Archaeology Magazine & Blogging Archaeology

Just a note to say that William Caraher’s excellent discussion about ‘blogging archaeology‘, which first saw life -natch- as a series of blog posts, is now up on Archaeology Magazine’s website.

William writes on his own blog:

“Thanks to everyone who helped with the revisions and Mark Rose at the Archaeological Institute of America who provided some nice editorial touches and his web-design who helped its slick appearance.  I hope to be able to provide an update to the article in 9 or 12 months time and continue to track some of the developments in the blogosphere.

[...]

It will be interesting to track the way in which certain genres coalesce in the blogosphere over the next several years.  On the one hand, there are clearly certain relatively well-defined and recognizable types of blogs: research blogs, teaching blogs, news blogs, graduate student blogs et c.).  On the other hand, there does seem to be a willingness to experiment with hybrid blogs that bring together teaching and research and present themselves in a conversational style.”

It’s a fantastic piece, and an excellent place to start when you’re interested to know what’s going on in the archaeological blogosphere.

Blogging Archaeology

William Caraher has been writing about the history of blogging, especially in the archaeological world (it is also posted here). It’s a fascinating discussion, and it brought to my attention a number of blogs - and student blogs written whilst on-site at excavations - that I hadn’t encountered before. It was nice, too, to see Electric Archaeology get a mention amongst all this fantastic work - thanks!

Many people write blogs with the hope of making a bit of coin from them too somehow. I wonder if academic blogs are considered in awarding tenure? I reach more people writing this blog than a lot of my more *academic* writing. My thesis isn’t climbing the ranks of Amazon, that’s for sure!

From the original post:

“…These specialized blogs will not be of interest to everyone, but they have tapped into the rich potential of digital media to communicate, inspire, and promote collaborative scholarship. Shawn Graham’s innovative Electric Archaeologist shows how a whole range of digital media can assist an archaeologist in research and teaching. Sebastian Heath’s blog Mediterranean Ceramics explores the intersection of the study of Mediterranean ceramics and the resources available on the internet. Tom Elliot, the director of the Pleiades Project which brings together geographic and historical information for ancient places across the Mediterranean, makes occasional posts at his horothesia blog. His main interest is developing innovative and open methods to disseminate archaeological and historical data. Scott Moore’s Ancient History Ramblings has developed a serious focus on archaeology in the virtual world of Second Life. Charles Watkinson, the director of publications at the American School of Classical Studies maintains an occasional blog on “communication in the humanities and social sciences.” Digging Digitially provides some great info on digital archaeology as the “Semi-offical” news source for the SAA’s Digital Data Interest Group. The Okapi Project’s blog from the University of California at Berkeley includes regular reports on their innovative efforts to disseminate academic research through digital media – including their work with the Çatalhöyük excavations….”

Archaeology Island in Second Life

Scott Moore is detailing his archaeological projects in Second Life over on his blog. Yesterday, he and his colleagues made a presentation to his university trustees about what they are doing, which include a virtual Parthenon, Mayan temple, and a shipwreck. Sounds fantastic, and I can’t wait to come visit! Robert Welch University is also planning a small presence in Second Life, which will be more to bring our distance students together than to do any large-scale simulation, although I’m planning a tetris-style immersive game to help with the Latin teaching.

Scott’s Parthenon

Electric Archaeology: Research Notes - writers wanted!

The turn-around time for publishing research can sometimes feel like it takes ages. This isn’t - necessarily- problematic when you are publishing the results of years of study in a field that doesn’t change all that much (like my own cozy world of brick stamp studies…). But when you’re working in a field that changes monthly, if not weekly (like anything connected with digital media) by the time that article of yours comes out, it could very well be out of date. My article on agent-based modeling the Antonine Itineraries was published quite quickly, but by the time it came out the platform I used - Netlogo - had already undergone a substantial upgrade. My code was already out of date (though upgrading the model code would probably only take a day or two). I did find though that the comments and correspondence I received as a result of putting up a tatty web 1.0 website during that research were invaluable to the development of my project. I was able to put up ‘work-in-progress’ notes that generated great feedback that helped negate some of the dangers of working in a void (I was the only person in my department interested in agent modeling, at the time).

