Castles and Coprolites

I have a very important deadline tomorrow, hence it's the perfect time to do a blog post for Doug's Archaeology Blogging Carnival.  Last year I took part in a series of posts about the purpose of blogging . This time the theme is Grand Challenges facing archaeology, specifically the participant's archaeology. In my case of course this is geoarchaeology. It's a good theme for me, as it's something I've been reflecting on a lot recently. I am writing a paper on investigating 'use of space', and multi-proxy approaches in archaeology. It's half review, half critique, and is turning into a bit of a monster. What follows is some of the central thoughts I am discussing in that paper, so actually any comments and feedback would be much appreciated! One of the major challenges that I see facing geoarchaeology, is the integration of data from different scales. How do we use data collected for example at the microscale (such as geochemical patterning of floor...

Blog readers, I need your help! Or rather, a fellow blog reader and student needs your help. Fleur Shinning is a Masters student in Heritage Management at Leiden University  in the Netherlands. Her research is investigating how the use of blogs and social media contributes to the accessibility of archaeology, and she is studying several blogs as case studies, Castles and Coprolites being one of them. Her end goal is to contribute to improving public outreach activities, and she is hoping to get blog visitors to answer a series of questions regarding their motives for visiting the blog. You can access the questionnaire here:  http://goo.gl/forms/z3BAUTyYUL . As an incentive anyone who answers the questionnaire will be entered into a competition to win 6 issues of Archaeology Magazine! As the blog author I have also answered a series of questions on blogging for Fleur's research, and it reminded me about the blogging carnival that I took part in durin...

So as noted over on Doug's Archaeology blog , many people who have been taking part in the SAA Blogging Carnival didn't post anything for February, in response to the open ended question of blog about whatever you like. My excuse is, that I did start working on something, but it started to evolve into a full length piece which I will probably submit to either the IA issue or e-book on blogging archaeology that are in preparation . I couldn't help but do a little background reading into the use of social media and blogging as a research tool, and became immersed in the vast amount of literature on the topic. So my theme for February ended up being, Archaeological Blogging as a Tool for Self Reflexivity...or something along those lines. It actually links in very well with a lot of thinking I've been doing recently about bringing together archaeological science and theory, partly due to co-convening a course in theoretical archaeology this year, but also the experience of ...

It's Blogging Archaeology round 3! The summary of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly has just been posted over on Doug's Archaeology . Lots of good responses, it's definitely worth a read to see some of the 'bad'. The positive aspects of blogging are obvious in some ways - spreading the word about your research, (theoretically) getting interaction with an interested audience. The negative side it seems can be quite serious. My own reponse to 'the bad' seems quite trivial compared to what some people had to say. One response that stood out for me was Pots and Places, Stones and Bones, "the balance between self promotion and over exposure on social media (including blogging) really needs to be questioned" and the suggestion that blogging can come across as boasting. This is something I have thought about with my own blog. As it is a blog about my research, it is all a bit me me me, though I hope it doesn't come across as boastful. Maybe I should h...

It's December! That means I need to be thinking about a new micrograph of the month for your viewing pleasure, but for now here is my response to the second round of questions for the Blogging Archaeology blog carnival. Click here for more info and my response to the first round in November. Very interesting to see the range of responses to the last lot. I recognised a few of the blogs taking part, as well discovering some new ones to add to my reading list. The Good- what has been good about blogging?  I love writing and putting together images, and my blog is a great way to keep up with that in a way that is less time consuming and stressful than writing articles and lectures. Aside from the pleasure of simply writing, it's also great fun looking at my viewer statistics. It is quite satisfying to see where my audience comes from. Sometimes I can guess who it is, for example when my relatives in Oregon have been reading, and I also get a lot of views from Edinburgh, York...

I was invited today to take part in a blogging carnival, related to a Blogging in Archaeology session at the upcoming SAA conference . Quite handy actually as I can't attend the conference in person this year due to teaching commitments. What is a blogging carnival you may ask? Check out the original post on Doug's Archaeology here. Each month leading up to the session, a question is posted, and participants can choose to answer it via their blog. The answers are then all summarised at the end of the month. Hopefully this will highlight some new archaeology blogs to add to the long list I already follow (maybe I should do a post about that!). Anyhoo. Here are my answers to the first set of questions: Why did you start a blog? I had been meaning to start one for years before I actually did. I have been a big user of social media since I was an undergrad, but always for personal rather that professional purposes. I eventually started my blog at the beginning of 2012 af...