I'm interested in past environments and ecosystems, and the remains of living organisms recovered archaeologically. In particular, my PhD research is focussed on molluscs from the Western Isles of Scotland, and what assemblages of snails can tell us about past land use and site formation processes.
My other major interest is in community archaeology and public engagement, and in particular the ways in which archaeologists use the internet. Supervisors: Jacqui Mulville and Niall Sharples Address: Cardiff University Humanities Building Colum Drive Cardiff CF10 3EU
In the summer of 2011, Cardiff Osteoarchaeology Research Group was invited to present a number of... more In the summer of 2011, Cardiff Osteoarchaeology Research Group was invited to present a number of archaeological engagement activities at the Green Man music festival as part of the Einstein’s Garden science learning area. The project, called Back to the Future?: Animals and archaeology in Einstein’s Garden comprised a number of activities, designed to cater for a wide range of ages as the festival audience typically includes young people and families. Over four days more than 2000 people visited the stall. This paper will briefly outline the activities presented, and will reflect on the challenges posed by outreach at a music festival, in particular how to hook the main festival demographic, and how to evaluate success.
Mulville, J., and Law, M., 2013. Environmental Archaeology and Community Engagement: Activities and Advice. Cardiff: CORG/ Association for Environmental Archaeology, 2013
On December 1st, 2010 a workshop was held at Cardiff University on the subject of community engag... more On December 1st, 2010 a workshop was held at Cardiff University on the subject of community engagement for postgraduates studying environmental archaeology. In the morning, speakers from the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff University, Young Archaeologists Club and Techniquest spoke about how they have taken their research outside of the academic realm. These talks outlined key learning outcomes from the experience, and offered practical advice in identifying and engaging with new audiences.
In the afternoon participants worked in groups with help from the speakers to design outreach activities based on aspects of their research and targeted at specific age groups. These form the basis of this resource.
, in Niall Sharples, The Beaker-period and Early Bronze Age settlement at Sligeanach, Cill Donnain, in Mike Parker Pearson, ed. From Machair to Mountains: archaeological survey and excavation in South Uist. Oxford: Oxbow. pp. 250-253., 2012
Day of Archaeology (http://www.dayofarchaeology.com) is an annual event which offers a view of th... more Day of Archaeology (http://www.dayofarchaeology.com) is an annual event which offers a view of the working day of archaeologists worldwide, and answers the question " what do archaeologists do? " On the first event, on July 29th 2011, over 400 people working, studying or volunteering in archaeology contributed blog posts describing their day. The published text is not scripted by the organisers, and only minimally edited. The resulting website presents a behind-the-scenes view of archaeology that incorporates not only the exciting discoveries often showcased in public archaeology, but also everyday details of archaeological work. This talk examines the development of the project and its two iterations to date; highlights the diversity of posts on the broad subject of " historical archaeology " , and asks what such large-scale collaborative projects can contribute to public engagement with archaeological work. The day has its roots in a Twitter conversation on the Day of Digital Humanities in March 2011. The Day of Digital Humanities is a community wiki project organised by University of Alberta in which digital humanists across the world write about one day in their working lives. We realised that the varied nature of archaeological work meant that the discipline was supremely suitable for a similar project. In a matter of minutes, a small core of digital archaeologists (Matt, Lorna, Dan, Tom, Andy, Jess and Stu) was recruited via Twitter, along with an offer from Dan of free hosting on the Portable Antiquities Scheme's servers. We decided to use an installation of the WordPress content management system rather than a wiki for the project, with a theme designed by Tom, Dan and Jess. WordPress was chosen because it offers simple customisation, and was felt to be relatively easy for contributors to understand how to create posts, embed media and links, and post and respond to comments. Detailed instructions on how to use the WordPress system were made available before the day, and support available on the day to enable archaeologists who were not familiar with talking about their work on the Internet to contribute. The date set for the first Day of Archaeology was July 29th, 2011, during the Council for British Archaeology's Festival of British Archaeology, a week-long national series of public events in the UK. As part of our publicity drive for the day, and to encourage a feeling of community ownership ahead of the first posts being submitted, a competition was launched on Twitter to find a logo for the event, the winning design being submitted by Glen Hustler and Pat Hadley. Participants were recruited via Twitter, a Facebook page, emails to various subject-specific mailing lists, posters displayed in archaeological departments and commercial practices, and an editorial article by Mike Pitts in British Archaeology. A total of 438 people signed up via email to contribute, and were issued with login information. We asked for posts describing the contributors' working day, supplemented by photos, video or audio if desired. On the day itself, and subsequent week, 435 posts were submitted, being available online after moderation by one of the team. The website recorded 5906 visits from 4416 unique visitors on the day from 90 countries. The average visitor spent 5 minutes, 49 seconds on the site, visiting 4.43 pages.
In the summer of 2011, Cardiff Osteoarchaeology Research Group was invited to present a number of... more In the summer of 2011, Cardiff Osteoarchaeology Research Group was invited to present a number of archaeological engagement activities at the Green Man music festival as part of the Einstein’s Garden science learning area. The project, called Back to the Future?: Animals and archaeology in Einstein’s Garden comprised a number of activities, designed to cater for a wide range of ages as the festival audience typically includes young people and families. Over four days more than 2000 people visited the stall. This paper will briefly outline the activities presented, and will reflect on the challenges posed by outreach at a music festival, in particular how to hook the main festival demographic, and how to evaluate success.
Mulville, J., and Law, M., 2013. Environmental Archaeology and Community Engagement: Activities and Advice. Cardiff: CORG/ Association for Environmental Archaeology, 2013
On December 1st, 2010 a workshop was held at Cardiff University on the subject of community engag... more On December 1st, 2010 a workshop was held at Cardiff University on the subject of community engagement for postgraduates studying environmental archaeology. In the morning, speakers from the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff University, Young Archaeologists Club and Techniquest spoke about how they have taken their research outside of the academic realm. These talks outlined key learning outcomes from the experience, and offered practical advice in identifying and engaging with new audiences.
In the afternoon participants worked in groups with help from the speakers to design outreach activities based on aspects of their research and targeted at specific age groups. These form the basis of this resource.
, in Niall Sharples, The Beaker-period and Early Bronze Age settlement at Sligeanach, Cill Donnain, in Mike Parker Pearson, ed. From Machair to Mountains: archaeological survey and excavation in South Uist. Oxford: Oxbow. pp. 250-253., 2012
Day of Archaeology (http://www.dayofarchaeology.com) is an annual event which offers a view of th... more Day of Archaeology (http://www.dayofarchaeology.com) is an annual event which offers a view of the working day of archaeologists worldwide, and answers the question " what do archaeologists do? " On the first event, on July 29th 2011, over 400 people working, studying or volunteering in archaeology contributed blog posts describing their day. The published text is not scripted by the organisers, and only minimally edited. The resulting website presents a behind-the-scenes view of archaeology that incorporates not only the exciting discoveries often showcased in public archaeology, but also everyday details of archaeological work. This talk examines the development of the project and its two iterations to date; highlights the diversity of posts on the broad subject of " historical archaeology " , and asks what such large-scale collaborative projects can contribute to public engagement with archaeological work. The day has its roots in a Twitter conversation on the Day of Digital Humanities in March 2011. The Day of Digital Humanities is a community wiki project organised by University of Alberta in which digital humanists across the world write about one day in their working lives. We realised that the varied nature of archaeological work meant that the discipline was supremely suitable for a similar project. In a matter of minutes, a small core of digital archaeologists (Matt, Lorna, Dan, Tom, Andy, Jess and Stu) was recruited via Twitter, along with an offer from Dan of free hosting on the Portable Antiquities Scheme's servers. We decided to use an installation of the WordPress content management system rather than a wiki for the project, with a theme designed by Tom, Dan and Jess. WordPress was chosen because it offers simple customisation, and was felt to be relatively easy for contributors to understand how to create posts, embed media and links, and post and respond to comments. Detailed instructions on how to use the WordPress system were made available before the day, and support available on the day to enable archaeologists who were not familiar with talking about their work on the Internet to contribute. The date set for the first Day of Archaeology was July 29th, 2011, during the Council for British Archaeology's Festival of British Archaeology, a week-long national series of public events in the UK. As part of our publicity drive for the day, and to encourage a feeling of community ownership ahead of the first posts being submitted, a competition was launched on Twitter to find a logo for the event, the winning design being submitted by Glen Hustler and Pat Hadley. Participants were recruited via Twitter, a Facebook page, emails to various subject-specific mailing lists, posters displayed in archaeological departments and commercial practices, and an editorial article by Mike Pitts in British Archaeology. A total of 438 people signed up via email to contribute, and were issued with login information. We asked for posts describing the contributors' working day, supplemented by photos, video or audio if desired. On the day itself, and subsequent week, 435 posts were submitted, being available online after moderation by one of the team. The website recorded 5906 visits from 4416 unique visitors on the day from 90 countries. The average visitor spent 5 minutes, 49 seconds on the site, visiting 4.43 pages.
