The National Park Service’s Archaeology Program hosts a series of online archaeology exhibits, one of which is called The Earliest Americans.. The exhibit’s home screen has a sidebar with a list of subheadings containing links- the first two of which focus on archaeologists and archaeology as a discipline.  These hypermediate the exhibit as constructed, as the bearer of praxis and not just pure information. According to the first of these subheadings, the exhibit was inspired by a Harris poll that assessed the American public’s understanding of archaeology and attempts to move the public’s conception of archaeology away from archaeology and toward an understanding of publicly funded archaeology. The second subheading acknowledges past misrepresentations of early inhabitants of America and discusses the nomination of new National Historic landmarks. Three more subheadings divide the nation into the Midwest, Northeast, and Southeast. These subheadings begin with a migratory narrative of the prehistoric people in the area then have further panels focusing on archaeological and geological conclusions about the area and artifacts.

Each subheading can be converted into a Word document, which betrays the exhibitors’ conception of the exhibit as closer to a book than a museum experience- though links allow the audience to explore under self-direction, there is no video or interactive programming, so text is the dominant medium.

The exhibit is as much about archaeology as it is about early American inhabitants. Photos of archaeologists at work juxtaposed with artist’s interpretations of prehistoric scenes encourage the audience to engage with the text as a product.  Links allow the interested reader to engage deeper with the scholars by reading the study on which it was based. However, this reflexive attempt is mitigated by the fact that the exhibit is almost entirely lacking a female perspective: though one female archaeologist is portrayed in a photograph, the illustrations show only male figures and the narratives are either male-centered or genderless.