareness about challenges encountered by ECAs, such as job insecurity, imposed mobility, the lack of research freedom, independence and results ownership. We also wanted to address the consequences of things such as the economic and mental well-being of ECAs and to create a support mechanism to make them feel heard and empowered. In the summer of 2020 we applied to officially become a community of the EAA and we have been growing steadily ever since.

2. What is an Early Career Archaeologist?

This is indeed a good question. In our Community, being an Early Career Archaeologist is not about age, but about status. We usually consider ECAs to be professionals who have not yet held a position of responsibility or authority within their institution, marked by tenure, therefore include here postgraduates and postdoctoral researchers. Finding a permanent position within the academia can be a very challenging process and in some cases can take several years, and our community aims to support researchers on their journey.

3. Can you tell our readers shortly about the different resources ECA has available?

Well, I would say that we are a fairly new community and still developing. We are trying to be helpful and have created several platforms to keep ECAs informed and connected to what is currently happening in archaeology. Our social media pages and website provide useful links to sites, as well as a selection of mailing lists where jobs and/or funding opportunities are circulated. We share information about national archaeology events, conferences and such. We also have a collection of links where access to archaeological data and literature. Apart from that we have created a mentoring program to support researchers.

4. You are in charge of the mentoring programme. Can you tell us more about that?

We have started this mentoring programme to create a safe environment for ECAs who seek guidance, support and feedback regarding their professional development, to create an intergenerational support network for ECAs available to everyone, irrespective of their age, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background, and to help ECAs establish themselves professionally, gain skills and experience. We began by making an appeal to volunteers, both mentors and mentees, who then registered to be part of it. We have forms that our volunteers need to fill, detailing what kind of help and support they need or can offer, as well as a code of conduct, which is very important to us and to which the participants must adhere. The matchmaking of mentees and mentors is based on these forms, but in the end, everyone gets to make their own choice. We do not get very involved in the actual mentoring process and we allow the pairs to find a mentoring relationship that works for them, but we are there for people in case they need any support. Soon, we will send a survey, one year after the beginning of this project, to see how effective our approach is or if we need to make some changes.

5. Do you have any feedback from people involved in mentoring so far?

Yes, so far feedback has been positive. Our mentees have shared with us that the mentoring programme has been beneficial and useful to them. Some felt the need to mention they are thankful that such a program exists, and they are happy with the mentors we have been able to match them with. Overall, people seem to be pleased with the way we are communicating with them and organising the process, but I am sure there is room for improvement.

6. What inspires you to work with ECA? Where do you see ECA going in the near future?

The feedback I just mentioned is an inspiration. I think that if we can make even one person’s life a little better, offer support

during difficult moments, give people a feeling that they are not alone in this, if we can make the smallest difference, then we should spare no effort. In the near future, we hope to expand the mentoring programme, we would love to see more people reaching out to us. I also feel we should do more for the community and we do have ideas to create other support mechanisms, but this is of course challenging for us as well. We also have, at the same time, a typical academic life, the one we want to raise awareness about, with stress, deadlines, looking for funding, moving from country to country...but we are trying our best.

7. You work at the University of Helsinki. Where can the students meet you?

My work at the University is mostly research related, but occasionally I am involved in teaching. Last year I gave a course together with Marja Ahola, an introduction to mortuary archaeology, and I am currently involved in other courses such as Archaeology International coordinated by Kristin Ilves, Marko Marila and Liisa Kunnas-Pusa or Culture, Agency, Ownership coordinated by Marja Ahola. I also usually present the excavations of YMPACT project in the Archaeology Afternoon at Tiedekulma, and I have organised together with Marja Ahola the Helsinki Archaeology Seminar in the past years. I am quite easy to reach, though, anyone is welcome to contact me via email if they have any questions, thoughts that they would like to share or are interested in my research.

8. What is your favourite part of archaeology?

There are many things I enjoy doing. I enjoy walking on the fields to identify new sites and to take pictures of them and their surroundings. I am passionate about photography and sometimes like to get lost in the landscape and try to imagine how it looked in prehistoric times. I enjoy excavations and feel we have the privilege to uncover parts of people’s lives from the past. A significant part of my excavation experience relates to researching graves. I often found myself in the situation in which I document and in the process I am touching these artefacts, be they hair rings, pendants or other ornaments, pots or axes, and I cannot help myself but think about the people that touched them in the past. How did they feel in their hands, what were they thinking about when they laid them inside graves. Of course, most of these things are forever lost and through archaeology we try to get a glimpse of people’s lives. Currently, we have access to more and more sophisticated tools for analysis and interpretation, but at the end of the day, for me archaeology is about the human experience across time and space.