Day of archaeology 2011

One of the projects that I'm working on, alongside some other digital archaeologists (Lorna Richardson, Matthew Law, Jess Ogden, Stu Eve, Andrew Dufton and Tom Goskar) is the “The Day of Archaeology 2011”, a social media based project that will allow archaeologists working all over the world to document what they do on one day, July 29^th 2011. I'm providing server space via the Portable Antiquities Scheme's underused backup box and also configured the WordPress install and open source twapperkeeper for storing the social buzz.

This date coincides with the “Festival of British Archaeology“, which runs from 16^th – 31^st July 2011 and is one of the hundreds of events being held to celebrate archaeology in the UK and beyond.

So how does it work? Well, archaeologists taking part in the project will document their day through photography, video, facebook activity, Twitter commentary and written blog posts. These will then be collated in realtime on the project's dedicated website The day of archaeology website, which will then provide a glimpse into a day in the life of people working in archaeology, from archaeological excavations to laboratories, universities, community archaeology groups, education services, museums and offices. This project is open to everyone working or volunteering in any aspect of archaeology from anywhere in the world – and even those who have defected! Currently, over 150 people and organisations have signed up. You could be next, so give archaeology a voice!

This innovative idea, follows on from the very successful “Day of Digital Humanities” and was dreamt up by Matthew Law and Lorna Richardson and was then built upon following a Twitter conversation and subs

The project is supported by:

• The Portable Antiquities Scheme (providing server space for free)
• Council for British Archaeolog
• L-P Archaeology
• Wessex Archaeology
• UCL's Centre for Digital Humanities
• The Institute of Archaeology
• CASPAR

The hashtag for this project is #dayofarch and can be used on tweets, blog posts and flickr photos to aggregate externally. Please consider using this tag if you refer to this project.