The Blog Year in Review

As long-time readers of this blog know, each year I do a little “Year in Review” blog post (2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, et c.). Most of these lately have pondered the demise of the blog as genre of writing (and each year a bunch of posts come out that either mark the end of the blog or defiantly declares the opposite).

From where I sit, it appears that the blog has stabilized after stumbling its way through the second decade of the 21st century. My blog’s readership was up about 10% and it appears to have been a general increase rather than driven by one or two high performing posts. In fact, I wrote a bit less this year than in years past with 233 posts (down a few posts compared to 2022, and about 10% from my heady COVID years). I wrote about 134,000 words which is about 20% below my average (although if I eliminate the COVID years, where I blogged as much to pass the time as anything, I’m only 12% below my annual average).

Here’s my annual list of my most popular posts based on views per day. Since posts tend to accrue most of their views in the first month that they’re up, more recent posts have a bit of an advantage. All but one of the top 5 posts appeared in the last 30 days.

1. Pseudoarchaeology, Esotericism, and Citizenship.  2. Classical Archaeology, Elitism, and the Weight of Structures. 3. On Al Berger. 4. Teaching Tuesday: Historical Methods. 5. Cyber Monday Download Bundle from The Digital Press. 6. Sneak Peak: An Archaeology of Roads. 7. Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? 8. Three Things Thursday: ASOR, Sun Ra, and Hope. 9. My Digital Workflow: Obsidian. 10. New Book Day: Campus Building. 11. Some Notes on Pseudoarchaeology. 12. Sam Rivers and Two Bonus Tracks. 13. The Roman Bath at Isthmia and the Hexamilion, Part 1. 14. Pre-1997 Flood Walls and Levees in Grand Forks. 15. Two Things on Publishing Tuesday. 16. Messene, Olympia, and the Greek Dark Ages. 17. Updates from The Digital Press. 18. On Slavic Pottery. 19. Teaching and Chat GPT. 20. Corinth Excavations in 2020 and 2021. 21. Survey Archaeology, Rural Sites, and Diversity. 22. Not the Next Book: Recent Advances in Pseudoarchaeology. 23. Kilns, Pools, and Lamps at Polis on Cyprus. 24. Updates from Pyla-Vigla on Cyprus. 25. Survey Archaeology and Regionality in Roman Boeotia. 26. Be More Amateur.  27. Grim. 28. A Fake Research Proposal: An Archaeological Study of Wear Patterns and Distribution of Dog Toys in a Suburban Environment. 29. A Small Book about Small Sites on a Small Island with Big Ideas. 30. Late Antique Mining on Cyprus. 31. Ten Years of Punk Archaeology.

There are some patterns. There are seven posts on books and publishing (5, 6, 10, 15, 17, 26, and 29), six posts on Greece (13, 16, 18, 20, 21, and 25), four posts on Cyprus (23, 24, 29, and 30), four posts on pseudoarchaeology (1, 8, 11, and 22), and four posts on general academic matters (2, 3, and 26). There were two on teaching (4, 19). 

I was a bit disappointed to see that my effort to share some music with folks appears not to have resonated with only one music post making the top 30 (12). My posts on Grand Forks and general “North Dakotiana” seem not to attract many views (14), but my wife’s national register nomination for the Baukol subdivision saw a good many downloads (so perhaps it’s just me!). 

After almost 15 years of blogging, I tend to blog as much for myself as for my audience, but I continue to be humbled when I discover that something that I write interests people. So, if you read, please keep reading and if you keep showing up, I’ll keep writing.

All the best in the New Year!