Two Things Writing Tuesday

I’m back from traveling and my summer research leave and while I’ll take a few days to recover from jet lag, I’m looking forward to getting back into my routine and starting the slow ramp up to the fall semester. There are two (and a half) things that are “closest to the sled” right now and I want to get sorted before the end of the month.

Thing the Half

I’m so close to being done the final report on my work with Richard Rothaus and Scott Moore at Isthmia. I previewed some of this last week, but I’m excited to share the entire report when it’s done. In other words, stay tuned!

Thing the First

In the spring, I wrote a draft of a chapter of a volume on campus crises. For whatever reason I misunderstood the directions and wrote it at twice the length that the editors wanted. This means that I need to cut this thing down in a pretty substantial way.

Before I do that, though, I want to make the full length paper available (and link to it in my more abbreviated and presumably published version). Here’s where it stands at present. Stay tuned for a shorter, more concise, and hopefully more on point paper.

Thing the Second

I’m very excited to work with David Pettegrew on paper titled “Mobilizing the Archaeological Report for the Future Interpretive Community: Linked Open Data, Analysis, and Publication.” This paper will involve a bit reading on publishing, on writing in archaeology, and on archaeology in the media.

I’m starting to think a bit about how this paper might connect with my interest in pseudoarchaeology. In part, I wonder whether the issues with pseudoarchaeology is less a scientific problem and more a media issue. In particular, it is interesting to think how the tactics used by pseudoarchaeologies both leverage existing communities and creating communities around their beliefs. In other words, archaeology isn’t just about “the science,” but also about “the media.”