Reflecting on that experience - the lag time to final publication, and the power of many eyes looking at your work - I would like therefore to offer to anyone (especially at the senior undergrad or grad student level) who is working with digital media and archaeology or history, space on this blog to publish a series of ‘research notes’ - short articles, updates or ideas concerning their research. If you’re interested, drop me a line and I’ll set you up as an author: grahams at cc.umanitoba.ca

Archaeoinformatics and Digging Digitally

Archaeoinformatics has posted a number of archived lectures which may be of interest to those who have one foot in the dirt and another in bits&bytes, available here. And if you’re wondering who ‘Archaeoinformatics’ are, they tell us that:

Archaeoinformatics.org, is established as a collaborative organization to design, seek funding for, and direct a set of cyberinfrastructure initiatives for archaeology. Archaeoinformatics.org seeks to coordinate with and, develop interoperability of its own projects with other relevant data-sharing initiatives. It offers to work with professional organizations and federal agencies to promote policies that will foster the development of cyberinfrastructure for archaeology.

I also draw your attention to ‘Digging Digitally‘, a blog connected with the Society for American Archaeology Digital Data Interest Group. They are organising a session for the 2008 SAA conference in Vancouver that sounds extremely interesting:

If you are developing or using web-based tools or resources for communicating archaeology, or if you have ideas or opinions about this subject, please consider being a presenter or discussant in a “Web 2.0″ session at the next SAA meeting in Vancouver (March 26-30, 2008). Please review the abstract below and contact Sarah Kansa (skansa@alexandriaarchive.org) if you are interested in participating. This session is co-organized by Sarah Kansa (The Alexandria Archive Institute) and Julian Richards (Archaeology Data Service & Univ. of York). The Alexandria Archive Institute is sponsoring the session by covering the cost of registration fees for presenters.

Archaeology and the Visual - a conversation with Michael Shanks

Came across this today - a fascinating discussion with Michael Shanks about representing the past. I especially like his comments regarding maps (and by extension, Second Life) as a prothesis for understanding the past. A snippet below:

“TW: Why do archaeologists need to think about media? How is visualization implicated?

MS: The easy answer is that archaeologists need to publish what they find, otherwise the past is lost. But there is more to it. There is a distinctive experience of immediacy in archaeology - a notion of discovering the past in its material remains. A conservation ethic drives the global heritage industry - that the past should to be looked after as a legacy of cultural property, with such a past often even considered a human right. But it is, of course, the case that archaeologists do not discover the past. They work on what remains. And such work involves the translation of materiality into proxy mediating forms - texts, catalogs, images. Now while this discursive character is widely accepted in many disciplines, the archaeological nature of the relationship between past and present is less often recognized. By this I mean the material relationship of decay/loss and rescue/restitution at the core of contemporary historicity. Such an archaeological sensibility refers to matters of presence and absence, of trust and authenticity. It reaches far beyond the discipline. I consistently argue that there is an archaeological sensibility at the heart of modernism and modernity.

In this I would subordinate inscription and visualization to mediation. I hope the reason why will become clear - it is to do with the idea of medium as mode of engagement.

[...]

TW: But in practice, maps only work, only allow navigation and wayfinding, via relating directly this abstracted information beyond the immediate perceptual and cognitive capacity of a map-reader to what is immediately perceived on-the-ground. The perceiving map-reader becomes a conduit for coordinating information offered directly through perception - of features, plazas or pyramids - and indirectly through the schemata of the map. One cannot operate effectively without the other. This is a cyborg ontology. In this sense, maps are better understood as prostheses of the individual. We might say that visualization is less what we do with information - to convey, condense or distribute - and more how we intimately function through visual media.

MS: Rather than a virtual world, we have treated Second Life as such a prosthesis. Not a substitute, not a re-presentation of a world, but as an extension. An instrument of augmentation. A mediation of certain source materials - re-sources for mapping pasts….”

Who I am, what this blog’ll be about… perhaps.

It is my intention here to keep track of my explorations in Second Life and other worlds: archaeologists are about material culture, but how many of us are interested in virtual material culture, or the possibilities of these worlds for teaching and research?

I freelance a bit, and am working right now with a new online liberal arts university called Robert Welch University. I’m developing some archaeology classes for them, and eventually I would like to use SL to teach excavation methods. That could be very difficult….

Right now, I’d be interested in finding out what accurate(-ish) reconstructions of ancient structures people have come across in SL? Traditional archaeological reconstructions are all very well, but I think experiencing the structures, of how movement creates a reading of the building, would be a great way to start incorporating SL into my classes - a 21st century virtual reconstruction of the 18th century Grand Tour. Class projects would be to reconstruct from excavation reports, perhaps.

I came across today what seemed to be a great reconstruction of some Egyptian temples (can see them in pathfinder linden’s flickr), but when I went there, it seems that some merchants had moved in with the usual sex paraphernalia. Not exactly the experience I’d want for this class.