The Day of Archaeology is an annual, 24-hour, international online event in which archaeologists and those in related fields write

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

posts about their work. It was inspired by the Day of Digital Humanities and, similarly, allows practitioners of many kinds, to document their work informally and 'provide a window into the daily lives of archaeologists from all over the world'. Though it encourages diversity rather than thematic posts, the project has some similarities to Blog Action Day.

Overview

The first event took place on 27 July 2011. The event is organised by a voluntary committee of archaeologists based in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

United States of America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

and

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

. The main site runs a customised

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...

content management system A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content (content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...

and the event is promoted through

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

and

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

pages (see

External links An internal link is a type of hyperlink on a web page to another page or resource, such as an image or document, on the same website or domain. Hyperlinks are considered either "external" or "internal" depending on their target or destination ...

). The project is supported by several British archaeological and academic organisations: server space is provided on the

Portable Antiquities Scheme The Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) is a voluntary programme run by the United Kingdom government to record the increasing numbers of small finds of archaeological interest found by members of the public. The scheme begun in 1997 and now covers m ...

servers and long-term

digital preservation In library and archival science, digital preservation is a formal endeavor to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable. It involves planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods an ...

is provided by the

Archaeology Data Service The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) is an open access digital archive for archaeological research outputs. It is located in The King's Manor, at the University of York. Originally intended to curate digital outputs from archaeological researchers ...

L-P Archaeology
and the

UCL Centre for Digital Humanities The UCL Centre for Digital Humanities is a cross-faculty research centre of University College London. It brings together digital humanities work being done in many of the university's different departments and centres, including the library se ...

provide technical and management advice. In 2011 and 2013 the event was timed to coincide with the

Festival of British Archaeology The Festival of Archaeology is a fortnight-long festival coordinated by the Council for British Archaeology (CBA). It is an annual UK-wide festival, during which events take place across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. History The ...

. The project covers any form of work that could be considered archaeology and encourages contributions from any level of professionalism.

External coverage

Several archaeologists have blogged about the project in official and personal capacities and the project committee wrote posts on various other sites, notably the

Society for Historical Archaeology The Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA) is a professional organization of scholars concerned with the archaeology of the modern world (15th century-present). Founded in 1967, the SHA promotes scholarly research and the dissemination of knowledg ...

and the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

. After the 2011 event a preliminary data mining analysis was conducted. Similarly, after the 2014 event a topic modelling and keyword analysis was published. The Day of Archaeology project was nominated for a British Archaeology Award in July 2011 in the 'Best Representation of Archaeology in the Media' category and was highly commended.

Event summaries

Data sources:{{cite web , url=http://www.dayofarchaeology.com/wrapping-up-the-day-of-archaeology-2013/ , title=Wrapping Up the Day of Archaeology 2013 , date=1 August 2013 , accessdate=30 October 2013 , author=The Day of Archaeology Team

References

External links

Day of Archaeology on TwitterDay of Archaeology on FacebookDay of Archaeology on Flickr
Public archaeology Digital humanities Science blogs Annual events Web-related events