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Conferences & Networking

The SAS regularly sponsors conferences, workshops, and conference sessions. If you're planning an event on any topic relevant to the goals of the society, please get in touch with the VP of Intersociety Relations so that we can explore partnering with you and your organization. 

If you're a student SAS member interested in getting involved with the society and promoting professional fellowship among your peers, check out the Student Ambassador program and reach out to our VP for Membership Development to learn more.

SAS Executive Board Reading Recommendations – "Four centuries of commercial whaling eroded 11,000 years of population stability in bowhead whales"

Happy summer! SAS Representative on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Archaeological Science Ester Oras has passed along an exciting new paper for June’s Executive Board Reading Recommendation. Ester writes:

The paper "Four centuries of commercial whaling eroded 11,000 years of population stability in bowhead whales" by Westbury et al. (Lorenzen's group at the Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen) stands out as a unique integration of palaeoenvironmental, biological, historical, biomolecular and ecological records. It shows how human induced population decline through commercial whaling has had a direct influence on the demography and genetic diversity of bowhead whales, in fact, even more than the long-term climatic changes throughout the Holocene. An intricate and nuanced insight into human-animal-environment interactions with a serious cautionary tale.

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Westbury, M.V., Brown, S.C., Cabrera, A.A., Morales, H.E., Parreira, B., Ma, J., Coll Macià, M., Rey-Iglesia, A., Dyke, A., Scharff-Olsen, C.H., Scott, M.B., Wiig, Ø., Bachmann, L., Kovacs, K.M., Lydersen, C., Ferguson, S.H., Szpak, P., Fordham, D.A., Lorenzen, E.D., 2026. Four centuries of commercial whaling eroded 11,000 years of population stability in bowhead whales. Cell 189, 2040-2053.e19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2026.02.022