SAFE: “Saving Antiquities for Everyone”

http://www.savingantiquities.org/blog/

SAFE is a non-profit organization that hopes to raise public awareness about the legal and ethical considerations of the antiquities market, particularly through media and educational programs. Their blog is one such method to educating the public about looting, heritage preservation, and community outreach in order to decrease illegal artifact sales and limit the impact of the black market. The blog is geared towards the public, but I was made aware of the blog through my work at the museum, so there is also a professional audience that uses the blog as a resource. The articles therefore, are written in a tone that professionals (such as historians, archaeologists, and museum curators) appreciate, but which is still accessible and informative to the general public. This is a great blog because it encompasses multiple fields and offers the public a deeper understanding of why black markets and looting can exist, but also how small steps can make a difference in preventing such things from happening. The blog reports on diverse regions, but has a global focus. I would rate this blog as very well done and an effective resource for anyone interested in heritage preservation and artifact protection.

This is and outreach blog of Port Tabacco Project. According to the blog, this project is sponsored by the Archeological Society of Maryland and several other organizations in order to restore the history of Port Tabacco. Although this project has already finished for a while, this blog still stands here as a beacon to mark the history of the research steps. We can see the project crew constantly post their findings, reactions and record of collaborative activities with the public. I believe during the project running time, this blog played an important role of communication, and we can “excavate” the project history through this blog.

http://porttobacco.blogspot.com/

If you are the fan of maritime archaeology, don’t miss this blog! University of Southampton has a long tradition of maritime archaeology and continuously growing. This blog is a sub-blog of a group blog runs by, mostly, students. If you have other interests such as archaeology computing methods, classic or historical archaeology in England, just jump to other sub-blog and you can find what you want. In the maritime archaeology sub-blog, it seems the formal tone is used more often, maybe it is not many fun to read, but definitely a place to visit for underwater archaeology and cool technologies.

http://blog.soton.ac.uk/archaeology/centre-for-maritime-archaeology/

I found this blog might be the future shape of ours, the “Flinders Archaeology Blog” is an unofficial blog of Department of Archaeology at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia. This blog seems co-authored by many students (and departmental staff), so the writing styles are differ between authors, however most of them are easy to read and even fun, the target readers shall be the public. Through the tags they have, we can see that they touch multiple topics from historical archaeology to maritime archaeology to cultural heritage management, there is abundant information in this blog.  I will say, use the search function to find the resource you want.

http://flindersarchaeology.com/

After the now Seattle-famous mammoth tusk twitter page, it’s no surprise that the Burke Museum’s mar/comm team has done a fantastic job with the Burke’s archaeology blog. The site features both unique artifacts from the Burke’s vast archaeological collection as well as some highlights of archaeology projects going on at the Burke. Archaeology of an insane asylum anyone?

This blog seems to me an awesome outreach tool for the museum to reach those tech-savvy archaeologists and museologists.

Blog is here: http://burkemuseum.blogspot.com/search/label/Archaeology#.U0zWl-ZdUpI

Sure, you can read about the goings-on of a field school, how exciting. But how about a couple weeks of living vicariously through the eyes of students in a maritime archaeology field school? The Maritime Archaeology Program of the University of Southern Denmark has just that.

The blog gives brief updates and plenty of pictures from the school’s 4 week long maritime archaeology dive course. The blog does a great job of showing the behind the scenes work that goes into diving (including the not so glamorous), as well as the glory shots.

How cool would maritime archaeology be?

Blog is here: http://www.maritimearchaeology.dk/

I found an interesting blog called Sexy Archaeology which bills itself as a kind of clearing house of archaeology news. But not just any old dig makes it on Sexy Archaeology. Projects must be either:

1. “Excitingly appealing” 
2. Groundbreaking research

Examples include everything from experimental archaeology of Cold War test planes to dating early hominid species. The idea seems fantastic to me. The blog combines some of the exciting awe and mystique that draws people to archaeology, while actually introducing people to “real” archaeology, which is a scientific and process oriented endeavor.

The blog is owned by Kurt Hunt, who has a M.A. from the University of Bristol in Archaeology for Screen Media. It is clear the Kurt is a media savvy guy, and the perfect fit to run this kind of blog.

The blog is available here: http://sexyarchaeology.wordpress.com/

I was lucky enough to find a list of many archaeology blogs hosted though:

http://pastthinking.com/links/

It also lists some of the other blogs mentioned already in several postings such as Doug’s Archaeology and Bad Archaeology and many others I have not yet checked out. I’ll list some of the ones I found on the better side and noticing that some of them have already been posted on the blog.

http://www.acagle.net/ArchaeoBlog/?paged=3

One of the more interesting blogs I found focuses on the author’s different viewpoints and reviews to articles and excavations underway. One of the quotes that I found from him is “the conservationist in me thinks that “discovering sites” just ends up destroying them in the long run” which is an interesting quote to think of compared to the plethora of sites he has commented on. Although some might disagree with his viewpoints and the posting might be on the shorter side. The author also does seem to focus on more European and Egyptian archaeology but it is a good starting point to start looking at different archaeology blogs. Though active his responses tend to be on the shorter side.

http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/

This might be a good blog to check out considering the very first post focuses on modern archaeology and modern ruings (however it just is a plug for an exhibit coming out) given this there seems to be a lack of blogs dedicated to more modern archaeology work. There are also several book and article reviews and different updates on some archaeology excavations. The tags are also descriptive to allow the reader to check out several categories my personal favorite being the “meditations” tag that is more on the descriptive part of words of archaeology (if that makes sense).

http://whereinthehellami.wordpress.com/

On another note, I found a blog called “Where in the Hell Am I”, if one is interested in the day to day life of a CRM archaeologist, although frankly the most recent postings are more of a local food review (if you really want to know about tacos).  However there are some good posts such as the one on Blogging Archaeology and its troubles. For example even though this blog is made specifically to enhance public knowledge on just what is done in the CRM, it has only had 15,000 views in total with less than 200 views for each post. It does make me wonder if the general public normally searches for items like these or if these blogs only seem to cater to achaeologists/enthusiasts in the end.

http://dougsarchaeology.wordpress.com/archaeology-blogs/

In addition to the five blogs I reviewed, I stumbled upon this extensive list of archaeology related blogs. For those looking for new archaeology blogs to follow or blogs focused on specific topics (e.g. experimental archaeology), this list is a good place to start.