Martin Aitken Student Posters Awards

As usual in ISA Symposia, two students will receive the 
Martin Aitken award for best poster presentation.

Interested student candidates are required to submit a PDF version of their poster by May 1st to:  isa2020@isa2020-lisboa.pt  with the subject: Martin Aitken Award.

HISTORY OF THE AWARD

The International Symposium on Archaeometry offers two awards in every venue for the two best student posters in honour of Martin J. Aitken. These awards were established after the ISA Meeting at Toronto in 1988, following the suggestion by prof. Ronald Farquhar, the organizer of the Toronto meeting, who offered for this purpose the surplus of money that had been left over. After the exhaustion of the original fund the awards are now offered by each venue organizer and at present they are at the level of 200 € each. 


Martin J. Aitken was a professor at the Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Oxford University. He started a series of meetings at Oxford in 1960 which were to become the International Symposium on Archaeometry. He was also the founder of the Journal Archaeometry. Martin was the Chairman of the ISA Standing Committee until his retirement after 1986. He was a specialist in Thermoluminescence dating but his broad knowledge on all dating techniques and other scientific approaches to archaeological finds made him a very important figure in such a way that can be considered as the Godfather of Archaeometry. 


The ISA traditionally attracts many research students whose contribution to research in the field of Archaeological Sciences and to the Symposium is greatly appreciated. The purpose of the best student poster awards is to further encourage student participation in the ISA meetings and to highlight the contribution and importance of students in the research in the field. The aim of the awards is also to set examples for the best way of communicating and presenting the results to other scholars in the field.  

CRITERIA AND GUIDELINES FOR JUDGING STUDENT POSTERS

GENERAL

ISA student posters should demonstrate clarity of content, quality of research, and best use of the poster format.

SPECIFIC GUIDELINES

•  Are the problem, methods, results, and conclusions clearly presented and easy to comprehend? 
•  Is the research competent? Is it also innovative to some degree?  Are the techniques appropriate for the stated problem?
•  A poster is not an oral paper. Has the student used the poster format to best advantage? That is, is the text clear, concise, and balanced by carefully selected, highly visible images and graphs?  A poster, like a good museum exhibit, should be easy to read from a short distance and easy to understand in a short amount of time (please note: good layout and ease of comprehension are more important than fancy fonts, designer colours, or expensive materials).  
• The student applying for a poster award must be the first author of the paper presented as poster. There is no limitation to the number of co-authors.