Curious how we picked the books for Of Mycenaean Men? In this article, we explain the development of that open educational resource (OER) and how we found the books for it. We hope learning about our process helps folks who like popular science and nonfiction find more archaeological data literacy related works for themselves.
Reading articles, books, and blogs is a great way to learn and was key to developing the Data Literacy Program. It helped us clarify the values for the program, learn about current research, and demonstrated just how many books about data literacy there are out there. As we began keeping a list of the most important ones, the idea for a book club Digital Data Story stuck in our minds. That original list eventually became Of Mycenaean Men.
Some of the first books that we decided would be part of the club were Weapons of Math Destruction and Data Feminism. Both were great, accessible introductions to data for adult audiences new to data literacy. Picking these helped us focus on the finding other books written for adult readers to include and also made us wonder if there were ideas about data that those books didn’t discuss but would be useful for us to highlight. So we added Living in Data and Braiding Sweetgrass. These books contextualized and humanized data to complement our first two selections.
With those four books, we had introductions to data covered. Now to add the archaeological part. For these books, we focused on finding adult nonfiction about archaeology or archaeological data. This included remembering popular nonfiction we had read recently, getting recommendations from colleagues, and searching public library tags and subject headings.
We chose to search tags and subject headings at public libraries, rather than use keywords on search engines or at online retailers because librarians spend a lot of time deciding how to categorize books in their collections. In addition, public library catalogs (in contrast to academic ones) would reflect greater accessibility for a book because our local public library had a copy. Public libraries, at least in the United States, also often have multiple reading options for books, another kind of accessibility, which we confirmed by searching through library apps that included ebooks and audiobooks.
Using those platforms, we stretched our data literacy legs and used tags or hyperlinks to explore existing books about archaeology. We learned was that in public libraries, lots of books about archaeology are tagged as sociology or history instead. As we evaluated those books, we referred to our goal of representing diversity in archaeology. To keep us accountable to those goals, make our work reproducible, and be transparent about this process, we created our book data table. That table includes information about all the books we recommend in our book club OERs. It also includes demographic information about the creators of those books. This allows readers, like you, to evaluate whether we stuck to our values. Readers can also use it to learn more about the books we recommend and preview other elements of the OER.
This table was one way that the DLP worked to cultivate archaeological data literacy with ethics and transparency in mind. Another was through the selection of our last theme for books in Of Mycenaean Men. While a mouthful, “What is the impact of archaeological data on modern human society?” was an important part of cultivating data literacy through this resource because it makes readers focus on archaeological data in terms of the people who create, use, and are impacted by those outcomes.
Rather than search for more books for this theme, we reviewed the options we had for books about archaeology. Once we had a list of books we liked, we considered which focused on telling stories about people in the past and which focused more on how those stories say something about current societal issues. This helped us separate which books were more archaeology from those about archaeology’s impact on modern societies.
Whether you read all the books or skim our suggestions, we hope you check out Of Mycenaean Men, its related video resources, and use our tips to help you find your next great read!
Image Credits: “OMM_SelectionBlog_Header” by Paulina F. Przystupa from the DLP / CC BY. It includes “OfMycenaeanMen_Mask” by L. Meghan Dennis from the DLP / CC BY. This is adapted from “Mycenaean gold funerary mask, NAMAthens, Greece” by Jebulon representing their own work via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mycenaean_gold_funerary_mask,_NAMAthens,_Greece.jpg) / CC0. “Screen capture of AAI Reads – Weapons of Math Destruction” by Paulina F. Przystupa from the DLP (2026) / CC BY-SA. It includes text by Paulina F. Przystupa from the DLP 2022 / CC BY. It also includes the “AAI reads logo” by Paulina F. Przystupa from the DLP / CC BY-SA.
