Be mindful of ethics

Adhering to the ethical norms of the particular sub-disciplinary environment that you work in is very important. In Australia for example, disclosing site locations or certain types of information shared with you by community members is widely seen as being unethical. This will vary depending on what codes of ethics you are  signed up to, so make sure you take the time to read those fine details when you join a new organisation. Don’t publicise things that you shouldn’t!

In a research environment one mistake that new bloggers can easily make is to disclose data or ideas generated within your research team, that are not ready for public release. If you are working as part of a team on a project, make sure to contact directors or project leaders with a draft of your work and seek feedback (or consent). Don’t just hit publish! The same applies to field schools where there is serious research being done.

Be mindful of employment policies

Sometimes there are very clear guidelines that influence what you can write about. For example, if you work in cultural heritage management then confidentiality is a major concern. Webster (2014:223)  writes about being fired twice for using social media in this context. In one case, he says:

I was fired because I broke confidentiality by mentioning that we were on a survey for a client. The fact that the client was talking about the project to the local media was beside the point. The company had a zero tolerance policy about breaking client confidentiality, which I was not aware of. I’m sure I signed something in the confusing mountain of paperwork when I was hired, but that had been nearly a year prior to this incident

Finding good work as an archaeologist is not easy, so make sure you understand how your blogging relates to your employment situation. If there is no policy, then seek advice.

Bad writing is unprofessional

It might seem obvious, but it needs to be said: the most unprofessional thing an archaeological blogger could possibly do is to write unprofessionally. The same rules that apply to writing well in more formal contexts (assignments, scholarly papers, etc.) apply with blogging. To quote the longstanding Editor of Archaeology in Oceania, Dr Peter J. White (2006:416),  written work containing poor grammar and spelling:

“suggests that you are illiterate—and thus probably also incompetent…you should never let any of your work escape into the hands of others until you have checked it for spelling and grammatical errors. If you know that you are weak in this area, get help from someone who is better trained”.

It is far too easy to publish poorly written work to the web and you should avoid doing so at all costs.  I am not suggesting that blog posts should be written in the same style as academic papers, because the style of writing can vary depending on your intended audience. However, your work should always be free of all the normal errors that would see your work marked down in an assignment. Don’t let this put you off though. Instead, use it as a motivation to improve your writing skills and if you need advice on your writing, seek it out. You will find that your writing improves through time (and you can always go back and lightly edit errors in earlier work!).

My word that’s wordy

I personally enjoy brief, snappy blog posts that share a sharp opinion or piece of information in a few hundred words or less. It is the kind of material that is easily shared because people quite easily get the point and then click those all-important ’share’ buttons on your post. There are, of course, very good reasons to write more extended, essay-like posts (such as when you are trying to teach students!). My advice is that if you are new to writing blog posts, start at the shorter end of the spectrum—200 words or so is great. The reason is that it is much more useful to frequently write shorter pieces than it is to generate two or three 2500 word posts a year. By doing this, you build a perception of being prolific and you create more opportunities for engagement. Also, it is much easier to carefully proof short posts than it is to proof longer, more unwieldy pieces of work.

Write in a style appropriate to your audience

Everyone writes differently and it is important that you decide the most appropriate style for your blog. However, it can also be good to experiment with different approaches depending on the subject at hand. Most blogs that I read are written in first person, inject some light humour and adopt a relatively relaxed conversational style. However, some authors publish more serious academic writing on their blog and adopt a style that is more reminiscent of a scientific paper. What you do will depend on your audience, and that may vary from post to post. My only point here is to think about it before you start writing: who are you targeting and what is the best ‘voice’ to reach them? Is it  fellow archaeologists, the broader scientific community or the community at large?

My own approach is generally to write as plainly as possible, and I think that this is the best approach for most archaeological research blogs because your work will be read by more people. If you want to write an academic paper, then do so, and publish it in an academic outlet. That’s only my opinion, and I know many bloggers who are a lot more active (and successful!) than I am write very technical pieces at times.

Don’t blog in a silo

Blogging is about interacting with and acknowledging the ideas and work of others (just like archaeology really). So, make sure you read other people’s blogs and, where appropriate, and try to comment on their work. Just writing words and publishing without looking at what others are doing is probably not going to encourage them to engage with your work. If you don’t want to engage with others, then why bother with blogging at all?

Watch out for content theft!

I suspect that most long-term bloggers have experienced content theft of some form or another. Writing on the web does not mean that anyone can use your material or that you have no rights. If it has your name on it, the copyright is yours at a general level. By applying a Creative Common’s license  you make it more obvious that the content is yours and you are supported by clear terms and conditions for using your work. So, once you get started, look into this and apply an appropriate licence to your work. It’s quite easy to do and there are licenses that have been specifically developed for Australia.

