The Voices of the Past logo grew from an archaeological image that unexpectedly resembled the RSS symbol: a bird motif from a 1,000-year-old pot associated with Middle Mississippian iconography. The post traces how an ancient visual form became the basis for a modern digital identity—an unusually literal expression of the project’s attempt to connect heritage and networked media.
Tag Archives: Archaeology
Posts about archaeological sites, fieldwork, excavation, survey, public archaeology, archaeological interpretation, and stewardship of archaeological resources.
Paging the Past: A compelling gaze into “the belly button of the ancient world”
A review of Michael Scott’s history of Delphi, focusing on the site’s remarkable political, religious, and archaeological longevity. The book succeeds by making a dense history legible through narrative, strong illustrations, and a substantial treatment of the modern archaeological record—an especially useful bridge between ancient significance and the site visitors encounter today.
Paging the Past in “Herculaneum: Past and Future”
A review of Andrew Wallace-Hadrill’s Herculaneum: Past and Future, examining how archaeology, conservation, architecture, geology, material culture, and site management combine to reveal the ancient city as both a preserved place and an ongoing preservation challenge.
iPads break digital ground in Pompeii archaeological research
Archaeologists at Pompeii were among the first to use iPads as field-documentation tools, replacing parts of a paper-heavy workflow with direct digital recording at the excavation site. Steven Ellis discusses how the experiment changed data collection, communication, and research practice while attracting attention from Apple and the wider public. The project captures an important transition: mobile technology moving from consumer novelty into the everyday infrastructure of archaeological fieldwork.
Talking Pyramids’ Vincent Brown on Managing News Content with Social Tools
Egyptology enthusiast Vincent Brown discusses using podcasts, blogs, Twitter, and other social tools to build an online community around ancient Egypt and the pyramids. The conversation moves beyond simply publishing content to questions of curation: how to find relevant material, shape useful updates, use hashtags effectively, and create a recognizable digital presence around a specialized field of knowledge.
Paisley’s Past, Part II: Building the team, organizational support and funding
The second Paisley’s Past installment shows community archaeology moving from idea to organization. Claire Casey describes assembling a multidisciplinary team, conducting reconnaissance, building relationships with local institutions, seeking funding, and creating the support structure needed for a multi-year project. The piece is valuable because it makes visible the less glamorous work behind participatory heritage: partnerships, credibility, logistics, persistence, and the gradual conversion of enthusiasm into a viable community initiative.
The Archaeological Box’s Matt Thompson on developing membership websites and refining the use of social media as a support mechanism
Matt Thompson describes building The Archaeological Box as a bilingual, media-rich online resource for archaeologists using Drupal, maps, podcasts, professional accounts, and other community features. What began as a way for a small group to share scattered resources grew into a larger experiment in digital infrastructure. The conversation examines membership models, content management, and social media as support for a substantive knowledge platform rather than an end in itself.
Can you help this heritage project? Bringing “Paisley’s Past” into the 21st Century with community archaeology
Paisley’s Past began with frustration that an important Scottish town’s heritage was being neglected—and with the realization that waiting for someone else to act was not enough. This first installment follows the project as it moves from complaint to a proposed multi-year community archaeology initiative. By publishing the process while it was still forming, Voices turned the project itself into a participatory case study, inviting others to share experience and help shape what came next.
Meet the Blogger: Kurt Thomas Hunt on putting the sexy back in archaeology
Kurt Thomas Hunt built Sexy Archaeology as both a personal voice and a deliberately recognizable digital brand for archaeology. This interview explores how he combined blogging, photography, social media, and a bit of entrepreneurial experimentation to make the field more approachable and energetic. Beneath the playful branding is a serious question about professional communication: how can archaeologists reach wider audiences without draining the discipline of substance?
Exploring Archaeology on the Social Web
David Connolly and Maggie Struckmeier survey archaeology’s uneven adoption of social media, highlighting projects that use online networks for genuine participation rather than simple self-promotion. Their examples span communities, blogs, and collaborative platforms, but the central distinction is behavioral rather than technological: the strongest projects create interaction, usefulness, and shared identity. The piece captures archaeology learning that an online presence is not the same thing as an online community.