Going the distance: Journeys back into the Silvretta Mountains – the Fieldwork Blog

After almost a long year in the office, it is finally time for fieldwork again. This week will see the start of the Silvretta Campaign 2011. The “Rückwege Projekt” is an international and interdisciplinary project of the University of Zürich. It will lead us across some considerable distance, geographically and chronologically. Although in kilometres not that far, excavating the Silvretta Mountains on the borders of Switzerland and Austria does take you into a completely different world. Besides, the journey to our campsite is really quite long.

Chronologically we will be back to where we dug last summer, for some of us it will be the fifth year already. It looks to be the last field season, though. But we will also find ourselves going much further back in time. Mesolithic and Neolithic abris as well as Bronze Age sites and an Iron Age animal pen (incl. occupational evidence) and an Iron Age Alphut in the Fimbertal are awaiting us.

The first four weeks we’ll be in the Val Urschai and on the Plan da Mattun. First a small number of archaeologists will be accompanying geodetic metrologers and geodesy engineers of the Technical State University Zürich (ETH-ZH). They will carry out some fancy survey work. After that there will be two weeks of proper excavation. As every year, we will be visited by quite an army of scholars from different disciplines, geologists, micro-morphologists, palaeo-botanists, geographers and many more. They will do their own research related to the natural and human history of the occupation of the high alpine region.

As last year’s campaign was so successful, we are very curious to see hat this field season will bring. And we are very excited to be able to let you follow our work `live´ on our blog this year, so head over to it now and subscribe!

Blogging Archaeology 1 to 5 and VIARCH – when an archaeologist temporarily ceases to be an archaeologist

Many archaeologists identify themselves rather strongly with their profession and I guess I stand accused. However, even archaeologists can’t always be archaeologist. I was being distracted from archaeology for a while working on our house. It’s about finished now and we’ve moved in. As I returned to the world I noticed I have missed two big events in archaeological blogging and visualisation: Okay, I knew I sadly sadly would not be able to make it to the VIARCH-Conference. The Archaeological Eye has more infos on this.

Secondly, as a prequel to the SAA conference session on blogging archaeology, Colleen Morgan of Middle Savagery, held a blog-carnival. For four weeks, she each week posted a question which was answered by various archaeological bloggers on their blogs. These she collected and synergised. A shame I missed it. However, I think it was a fantastic effort and it’s great to see such a self confident and reflective bunch of blogging archaeologists.

Much of my thoughts were voiced by the many contributors, so I’ll only highlight a few issues here and give a Swiss/continental European perspective on some. (Better late then never!) That actually brings me to the first point. It seems there are not many non-English language archaeology blogs around, or they are not well integrated with the English language bloggers. In fact, I know that there are only very few German language archaeology blogs. And I guess, I once again stand accused as I decided to blog in English and not in German (or any of the other Swiss languages or my native language). It would be great if the interaction could become more international.

The questions C. Morgan asked were: 1.) What is the place of this conversation within academic, professional, and public discourse? Simply put, what can the short form do for archaeology? 2.) on the risk of blogging archaeology. What does one share, what not? 3.) are we really changing opinions or moving the field forward? Who is your audience and how to you interact with this audience? What do you want out of interactivity by means of blogging about archaeology? 4.) and lasty she asked how people feel about publishing the blog-carnival.

Histories blogged

Last Friday (the November 12th), the Geschichtswissenschaften en Web 2.0 (historical sciences and web 2.0) workshop took place in the beautiful Wildt’ischenhaus in Basel. The day was divided into two parts. After an introduction, followed a theoretical paper by M. Thaller. S. Zala then presented his work for dodis.ch. Both talks centred around the theme of publishing primary historical sources and subsequently working with these on the web. Although this appears to be commonplace, the historians present in Basel still see it as a sensitive issue. As an archaeologist, I do not really see the problem: as long as it is clear that the sources are or are not edited, and whether there is any kind of bias, it should only be an advantage to researchers. For archaeology it is still rather uncommon to instantly publish our equivalent of historical sources – our raw excavation data – online (databases, recordings sheets, photos, day reports etc.). I can only think of very few examples (Silchester, UK & Çatalhöyük, Turkey).

The introduction by Peter Haber and the afternoon dealt mainly with blogging and – to a lesser extend  – to other web 2.0 application, which was in my eyes rather disappointing. M. Kelly (edwired), C. Sarti (zwergenblick), M. Brendel (geschichtskombinat) and A. Tantner (addresscomptoir) all gave a more or less brief peek into their blogging life, followed by an interesting but slightly tame discussion which did not really looked beyond the garden fence.

