outreach – Colleen Morgan

Archaeology on TikTok

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGerqYusP/

I’ve loved experimenting with different digital media in archaeology over the years, long enough that I remember Hi8 tapes and waiting overnight for videos to render, just to notice a bad edit and having to do it all over again.

Honestly, for direct reportage from fieldwork and other archaeological science communication, TikTok seems like a miracle. I’m still very much a newb (do they say that anymore??) with the interface, but it’s certainly not as steep of a learning curve as, say, Final Cut Pro in the mid-2000s. I use Capcut for my editing as I found the TikTok interface not particularly intuitive and I was struggling to add subtitles to my videos. I was advised not to upload directly from Capcut though as it apparently tanks your views.

My videos are perhaps pretty boring, standard fieldwork updates, with some appearances from the lovely students who were on the excavation with me, and oblique shots of the extremely professional and excellent DCT workers. The TikTok algorithm pushed the videos locally in the UAE, much moreso than the US/UK standard audiences.

I made these updates as the field director of the York excavations at Hili Archaeological Park (oh god I just realised that gives me a YEAH-AP acronym) and I therefore had a lot of freedom to do so, within reason. I did not show some of the finds and the site is under close guardianship. Also one of the male students got a few “thirsty” comments, but I advised him of these, did not respond, and we spoke about his opt-in for a continued presence in the videos.

Also, as site director, I was mind-numbingly busy at all times. I was working 10-12 hour days on the regular, as I was keeping fieldwork going at the same time as attending to various tasks such as PhD meetings and the like. It’s not good practice, and I hope that others do not do so, but also I don’t really want to try to hide the reality of what it’s like to conduct archaeological fieldwork while continually squeezed by the university timetable. But I still managed the 1-3 minutes it took to record the videos, and the same amount of time that it took to edit and upload them to TikTok. Worlds different from previous media practice.

There were other media-makers, including professional videographers and a sound artist and engineer on site, and I hope to be able to feature their work in the coming days.

Anyway, I’ve got 21 videos up there, and you can follow my adaptations to the media, if you wish. Not sure how much I’ll update offsite as I feel like I have a pretty good handle on the affordances of the medium now, but we’ll see.

Archaeology and Public Outreach in Doha, Qatar

Somehow in the churn of the last couple of years I missed posting about a new (old) book chapter that came out in 2022:

Public Archaeology and Engagement in the Origins of Doha and Qatar Project (ODQ).

This was a project under the PI Robert Carter that ran from 2012 – 2015, wherein we excavated in Doha and Fuwairit, did a bunch of building recording, oral histories, in person and online outreach, and historical research. The project webpage/blog has a bunch of resources.

The chapter gives the background of the project and discusses how critical public outreach became over the duration. We:

worked with multiple stakeholders, trained members of the government, gave public lectures in schools and other venues, designed educational materials, opened access to research as it was carried out through digital media, appeared in documentaries, museum exhibitions, and magazines, and opened the research and publication remit to local stakeholders who have indelibly shaped them (pg 94-95).

While we had some open days, we also filmed short excavation explainers that were translated with Arabic subtitles to try to demonstrate archaeological excavation.

We also had a fantastic interactive historical GIS created by the very talented Michal Michalski. Unfortunately a lot of that work was lost when UCL shut down their Qatar campus with their IT services as a casualty.

We also found that the local schools were completely lacking in teaching local history and archaeology, so we made some resources and conducted school visit. I particularly enjoyed our implementation of building elevations as colouring exercises for children.

The bulk of the work was written in 2015, and perhaps shows some of the problems of publishing about digital work, particularly in books that can have long delays. As I said though, I’m still happy about the work we did in Doha, and the small community we were able to create around archaeology in the region.

Morgan, C., Carter, R., Aziz, F. A., & Al Thani, M. (2022). Public Archaeology and Engagement in the Origins of Doha and Qatar Project. In A. Badran, S. Abu-Khafajah, & S. Elliott (Eds.), Community Heritage in the Arab Region: Values and Practices (pp. 91–108). Springer International Publishing.

community_heritage_in_the_arab_region Download

The Holocaust, 9/11, the Slave Trade and…Facebook? How Museums & Experts Fail at Social Media

As part of my EUROTAST postdoc I partnered with the Institute for Public Understanding of the Past and Marc Pallascio, a History MA student to conduct a survey of the online outreach of museums and institutions that commemorate so-called “dark” or difficult heritage. At the outset of my postdoc I wrote:

How do I digitally remediate difficult heritage? What considerations do I take when I disseminate research on this incredibly sensitive topic, heritage that hurts? (…) Anyway, I’ve taken to calling my new job digital heritage on hard mode.

