Blogging Archaeology

Fellow Cal Bear and archaeologist Middle Savagery is leading a round table on "Blogging Archaeology" at the upcoming Society for American Archaeology annual conference in Sacramento, CA. For those of us not able to attend, she has kindly offered to bring her fellow archaeo-bloggers into the discussion by posing questions on her blog every week for the next month and asking people to respond.

It has been difficult for me to blog as of late due to my now steady employment (hurray!) and other projects. However, this challenge sounded fun and a great way for my friends and family (loyal followers of this blog!) to hear other points of view about archaeological matters besides my ramblings. So without further adieu, I present Middle Savagery's...

The emergence of the short form, or blog entry, is becoming a popular way to transmit a wide range of archaeological knowledge. What is the place of this conversation within academic, professional, and public discourse? Simply put, what can the short form do for archaeology?


I have often reminisced about the early days of archaeology in the Middle East, when such mass-market books like Nineveh and Its Remains by Austen Henry Layard, Ur of the Chaldees by Sir Leonard Woolley, and Troy and Its Remains by Heinrich Schliemann enabled the burgeoning field to reach a wide audience. These condensed works, apart from fueling the mystique of archaeological fieldwork, provided a window into the excavator's thoughts and initial interpretations about the ancient sites and civilizations he was uncovering.

In many ways, I see short-form writing as a resurgence of this type of publishing, one that simultaneously promotes public outreach and transparency in the archaeological process. Short-form or blogging also creates the opportunity for actual dialog with an interested lay audience via comments and virtual discussion groups, providing a distinct advantage to one-sided archaeo-novellas of 100 years ago.

Unfortunately I think we have a long way to go before blogging, in its own right, is accepted as a viable and professional form of knowledge transmission. In the meantime, short form entries on, say, an archaeological project website (like here, here, and here) stand as a dynamic record of the thoughts, concerns, and decisions that chart the course of any given field season (and thus affect the outcome of our data!). Think of it as a digital trench notebook that the whole world can read. The question then remains: is the archaeological field ready for this level of transparency?