Of course, the reverse rule applies to you as well. Plagiarism is plagiarism, whether the ideas or words are pilfered from a published scholarly source or a blog. I am sometimes astounded to see academics and students who pinch images off the net for lectures, with no credits or acknowledgement of the source. This is a form of plagiarism, and it is very easy to fall into this trap with a blog. Make liberal use of citations, either by linking to the source or by using more traditional citation methods. When it comes to images or other media, try to use only those that have a license of some form that allows reuse.

Get your priorities right

Undertaking high quality research is usually a key part of your job if you are a research student, postdoc, or academic. The universally recognised way of demonstrating high quality research is through producing book chapters, journal articles, books, monographs or—in the case of students—thesis drafts. These things are measurable and, often, are what you are paid to do. Ignore this basic fact at your own peril! Do not let the immediate, short-term satisfaction that comes with blogging override what should be an innate need to publish or perish. These things are  often counted when you apply for jobs, grants, or promotions and should form a central element of your communications strategy. These research outputs are also weighted much more heavily than other things, that is, they are taken much more seriously, than blog posts and other forms of media attention.

That’s not to say that blogs (or media attention) are unimportant, and I have outlined the benefits of blogging in my previous post. Generally, blogs are recognised for what they are: a form of community outreach, and a supplement to the more serious work of good research. Blogging and research supplement each other very well and novice archaeologists should seriously consider starting a blog. Just be careful, and keep your career priorities in mind. It might be harmful to your career in the medium term if blog posts—as good as they might be—are the only thing that you produce. Instead, integrate your research with your blogging and aim to use blogging as a tool publicise your research as you do it. Try not to let blogging define you as a professional. Your research outputs should do that.

References

Webster, Chris. 2014. “Fired Twice for Blogging and Social Media.” In Blogging Archaeology, edited by Doug Rocks-Macqueen and Chris Webster, 222–231. Landward Research Ltd in Association with Succinct Research and DIGITECH LLC.

White, Peter. 2006. “Producing the Record.” In Archaeology in Practice: A Student Guide to Archaeological Analyses, edited by J. Balme and A. Paterson, 410–25. Carlton, Victoria: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. (Link)

What will you write about?

Delving into the technical detail of how to start a blog is not something I want to get into here, though suffice to say it is fairly simple to get started. The Guardian has prepared a great guide that is worth reading as a starting point. The more difficult aspect of starting out is choosing what to write about. What could you possibly say that other people will want to read about?

It depends where you are at in your career. Established professionals who are active in teaching, research or in commercial archaeology should have lots to say. For students though, it may seem very daunting and difficult to carve out your own space and so my suggestion is to write professionally about your experiences of learning about archaeology. Write about your participation in field schools or write posts about visits to public sites. Aim for a local audience by preparing posts that your fellow students, lecturers, family and friends might be interested in. Write about debates or sites that you are reading about, and share resources—links to papers, upcoming conferences, interesting news items—that others may also like to read. Also, learn about web feeds and use this as a way of keeping up with other blogs and comment and respond to those where relevant. People might start doing the same in response to your material.

Research students completing a thesis at any level are potentially on the threshold of a career as a professional archaeologist. Your emerging research speciality is a great focus for blogging. Well known palaeo-blogger John Hawks provides quite a good perspective on this:

If I were starting out today, I’d blog my dissertation. Why not? Is there really anything so secret in your history and literature review that it couldn’t be read by the few hundred people who will find your blog?

Now, you don’t want to write things that would allow someone to scoop you. As a graduate student, you can’t afford to lose your projects, because they create the publications that build your record. So don’t write about research methods if they’re new and don’t blog results that you want to publish in a journal.

I agree completely. Share your research as you do it! Tell us what your project is about, and share your experiences along the way. Of course, don’t put material out that is original and should be published, but focus on breaking down some of the ideas and previous results influencing your work for the benefit of others. There is so much literature out there to read, and you are (or are becoming) a master of the literature in your particular field. Share that knowledge or the experience of acquiring it. There are many examples of people who are good at this, but one local example of a student blogging about her research that I quite like is that by a current Master of Archaeology student Susan Arthure, who writes at ‘Don’t forget your shovel’. It’s a very good blog and a good example for students starting out.

Mid-way through my own Honours degree a senior archaeologist said to me, “Honours theses are meant to be forgotten”. While I don’t agree with that point, it is  true that research theses are forgotten because they are read only by your supervisor(s), your examiners and, if you’re lucky, a few interested specialists. It’s not until you publish that work that you gain some wider recognition for your contribution. Establishing yourself as a professional archaeologist is a competitive business, and you can’t afford to make that thesis the only public face of your research efforts. By writing a good blog along the way, you increase your visibility in professional networks and develop a measurable track record that displays your research and communication skills for anyone who is interested. That’s important—not only for getting jobs, but also for getting PhD positions and large grants. If you do this, you should list your blog at the top of your CV.