After fifteen years of hosting millions of user-built webpages, in April 2009 Yahoo announced tha... more After fifteen years of hosting millions of user-built webpages, in April 2009 Yahoo announced that they would be shutting down their United States Geocities webpages. Geocities was once the most common hosting service for low-cost personal webpages, including hundreds of public outreach sites about archaeology. Were the webpages moved to another hosting site, archived, or abandoned? We tracked and recorded the fate of 89 of these webpages, eventually sending a survey to the webmasters asking them a range of questions. While we received relatively few responses, the answers to the questions were illuminating. Much of the current digital outreach performed all over the world relies on "free" services such as Twitter, Flickr, Wordpress, Google Pages, or Facebook to host their content. What can the fate of archaeological content on Geocities pages tell us about the benefits and risks of using commercial infrastructure for archaeological outreach? In a conference dedicated to understanding digital public engagement, we sort through the digital wreckage of past outreach efforts to evaluate the fate of the online archaeological presence.
Bryozoans (Phylum Bryozoa), also known as sea mats or moss animals, are colony-forming sessile in... more Bryozoans (Phylum Bryozoa), also known as sea mats or moss animals, are colony-forming sessile invertebrates, comprising communities of separate individuals (zooids). Many are calcified, and have archaeological potential, yet they are seldom investigated, perhaps due to considerable difficulties with identification. This poster summarises archaeological contexts in which bryozoans might be expected to occur, and reviews some previous work, as well as suggesting some future approaches to archaeological analyses of bryozoans.
The sediments of the north coast of the South West Peninsula, from the wind-blown sands of Cornwa... more The sediments of the north coast of the South West Peninsula, from the wind-blown sands of Cornwall to the intertidal peats and clays of the Severn Estuary, have the potential to contain a wealth of archaeological remains, often associated with well-preserved assemblages of snails and other invertebrates. The palaeoenvironmental potential of snails from blown sand was the subject of an important review paper by Evans in 1979, and were summarised more recently by Davies in 2008, however in general molluscan analysis has flourished more in inland sites than on the coast. This paper presents a summary of published and unpublished work to date, highlighting aspects of taphonomy and site history that may be revealed, and proposes an agenda for future invertebrate zooarchaeology in coastal sites in the South West.
An increasing awareness among archaeologists of the desirability and importance of engaging with ... more An increasing awareness among archaeologists of the desirability and importance of engaging with wider audiences has coincided with the development of online Web 2.0 applications. These allow ever-more sophisticated methods of interactive data presentation, while requiring minimal knowledge of computer programming languages. The result has been a growth of public-oriented websites relating to specific archaeological projects, as well as a number of peer-to-peer initiatives, such as the handful of databases of so-called ´grey literature´ that are being developed in the UK. At the specialist level, archaeologists have been somewhat slower to embrace this trend. Within archaeozoology, a small number of data-sharing projects do exist, either contained within websites relating to particular field projects, or within social networks and e-mail lists. This paper will outline the current situation in Britain, presenting results of a survey on internet use for research by UK archaeozoologists, suggest future directions for archaeozoological data sharing, and highlight concerns about sustainability of current initiatives.
