For the Day of Archaeology this year, I wrote up my experiences at the US Ambassador’s House talking about Women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), including my archaeology photo in the “distractingly sexy” campaign:
For more, read the entry at the Day of Archaeology webpage.
About a month ago I got an email. Any archaeologists who were interested could tag along on a trip to Saltwick Bay on the northeast coast of England to hunt for fossils. The trip was arranged as part of the Symposium on Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy, an annual conference that was being held at King’s Manor this year.
Going fossil hunting with a bunch of paleontologists? Heck yeah! A month later I was neck-deep in deadlines, but decided to go anyway and do some writing on the bus. We scrambled along the shoreline and picked up a bunch of fossils.
Dean Lomax, Assistant Curator of Paleontology at the Doncaster Museum and author of ‘Dinosaurs of the British Isles‘ was along to answer my silly questions about what I’d found.
It was interesting to watch the Paleontologists in action, smashing up rocks, wrapping samples in tissue paper and putting them into plastic bags.
There were even a few possible dinosaur tracks! I felt pretty good about my fossil spotting after doing a fair bit of archaeological survey, but I totally missed these.
What is more interesting than dinosaurs? The debitage left behind by people looking for dinosaurs, obviously.
It was a good day out–thanks to the fantastic paleontologists who invited us along!
I’m very excited to be co-editing a new issue of THEN DIG – the Open Access, Open Peer Review archaeology blog with Dr. Andrew Roddick. Here is an excerpt from the Call for Posts:
In this issue of Then Dig we explore encounters with the past in the context of archaeological science. From the abstract expressionist appreciation of ceramic thin sections, to the treasure hunt for phytoliths under a microscope, to the severe precautionary costumes of the Clean Room, we investigate the aesthetic, the multisensorial, and the profound in archaeological science.
After a small hiatus, the blog/journal has been thriving. I’ll be posting the last submission associated with the Zeitgeist theme very soon, and there’s a great line-up that Dr. James Flexner has put together from a conference on Oceania that will also be going up shortly.
I’ve also very much enjoyed the Open Peer Review style. It is non-confrontational, productive, and synergetic. In the very small world of archaeological publishing, most of the authors cannot be anonymous anyway, and the cloak of reviewer anonymity invites a level of nastiness that is counterproductive. I’ve joined John Hawkes in signing all of my reviews anyway. I should probably send samples of my hair as well, so the authors can make a proper doll to stick with pins.
Anyway, consider submitting to the issue! It should be a good one.
Here’s to experimental publication types in archaeology!
Colleen Morgan 