Share your thoughts

I want to finish up today with the following questions, which I’ve also posted to #profarch on twitter:

• Are you an archaeology blogger? What started you and what are some of the most distinct professional benefits you’ve encountered so far (for bloggers, please feel free to shamelessly plug previous posts on the topic!)
• If you do not blog—or are not convinced that it is helpful—then tell us what factors discourage (or prevent) you from blogging as a professional archaeologist.

The point is to generate some discussion to benefit students of archaeology who might be thinking about the value of blogging.

Social media

I don’t want to get bogged down in definitions of social media, but it is worth briefly paraphrasing the range of definitions provided on the relevant Wikipedia entry, which speaks to social interaction, often focussed on user-generated content (commentary, photos, video, etc), and using web-based applications (twitter, blogger, etc). Basically then, social media can be defined most simply as using web based technologies for social interaction, often focussing on user-generated content. If you have a different view of it, please post a comment!

Blogging is an important, if not dominant, form of social media where the ‘user generated’ content is text and/or other media dropped into a chronologically ordered website. Authors create ‘posts’ and in this way blogs are similar to a journal or diary. The WordPress blog provides a very good introduction to blogging, which is worth taking some time to read before reading further if you are completely new to it. Image credits: kropekk_pl, via Pixabay Why are archaeologists interested in social media? The first issue that needs some consideration is why are archaeologists interested in social media? Many archaeology students will already be active in social media with personal Facebook or Instagram accounts packed with friends, family members and other acquaintances. Why might these tools be of value for archaeologists?

Archaeologists permeate the web because archaeology is fundamentally about the contemporary values held by people about (usually) the things (material culture, places, etc) that are emblematic of “the past”. For some archaeologists, the values that are of most importance are those held by intellectual elites in the context of western science. However, even the most ardent advocates of this form of traditional archaeology recognise that what they produce for highly specialised academic audiences is sometimes of wider value in the community. As a result, they produce media releases about the results published in otherwise inaccessible academic journals, promoting media coverage and community interest. Indeed, archaeologists have been active in the popular media in various ways since the early 20th Century and have featured in television shows since the 1950s (see Brittain and Clack 2007). So even though archaeologists often write for highly specialised academic audiences, most successful academics recognise the importance of converting their research work into outcomes that benefit the community at large.

Within the last two decades it has increasingly been the case that community engagement is grafted onto the intellectual rootstock of novice archaeologists from year one in their degrees. This is because many archaeologists now hold the view that not only do non-archaeologists (‘communities’, ‘lay’ people, ‘the public’) have strong interests in our ‘finds’, but as well as this, they are interested in the very knowledge and ideas that archaeologists produce and the way that we approach our research.

One of the key reasons for this were theoretical developments within the discipline through the late 1980s and into 1990s (i.e., post-processesual approaches) that contributed to increased reflexivity within the discipline. That is, greater reflection on the role of archaeology in society and in how we produce knowledge. This involved a reevaluation of what archaeologists actually ‘do’. For Shanks and McGuire (1996), for example, archaeology can be understood as a site or mode of cultural production, whereby:

Archaeologists take what’s materially left of the past and work on it intellectually and physically to produce knowledge through reports, papers, books, museum displays, TV programs, whatever. In this archaeology is a mode of cultural production or technology with a raw material (the fragmented past, result of formation processes) and with theories and methods that allow (or indeed hinder) the production of what archaeologists desire, whether it is an answer to a research hypothesis, general knowledge of what may have happened in the past, or a tool in a political armory in the present.

According to this view then, the knowledge we produce is not generated in a social or cultural vacuum but instead in dialogue with a range of varying interest groups. For proponents of this view, dialogue and engagement defines archaeology.

There are many different perspectives on how best to engage the public in a dialogue through archaeological research though this is beyond the scope of this post. Jeremy Sabloff—whose work students will be familiar with from earlier in the topic—has prepared a very useful summary. The key point here though is that moving into social media was a natural move for archaeologists of many persuasions. It gave us the opportunity to write more directly for the public, to enter into a direct dialogue with readers, and in doing so, to more fully realise fundamental philosophical positions on the nature of archaeological practice.

(image credits: http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3308353)

The rise of blogging

Social media as we know it now kicked off in archaeology in the early to mid-2000s, though archaeologists were active on the web long before this. For example, Kris Hurst was writing at About Archaeology from the late 1990s and there were a few early news services that reported on new finds and results, such as http://www.archaeologica.org, which, admirably, has changed little in its basic design since 2000. At this time, a lot of writing on the web involved writing HTML code with a text editor, which was a very slow and relatively inefficient form of web publishing by today’s standards. It also turned a lot of people away from writing for the web.