Although the Western Isles have been subject to a number of recent archaeological investigations,... more Although the Western Isles have been subject to a number of recent archaeological investigations, there has been limited recent work on molluscan assemblages. This is despite the very good degree of preservation to be expected in a number of deposits, and the significant work in the 1970s and 1980s on a number of sites such as Northton, Baleshare, and Hornish Point. In the meantime, land snail analysis has flourished in southern England and elsewhere in Europe, with the development of new techniques of numerical analysis such as the taxocene framework, the use of land snail assemblages in climate reconstruction, and recent refinements in amino acid dating. This paper provides a brief summary of the work to date on Hebridean snail assemblages, presents preliminary results from work in progress, and proposes a research agenda for archaeomalacology in the Western Isles and other coastal sites in the North Atlantic.
We're now accepting contributions for Issue 35 of the Archaeo+Malacology Newsletter - please do g... more We're now accepting contributions for Issue 35 of the Archaeo+Malacology Newsletter - please do get it touch with any news items, short research articles, notifications of publications, interesting images, reviews or lay summaries of work published elsewhere. The deadline is January 31st 2020.
Guerilla Archaeology is a Cardiff-based collective made up of archaeologists, scientists and arti... more Guerilla Archaeology is a Cardiff-based collective made up of archaeologists, scientists and artists dedicated to bringing the past alive. In 2012-2014 we attended four music festivals and one city centre art event with the result that over 5,000 people got ‘down and dirty with the past”.
Guerilla Archaeology focuses on engaging with the public outside traditional learning environments. Our chief motivation is not instruction, but provocation. We use our research to act as facilitators: not to convey any particular ‘truth’, but to enable everyone to find their own truth within the past and establish their own relationship with it. By doing this we engage with a diverse range of audiences and hope to co-create a past, rooted in our research, with the wider public.
Dear AMWG members, We kindly remind members to send in contributions for Issue 33 of the Archaeo ... more Dear AMWG members, We kindly remind members to send in contributions for Issue 33 of the Archaeo + Malacology Group Newsletter, to be circulated in February 2020. If you missed Issue 32, you can view it at https://archaeomalacology.wordpress.com/archaeomalacology-newsletters/. The Archaeo + Malacology Newsletter warmly invites contributions related to archaeomalacology in its widest sense. We are looking for short reports, new publications or works in progress, field or laboratory activities, or any archaeomalacological related news,
The papers included in this special issue were originally
presented at the 2011 conference of the... more The papers included in this special issue were originally presented at the 2011 conference of the Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) which was held at the University of Birmingham, in a session entitled The How and Why of Archaeology Outreach: case studies and reflexive approaches to public engagement. We had an overwhelming response to our call for papers, reflecting the massive surge in public engagement programmes in recent years. Subsequent TAGs have hosted numerous other sessions on similar themes, including two sessions in 2012, which have been published in a previous special issue of AP Journal. Papers and posters included in the conference session were a great reflection of the variety of public engagement activities that were taking place internationally at the time (participants came from the UK, Norway, the US, Canada and South Africa). A number of different themes were touched upon, from debates surrounding ‘bottom-up’ versus ‘top-down’ approaches, to the ways in which our public engagement programmes can work in parallel to school curriculums. The papers published here offer a taster of the kind of debates that were touched upon. Firstly, Tom Dawson describes work being done in Scotland, involving collaborative work between community groups and heritage managers with the aim of saving archaeological sites that are threatened by coastal erosion. This paper includes two specific case studies where the community has been directly involved in rescuing coastal sites and provides a wonderful example of the importance of local knowledge for the preservation of coastal archaeology. Law et al’s paper reflects upon a public engagement project that was run at the Green Man music festival in Wales in 2011 Back to the Future? Animals and archaeology in Einstein’s Garden. It reflects upon the use of a number of specific activities aimed at giving festival attendees an opportunity to learn more about archaeology and the relationship between people, animals and their environment in the past. Traaholt and Føntelien describe an innovative use of the sediment removed from a development site after the initial professional archaeological involvement. A certain amount of this sediment will have fallen outside of the professionally excavated sample, and working with schoolchildren offsite allows further information to be recovered in a process they term Slow Archaeology. The project, in