PAN ISSUE 6
DECEMBER 2019
We hope you've enjoyed past issues of Public Archaeology Notes (see Archives below). Please feel free to distribute Public Archaeology Notes to your networks, constituencies, and various communities. Email us interesting news and resources, so we can share with everyone! Our contact information may be found at the bottom of this newsletter.
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PAN Has a New Editor
Having served as the Coordinator of the Society for American Archaeology Network of State Coordinators, as Editor of the Society for American Archaeology PEC Network of State Coordinators Facebook Page, and as creator and Editor of PAN over the past 3 years, Giovanna Peebles (Vermont, SAA Public Education Committee) has handed over the trowel to a new Network Volunteer Team: Melissa Zabecki (Arkansas State Coordinator), Bernard Means (PEC member and Virginia State Coordinator), and me - Rachel Kulick (Ontario Provincial Coordinator). We will be working with each other, Elizabeth Reetz (SAA PEC Chair), and Beth Pruitt (SAA Manager of Education and Outreach) to continue to coordinate public archaeology education and outreach efforts. We will greatly miss Giovanna in this role, but we are happy that Giovanna will have more time for her other endeavors.
A bit about me, the new PAN Editor: I am a geoarchaeologist, originally from New Jersey, and now working at the University of Toronto, where I act as the Curriculum Support Officer for the Department of Historical Studies and as a Sessional Lecturer in the Depts. of Visual Studies and Classical Civilization. My current research projects are on Crete, Cyprus, and Hawaii. Thanks to Giovanna's invaluable guidance during this transition, I look forward to presenting you with PAN Issue 6 and to communicating with the State/Provincial Coordinators and the public archaeology community.
Photo: Rachel Kulick, in her University of Toronto Mississauga office.
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Award Nomination Deadline: Dec. 20, 2019
The deadline to nominate a project for the SAA Award for Excellence in Public Education is December 20, 2019. The category this year is “media and technology.” The SAA awards page details the process for submitting a nomination online. Questions may be sent to the chair of the nominating committee, Meredith Langlitz (mlanglitz@archaeological.org). |
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Notes from the SAA Headquarters:
By Elizabeth Pruitt, PhD, RPA
Manager, Education and Outreach, Society for American Archaeology
SAA Outreach with Girls Inc. D.C.
Sometimes they let me escape from the SAA offices, and this summer I got to spend a week with 50 girls in D.C. talking about archaeology! We partnered with Girls Inc. D.C. as part of their summer STEM and Leadership Academy. We used Project Archaeology “Investigating Shelter” materials to “excavate” a Midwestern wickiup. We mended ceramics, made colonoware pots, visited an excavation in Alexandria, VA, and heard a panel of local professionals share their experiences as women in archaeology. Afterschool Alliance visited one morning and wrote up an article about our activities that day.
The program was only possible through funds from SAA’s Public Education Initiative, so if you have donated to SAA in the past, thank you! Because of the program’s success, it will now be part of my Education and Outreach budget going forward, so I will be able to make this an annual event. I’m hoping that I can build a closer relationship with Girls Inc. DC so that we can work together, not just during the summer, but in their afterschool programming as well.
PBS cartoon series: Molly of Denalili
This summer 2019, PBS started a cartoon series called Molly of Denali. It features First Nations main characters and teaches children how to find credible information through historical sources, maps, oral histories, books, photos, and more. This could be a great resource for educators to introduce media literacy as an important aspect of research. |
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Spotlight: Archaeology Awareness Month
By Michael Moore, Director and State Archaeologist
Tennessee Council for Professional Archaeology (TCPA)
In September 2018, the Tennessee Council for Professional Archaeology recognized Tennessee Archaeology Awareness Month by hosting our second annual Archaeology Day. For the last two years the event has been a truly collaborative effort involving both avocational and professional archaeologists from various interest organizations, private contracting firms, multiple state and federal agencies, and archaeology students and faculty from universities across the state. Geared toward kids; it’s fun for all ages with a wide variety of archaeology-related activities, informational booths, a lecture series, storytelling, games, and even an archaeology photo booth. Some of the activities included a mock excavation, basket-weaving, prehistoric pottery-making, flint-knapping, atl atl-throwing, archery, archaeological mapping, and tombstone carving. Participants learned about stratigraphy, geology, cave art, historic artifacts, zooarchaeology, metal detecting and much more. All the kids who attended received a free “Field Notebook” full of fun activities to take home. This year the event drew a crowd of around 600 kids and adults who got to experience being an archaeologist for the day, learning about Tennessee’s history and prehistory, and gaining a better understanding of the importance of preserving the clues to our shared past. We look forward to hosting the event again for many Septembers to come. |
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Spotlight: 2019 State Archaeology Posters
At the 2019 SAA Annual Meeting in Albuquerque, NM, the winners of the State Archaeology Celebration Poster Contest were selected by a popular vote of conference participants. Below are 2019's first, second, and third-place winning posters, respectively: Alaska, Wyoming, and California. Higher-resolution images of all posters may be downloaded from the SAA website. |
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Spotlight: Outreach Campaigns
Connecticut
In memoriam: Brian Jones, PhD, Connecticut PEC State Co-Coordinator
Prior to his passing this July 2019, Dr. Brian Jones, since 2014, led the Connecticut Office of State Archaeology and the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History public programs in public archaeology outreach endeavors. The following programs were led by Brian and are but a few examples of his exemplary contributions to public archaeology.