The development of the technology behind blogging software changed everything. I first became aware of blogging and the idea of web feeds (or RSS) in about 2002, stumbling across the work of those good folk at Boing Boing  who have been the forefront of blogging since the late 1990s. It was after 2003 that blogging took off, stimulated by the launch of more user friendly publishing platforms such as Blogger (1999, but acquired by Google and relaunched in 2003) and WordPress (2003) that allowed users to overcome previous technical challenges. In his fine history of archaeological blogging (2008), Caraher observed that academics were generally slow to move into blogging and only did so because it allowed them “to return to the public sphere without having to contend with the cultural and market forces that influence the national media”. This makes sense in relation to archaeology, where we are often unhappy with the extent and type of coverage given to archaeological stories in the media. Blogs suddenly allowed archaeologists to write their own content, which was a major shift and something of a new frontier. Instead of trying to push content into the mainstream media where content went through the cultural and corporate filter noted by Caraher, archaeologists could now write what they liked, how they liked and for whom they liked.

A few dozen well-established archaeology bloggers were pumping out posts by about 2005, typically offering commentary and information about fairly specialised topics. I’ve lost track of many of these early bloggers, but some have since emerged at the forefront of archaeological blogging today: Space Age Archaeology (run by Flinders University’s very own Dr Alice Gorman), Middle Savagery, Archaeoastronomy, A Very Remote Period Indeed, A Hot Cup of Joe, John Hawk’s weblog and the Aardvarkaeology blog. Indeed, the scope and depth of material on these and other sites is impressive. As John Hawk’s notes on his site index pages, his blog features some nine years of writing and represents many books.

Despite the early successes of these archaeological bloggers, archaeologists were still relatively slow to get into blogging, particularly in Australia. I recall participating in debates on several Australian Archaeology email list servers in the mid-2000s where, on raising the potential for blogging in Australian Archaeology, I (and several other colleagues) were lambasted by senior archaeologists who saw little potential for blogging to make any kind of contribution to the serious business of archaeology. Even in 2007-08 these views were regularly expressed. This didn’t help! On the one hand, global debates about the future of blogging were exciting and encouraging, but these were countered by the inward looking conservatism of dominant sectors of the Australian professional archaeology establishment. I know of two cases where Australian archaeological bloggers wrote under pseudonyms and dared not publicise their work for fear of public ridicule. My first blog, ‘Common Roots’ (2004-2006), was one of these and I remained anonymous. Although it attracted international readership, I made sure that it went under the radar in Australia. This was a mistake, now that I think about it.

Australian archaeology was notably slow to move into blogging and it was not until about 2012 that a major blog was established in the form of the Australian Archaeological Association’s website—which features a blog. I am only aware of several regularly updated blogs run by Australian archaeologists: the aforementioned blog by ’Dr Space Junk’, and another by Gary Vines which provides some great perspectives on consulting archaeology in Australia There are many more I’m sure, and if you run something I’m not aware of please post to the comments below and I’ll update this post.

Blogging into the future

Internationally, the number of archaeologists who write blogs has boomed since the mid-2000s. For example, Doug’s Archaeology includes a list of many hundreds of archaeology blog sites covering an incredibly diverse range of topics. Most of these are run by individuals though this is by no means the only format that blogging takes today. Archaeology’s encounter with social media is much broader than blogging, of course, but for reasons I explain in the next post blogging is a more robust and tangible form of social media interaction than most other forms, and has more distinct professional benefits as well.

What are scarred trees?

‘Scarred trees’ are simply trees that have some evidence of scarring as a result of people in the past removing bark or wood, engraving designs or motifs or cutting into trees for various reasons, including to collect food. In Australia, scarred trees have typically been created by Indigenous peoples. South eastern Australia is well known for the often large and imposing canoe scars carefully carved into the trunks of majestic river gums, and which are a common sight near waterways and wetlands. However, it is less well known that scarred trees are found in many parts of Australia and indeed, in many other parts of the world including in North America and Europe.

Scarred trees are a physical reminder of how Indigenous peoples in the past lived and are often of high importance to Indigenous communities in Australia today: they provide a link to the past and are generally a type of heritage place that communities try to preserve and protect where possible. Scarred trees are highly vulnerable to destruction via natural decay and fire while development is also a major threat as mining, urban expansion and so on see widespread clearance of otherwise undisturbed areas of forest and woodland across the country. This is particularly the case in western Cape York Peninsula where mining has considerable impacts on the local environment and where the foreseeable future is one that is dominated by ongoing mine expansion.

Scarred trees on Western Cape York

Many thousands of scarred trees occur on Aboriginal lands around Weipa, with well over 1,500 recorded on the Weipa Peninsula alone (1, 2). They are regularly found by archaeologists and Traditional Owners completing assessments before mining clearances and are frequently cut down and moved to make way for mining development. In the past few years, some Traditional Owners have chosen scarred trees of special importance and have placed these into monuments in the local area, in part to prevent them from being destroyed by mining (3).