Akershus County, Norway; has so far involved over 3000 schoolchildren. Finally Hughes presents a commentary on four years of community excavation and oral history in the city of Worcester, UK, demonstrating how the work was designed to be relevant to the broader educational framework of visiting school children, how it enriched the city’s archive of recorded oral history, and presenting a selection of feedback comments from people involved in various aspects of the project. Much has been written to situate a theory of public archaeology (see review in Richardson and Almansa-Sanchez 2015), with models ranging from a deficit approach which simply communicates results of archaeological research (this has been specifically excluded from the category ‘public archaeology’ by Richardson and Almansa- Sanchez (2015, 9); we agree and feel that the term archaeological communication might be more appropriate in these instances), to more democratic models, that allow broader public agency in archaeological encounters. These papers reflect the variety of approaches adopted when setting up public engagement projects, and a variety of scenarios requiring different approaches. It is our explicit view that all public engagement, whether communicating results obtained by an ‘insider group’ of professional archaeologists to one or more ‘outsider groups’; top-down projects that mobilise volunteer involvement to an end determined by an ‘insider group’ or genuine co-creation of archaeological research projects, is good and to be encouraged. We believe that deeper involvement in the creation and execution of the archaeological project will lead to deeper engagement with the historic environment in general, and needs to be more widely adopted. Part of the point, however, must also explicitly remain to ensure that archaeology exists in the wider ‘public’ imagination, to make archaeology as a practice and discipline appear attractive, interesting and relevant, and to ensure that anybody can access archaeological knowledge. Ultimately, there will always be an ‘elite’ (in the context described by Henson (2009)) carrying out archaeological research in the academic or commercial spheres, with or, more often, without, the involvement of a wider public. The results of this type of work - all of it - must be made publicly accessible, and for that to happen archaeological communication must be seen by professional archaeologists as valuable and not denigrated by those of us who write about public archaeology as the lesser cousin of democratic models of public archaeology. The papers presented here demonstrate a spectrum of ‘public’ involvement, from the pure archaeological communication of Law et al. to the widespread community involvement of the Shorewatch project described by Dawson. Aside from Dawson’s, where the Bressay and Baile Sear projects in particular had significant community input, none of the presented case studies presents genuine co-creation from the stage of project initiation, and there were very few examples of this in our full conference session. We suspect that this has much to do with the situation of the session in a conference more likely to be attended by professionals. Bringing more community projects that are not professional-led to TAG – and not just in sessions that are specifically about community or public archaeology – must surely be on our agenda moving forward.
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In the afternoon participants worked in groups with help from the speakers to design outreach activities based on aspects of their research and targeted at specific age groups. These form the basis of this resource.
In the afternoon participants worked in groups with help from the speakers to design outreach activities based on aspects of their research and targeted at specific age groups. These form the basis of this resource.
At the specialist level, archaeologists have been somewhat slower to embrace this trend. Within archaeozoology, a small number of data-sharing projects do exist, either contained within websites relating to particular field projects, or within social networks and e-mail lists.
This paper will outline the current situation in Britain, presenting results of a survey on internet use for research by UK archaeozoologists, suggest future directions for archaeozoological data sharing, and highlight concerns about sustainability of current initiatives.
Guerilla Archaeology focuses on engaging with the public outside traditional learning environments. Our chief motivation is not instruction, but provocation. We use our research to act as facilitators: not to convey any particular ‘truth’, but to enable everyone to find their own truth within the past and establish their own relationship with it. By doing this we engage with a diverse range of audiences and hope to co-create a past, rooted in our research, with the wider public.
presented at the 2011 conference of the Theoretical Archaeology
Group (TAG) which was held at the University of Birmingham, in a
session entitled The How and Why of Archaeology Outreach: case
studies and reflexive approaches to public engagement. We had
an overwhelming response to our call for papers, reflecting the
massive surge in public engagement programmes in recent years.
Subsequent TAGs have hosted numerous other sessions on similar
themes, including two sessions in 2012, which have been published
in a previous special issue of AP Journal.
