Blogging Archaeology – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at Hazelnut Relations and beyond

Finally, I get around to writing my second instalment for Doug’s archaeological blogging carnival and the first post of 2014. Happy New Year everyone! The december question he asked us was about the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of archaeological blogging. My blogging experience has been predominately good. I have enjoyed writing here so far, I believe blogging has helped me improve my writing skills and it has led me to ‘get to know’ many other archaeological bloggers and it is a joy to read about their work and their interests and (archaeological) lives.

However, some of the best experiences I have had through having started this blog, is my involvement with two other blogs. In 2010/2011 and 2013 I have taught an e-learning course on the techniques and methodology of alpine archaeology at my department at the Universität Zürich. The Alpine Archaeology Blog has been an integral part of this course and was quite a success. Not only in terms of readers, but esp. in 2010/2011 when the course and blog were part of an alpine themed semester, it engaged staff and students beyond the course. I believe it also enriched the studying experience and the students wrote some very good articles as part of the course. For me, as tutor, it was equally enriching and I think a blog can, under the right circumstances and as part of the right course, be an interesting addition to regular teaching methods.

Summer 2010 & 2011 I was part of the field equipe of the Rückwege Project in the Swiss-Austrian Alps. In 2011 we decided to try blogging from the field (go and have a look, there are some great articles and photos, but do go all the way back to the beginning for the posts from the field!) This was not always easy, as we often camped for days on end in the high Alps at 2400 masl, far beyond any internet or mobile phone reception. Still, it worked! The blog was set up by project leader Th. Reitmaier and me, but we encouraged the students and other team members to contribute. We even managed to convince some of the specialists who visited us in the field for a few days to write for the blog. Many people in various countries learned about the ongoing fieldwork and our objectives and the many aspects of a modern, multi-disciplinary archaeological research project through the blog. We were, largely because of the blog, able to reach even more people, by attracting quite a lot of attention from regional, national and even international media.

Alltag auf der Grabung “Eisenzeitliche Hütte” im Fimbatal. From the Rückwege Blog (01.09.2011)

Fieldwork is a very good theme for a blog, it seems. My own research is – and this brings us to the Bad of archaeological blogging – in my experience, well, I am not so sure yet if it is. The initial idea behind this blog was to write mainly about my PhD research, but so far this might have proven to be the most difficult to write about. It seems all these other things you do, the little side projects, the fieldwork that are easy to write about. Maybe it is also, because for so long I have been predominantly a field archaeologists and I feel so at home there. In any case, it is a challenge I hope to address this year as my research reaches another stage and I should be able go get more specific results from the lab. So, considering this a challenge, even this is not that bad.

Now onto the Ugly: Other than repeating what I mentioned in the answer to the first blogging carnival question (that it would be appreciated if there would be some sort of support from my department, faculty or university for blogging and science communication in generall) I am lucky to have very little ugly to say about blogging archaeology so far. So, what have you got in store for us for January, Doug?