In a post earlier this week I provided a brief account of why blogging is of interest to archaeologists and also touched on aspects of the history of ‘archaeo. blogging’. I’ve taken the time to do this to provide students in my Introduction to Professional Archaeology class with a background to blogging and social media in archaeology, which I argue is an important part of professional communication in the discipline today.

There’s been a bit of talk on the Australian Anthropology Society email list (AASNet) about open and commercial publishing, and the future of academic publishing in anthropology in Australia. This was prompted by a post about the obscene profits of commercial publishers, the content of which irked many, and I think the issues raised in both contexts have a lot of relevance to the future of publishing in Australian archaeology. The latter post makes the very strong point that commercial publishers make a lot of money as the data below on Elsevier’s profits suggests: