Blogging Archaeology

293 Pages·2014·6.66 MB·English

Blogging Archaeology Page 1
Published by Landward Research Ltd in Association with Succinct Research and
DIGTECH LLC

http://landward.eu/ | www.succinctresearch.com | http://www.digtech-llc.com/
ISBN 978-0-9572452-1-1
Edited by Doug Rocks-Macqueen and Chris Webster
Copyediting and Front Cover Design: Quonya Huff
Authors (Alphabetical):
Matt Armstrong Doug Rocks-Macqueen
Matthew Austin Jessica Rymer
David Gill Jaime Almansa-Sánchez
Maria Beierlein de Gutierrez Lucy Shipley
Sam Hardy Chris Webster
Emily Johnson Katy Whitaker
Kristina Killgrove William White
Bernard Means Howard Williams
Katy Meyers

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
International License. To view a copy of this license, visit:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Blogging Archaeology Page 2
Limit of Liability and Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher, editors and
authors has used their best efforts in preparing this book, and the
information provided herein is provided "as is." The publisher, editors and
authors makes no representation or warranties with respect to the
accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically
disclaims any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for any
particular purpose and shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or
any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special,

incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Blogging Archaeology Page 3
Table of Contents

Introduction- It is like no other archaeology book before it. ____________ 6
Archived Links _______________________________________________________ 8
Archaeological Blogging and Engagement ___________________________ 9
Matthew Austin
Professionals, Not Adventurers: Personal Reflections on the Value, Ethics,
and Practicalities of CRM Blogging ___________________________________ 20
Matt Armstrong
Teaching Public Engagement in Anthropology________________________ 36
Kristina Killgrove
Looting Matters: Blogging in a Research Context ______________________ 44
David W. J. Gill
Calling All Archaeology Careerists: Discussing Archaeology Careers
Online ______________________________________________________________ 60
William A. White, III
Why archaeological blogging matters: Personal experiences from
Central Europe and South America. __________________________________ 77
Maria Beierlein de Gutierrez
‘A masterpiece in political propaganda’ and a futile exercise in
archaeological blogging ____________________________________________ 93
Sam Hardy
Virtual Curation and Virtual Collaboration __________________________ 121
Bernard K. Means
Blogging Archaeology Page 4
#freearchaeology: blog post turned international debate ___________ 145
Emily Johnson
Blog Bodies: Mortuary Archaeology and Blogging __________________ 152
Katy Meyers
Howard Williams
Perceptions of Archaeology and The Words We Use ________________ 179
Jessica Rymer
The end of a cycle. Blogging about public archaeology in Spain. El fin de
un ciclo. Blogueando sobre arqueología pública en España ________ 187
Jaime Almansa- Sanchez
Etruscans Online __________________________________________________ 196
Lucy Shipley
The Edgcumbe cannibal fork – blogging a creative response to the
meanings of things ________________________________________________ 213
Katy Whitaker
Fired Twice for Blogging and Social Media: Why CRM Firms are Afraid of
Social Media _____________________________________________________ 222
Chris Webster
Running An Archaeology Blogging Carnival - A Post-mortem ________ 232
Doug Rocks-Macqueen
Appendix ________________________________________________________ 246
Archived Links ____________________________________________________ 268
Blogging Archaeology Page 5
Introduction- It is like no other
archaeology book before it.
On April 26th, 2014 a session was run at the Society of American
Archaeologists Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas, on Archaeology, Social
Media and blogging. Or we should more correctly say, will be run at the
SAA conference; at the time of writing this book, it has yet to take place.
This book is like many other contribution-based books or special journal
issues that are based on a session at a conference. However, it differs in
that it has not taken years, after the fact, to be published. In fact, it will
be published at the beginning of the session, Saturday morning April 26th,
2014. Some of the papers will be online before they are even presented
in the session.
In an attempt to reach a wider audience, the editors and organiser
of the SAA session, envisioned putting together a book of the papers
given at the session and contributions from others interested in the
subject. The idea was that everyone, public and archaeologists alike,
would have instantaneous access to many of the same thoughts and
insights as those who could attend the session in Austin. Thus, several
months before the blogging archaeology session would take place in
Austin, a call for papers was announced. After several rounds of editing,
this book is finally complete.
The general theme of this book can best be described by the
abstract from the session it was born out of:
Blogging Archaeology, Again
Blogging and social media have become indispensable tools for
archaeologists in recent years. Academic and cultural resource
management projects are utilizing blogging and social media for
outreach and in classroom settings. The sharing of archaeology
news and information by archaeologists and journals is a primary
source of up to the minute information for many. A number of
blogs are aimed at providing the public with information on either
Blogging Archaeology Page 6
a single topic or a range of related topics. With all the benefits to
blogging and the use of social media in archaeology there are still
issues to overcome. The problem of relating site and project
information to the public while maintaining anonymity of the
parties involved and keeping site locations confidential is
something that every archaeologist struggles with. In this session
we will examine the ways archaeologists use social media and
blogging and how problems related to the use of social media
can be overcome.
You will find that almost no two papers are alike, both in content and
presentation. As bloggers ourselves, we have noticed the great diversity
in the archaeology blogging community and we wanted a book that
reflected that. The authors were given instructions to write whatever sort
of paper they wanted to, and they did. Some of the papers are heavily
referenced research presentations while others are personal narratives.
We did not specify what type of English to use, British or American, and
both are found throughout this book. For referencing, we only asked for
Harvard style but, there was no house style. First person or third person
voice, it did not matter to us. Word limits: we had none. We asked
authors to write the papers they wanted to present to the world, not the
papers we, the editors wanted to present.
What resulted is one of the most unique pieces of writing the field of
archaeology has seen in a long time, and we would argue has ever seen
in such a formal publication as a book. When have you seen an author
alternate the language a section is written in? Each author presents a
style of writing that is uniquely their own. You will find some papers used
footnotes to express additional ideas in sentences, (while others used
brackets) -- or dashes --. Each of the author’s voices comes out in unique
and very discernable ways, like what one would find on archaeology
blogs. Essentially, all of the authors were given the subject of blogging
and social media and asked to present to us how they wanted to.