This article attempts to address some of these questions through social media metrics and the online interactions of heritage institutions associated with difficult heritage: The Holocaust, 9/11, and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, with a focus on the latter. Additionally, we looked into existing online communities surrounding difficult heritage that are independent of these larger institutions.

Spoilers: there was little-to-no interactivity between official institutions and online places where people chose to “remember together.” Social media was used by official institutions purely to broadcast, not to interact.

Institutions and experts were also pretty scarce where there was the most interaction, debate and arguably a need for an informed opinion. It’s a complete cliche online, but we ventured where nobody dares to go: THE COMMENTS.

These were on a YouTube series for Africans in America, on the “Little Dread” YouTube channel. Even when a link to a reputable source is posted, it is countered with a reference to the van Sertima pseudoscientific book “They Came Before Columbus.” More importantly, there are several online places and communities that are obviously taking up issues of heritage, race, and origins and these are overwhelmingly NOT in ready-made, sanctioned arenas for such discussions. As we state in the paper:

Authoritative voices are absent in non-specialist discussions of heritage online, as experts frame their conversations within official settings.

From the conclusions:

The distributed network of the internet would seem to be an ideal venue for discussions with and between members of the diaspora formed by the descendants of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Yet, there is little connectivity apparent on either websites or social media between academics, heritage interpreters, and the online stakeholder communities…identifying where meaningful performative collective memory is exercised, then engaging with stakeholders on their own terms, may be more impactful than websites or campaigns of outward-facing social media.

Despite the 2015 publication date, the article has just been published by the Journal of African Diaspora and Heritage:

Morgan, C., & Pallascio, P. M. (2015). Digital Media, Participatory Culture, and Difficult Heritage: Online Remediation and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage, 4(3), 260–278.

It’s also available as a pre-print on Academia:

https://www.academia.edu/24144509/Digital_Media_Participatory_Culture_and_Difficult_Heritage_Online_Remediation_and_the_Trans-Atlantic_Slave_Trade

Minecraft for Archaeological Outreach

CL3_3226 — The “Real Tools of Minecraft”

We ran a “Virtual Dig” event for Yornight again this year, refined and improved from last year’s effort. The event was wildly popular once again, and utterly wiped out the researchers participating.

I re-structured the event so that there is something for each of our expected demographic–we had kids that had never played Minecraft who participated last year, as well as a few bored parents. We were able to address the former with a papercraft event, but as the papercraft was based around Breary Banks, we decided to eliminate it this year and focus primarily on Star Carr, for consistency across the activities.

For the younger kids we expanded on our “real tools of Minecraft” event last year. It was very successful for connecting the analog world to the digital world, and gave us a way to talk about the spectrum of archaeological tools. Minecraft has pickaxes, shovels, buckets, a compass, and flint, and we had the kids match up the tools from a print-out. Of particular interest was the flint, as many children did not make the connection from the digital representation to the rocks in their backyard.

I’ve uploaded a printable pdf of the Minecraft tools. I also made a sheet with a few letters that you can have the kids place next to the real tools. Feel free to steal the activity, but pleaaaaase tell me ([email protected]) if you do so I can show my department how useful it is to muck around with video games.

We also had our usual server running with the Star Carr landscape installed, which I wrote about making last year. I actually had to re-make it this year in a single day, due to the old version accidentally getting wiped out. Ooops!

Once again we also showed Anthony Masinton’s Yorkshire 9000BC on the big screen in back. It’s made in Unity, so we tied it to Minecraft by saying they were both video games AND both of them were based on the same digital elevation model. I’d point at the houses he’d placed on the landscape, talk a bit about how hard it was to reconstruct houses based on postholes, then end with an entreaty:

Can you build a 10,000 year old house in Minecraft?

CL3_3209 — Fabrizio, showing off his ADS viewer to Julian Richards & Gareth Beale

For the older kids and adults we had Marie Curie Fellow Fabrizio Galeazzi present Star Carr data on his ADS viewer, to show the detailed visualizations of stratigraphy within a research database. It was a great link for showing the research potential of archaeological visualizations.

Overall it was chaotic but fun–we didn’t always have a chance to collar the kids with research before they started bashing through Minecraft. I’ve yet to have a chance to see what kind of carnage they enacted upon the Mesolithic landscape. I look forward to it though, as it’s an archaeology of its own.

