AlunSalt: Ancient Science and the Science of Ancient Things

This blog is written by Alun Salt, a published archaeoastronomer based in Britain, who is currently working on another blog and on educational material for the Center for Interdisciplinary Science. Alun’s blog posts include responses to archaeological papers and news stories, posts about his own relevant interests (like photography) and personal matters as well. He has a particular interest in the intersections between astronomy and archaeology, so there are many posts related to both of those topics. The tone of his writing is casual and often playful, but is also critical and informative. I found the aesthetics of the blog to be a bit jarring, but the text is still readable and there are plenty of pictures to illustrate his posts. I would give this blog a rating of 7 out of 10. The blog allows comments and is authored by someone who is very willing to engage in a conversation with his audience and the archaeological community (through his posts and by replying back to comments). Unfortunately, sometimes his posts are hard to read because of awkward grammar. However, the overall experience is positive. Alun seems knowledgable and passionate, and his posts critically engage with the topics he is discussing. His audience includes both archaeologists and people interested in archaeology.

Bones Don’t Lie: News and Commentary on Bioarchaeology and Mortuary Archaeology

The second blog that I would like to mention is written by Katy Meyers, a graduate student of mortuary archaeology at the University of Michigan. What is most interesting about this blog to me is that the author is arguing for her blog to count as a scholarly publication. To this end, she has a “works cited” section at the end of every academic post and a page specifically requesting reviews and comments from her scholarly peers. From the comments, the audience of this blog seems to consist of archaeologists, teachers, students of archaeology, and people who are just interested in archaeology. Katy focuses on her specialties–mortuary and bioarchaeology–and writes informative, well-written, reflective posts about news and archaeological papers. This website is the more visually pleasing to me that AlunSalt, with well spaced and formatted text, a clean background, and a good use of color. She also uses plenty of pictures. I would give this blog a rating of 8 out of 10. I appreciated Katy’s effort to make her blog a scholarly endeavor, for example, by using research papers to discuss topics in the context of current and past archaeological work. I found everything about this blog to be pleasant and informative. And even though she cites scholars, Katy’s writing is plain and clear enough that people besides archaeologists and archaeology students should also be able to learn from it.