There appeared to be four main reasons for blogging: (self-) reflection, networking, marketing and blogging used as a thinking-/writing-aid. Surprisingly, except for M. Kelly, none of these bloggers see blogging as a way to profile themselves academically. In the archaeological/anthropological blogosphere, I get the impression, that this is definitely different. The – mainly Anglo-American – archy & anthro bloggers (I sadly know very few blogging archaeologists in the German speaking world) seem to use blogging at least partly as a way to profile themselves, while the supervisors of the PhD-candidate bloggers at the workshop do not even know of their student’s blogging activities…

The question was raised whether blogging should be considered scholarly or scholarship. M. Kelly describes Scholarship as work that is:

1. the result of one or more persons research activities
2. this research is situated in a larger “research” context
3. is peer-reviewed
4. gets published

Most bloggers at the workshop see their blogging as mostly scholarly, if at all. It touches on their academic work. However, it is not always completely referenced and often not fully developed work. Also, their audience (the one they reach or aim to reach) is not a scientific audience per sé.

I guess, this is all roughly how I see my blogging. It serves a small collection of purposes: The main aim of this blog was to be a showcase for my PhD (I guess that fits under networking), only afterwards it really turned into a blog, at least in my mind. It allows me to show what I am working on, not unlike e.g. a conference poster. The blog gives me a place to write about what interests me, but does not always fit exactly in my research. I also hope it helps me practice my writing skills and aids me in my thinking. The blog may also help record the research-process behind my phd-work. Even though, I try to post informative pieces, I aim to be scholarly, not necessarily to post scholarship-work.

All agreed, though, that we love our subject and love talking about it.  Doing it on our blogs might save our nearest some tedious hours. At least sometimes! It was an interesting, if tame day and I thank hist.net and infoclio.ch for organising the day! Not a bad start. I’m curious what comes next.

Infoclio.ch has an extensive piece on the workshop with links, streamings of most of the talks and the accompanying slides. So go and have a look!

Update 22.110.2010: on hist.net J. Hodel does a bit more soul searching.

Archaeology e-learning and dissapearing knowledge

I have just posted two posts concerning the e-learning course “alpine archaeology: tools and techniques” on the alpinearchaeology-Blog.

One illustrates the content of the Oral History Film and shows a slideshow of the alp hut where the interviewee spend a number of summers 70 years ago – as a young boy – working as a shepherd and cheesemaker.

Sadly, this older generation is moving to nursering homes and dies and the agricultural practices in the Alps are changing dramatically. Much knowledge about alpine agricultural practices and crafts as it existed over the past centuries is literally dying out. Oral History is one of the best methods for trying to preserve some of these traditions and knowledge before it is too late.

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The alp huts in the slideshow are restored by volunteers as they were when given up ca. half a century ago. They give an intriguing look into the experience the shepherds and farmers must have had, living and working there in such a remote location for many a generation. Go over to the alpinearchaeology-blog and have a look at the post and many more photos. You find it here.

The other post shows a wordcloud. It shows the results of an assignment I gave the students. They listed the threats to potential archaeology in an alpine environment. It  is one example of how it can be tried to incorporate and make use of opensource software (in this case wordle.net) and wordclouds into teaching and especially e-learning. I hope soon more of such examples will appear there.

Workshop Geschichtswissenschaften und Web 2.0

On the 12th of November 2010, I will take part in the workshop “Geschichtswissenschaften und Web 2.0” organised by Infocli.ch & histnet.ch.  I am not sure whether I myself consider archaeology as part of history as a discipline, although the Dep. of Pre- and Protohistory in Zürich is part of the “historische Seminar”. I’m looking forwards to it anyway.

The workshop doesn’t cost anything, but one has to register. Will we see each other there?

Visiting the Alps

It has been a little quiet on hazelnut_relations lately. That is partly due to some deadlines for various projects. However, I have been visiting the  Alpine Archäologie Blog regularly, so have a look there. You can also find links at the haz_rel @ alpine arch-page above. But bear with me, you’ll find me back here soon!

Four Stone Hearth Tea-Party and a weekly anthro round-up

Krystal at Anthropology in Practice invites to the 102nd Four Stone Hearth Tea-Party.

It’s a good and very wide selection this time. So, head over there.

And also at Neuroanthropology the Wednesday round-up has some fascinating links as well!

Keep up the good work, all of you!

Alpine Archaeology-Blog, e-learning and archaeological methods and techniques

From today the Alpine Archaeology-Blog is up and running. The Department of Pre- and Protohistory of the University of Zürich, Switzerland has got a long history in teaching and researching the archaeology of mountainous areas. There are e.g. the Leventina Project (Della Casa, in press, Hess et al., 2010) and the projects in the Andes by my collaegues M. Kolb-Godoy Allende and P. Fux (Fux, 2007) and colleagues. A current example is the “Rückwege” project in the Silvretta (Reitmaier, 2009, Reitmaier, 2010, Reitmaier and Walser, 2008).

During the 2010 autumn semester almost all taught courses will be solely devoted to Alpine Archaeology. As part of this alpine semester I will be teaching an e-learning course on the methods and techniques of archaeological research in alpine environments. To be able to enhance not only this course, but the learning and teaching experience throughout the department (for lecturers and students alike) we decided to start a blog. All students and teaching personal are encouraged to use this blog to exchange knowledge, document their work and have fun posting and reading the blog.

Both the blog and the e-learning course will be an experiment in how to integrate digital media into teaching. Of course, we are not the first to do this.