Why we developed the ArchaeoVenturers Project

THE DIGGER

Photo Credit: Eric H. Cline and
Biblical Archaeology Review

For years my family silently suffered behind their smiles and nods as I would go on – and on – and on about archaeology, anthropology, the Middle East, or whatever it was that I was working on or researching that week. The problem is – the details I found fascinating were not quite as fascinating to those around me – except for Justine, of course! We realized that there are so many important and amazing topics in history, science, and global affairs that would be interesting to so many – if only we could change, and shorten, our discussion of them. We developed the ArchaeoVenturers Project to break down all of the awesome stuff and put it into a more easily digestible format for those both in and outside of the field.

Katie when she was a Sports Illustrated
'College Cheerleader of the Week'
while at Miami University. Check out
Katie's SI interview HERE and the photo gallery HERE
Photo Credit: Peter Schlitt, Sports
Illustrated

What you see as available on television for the characterizations of a scientist, archaeologist or engineer, always seems to fit people into these little boxes – and women even more so. One of the amazing things about my family and Justine’s – aside from their putting up with our constant drawn out discussions of science and history - is that they never told us that we couldn’t do something. Being women never once hindered the way we conducted ourselves as school, in the field – or in fashion. Only when I got older did I realize the obstacles women faced in one field or another. I love digging in the field, getting dirty, and working outside in 100-degree weather – I enjoy getting entrenched in academic research and examining new ways of looking at the world. Both of these are commonplace for someone in a social science or humanity – but what I later learned wasn’t so commonplace were some
of my extra circulars – namely, being a cheerleader in college – and for those who know the cheerleading lingo, I was a flyer. I had no idea these two roles in my life were considered mutually exclusive by many. I never liked the idea of women needing to fit into these little boxes – you often hear about a renaissance man – but less often a renaissance woman.



THE DIVER

Katie and I have known each other since graduate school and something we started to talk about more over the years was how we engage a different audience for our archaeological pursuits. Her work at the Capitol Archaeological Institute at GWU fueled her need to find creative ways to make archaeological lectures more appealing and then when we started to work directly together, we tried throwing archaeologically-oriented events that would reach a broader audience. This in part was because of our friendship with the founder of Thirst DC who did exactly that- only more heavy on the science and with bigger audiences. We decided that in order to engage the current generation in their digital world, being active on social media would be only the tip of the iceberg. When a sample of today's generation was asked if they preferred to watch a YouTube video or read a blog, 9 out of 10 hands raised their hands for video, and yet the average length of time they watch videos averages on 30 seconds- so that's why we decided that videos were clearly the avenue to pursue but they needed to be short and concise - the blogs are for folks who are likely our age and older, people who are still interested in gathering supplemental information via the written word.

So, for me at least, and luckily Katie shared the same view- we just wanted to engage a more general

Check out Justine's BBC Radio
interview on 'The Conversation' HERE.

audience than just our colleagues, and it seemed like the logical thing to do would be to follow these growing online trends. I've learned that pursuing archaeology doesn't mean much to me if there is no one to interact with, whether that's a descendent community member, a student diver in Youth Diving With a Purpose, or someone who just found ArchaeoVenturers online randomly. We need to be sharing it with more people, or we are going to be outgunned by those who do make it more interesting. On it's own, even without the glamorous pull of lost treasure, archaeology can be fantastically exciting and I think that as a rule, we should be doing all that we can to captivate our audiences.

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The #AVProject was developed for all of the renaissance women, men, girls and boys out there – the people that are breaking stereotypes on their way through the glass ceiling. #LetYourAVflagFly