We hope you enjoy the book.
Doug Rocks-Macqueen & Chris Webster
Blogging Archaeology Page 7
Archived Links
Because this book deals with blogs and social media, many the
resources cited are digital in nature. This means that we run the risk of
“link rot”. To avoid this problem, most of the webpages cited throughout
this book have been registered with the Internet Archive (IA). Each
unique link has an end note with a link to the archived version of the
webpage on the Internet Archive. We believe that the Internet Archive
will most likely be around longer than many of these Internet resources.
The Internet Archive cannot archive every page, for various reasons
including those pages blocking IA, and while the majority of linked
resources have been archived, some have not. If you find that the
orgional hyperlink no longer works please see the archived links for a
snap shot of the resource being cited. You can find them by following
the end notes behind each hyperlink.

Blogging Archaeology Page 8
Archaeological Blogging and
Engagement
Matthew Austin
Blog: http://darkageology.wordpress.com i
Introduction
Creating a website in the early days of the World Wide Web was
difficult. Not only did such an endeavour require access to a computer
with an internet connection, which was expensive and uncommon, it
also required a good understanding of HTML. Nowadays the price of
computing is relatively low and record numbers of people have access
to the internet. The level of technical knowledge required to create a
website has also been greatly reduced by the development of online
publishing tools. As a consequence, blogging has become an important
aspect of the World Wide Web. Particularly in the last decade or so, the
number of blogs has increased substantially due to the emergence of
popular blogging platforms. For example, there are currently over 175
million ii Tumblr blogs and over 75 million iii WordPress blogs (Tumblr 2014;
WordPress 2014). In a sense, the very existence of this volume can be
seen as a testament to the growth of blogging.
Definitions
In order to present a case for archaeological blogging as an
important form of public engagement, it is appropriate to first define our
terms. For the purposes of this paper, I will define a blog, or ‘web log’, as
an interactive, regularly updated website, composed of posts and
pages, which is published on the World Wide Web. A broad definition
such as this allows us to consider the variable character of blogs.
Archaeological blogs range from personalised, single-author accounts to
multi-authored professional news websites with thousands of hits a day.
Blogging Archaeology Page 9
Most blogs about the past have a single author, but this is by no means
the rule. Peter Konieczny and Sandra Alvarez’s ‘Medievalists.net’ iv is a
very good example of a highly popular multi-authored news blog about
the medieval period (Konieczny and Alvarez 2008-2014).
The term ‘public engagement’, on the other hand, is more difficult to
define. Despite this, it is an incredibly significant term, and one which
plays an important role in the funding of academic research. In the UK,
annual events like the National Science and Engineering Week v and the
Festival of Archaeology vi are designed to engage the general public
(i.e. the non-specialist) with disciplinary knowledge and academic
research (British Science Association 2014; Council for British Archaeology
2014). The UK-based National Co-ordinating Centre for Public
Engagement vii defines public engagement as:
‘…the myriad of ways in which the activity and benefits of higher
education and research can be shared with the public.
Engagement is by definition a two-way process, involving interaction
and listening, with the goal of generating mutual benefit.’- (National
Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement 2014)
An alternative if similar definition has also been put forward by the
Higher Education Funding Council for England viii :
‘…public engagement should involve specialists in higher education
listening to, developing their understanding of, and interacting with
non-specialists.’ - (Higher Education Funding Council for England
2006, 2)
Whilst these are suitable definitions, they fail to fully appreciate the
multiplicity of quantitative and qualitative factors at play, and do not
allude to how one might measure such impact. Regardless of this, a
broad and nonspecific definition is useful for our current purposes, and
allows a range of archaeological blogs to be considered.
Archaeological blogs differ in terms of purpose, audience and content,
but can be grouped into loose categories. Some of these will now be
considered.
Blogging Archaeology Page 10