In this short piece, I introduce two concepts taught in Anthropology that I believe would prove extremely useful should it be taught in classrooms.
Material Culture and Overwatch
How does the development team at Overwatch utilize the interpretation of materials within their world-building? How do the players and audience respond?
New Series: An Archaeologist Plays
Hello all, Long time, no post. I wanted to give you a heads up that I have a YouTube channel where I also sometimes post archaeology related things, like my new series! I recently completed a play-through of the first Uncharted game, which the first episode is linked below! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFYuTd_kxj-VRPOeIexj_Mm5kWLpcjSyv There is profanity if that's [...]
Archaeology of The Sims 4: “Jungle Adventures”
In the Sims franchise, players can control simulated persons, or "Sims" and decide how they will live: will they be good? Evil? Family-oriented? Dead immediately? Careers and hobbies such as scientist, chef, author, and more can be played to design the life of your Sims. In the third iteration of the franchise, Maxis and EA [...]
Material Culture and MAGA hats
In order to learn more about humans of the past, I study artifacts - also called things, items, stuff, trash, or materials. As someone interested in prehistory, cultures without written records, I usually do not have any indication of exactly how and why objects were used, and especially not how they felt about these items. [...]
To Georgia K-12 Teachers: Highlighting Archaeology in the Classroom
As part of my Master’s thesis, I surveyed K-12 teachers of Georgia (all grades, all subjects) on their perception of archaeology in the classroom. In total, 154 of you responded from all around the state (33 counties total)! In this post, I seek to highlight the results of the survey. My full thesis can be [...]
Game Developers need Anthropology.
How anthropologists could help video game development internally and externally.
Unpacking the SAA Public Archaeology Panels
The 83rd Annual Society for American Archaeology conference just wrapped up this weekend in Washington, D.C. Hundreds of papers were presented under many themes, regions, and interests. One such interest of mine is public archaeology and outreach - and boy were there a lot of those! Before the conference occurred, Elizabeth Reetz (@ecreetz) made a [...]
Uncharted Effect: Video Games and the Portrayal of Archaeology
How an archaeologist views video games and popular culture represent archaeology.
What is Archaeology?
Archaeology is complex and simple. Scientific and artistic. To discover the lives of those that lived in the past we as archaeologists must destroy the areas in which they flourished. It is often called a "destructive science," and with good reason. The Four Branches Archaeology (equally interchangeable with Americanized 'archeology') is a subset of Anthropology, [...]
fanthropologist 