Questioning "Vampire" Discoveries.

I had a tough time finding websites that were more than just blogs for this assigned post. Since our project is about Vampires and archaeology I thought I would be able to find some really interesting sites that were more than pop-culture fan sites or small blog posts. Unfortunately my searching did not come up with anything that really fit what I was looking for. I ended up deciding on a blog post about the problems with sensationalizing the concept of 'Vampire' burials to gain notice and public popularity about the dig site. It outlines the argument as well as including a letter written by an expert, critiquing a recent 'vampire' find. But since it is just a blog post, I decided to look at the website as a whole to mark it with the rubric. The website is called Publishing Archaeology and posts information about professional publishing issues in Archaeology.

For analysis I would probably give the page a 7. While good material is given the posts are fairly short and only really look at the surface of each full topic. Because all of the posts are on different subjects it makes the amount of analysis for each of them pretty basic. It falls somewhere between a 'good' and a 'very good' on our rubric. It works for the site but does not really fit what we are looking for for our site.

In the content and background information I would give this site a 10. The information included is from peer reviewed articles and academic sources. The site also uses their information in an interesting and clear way in order to present new and interesting ideas. As I explained in the last section, the site is meant to give pretty short descriptions of interesting new ideas and concepts in Archaeology, this lends itself well to our marking system because it is very clear and concise in the descriptions of the ideas presented.

The resources section would receive full marks because there are more than 2 articles used as resources for each post that cover a cross-disciplinary approach to the concepts. As well it is clear and well laid out and you can find the sources used for each one at the bottom of each post.

Navigation is pretty simple here since it is a blog, so therefore if you are at the main page you just keep scrolling down to get to different articles. The site also includes a sidebar with a few things I found useful for navigation, specifically the "Labels" which has tags for each post so that you can navigate old posts easily. I would give this section a 4 because I would have likes a little bit more accessibility in the form of a search bar to search old articles quicker and the presentation is a little boring, but overall it works well.

The only other section is on teamwork and since this site it put together by more than one person I will give it full marks for teamwork! Go Team!

The website provides interesting information from academic sources in a concise way. It includes pictures every now and then to keep the site fun and interesting:

A cute picture that I found on the site and figured it would represent the site as a whole pretty well. 

And while I found the site relatively bland and boring, the sources are very good, the layout was clear, and the information was easily accessible. 28.5/32.5

The site: Publishing Archaeology. Contributors: Cindy, Michael E. Smith. URL: publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com