Why blog unfree archaeology?

Leading up to a session on Blogging in Archaeology at the 2014 Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Doug Rocks-Macqueen’s hosting a monthly blog carnival on Blogging Archaeology (and there’s also a Twitter conversation on #blogarch). (Like him, I’m not going to be there, and unhappy about it – albeit mainly because it’s in Austin.)

one out of three ain’t bad: who wants to be a Volunteer Research Assistant at the Serpentine Galleries?

Thanks to a friend who knew my Sunday night wouldn’t be complete without an offensive advert for unpaid labour, I now know that the Serpentine Galleries‘ ironically-titled ‘jobs’ page is inviting applications to be a Volunteer Research Assistant – at least, to be an assistant…

Italy: social media are improving public archaeology

ANSAmed’s reported that Italian ‘archaeology is becoming “social” with the archaeoblogger [archeologia diventa ‘social’ con gli archeoblogger]’. It explains that social media are improving communication between universities and the public and between teachers and students, and education at/by archaeological sites and museums.

The article was more a surprise than anything else, because I read it to find out about archaeology in social media in Italy, but found that the conclusion – punchline? 😉 – of the article was unfree archaeology… What can I say? Davvero, sono stanco di lavorare gratis.

It was even more surprising than that seems, because I’ve written tens of thousands of words on precarious labour in the UK (and tens of thousands more on the problem elsewhere) but Italy is the first (and only!) place it has been (even incidentally) mentioned in “the” media.

Indeed, Alessandro d’Amore’s interview on free archaeology (on his blog), which led to the mention in the mainstream media, has already been read more times than most (if not all) of my posts on free archaeology.

Do you have a solution? No. (A slightly longer chat with Alessandro d’Amore…)

As we (students and workers) have discussed, the cultural heritage profession’s labour problem is an international one. One of our Italian compagni, Alessandro d’Amore (@Alex_OLove), thought up some questions about free archaeology, to introduce the British situation to our Italian colleagues. He’s managed to translate my angry rambling into a chiacchierata [chat].

#FreeArchaeology: una chiacchierata con Sam Hardy di (Un)Free Archaeology

Le parole in Archeologia

Ciao Sam e grazie mille per aver accettato di fare questa chiacchierata. Sono molto contento di questa opportunità.

Ciao Alessandro, grazie a te per quest’intervista. Noi attivisti (anti)#freearchaeology siamo d’accordo con voi attivisti di #no18maggio sulla necessità di costruire una consapevolezza ed una solidarietà internazionale per portare avanti le nostre battaglie, perciò quest’occasione è ottima per tutti noi.

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Which side are you on, Portsmouth?

Following on from the last post on why workers and students should strike for higher education, I want to give the University of Portsmouth the short shrift it deserves for making its crowdfunding project’s most precarious worker crowdfund their own salary.

Why strike for higher education?

As in other sectors, so in higher education, bosses have increased their incomes through the crisis, while their employees have endured 13% real terms wage cuts (as well as both further increases in their already-more-than-full-time work, and such casualisation that most academics in the UK are precarious workers).