My Day of Archaeology: Meeting the US Ambassador

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.

A Decade of Archaeology in Action on Flickr

I’ve been using Flickr for photographs since 2005, and have administered a group “Archaeology in Action” for almost as long. There’s 630 members and almost 4,200 photographs of archaeologists doing that thing we like doing so well.

Archaeologist Mary Weahkee during an Education Outreach event. New Mexico, USA.

Interestingly, being the admin for the group helped me define what it meant to be an “archaeologist in action”–what does our discipline cover? It also helped me define what an archaeological photograph is, exactly. HINT: NOT YOUR TRAVEL PHOTOS OF THE PYRAMIDS. I delete those mercilessly.

Shilla, South Korea - archaeology, planum — Shilla, South Korea – archaeology, planum

Why? Why should I censor the tourists? Aren’t their experiences of the site just as legitimate as ours? Perhaps. But it wasn’t archaeology. The Flickr group was cultivated to be a resource for educators, and to show a diversity of people doing archaeology. That last, active part was also important. Someone in the photo had to be doing something. Even if that someone was behind the camera. The photographer had to make archaeological seeing visible.

Modele Numerique de Terrain d'un chantier archéologique à Fleury-sur-Orne (Calvados-FR). — Modele Numerique de Terrain d’un chantier archéologique à Fleury-sur-Orne (Calvados-FR).

The group has been motoring on, attracting spam, but also, occasionally, surprising me with gorgeous, raw, photos from around the world of the incredible, strange, delightful tasks of archaeology.

Archaeologist Karen Wening surveys the highway right-of-way at the top of San Augustin pass on US Highway 70, about 10 miles east of Las Cruces.

Recently Flickr took away one of my most favorite functions–note taking. I loved this function as I was able to annotate maps and photographs to explain different features–it was great for outreach. I heard that they’ll add it back soon. Let’s cross our fingers!

Nya Lödöse Project, working on a Harris Matrix.

In the meantime, if you have any photos of archaeology in action, sling them toward the group!

Previous photo-based posts highlighting Archaeology in Action. I probably should have made it a series at some point. Or at least had a consistent naming scheme:

Archaeology in Action on Flickr
Archaeology in Action Update
Archaeology in Action, Another Update
Archaeology in Action Around the World
Archaeology Around the World
Community Archaeology in Action

Breaking Blocks and Digging Holes: Archaeology & Minecraft

Archaeologists have been playing with Minecraft to present the past and the play around with reconstruction. Shawn Graham, as always, is at the forefront of developing archaeological landscapes in Minecraft and if you’d like to try it out, I suggest you read up on Electric Archaeology. I used his instructions to import a digital elevation model (DEM) from the famous Mesolithic site of Star Carr, currently being investigated by Nicky Milner at the University of York.

After a few tweaks, I managed to get a fairly nice, smooth landscape–Star Carr, now a lovely undulating field, was once on the edge of Lake Flixton. Organic materials such as wood preserve very well in the waterlogged peat and so they find lots of spear points, platforms and a deer frontlet or two.

Red deer antler head-dress from Star Carr at the British Museum.

Sadly we did not reconstruct the frontlets–building things in Minecraft is a lot like using Lego. Not fancy, specialist Lego like they have these days, but the basic set. So I got a reasonable model of Star Carr up and running for Yornight, which highlights European Union-funded research at York. I had a lot of help from other people in the department affiliated with the Centre for Digital Heritage.

We had several computers running on our own local server and kids (mostly boys) went pretty crazy for it. Our set up:

Well, archaeologists working at Star Car have found these circular houses with evidence of postholes, and we’ve made reconstructions based on that. But we aren’t actually sure what exactly the houses looked like. Can you help us think of different ways the houses might have looked?

That was pretty much it. A few of the kids tried to build round houses, but as you may have guessed from the Lego-ness of Minecraft, they were still pretty blocky. Some built other houses, out of brick, some built giant flaming towers, and a few somehow made guns and started shooting at each other! I’d say it was a success.

The dungeon-like barrel vault added to the atmosphere.

We also had a papercraft Breary Banks, another University of York excavation site, and kids colored and cut out models of the camp. I found that having a mix of tactile and digital activities was more inclusive–kids didn’t have to feel forced into doing anything they weren’t used to or were uncomfortable with.

Finally, we had the “real tools” of Minecraft, and that seemed, oddly, to be the most popular. It made the connection between tools that archaeologists used and the virtual tools in the game. We had a big nodule of flint, which is used in the game but many kids never made the connection to rocks.