Kids’ Archaeology Week program 
The CT Office of State Archaeology and the CT State Museum of Natural History public programs held the 13th and 14th years of the Kids’ Archaeology Week summer program (in 2018 and 2019 respectively) at the site of an 18th century house on University of Connecticut property. A former Teachers Dig participant produced an educational video based on the 2018 field week “What Does an Archaeologist Really Do?".
Photo: Farewell House Kids' Dig, 2018. Photo courtesy of Brian Jones.
Educators’ Archaeology Week & Vets’ Archaeology Week
The programs also included the 3rd and 4th years (in 2018 and 2019) of the Educators’ Archaeology Week followed by the new Vets’ Archaeology Week (in 2018), both at the 17th-18th century Mason/Marshall site in Windsor, CT. In early August in both 2018 and 2019, the CT State Museum of Natural History Adult Field School and Friends of the Office of State Archaeology (FOSA) Field School were conducted at the 17th Hollister Site in Glastonbury, CT.
 Photo: Hollister site excavations in 2019
One-day Public Archaeology Events
In addition to these more-focused 1-week programs, in 2018, CT ran one day public archaeology events for local Historical Societies in Glastonbury, Stonington, and East Lyme. This included a pilot multidisciplinary program with a Hartford area riding group and summer camp program known as the Ebony Horsewomen. This program consisted of four stations rotated through by about 40 kids including archaeology, environmental science, urban gardening and music by a local jazz musician influenced by his Native American roots. The program was, in-part, financially supported by the Connecticut Humanities and FOSA.
Photo: Ebony Horsewomen program in 2018. Photo courtesy of Brian Jones.
All of these events were also mentored by experienced FOSA volunteers, without whom the programs would not have been possible. Most of the 2018-2019 summer activities were documented daily on the OSA Facebook page, which contains additional photos and videos; more information on the programs may be found via the Office of State Archaeology.
Indiana 
The Ohio Valley Urban and Historic Archaeology Symposium and IAC Workshop – Historic Archaeology and Artifacts took place on August 3 – 4, 2019. The event was sponsored by the Indiana Archaeology Council and the University of Indianapolis Shaheen College of Arts & Sciences.
Photo: At a recent Indiana State Fair (2018), the Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology hosted an Archaeology Roadshow. The public was welcomed to bring artifacts for identification, and to ask questions. Dr. Henry Professional Archaeologist was on hand as well.
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Spotlight: Online Technical Journals
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Spotlight: Conference Events
Family Science Days (AAAS)
 After a busy weekend of public outreach, sometimes an archaeologist just needs a cup of tea and a hug from a dinosaur. In February, SAA staffed a booth at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in DC. AAAS holds a Family Science Days weekend in association with their meeting, inviting the public to do hands-on activities, hear speakers, and learn about sciences of all kinds. With the help of multiple archaeological organizations (Archaeology in the Community, the Virtual Curation Lab, and DC Archaeology, among others), we fit about 15 archaeologists into a 10x10 foot booth! Families who visited us played with 3D printed replicas, excavated a “dig box,” measured artifacts, and learned how to incise pottery. Scientists from all different disciplines shared in these two days of unbridled curiosity, wonder, and enthusiasm with the public.
Photo: SAA Manager, Education and Outreach Beth Pruitt hugs a T-Rex who was prowling the hall at Family Science Days. Photo by Bernard Means
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Spotlight: Educational & Collaboration Resources
- To facilitate the sharing of educational resources, skills, and expertise to those publics engaged in interpreting, educating about, and otherwise exploring past human lifeways.
- To advocate for, and generate public stewardship of, our endangered cultural resources.
The School for Advanced Research (SAR) recently posted new materials on guidelines for collaboration between Native and non-Native museum professionals and communities intending to work collaboratively. |
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Spotlight: Virtual Museums
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Spotlight: Archaeology Podcasts
Podcast: The Dirt Podcast
This podcast is delivered by Anna Goldfield and Amber Zambelli and features a different archaeology theme each week. New episodes are released weekly, on Sundays.
Website: http://www.thedirtpod.com
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Spotlight: Blogging Archaeology
This newsletter highlights the archaeology blog of Dr. Doug Rocks-Macqueen. Doug posts on various useful and public archaeology-oriented themes. His emphasis on video-recording lectures is huge, and this practice serves as an excellent example to fellow archaeologists (or heritage/historic preservation professionals in general) to record important, and not-so-important, lectures and programs.
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Check out OKPAN's website for information, news, and events, and to connect to OKPAN via other forms of social media such as their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
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