The European Archaeologist. Issue No. 41: Summer 2014, 25-27

2016

Without their help I would still be entering, organizing, testing, and analyzing results. I would also like to thank the following people, in no particular order, for their contributions:  Ross Hilman and the Wyoming Cultural Records Office, for providing statewide WYCRIS data.  SWCA GIS Specialist, Bryan Swindell, his assistance with WYCRO digital datasets and their interpretation.  Carolyn Buff, Executive Secretary/Treasurer of the Wyoming Archaeological Society, for her suggestions and for supplying the email listings of current members.

Artifact collectors are commonplace the world over. They range from individuals with personal collections, to organized looting ventures which supply artifacts to market. In the United States, a strong tradition of artifact collecting exists in the North American Great Plains. In this region, artifact collections obtained from private lands are a common and potentially important source of information about the past. Here, we report on 'Artifact Roadshows' which are held to document lithic projectile points held in private collections. Through these events – which include the three-dimensional digitization and general artifact recording – we have expanded our understandings of collector motivations, created a platform to educate on best practices, and begun to appreciate the types of analyses which can be run on data accumulated in such contexts. These efforts seek to encourage collaboration between professional archaeologists and the public in documenting the heritage of the Great Plains.

Archäologische Informationen 45, Early View, https://dguf.de/publikationen/archaeologische-informationen/profil-der-ai, 2023

Attention has never been any more measured, qualifying and crucial as it is nowadays. Constantly in the social media expressions including views, likes, loves, sadness, comments, shares, or even subscribes define extensively how the perceptions are created, followed and cherished. This innovative setting however not always translates into joyful and promising ground in which posts, appearances, reporting and publication secure attention and by default success. Archaeology is increasingly developing in an interdisciplinary focus and especially in the last few decades such approach has produced rather captivating scientific results. Also coupled with other fields and disciplines has gained an indispensable role and is shaping several shaping several professions and careers that include: museology, protection, promotion and management of culture heritage, legislation, development of tourism, environment, public and private sectors and entrepreneurship. In this paper, I examine the nature of news posted in the social media and to what extent this content affects perceptions for the discipline in the public eye. I argue that awareness regarding the role of publicity in the field should not only be raised, above all, such dimension must become an indispensable task within the field.

Present Pasts, 2014

Natural Resources Research, 1997

Archaeological sites, the material remnants of our human past, are finite and nonrenewable cultural resources that are under constant threat from environmental forces, development activities, warfare, vandalism, and looting. Site looting is the destructive removal of archaeological objects to supply the art market. Looting is part of an economic system, the antiquities market, that works to supply the demand of collectors for archaeological objects. The destruction of archaeological resources by looters is an international crisis and threatens to obliterate the world's cultural heritage and our ability to understand past cultures. The scale and intensity of the looting problem can be estimated by studying the extent of site destruction in countries of origen and by investigating the sources of antiquities held by collectors. Finding a solution to the problem of looting will require a focus on the demand side of the market (i.e., collectors) instead of the traditional focus on the supply side (looters, dealers).

Advances in Archeological Research, 2022

Our professional understanding of the archaeological record is informed through academic research interest, the nature (tensions of time/ money/location) of cultural resource management, and the ability of archaeologists to fully access diverse forms of data potentially available to them. Knowledge of eastern Colorado is poorly known, given that 40% of the state is publicly owned (federal and state) and most professional work occurs on land administered by federal agencies in western Colorado. Given this research disparity, we argue that professional archaeologists in eastern Colorado would certainly benefit from expanding their research networks to include the efforts of avocational archaeologists. Our article describes how artifact collectors have searched eastern Colorado for the past 100 years; although their methods differ from professional approaches, their cumulative efforts provide a nuanced read of the archaeological record. Differences relate to increased time spent on sites, access to a variety of landforms, and repeated visits over the long term. We present a case study on playa lake archaeology to emphasize these concepts and provide suggestions as to how archaeologists can create better partnerships to unlock potentially novel perspectives of the archaeological record.

The public’s fascination with archaeology has meant that archaeologists have had to deal with media more regularly than other scholarly disciplines. How archaeologists communicate their research to the public through the media and how the media view archaeologists has become an important feature in the contemporary world of academic and professional archaeologists. In this volume, a group of archaeologists, many with media backgrounds, address the wide range of questions in this intersection of fields. An array of media forms are included including television, film, photography, the popular press, art, video games, radio and digital media with a focus on the overriding question: what are the long-term implications of the increasing exposure through and reliance upon media forms for archaeology in the contemporary world. The volume should be of interest to archaeologists and those teaching public archaeology courses.

Internet Archaeology, 2021

Archaeology in the United States is conducted by a number of different sorts of entities under a variety of legal mandates that lack uniform standards for data archiving. The difficulty of accessing data from projects in which one was not directly involved indicates an apparent reluctance to archive raw data and supplemental information with digital repositories to be reused in the future. There is hope that additional legislation, guidelines from professional organisations, and educational efforts will change these practices.