Why do I blog? And on archaeology, for Heaven´s sake? #blogarch

December 20, 2013 by sprechendedinge 1 Comment

I found this link at Dougs Archaeology and decided to just take up the challenge and blog about it! In preparation and advance for the SAA 2014 Doug is asking questions to archaeological bloggers and here are the ones for – uhm, November. Sorry, but I just found out these days and decided to hop on, although it´s a little late. There have been a lot of responses that popped up in my RSS-feeder, and I liked some of them especially:

These bones of mine

Hazelnut relations

Paul Mullins

So here are my my answers to Doug´s questions:

Why blogging? – Why did you, or if it was a group- the group, start a blog?

I am into blogging archaeology since 2008 when I started an information blog on Spanish on my Ph.D. research – which has been the only online accessible source of informacion on this area ever since. Surely, I published in journals and the like, but search online and there it is…. This blog has not been very much up-to-date lately, but well – it was a start. It was mainly about the sociabilization of information and this goal has been achieved, I think.

I started blogging seriously (even everyday) three years ago when I was a working mom and had to just write about all these experiences, stress and laughable moments that came with a child, a full time non-archaeological job and a family. Little by little, I got back to my scientific life I had led before becoming a mother. I blogged about it just recently…. right here.

So, there I was with a mom-blog and archaeological aspirations, getting back to my Ph.D., looking for new jobs and so on. And why not extend my blogging life into the archaeological realm? We are publishing constantly as archaeologists, but only few of these publications are accessible to everyone. The internet IS accessible and so I use it as a space to share my ideas and musings on archaeology, grants, exhibitions and “the past in everyday life“.

Why are you still blogging?

When I started on “sprache der dinge” (the language of things) it was to be meant to contain musings that won´t enter into scientific articles and the like. Like a forum that allowed me to think more freely on archaeological topics, like discussing them with friends and without the strictly scientific view that reins when publishing. And it has grown to contain not only book reviews and critics of exhibitions I visited and conferences attended, but also ideas on the integration of the past into our everyday surroundings, information on grants and scholarships, and thoughts on the process of studying archaeology, doing continous education online and things related to archaeology I have always wished to explore. It serves me as a platform to present myself at the web. I am still looking for a job in an archaeological or museological surrounding and I like the idea that this blog is – apart from my academic work – something like a business card regarding my online archaeological profil and skills.