According to local Elders, there are several different types of scar tree. Some scars were created by people cutting timber to make spear throwers or woomera as well as other  tools (4). The scar tree that is most commonly found in the Weipa area are ‘sugarbag’ scars which were created by people cutting into trees to collect the honey and wax of the stingless native bees. In the early days, a stone axe was used to create a small hole near a sugarbag hive and then a thin, spongy branch was inserted into this hole to soak up the honey. These holes would then be sealed up again so that people could come back at a later time to collect more of the honey or wax. We’ve recently suggested that this approach was a form of resource management or ‘domiculture’, or a set of economic practices and ethics that were — and still are — a major feature of Aboriginal cultural traditions in the region (5).

In the late 1800s Europeans bought iron hatchets and axes and these were also used in the collection of sugarbag right through the 1900s. Indeed, Napranum Elders who grew up in the Weipa Mission remember their parents collecting honey and exchanging this with the Missionaries who would place it into a tank beneath the Mission Superintendent’s house. It was mixed with water as a cordial-like drink, and was eaten on porridge and damper every day. Sugarbag is still collected regularly by local community members today, using similar methods to those used by their parents and grandparents.

How old are scar trees?

On western Cape York Peninsula, scars mostly occur on one species of tree — the Cooktown ironwood — which as the name suggests is a tree whose timber is extremely dense and hard and is well known to be quite difficult to cut. This tree is also quite slow growing, with one study suggesting that a tree that was about 35 cm in diameter at chest height had taken between 180 and 300 years to grow, with growth rates of about 0.12 cm each year (6). What this means is that average sized ironwoods are likely to be at least several hundred years old and that the very large trees with 60 cm or more in diameter may in fact be much older than we had previously thought. Scars have been recorded on ironwoods of all shapes and sizes, and even found on ironwoods that have long since died, so  it is likely that some scarred trees date to the period before Europeans arrived in the region.

There have been no previous attempts to discover the age of scarred trees in the region and only one other study in Australia that has attempted to do so (7), though this was highly destructive and required that the tree be felled — which is not always an option when it comes to managing Indigenous heritage sites.

The presence or absence of iron axe marks does give us a general estimate of the age of a scar and it is likely that scars with sharp and distinct axe marks were made after the late 1880s. However, many scars do not have clear axe marks suggesting they might be older than this. The techniques we are using potentially allow us to place scarring events into a 5-10 year time bracket allowing both community members and us to place specific trees into a particular historical context.

There are a number of reasons we are interested in developing a technique to effectively date scarred trees:

1. Having information about the probable age of a scarred tree will help to better manage these sites when difficult decisions about development are being made. For example, Traditional Owners may wish to manage scarred trees made in the 1960s, 1920s or 1850s in very different ways.
2. It will provide historical information that can feed into a range of community heritage work including educational and interpretive projects.
3. It will contribute to more academic research questions about the history of the region, particularly in terms of understanding what life was like for Indigenous people between the early 1800s and the mid 1900s and the ways in which the arrival of settler-invaders influenced Indigenous wellbeing.

So, this week we’re trying to relocate scarred trees on Alngith Country that have been recorded over the past 8-10 years. Next week, we’ll be selecting those trees that Alngith People want to core. Over the coming week I’ll post more information on the method we’re using and some images and video from the field.

Further reading:

I’m yet to upload my own publications here but if you are looking for a copy of something I’ve written just contact me and I’ll send it to you via express carrier pigeon.

1. Morrison, M.J., D.A. McNaughton and J. Shiner 2010 Mission-Based Indigenous Production at the Weipa Presbyterian Mission, Western Cape York Peninsula (1932–66). International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 14(1), pp.86–111.

2. Shiner, J. and M.J. Morrison. 2009 The contribution of heritage surveys towards understanding the cultural landscape of the Weipa bauxite plateau. Australian Archaeology, 68, pp.52–55.

3. Barkley, R. et al. 2008 Collaboration and innovation in the management of cultural landscapes in mining contexts, western Cape York, far north Queensland. Historic Environment, 21(3).

4. Morrison, M.J. et al. 2012 New approaches to the archaeological investigation of culturally modified trees: a case study from western Cape York Peninsula. Journal of the Anthropological Society of South Australia, 35, pp.17–51.

5. Morrison, M.J. and Shepard, E. [Forthcoming] The archaeology of “sugarbag” production: post-contact Indigenous economic diversification within colonial intercultural settings in Cape York Peninsula, north eastern Australia. Journal of Field Archaeology.

6. Cook, A.D. et al. 2005 Sustainable harvest rates of ironwood, Erythrophleum chlorostachys, in the Northern Territory, Australia. Australian Journal of Botany, 53, pp.821–826.