Papers and posters included in the conference session were a
great reflection of the variety of public engagement activities that
were taking place internationally at the time (participants came
from the UK, Norway, the US, Canada and South Africa). A number
of different themes were touched upon, from debates surrounding
‘bottom-up’ versus ‘top-down’ approaches, to the ways in which
our public engagement programmes can work in parallel to school
curriculums. The papers published here offer a taster of the kind of
debates that were touched upon.
Firstly, Tom Dawson describes work being done in Scotland,
involving collaborative work between community groups and
heritage managers with the aim of saving archaeological sites that
are threatened by coastal erosion. This paper includes two specific
case studies where the community has been directly involved in
rescuing coastal sites and provides a wonderful example of the
importance of local knowledge for the preservation of coastal
archaeology. Law et al’s paper reflects upon a public engagement
project that was run at the Green Man music festival in Wales in
2011 Back to the Future? Animals and archaeology in Einstein’s
Garden. It reflects upon the use of a number of specific activities
aimed at giving festival attendees an opportunity to learn more
about archaeology and the relationship between people, animals
and their environment in the past. Traaholt and Føntelien describe
an innovative use of the sediment removed from a development
site after the initial professional archaeological involvement. A
certain amount of this sediment will have fallen outside of the
professionally excavated sample, and working with schoolchildren
offsite allows further information to be recovered in a process they
term Slow Archaeology. The project, in Akershus County, Norway;
has so far involved over 3000 schoolchildren. Finally Hughes
presents a commentary on four years of community excavation
and oral history in the city of Worcester, UK, demonstrating how
the work was designed to be relevant to the broader educational
framework of visiting school children, how it enriched the city’s
archive of recorded oral history, and presenting a selection of
feedback comments from people involved in various aspects of the
project.
Much has been written to situate a theory of public archaeology
(see review in Richardson and Almansa-Sanchez 2015), with models
ranging from a deficit approach which simply communicates results
of archaeological research (this has been specifically excluded from
the category ‘public archaeology’ by Richardson and Almansa-
Sanchez (2015, 9); we agree and feel that the term archaeological
communication might be more appropriate in these instances),
to more democratic models, that allow broader public agency in
archaeological encounters. These papers reflect the variety of
approaches adopted when setting up public engagement projects,
and a variety of scenarios requiring different approaches. It is our
explicit view that all public engagement, whether communicating
results obtained by an ‘insider group’ of professional archaeologists
to one or more ‘outsider groups’; top-down projects that mobilise
volunteer involvement to an end determined by an ‘insider group’
or genuine co-creation of archaeological research projects, is good
and to be encouraged. We believe that deeper involvement in the
creation and execution of the archaeological project will lead to
deeper engagement with the historic environment in general, and
needs to be more widely adopted. Part of the point, however, must
also explicitly remain to ensure that archaeology exists in the
wider ‘public’ imagination, to make archaeology as a practice and
discipline appear attractive, interesting and relevant, and to ensure
that anybody can access archaeological knowledge. Ultimately,
there will always be an ‘elite’ (in the context described by Henson
(2009)) carrying out archaeological research in the academic or
commercial spheres, with or, more often, without, the involvement
of a wider public. The results of this type of work - all of it - must
be made publicly accessible, and for that to happen archaeological
communication must be seen by professional archaeologists as
valuable and not denigrated by those of us who write about public
archaeology as the lesser cousin of democratic models of public
archaeology.
The papers presented here demonstrate a spectrum of ‘public’
involvement, from the pure archaeological communication of Law
et al. to the widespread community involvement of the Shorewatch
project described by Dawson. Aside from Dawson’s, where the
Bressay and Baile Sear projects in particular had significant
community input, none of the presented case studies presents
genuine co-creation from the stage of project initiation, and there
were very few examples of this in our full conference session. We
suspect that this has much to do with the situation of the session in
a conference more likely to be attended by professionals. Bringing
more community projects that are not professional-led to TAG –
and not just in sessions that are specifically about community or
public archaeology – must surely be on our agenda moving forward.