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.

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.

B. Finlayson @ Universität Zürich & R. Ebersbach @ Berner Zirkel für Ur- und Frühgeschichte

I’d like to point out and invite you to two more talks in December that might interest readers in Switzerland. First, Bill Finlayson (CBRL, Jordan and University of Reading, UK) will give a lecture at the University of Zürich. He’ll speak on recent work in Jordan. Renate Ebersbach (Archäologische Dienst, Kt. Bern, CH) will talk on survey work in the Berner Oberland (Alpine regions of Canton Berne, CH) at the Berner Zirkel für Ur- und Frühgeschichte.

Bill Finlayson worked in Scotland, a. o. on a number of Mesolithic sites, and for the past decade or so has been director of the CBRL in Amman, Jordan. He is active in various Neolithic projects in the Levant. For example, as co-director of the excavations at the PPNA site Wadi Faynan 16. He also excavated the PPNA site of Dhra’ with Ian Kuijt and is involved in the Water-Life-Civilisation Project.

Date and location: Wednesday dec. 9^th 2009, 18:00, Universität Zürich Room K02-F-153.

The Archaeological Unit of Canton Bern, CH, has been quite active with survey work in the Alpine regions of the Canton. The finds of the Schnidejoch, for example, have received quite some media attention. There has been a new surge of research in the Alpine regions of the country. The University of Zürich, the Unit of Canton Fribourg, Canton Schwyz, the Unit of Canton Bern, for example, are all active in different regions, mainly staging survey projects. Renate Ebersbach has executed a survey project in the region of Meiringen. She will also show a short film.

Date and location: Thursday dec. 17^th 2009, 18:30, main building Universität Bern.

So come along, if you’re around! It would be good to see you there.

hazelnut_relations auf Deutsch

Man kann jetzt auch auf Deutsch über mich & meine Arbeit lesen auf der Website der Abteilung Ur- & Frühgeschichte der Universität Zürich. (Siehe Profil, Biographie & Forschung)

I am now also present – in German – on the website of the Abteilung Ur- & Frühgeschichte of the University of Zürich. (See Profil, Biographie & Forschung)