Archaeology in Social Media | Academia.edu Chronicles 01

Many readers of this blog are, I think, familiar with the rather excellent Academia.edu site. For those of you who are not, I recently described it as ‘Facebook for nerds’ … it has all the general features of its better-known social media cousin – you set up your own profile, follow other people (and hope they follow you), post stuff, connect … it’s pretty simple! Except … instead of posting pictures of cats, you post PDF copies of your published papers and lectures. In a world where conducting good research & writing good papers is no longer enough, you’ve got to get your work to your audience. Think about it … Researcher A is a wonderful academic and he publishes his fine material in a really well peer reviewed and respected journal. Researcher B is just as good, publishes in similarly august journals … but she decides to make PDF copies of these available on Academia.edu. In a perfect world they should achieve equal recognition and fame etc. … but in today’s world where decent internet connections are much more common and cheaper than well-stocked physical libraries, the Researcher with the best public outreach is the one that will reach the widest audience. Wide readership translates to larger numbers of citations in further academic works and … eventually/hopefully … this translates into greater academic renown, respectability, promoteability, and even tenure (the Holy Grail of academia). Even if you are, like me, an ‘independent researcher’ with none of these concerns, the ability to read current work and interact with the important thinkers in your area of study is exceptionally important and allows one to remain in touch with and part of current developments.

A number of internet services have emerged in recent years to service this burgeoning market, but my favourite is Academia.edu. There are many reasons to like it, including that it’s free to all and you don’t need an account of your own to view contents. However, if you’d like to download copies of PDFs or use any of the other features (such as messaging etc.) you’ll need a to create a personal profile. As an aside, I’d add that setting up your own profile is a very good idea as it generates a newsfeed, similar to the Facebook ‘Wall’ that delivers details of the latest updates. You can read papers, download them, and even bookmark them for future reference. As a way of highlighting what’s out there for Irish archaeology (well, mostly Irish stuff, but some other material that also caught my eye), I want to do at least one blog post on the topic … but maybe more, if there’s an interest. What follows is a completely partisan and biased list of what I think is cool on Academia.edu. If you think I missed something (maybe something by yourself), please feel free to let me know & I’ll add it into a future post. In the meantime, sign up & follow me too!


Rick Schulting: Sticks, Stone and Broken Bones: Neolithic Violence in a European Perspective
Rick Schulting: "In this chambered tumulus were found cleft skulls...": an assessment of the evidence for cranial trauma in the British Neolithic
Rick Schulting: Revisiting Quanterness: new AMS dates and stable isotope data from an Orcadian chamber tomb

 Ian Armit: Violence and society in the deep human past

 John Bradley et al.: Kilkenny City’s M3?

 Mary Chaill: More evidence for Early Bronze Age body-piercing

 Alison Sheridan: Scottish Food Vessel chronology revisited
Alison Sheridan: Going round in circles? Understanding the Irish Grooved Ware complex in its wider context
Alison Sheridan: The Neolithization of Britain and Ireland: the Big Picture
Alison Sheridan: Scottish Beaker dates: the good, the bad and the ugly

 Eamonn Kelly: The Vikings and the kingdom of Laois

 Leszek GardełaL 'Warrior-women' in Viking Age Scandinavia? A preliminary archaeological study

 Vicki Cummings & Chris Fowler: From cairn to cemetery: an archaeological investigation of the chambered cairns and early Bronze Age mortuary deposits at Cairnderry and Bargrennan White Cairn, south-west Scotland


 OK ... I think that's more than enough to be going on with for now!

 Just to recap:

 1) Set up a free Academia.edu account [here]
2) Follow me! [here]*
3) Enjoy the tsunami of free academic papers available to you ...

 * This step is optional ... but you know you should!

 The wonderful and marvelous Dr James Bonsall [follow his Academia.edu page: here] has produced an excellent guide to available web-based resources for Irish archaeology & has allowed me to share the link: here. Go for it! Explore & enjoy!
Location: Belfast, Belfast, UK

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Three Billboards Outside University College London: A case of approved plagiarism by Prof Andrew Bevan et al.

Image
Introduction The oft-recited adage is that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Going by this logic, there can be no higher praise from an academic than outright plagiarism of your work. I have had recent cause to be on the receiving end of just such praise and I can assure you, dear reader, that it doesn’t feel like a compliment at all. In fact, it sucks. I decided that, rather than meekly accept it, I was going to fight back for the recognition due to my work. To this end, I reached out to the two universities involved (University College London and Plymouth University) and the publishing journal (PNAS) and asked them to initiate investigations into the conduct of their employees/authors. I trusted that these institutions would be keen to ensure that their academics adhered to the highest standards and that any deviation would be met with swift correction. I was wrong and my trust was sorely misplaced. Until now I have only really discussed this issue with my cont
Read more

The dreaded first test post!

Image
An irregularly updated blog about archaeology and related madness! ... might just be good! ** I'm always looking for guest writers! So if you have something that you want to say about archaeology, please get in touch! ** [** If you like any of the posts on this blog, please consider making a small donation. Each donation helps keep the Irish Radiocarbon & Dendrochronological Dates project going! **] <A HREF="http://ws.amazon.co.uk/widgets/q?rt=tf_sw&ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=GB&ID=V20070822%2FGB%2Frobmchaarc-21%2F8002%2Fb7e77064-bfea-4ba8-954d-a415ec05ad0c&Operation=NoScript">Amazon.co.uk Widgets</A>
Read more

"Always remember to draw the swastika turning to the right": Some thoughts on swastika directionality in Early Medieval Irish Art

Image
Swastikas are, for a number of reasons, endlessly fascinating symbols. Like all symbols, they are only invested with the meanings we give them. Otherwise they are just little shapes and drawings that mean nothing in and of themselves. Owing to its long history and brief (if traumatic) association with Nazism, the swastika probably has a stronger resonance than most. You won’t spend long on the internet attempting to discuss the swastika before someone, trying to be helpful, notes that the Nazi version rotated counter-clockwise (elbows pointing left) and was bad, but the good Buddhist/Hindu version rotated clockwise. They may be trying to be helpful, but they are invariably wrong. It’s true that the version Adolf Hitler designed for the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei only went one direction: counter-clockwise. What’s wrong is that not all other ( i.e. non-Nazi) swastikas turn the opposite direction (elbows pointing right). Rather than dutifully plod through a debun
Read more