7. Long, A. et al. 2002 The origin and date of two scarred trees at Horsham Saleyards, Horsham, Western Victoria. A report to Horsham Rural City Council and Goolum Goolum Aboriginal Cooperative, Horsham.

1. Planning Planning Planning!

I didn’t plan my PhD studies at all well. You should. A carefully thought through PhD project will result in a much better thesis and you will emerge with a more rounded set of skills, knowledge and experience. There are two points I think are of special importance:

• Make sure you know why you are here. All theses have a question. Write yours up early and develop it through detailed literature reviews. What is your question? What gaps will it fill? What literature do you need to read? What contribution will you make? You can’t really begin to write or carry out your research until you understand why you are doing it. Do you really know what you’re doing? Find out by writing it up sooner, not later.
• Develop a thesis structure as soon as you can (but know it will change). Writing up a thesis structure and even a timeline of when you will complete key chapters will help you to organise your time and to think through in detail what specifically you need to do. Consult with your advisor(s) and prioritise/organise your time. Ideally, by the end of year 2 (in a 3 year program), you should have nothing more to do other than to finish writing.

2. Treat it like a job!

You have 3 years, maybe 3.5. For the first 1-2 years it’ll be very smooth and enjoyable.  You’ll make friends, you’ll feel important and privileged. However, I’m here to tell you that if you do not work in the first 1-2 years your last 1-2 years will be misery and pain.

Getting to your office/cubicle by 10 am, having coffee and socialising until 11, followed by an hour or two of catching up on email and then ‘doing lunch’ ahead of an afternoon of photocopying is not a day of work: it’s a day of messing about and avoiding work.

So, treat your PhD like a job. It’s a 3 year contract where you are expected to do 40 hours per week. The social life of a PhD candidate is important, as I outline below, but it’s only part of the reason you are here. You are here to learn, think, engage,  contribute and write.  Balance those things. You just look silly otherwise (and did I mention the potential misery and pain?).

3. Identify key skills and learn them quickly.

This is a simple point. Identify any critical skills you need to master in order to complete your research, such as new analytical techniques or how to use  new software, and learn them as quickly as you can. Take advantage of any professional development courses in your University. Focus on this in the first year if you can, but it’s never to late to learn.

4. Organise your research

The ‘data’ and materials you are analysing in your thesis will vary depending on your project so it’s difficult to generalise about how best to deal with that. Seek advice in your field: is there a particular system you need to be using? Find out quickly and master it.

We all use literature. Use a reference manager such as Zotero or Mendeley. They will save you time and help to organise your reference lists when you are writing your final draft.

Photocopying is old school and uncool. Scan things and use OCR to make them text searchable. If you use the reference managers above, you can search across a whole database (including inside the PDFS) for terms. That’s a very powerful and useful tool if you have 1500 PDFs.

Finally, take good notes when you read. Copy quotes and include page numbers, or summarise key points. Include those notes in your database: it becomes very useful over time. In my current teaching role I regularly rely on my notes to remind myself of what people said or of key results.

5. Always write

Of all the skills I gained in a PhD, learning to write was the most important. My writing style is far from perfect and that is one of the reasons I write a blog. You can always write better and so you need to start developing that skill now. Write paper summaries or blog posts (see below) and start writing chapters as soon as you can. You’re here to write a thesis and so the sooner you can start writing the better.

There’s a twitter meme, #200words I think, and I don’t remember who said it first, but the basic idea is to write 200 words a day on something. Every single day. Do that, rinse and repeat for 3 years and you have yourself a thesis.

6. Start building networks

I am not a fan of the word ‘network’ but everyone will tell you that these are what you need to get on in academic or professional life. This is true to some extent: your time as a PhD student is when you begin to develop the relationships that might ultimately lead to professional opportunities like jobs or grants. That’s important, but professional relationships are perhaps more important because they provide opportunities to engage with others: to learn, to share your ideas and to influence debate.Focus on that, not on building vapid ‘contact lists’.

Personally, I won’t bother to engage with new people at conferences unless they’re interested in discussing ideas or debating  important issues. You don’t go to conferences for speed-dating style ‘networking’, you want to build intellectual relationships and to converse, listen and learn. There are a a few ways to do this:

• Get to know others in your local research environment. Go to social events, join local organisations and if no such networks exist then start one. Even just a ‘coffee club’ or reading group to meet now and again can be really stimulating and helpful for all involved.
• Focus on meeting PhD students working on similar issues in other locations. Writing a thesis is very competitive, but that shouldn’t mean you ignore other people doing similar work. That reeks of arrogance.
• Identify the established people that you would like to meet. Don’t stalk them, but having a vague list of people you would like to meet can help you to focus your efforts.

