A Day of Archaeology

Excavating the Lift Station Site in the Chaco Maintenance Yard

Today marks an interesting experiment in online engagement with the public by archaeologists: the Day of Archaeology, sponsored by the Council for British Archaeology and other British organizations involved in archaeology and cultural heritage.  It’s basically a large, short-term communal blog, with archaeologists from around the world posting about what they are doing today.  The idea is to give the public a sense of what, exactly, an archaeologist does, as well as a sense of the diversity of what “doing archaeology” can be.  As you might expect given the origins of the project, there’s a definite tendency toward overrepresentation of British (or at least northern European) archaeologists, as is apparent from the map of posts, but there are some Americans involved as well, along with a handful of archaeologists from more far-flung areas.  One post I found particularly interesting was by Paul Hubbard, a Zimbabwean archaeologist, about the considerable challenges involved in doing archaeology in a place like Zimbabwe.  Since it’s not the kind of place where it’s easy to make a living from archaeology, Hubbard also works as a tour guide, which he says has been very useful to his archaeological thinking.  Given my own background as a tour guide, it was very interesting to read Hubbard’s impressions of it, although it sounds like the kind of guiding he does is much more intense than what I did.

There are a lot of other interesting posts as well, and I encourage you to take a look.  You won’t find much about the Southwest, however (although I did find a couple posts from Southwestern archaeologists).  This is in keeping with a tendency I’ve noticed before.  It has long appeared that European archaeologists are much more inclined to blog and otherwise use new media tools than their American counterparts, and that even among American archaeologists Southwesternists are particularly disinclined to get involved with the internet.  There have been a few blogs about Southwestern archaeology (besides mine) that have come and gone in the past few years, but there doesn’t really seem to be the same kind of enthusiasm about the internet that specialists in some other types of archaeology have developed.  I’m not sure if there is any fundamental underlying reason for this or if it’s just a fluke or the result of a particular set of contingent circumstances, but it’s definitely apparent.  This is not to say that this pattern will continue forever, of course, and as time goes on I suspect even Southwestern archaeologists will become more comfortable with blogs and other innovative ways of sharing information and experiences.  I certainly hope so, at least.

Shoveling at the Lift Station Site in the Chaco Maintenance Yard