Picture: That’s me, taking a photo of some black squiggly lines in the ground. Photo taken by Jenn.
As the title says, this is the inaugural “First Blog Post”. I’ll keep it short, because I really don’t have much to talk about right now. Also because I’m hungry and dinner won’t make itself.
Why am I starting this website/blog? I’ve been working in the field, as a CRM osteoarchaeologist, for almost 5 years now. I remember when I was first starting out I would look at other archaeologists with admiration, listening to their stories of all the amazing sites and artifacts they had found or studied. I asked a ton of questions, looking for their guidance with the idea that “they’ve been doing this for x many years, they must know what they’re doing”. Now, 5 years later, I find myself in their shoes, having new archaeologists and/or students coming to me with their questions and looking for guidance. As such, two things have become abundantly clear about archaeologists: 1) we don’t always know what we’re doing. 2) Not everything we do is awesome. Sometimes archaeology thoroughly sucks.
With those two ideas in mind, plus the fact that 4 years after having graduated with my BA I’m finally going back to school for a MA, I decided to start a blog where I can candidly discuss my experiences as an osteoarchaeologist and as a student. Though I’ve got a lot of cool stories to share about awesome sites or artifacts or projects I’ve been part of (well, I think they’re cool), I can also relate to all the students or recent archaeology graduates out there who are going through a rough patch, or dealing with a thoroughly sucky situation. I’ve been in thoroughly sucky situations and struggled, both in the past and recently. I’ll be as honest as I can in my blog posts. If something is great I’ll write about it. But if something is super awful, I’ll write about that too. We’ve ALL had terrible experiences, and I hope my shared stories can help other archaeologists/students realize that they’re not the only ones dealing with crap. We’re all in this together.
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