Mayhaps you’ve had a manuscript marinating? Potentially you’ve been pondering potsherd patterning? Or digging around in your data? Are you wondering how to turn these tidbits into some archaeological writing? Well, have we got some inspiration for you!
To alpha test our new Data Story, 30 Days to an Article: Archaeological Inspiration for Your Writing, we’ve got some data-driven archaeology prompts to encourage your next writing endeavor.
You can take a look at our full alpha-testing package here. The full Data story includes the prompt guide, a idea for how to start, and some advice for working with social media. In addition, the testing package has easy links to a couple of Open Context search tutorials. Because sometimes one word isn’t enough to get those rocks… knapping.
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We (aka the Data Literacy Program team via @OpenContext on Twitter) will be posting from our prompt list every day this month as encouragement for your #DataDriven #NaNoWriMo #AcWriMo and #ArchyWriMo. Archaeology inspires many writers so we hope that whatever you’re working on, we help cultivate a worthwhile workflow.
If you’re not familiar with #NaNoWriMo, #AcWriMo, or #ArchyWriMo, search the tag on social media platform and see what comes up. Alternatively, check out our post explaining these tags. This should hopefully get you interested in the game we’ve got going on. As always, feel free to reach out to us @opencontext or via e-mail at datastories@opencontext.org with questions.
This the prompts calendar for this Data Story! We hope you enjoy it
30 Days to an Article is our second Data Story in the Creative Series. These Data Stories aim to cultivate data literacy by inspiring creativity using archaeological data. Our goal with 30 Days to an Article is to cultivate data literacy using inspiration from archaeological concepts to cultivate writing as practice within a one-month timeframe. Habit forming is an important part of writing! Because of that, we hope that our prompt list helps get that habit started folks with archaeological interests.
This Data Story begins by reading data (in the literacy sense) to decipher the day’s prompt, which you can use to find more information on Open Context or another data-sharing platform. Then, you practice working with the data by turning the prompt into something new. A haiku, a few sentences, or even a whole new interpretation of an archaeological site – any writing can get you started! After that, at the end of the month, you can analyze what you’ve created. If you’ve written an article, it’s a good time to evaluate how you’ve laid out your argument in the last month!
In addition, if you fall behind or don’t see this guide until partway through the month, no problem! The inspiration guide is not a set of rigid rules. It’s one way to work with data. So pick up wherever you’d like or wherever you can.
Lastly, if you choose to travel this thematic month with us, let us know what you think! You can @ us on Twitter or e-mail us directly. Or, if you’re interested in being contacted for a follow up survey let us know. We want to make resources that encourage your data literacy journey and if some stuff just doesn’t work, we want to know!
With that, we hope you enjoy embarking on this archaeological adventure with us this #NaNoWriMo, #AcWriMo, or #ArchyWriMo!
