SAR Prize Entry

I just finished my entry for the SAR prize this year.  If our session gets chosen, we get to have a special seminar in New Mexico.  These seminars often yield publications and are great collaborative sessions, so it would be great to be able to go!  I reworked my WAC session (here’s the previous version) abstract a bit:

Archaeologists have been rapidly integrating new media technologies into their interpretive schemes through a variety of methods.  Virtual worlds, social networking websites, blogs, wikis, and digital photo mash-ups are becoming legitimate alternate ways to present archaeological information.  The greater availability of inexpensive equipment and software that is powerful and easy to use has provided a lower entry point for remixing photography, film, and databases into multimodal presentations and increased the potential for archaeologists to use these media to tell their own stories.  This, combined with the growing ubiquity of online, collaborative media platforms has allowed us to reach out to new audiences by integrating archaeology into a greater social sphere.   Archaeologists have built too many technological islands in the form of isolated websites, soon abandoned after the project ends.  While new media technologies do provide a venue for ongoing dialogue in a broader public context, what are the implications of this for archaeology?  In a conference that is fully engaged with questions regarding the future of archaeology, this session explores interpretive projects inspired by new media art and technology.  In this exploration we will discuss alternate narratives, collective actions and what it means to be an archaeologist in the digital age. Alternate forms of papers and presentations such as films or websites are welcome.

My entry was typeset by my friend Jesse, who does great design work.  It’s attached here, and you can see all of the other papers that are in the session.

Editing will get less excruciating someday, right?  Right?

Author: colleenmorgan

Dr. Colleen Morgan (ORCID 0000-0001-6907-5535) is the Lecturer in Digital Archaeology and Heritage in the Department of Archaeology at the University of York. She conducts research on digital media and archaeology, with a special focus on embodiment, avatars, genetics and bioarchaeology. She is interested in building archaeological narratives with emerging technology, including photography, video, mobile and locative devices. Through archaeological making she explores past lifeways and our current understanding of heritage, especially regarding issues of authority, authenticity, and identity. View all posts by colleenmorgan