We’re running it again for the local Young Archaeologists Club and for the upcoming Yornight, which will also feature some experimental Oculus Rift visualization. Digital shenanigans continue apace!

Heritage Jam Video Series Complete

Over the weekend I finished up the series of short videos for the upcoming Heritage Jam and I’m fairly pleased with them. I have a much larger video project coming up for EUROTAST, featuring the incredible work of the research fellows, and so it was a good way to get back into the video-making groove again.

Each of the videos is a challenge to the participants of the Heritage Jam, as outlined by Dr. Julie Rugg.

Challenge One: Dynamism

Challenge Two: Visibility

Challenge Three: Class

In each video Dr. Rugg identifies some interesting challenges for visual interpretation in cemeteries. I enjoyed learning about cemeteries from her as I edited the videos.

I’m never quite 100% satisfied with the videos that I make either, as there’s always more that can be done. When I teach filmmaking to archaeology students, I tell them that you can pretty much spend an infinite amount of time editing a video, making it as perfect as possible…but I have other projects, so finding “good enough” is not wholly satisfying, but does get the video out there for other people to view. If anything, all of this just makes me appreciate the professionals that much more!

Even if you aren’t participating in the Heritage Jam, the videos may make you look at cemeteries in a different way–they certainly did for me!

(PS: Try to watch them in HD if you have the bandwidth!)

Archaeologists Making Libraries: Di Hu

After working for several years near Pomacocha, Ayacucho, Peru, UC Berkeley archaeology PhD candidate Di Hu was approached by teachers at the local school. They needed quality books to help educate their students. In Di’s words:

High in the Peruvian Andes, the historic village of Pomacocha is nestled among high cliffs, rivers and volcanic mountains. With a population of around 800-1000 people, Pomacocha boasts a preschool, a primary school, and a high school. Despite the curiosity and enthusiasm of the students, Pomacocha does not have a public library. The schoolchildren have only basic textbooks that emphasize memorization of facts. Because of the lack of resources in Pomacocha, the schools cannot afford to buy non-curriculum books.

With all of the high-tech public archaeology and community outreach going on in archaeology these days it is easy to forget that some of the communities we work in still need basic amenities. Things that we take for granted. To serve this relatively low-tech need, Di started a crowdfunding campaign last April on Indiegogo:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/first-public-library-for-schoolchildren-in-a-rural-peruvian-village

She did incredibly well, beating her goal by $350! I was happy to contribute a little bit to the project, and I’ve been getting updates as Di has made back to Peru. I was very touched when she sent me a photo of the books that I sponsored, with a specialized nameplate:

The books are:

Muerte en la Vicaria by Agatha Christie (I asked for murder on the Oriental Express, but it was taken already!)

La Mujer en el Tiempo: Cronologia ilustrada que abarca mas de 20 siglos de personajes y eventos que marcaron la historia

500 Años de patriarcado en el nuevo mundo

Good stuff. Thanks, Di!

Time-lapse Excavation at Hammerfest, Norway

I was delighted to find this video of a time-lapse excavation performed by the Tromsø Museum of a turf and stone structure from the 1700s. What really makes this video is the graphic in the corner of where the camera is located and the overall plan of the structure, highlighting what is being excavated. It transforms what looks like a bunch of workers shuffling around rocks in the mud into something inteligible. This is the translation of the video description I got in Google Translate from the original Norwegian:

Time-lapse of the excavations on the structure of S5 in the period 9.6. -21.7.2010. The structure is constructed dwellings of turf and stone. The shape of the structure implies a dichotomy where one part may have been a timber construction and the other part a hut construction. On the inside of the thick sod walls were found neverlag in different levels (see eg.Context 102). Remains of buildings is mainly dated to the 1700s, but can extend down to 1600 – the number and up to 1800’s. Time-lapse footage shows the last part of the excavation, where the scroll. chimney, walls, entrances and some luck are being put excavated / removed. Towards the end of the grave none appeared a rock pit in one wall of the house, where the fill, context 118 and 128, were removed.

Video from the archaeological excavations in Cut Vika and Vika Mountains, Hammerfest, performed by the Tromsø Museum, University Museum.

Excellent video and a fairly easy way to help the audience see the archaeology.

A quick, unrelated note:

Thanks again for everyone who commented on the previous entry about health and safety. I’ve long wanted to make a series of videos or comics to make boring topics such as OSHA compliance easy to understand, but when to find the time?

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