7. Attend conferences, seminars and symposiums.

These are very critical to professional life and can be very valuable for students to participate in.  I would question the value of the ‘networking’ you might think you are doing at a dingy conference afterparty at 2 am in the morning. I revel in conference parties as much as the next person, but they’re not the primary reason you attend: you attend conferences to learn and meet people and you make a better impression when sober.

Go to events and present if you can. It’s daunting, but the best way to meet people is to stand up and tell them what you’re doing!  Be modest if you’re starting out, focus on the work and not on promoting yourself. The quality of the work is the evidence of your ability as a researcher. If you’re new to presenting papers, start out in your own research environment or ask a group of friends or colleagues to listen to your presentation. Whatever you do, don’t write your presentation the night before you are supposed to present. That always looks sloppy.

Listen and ask questions. If you’re interested in someone’s work in particular, read up on their work beforehand and then corner them and ask questions. You might even be able to arrange a short meeting with them over a coffee or breakfast. (once again though, stalking is not cool!)

8. Have you heard about the internets?

Ok, well you made it this far so I know you’re on top of that particular technology. I include this because I’m frequently confronted by people who have limited knowledge of the potential role of web-based media for scholarly discussion and broader engagement. I could go on at length about this, but let me make several critical points:

• Facebook is not social media. It’s a silo and in my view it’s not at all about professional networking and communication. Most of the Facebook interactions I see are people posting personal commentary and rarely anything that I could be bothered to read. That’s ok, and Facebook is good for keeping in touch with friends, but you need more than that as a researcher.
• Read blogs. There are some very good people writing on the web in your field. Find them, read what they say and learn from their style. They’re a great space for discussion and asking questions as well.
• Own your own space. Start a professional blog. Share things and write for others. You want to let the world know that you are trying to make a contribution. Make a long-term commitment to this and build up a portfolio of work.
• Use twitter. It’s fairly open and is a great way to share information or to see what like-minded people are doing. If you are following people who are not posting useful material, drop them like a stone! (It’s the internet you can do that!)

There might be other useful networks, but I have found Twitter to be most valuable for meeting others both in my own field and beyond. I like that fact that non-professionals sometimes read what I say on Twitter, and that’s an important part of what we do: communicating and reaching out beyond our conferences and lecture theatres.

9. Find some work-life balance

A PhD is a long and potentially very lonely road: 3 years, maybe 4. Don’t wear yourself out too quickly.

Make sure you do your 40 hrs per week. If you can do a few more that’s ok, but stay healthy and happy. A thesis will eat into your life until you’re nothing more than a hollowed and burnt out shell, hunched over a keyboard talking to yourself until 3 am in the morning. That’s unavoidable if you want to finish, but by trying to achieve some work-life balance early you will set yourself up for a final year with a touch less pain and misery.

Also, take holidays – you’re allowed (usually) – and make time for your friends and family.  Their support is what you need to get through.

So good luck!

I’d love to hear if anyone has any other ideas or thoughts on what I’ve outlined here and I am, of course, happy to answer any questions.

Earliest evidence of ground-edge axes, Arnhem Land

Geneste, J.-M., David, B., Plisson, H., Delannoy, J.-J. and Petchey, F. (2012) ‘The Origins of Ground-edge Axes: New Findings from Nawarla Gabarnmang, Arnhem Land (Australia) and Global Implications for the Evolution of Fully Modern Humans’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 22(01):1–17.

The grinding of stone to make sharp cutting edges did not evolve with the emergence of biologically modern humans in Africa, but late in the Pleistocene at the completion or nearcompletion of the Out-of-Africa 2 migration. Here we discuss the earliest securely-dated fragment of ground-edge axe from Australia, dated at 35,500 cal. bp, an age slightly older or comparable to the earliest ages for edge-grinding from the Pacific Ocean’s western seaboard. In this region ground-edge axes did not evolve with the emergence of agriculture, nor for the clearance of forests, but, rather, as socially mediated technology, part of the development of symbolic storage that is the hallmark of the evolution of cognitively modern humans at the geographical end, during, or following, Out-of-Africa 2.

Aboriginal mortuary tree in southwestern Victoria

Richards, Thomas, Catherine M Bennett, and Harry Webber. 2012. “A Post-contact Aboriginal Mortuary Tree from Southwestern Victoria, Australia.” Journal of Field Archaeology 37 (1): 62–72.

