For my original project, I decided to make brochures concerning different areas of archaeology, such as environmental archaeology and archaeological field methods. I was struggling with what kinds of information to include in these brochures, as they were intended for people who have little to no knowledge of archaeology. What kinds of things would people be interested in seeing regarding those topics? How much detail should be included? I decided to get some feedback from the class since I hadn’t on my original project proposal. Randy’s comment really stuck with me: that brochures remind him of the ones at gas stations that highlight all of the fun and exciting things people can do in the area. Thus my brochures took on a new goal: to educate the public on cool and important archaeological sites around the world.
I decided to divide the brochures by continent: Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America (including Central America) and South America. To begin my search for archaeological sites, I googled “archaeology around the world.” I found a site that conveniently had exactly what I was looking for: interesting archaeological sites grouped by continent. How perfect! I looked through the sites and the information about them and did some cross checking to make sure it was accurate. Some of the articles mentioned World Heritage site status, so I visited the UNESCO website as well. I made an outline of my findings to make it a bit easier to make the brochures.
Since brochures have five potential informational panels, I decided to devote four panels to sites on a given continent and the back panel to upcoming field school excavations. This back panel can be altered every season to include current information concerning archaeological excavations. I think this is nice because it always helps to have examples of “real-life events” because people can relate to them more than things that have happened in the past. The other panels contained key information about each site and pictures of the area or artifacts that were found there. Some of the sites are those that people may already be familiar with, such as Giza and Chichen Itza. However, people may not know sites such as Hadar in Ethiopia where the Lucy skeleton was discovered.
I am proud of how this project turned out. I spent hours researching places, finding images, and compiling them into six fabulous brochures. It was very interesting for me to learn more about these places, especially the ones that are not commonly known. Plus, I always enjoy projects like brochures that involve formatting, experimenting with different fonts and layouts, etc. It is my hope that these brochures can educate people about archaeological sites, research questions, and hopefully encourage them to learn more about the field of archaeology and different World Heritage sites and why they are important.