Experiences in science blogging: The blog Archaeologik

Abstract

This paper gives some personal insights and thoughts on the role of the public, the media and politics in regard to archaeology, resulting from the operation of the weblog Archaeologik for nearly 5 years now. Since then many relevant topics have been addressed and some feedback from the public, from colleagues, and from journalists has been given. Based on this experience, some assumptions can be developed on how the public perceives archaeology, how tensions arise from that, and which consequences can be drawn. In principle, there is a lot of public interest in archaeology, but often this is not a scientific one. However, the perception of archaeologists is rather bad, as their public relation does not communicate basic scientific principles and theories, but rather finds and fancy field methods. Archaeology has to reflect more closely on what messages and narratives it has to communicate to the public. It needs to make clear how modern society can benefit from researching the past. Social media and open access publications play a crucial role.