Here we document the investigation of the first Australian Aboriginal mortuary tree found since the early 20th century and the first studied by archaeologists and Aboriginal traditional owners. In 2001, a landowner discovered Aboriginal skeletal remains inside a fallen, dead tree while evaluating the tree’s potential as firewood, leading to the investigation of the site. The tree was located near Moyston, in southwestern Victoria, in traditional Djab Wurrung country and held the partial skeletons of three Aboriginal individuals—two adults and a child. Clay pipe-stem wear on several teeth belonging to the two adults indicates that these remains were broadly contemporaneous secondary placements from the early post-contact period (ca. a.d. 1835‐1845). Along with five additional mortuary trees within 30 km of the Moyston tree, this practice constitutes a previously unknown traditional mortuary pattern and contributes to our understanding of the complex mortuary behavior of the Aboriginal people of southwestern Victoria.

Impact of the dingo on the thylacine (Tasmanian Tigers)

Fillios, Melanie, Mathew S. Crowther, and Mike Letnic. 2012. “The Impact of the Dingo on the Thylacine in Holocene Australia.” World Archaeology 44 (1): 118–134.

The thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) was one of Australia’s largest predators, but became extinct in mainland Australia soon after the arrival of a new predator, the dingo (Canis lupus dingo) around 3500 bp. Evidence implicating the dingo in the thylacine’s extinction has been equivocal, largely because thylacines are thought to be considerably larger than dingoes. Thus, other concurrent factors, such as shifts in human technology and population increase as well as climate change, have been cited to explain their extinction. Here we present new morphological evidence that female mainland Holocene thylacines were actually smaller than dingoes. We discuss these findings against archaeological and contemporary ecological evidence concerning dingoes’ environmental impacts, and provide evidence that, as novel predators, dingoes induced a trophic cascade that had dramatic impacts on the fauna and economy of Holocene Australia. We suggest that dingoes, owing to their larger brains and body size, were likely a primary agent for the extinction of the thylacine from mainland Australia.

That’s all! If there’s something recent that I’ve missed (likely) feel free to point it out in the comments. I’ll try to collect a few more for the next AIACH wrap.

Authoritative sources?

Coincidentally, I’ve just been writing up a guide for my students on how to evaluate the quality of sources to help them decide what is and is not an appropriate source to include in formal writing (evidently some students struggle with the idea that a blog post or National Geographic article does not necessarily have the same scholarly status as a peer reviewed book or journal). This has meant pointing out to them what constitutes a good source and just why published, peer reviewed items are preferable. I’m sure I’ve oversimplified it and no doubt readers will point out flaws in my logic: but the only thing that makes a scholarly source more authoritative than, say, a blog post or PDF manuscript posted online is:

1. the fact that they are peer reviewed by people with appropriate expertise and track record in the field, typically by an editor and two anonymous reviewers,
2. authors use some system of acknowledging their own sources of ideas and information.

Somehow though, the status of the publisher has come to be interpreted as a third indicator of scholarly merit.  There is a deeply held perception in archaeology at least that manuscripts or books published by high profile publishers are inherently better than those published in localised journals with low readership, or monographs with low print runs. Why? I expect because they have larger print runs, higher rejection rates and on the whole are potentially more influential. Ostensibly, higher rejection rates means that the quality of materials published are on the whole better quality - according to the (potentially personal) criteria of the editor and reviewers. This is often true, but equally we’ve all read fantastic books or papers published by relatively small or obscure publishers. Good work is good work, regardless of where it is published.

Furthermore, not all academic publishers make huge profits, and as Mike Taylor at Sauropod Vertebrae notes, publishers do have a right to make a living and as a few posts on AASNet also note, large scale publishing is expensive. Regardless, the larger publishing houses are evidently profit driven and this must influence (or determine) what is published. So, in a sense, the market economy exerts a considerable influence on what constitutes scholarly material.  It also potentially places brakes on the intellectual output of particular disciplines, and I expect that it is possible to quantify the number of  papers able to be published within a field in any year.  That  makes me feel a tad uneasy.

More OA is good

I won’t go on beating this drum, I’m sure many others within the science blogging and open source publishing scene have made these and many other points previously. To my mind there is clearly a significant opportunity (and need) for an online, peer reviewed and open access journal publishing a broader array of material, particularly original data and monographs (grey literature!), rapid (near to real-time) discussion and debate, items not suited (or acceptable) to print journals (due to length, topic, or that are too ‘data rich’ for example) and incorporating non-printable media. PLoS One is a good model, but its science focus constrains those of use who work across the social sciences and humanities and the scale and volume of papers is much larger than what I’m thinking. Queensland Archaeological Research is another good model - it’s very small scale and the costs of managing this would be negligible. There are plenty of open access journals in archaeology already, just not necessarily in Australia, so it’s not a fundamentally new concept.

We need to open publishing in Australian archaeology to the wider opportunities afforded by the web in order to encourage more rapid dissemination of ideas and information, and to help make the outcomes of archaeological research more widely accessible while maintaining a focus on accuracy and rigour. Organisations such as the Australian Archaeological Association should at least explore the opportunities and implications of such a strategy and consider the public benefit that may stem from some form of online only, open access publishing platform.